Ivis was gone for the night. Whatever haunted him she could not touch, and though she made her love plain to see, he was simply uninterested in her, and it was that disinterest that so wounded Atran, straight down through her body like a spear pinning her soul to the ground. She knew he took women to his bed – if his tastes had been for other men, then she would have understood and it would not be so bad. But it was her that he had no feelings for.

She was not ugly. A little too thin, perhaps, and getting thinner as the neth berries devoured her reserves, but her face was even, not too lined, not too wan or sunken. She had green eyes that men professed to admire, and the sharpness which had once made the same men uneasy was long gone, drowned away and for ever done with. Sharpness wasn’t a gift when bluntness was what was desired.

Spite limped into the surgery. ‘Atran? I hurt my knee! Come quick – I can’t walk any farther!’

The surgeon blinked. ‘Rubbish,’ she pronounced without moving.

The girl frowned. ‘What?’

‘That’s arterial blood and it’s smeared, not spurting. Did the cook slaughter another pig? You’re a sick little wretch, you know that?’

Spite stared at her, and then slowly straightened. ‘Just fooling,’ she said.

‘Get out of my sight.’

The girl scowled. ‘Father won’t like it when I tell him how you talk to me.’

‘Your father doesn’t like you, so why would he give a fuck how I talk to you?’

‘We’re going to kill you,’ said Spite. Envy stepped out from behind her and Atran saw the bloody knife in her hand.

‘What have you fools done? Who did you hurt? Where’s Malice?’

Envy rushed her, knife upraised.

Atran’s hand was a flash, catching the girl’s wrist and snapping it clean. She then picked up the child by the throat and threw her across the room. Envy struck the cutting table, her back arching, folding around the table’s edge – a table that was bolted to the floor.

Shrieking, Spite flung herself forward.

A slap sent her sprawling. Atran turned to see Envy picking herself up from the floor, and that was impossible – the girl’s back should have broken, snapped like a twig. Instead, something dark and vile was bleeding out from the girl, from her limbs, her hands, from her dark eyes. The tendrils of this dread sorcery reached out, curling like talons. The broken wrist was visibly mending, flesh writhing under the red skin.

Spite scrabbled to her feet, and in her Atran saw similar power. ‘You’re nothing!’ the girl hissed. ‘A useless drunk bitch!’