When dressing, I caught sight of the bible on the desk top. It took me a moment to recognise it, and recognise why it was placed there. I sat on the end of the bed and stared at it. Soft brown leather, well-worn, and thin golden lettering. Then I recalled my vision.

The night before I had been too shocked, too confused, and too thrown by my conversation with Father Popov to consider what I had seen in any sensible manner. Now, in the silvery light of a growing moon, my first thought was of a warning. It was, admittedly, the most obvious conclusion – though no less correct for that. The four horsemen. Harbingers of destruction, each given a fourth of the earth to devour in their own ways.

I did not think Cornet Pitzmun was the actual horseman War, nor that the over-charging quartermaster was Famine. Not even the unsettling cart driver could truly be Death. They were only symbols placed before me for a reason I did not fully comprehend; not yet, and perhaps not ever. If they were meant to spur me into greater action and urgency in apprehending the person responsible for the horror at St Leonars prison, then the warning seemed disproportionately extreme. But if there was something greater at work in Drekenford then… I considered myself duly warned. I left the bible on the desk.

Mrs Lehner met me at the bottom of the stairs, as if she’d been lying in ambush.

‘Evening, Inspector,’ she said. I understood then that, no matter how often I might ask her not to, she would always use my title. ‘There’s a letter here for you.’

‘A letter?’ I pictured the King’s seal, a recall to Esteberg, scant details of a captured suspect.

‘Looks like the Father’s seal if you ask me.’

‘Yes, of course,’ I said, doing my best to hide my disappointment. ‘Is there coffee, Mrs Lehner?’

I read the Father’s brief note as I broke my fast with buttered bread and a heavy, spiced sausage that I’d seen in the market. He had arranged for us to visit Mrs Harsson at ten o’clock.

I was about to step out into the street when I recognised a man slumped at the bar. He didn’t look entirely disposed to company, but I couldn’t help myself.

‘I admire your day-brother’s paintings,’ I said.

He turned slowly, scowling. ‘Then buy one.’

‘I may just do so.’

‘Buy ten, buy a hundred, he’d still be an idle, ungrateful leech,’ the man said.

As much as I recognised the sentiment, given my own dissatisfaction with my day-brother’s choice of occupation, his strength of feeling caught me off-guard. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t—’

He harrumphed and returned to his ale.

The night had a sharp feel to it, and a chill to the wind that regularly took me by surprise as I rounded a street corner or passed an alley. I gritted my teeth each time, crossed my arms, and swore I would be ready for the next icy blast.