She left the knife buried halfway to its hilt – as deep as her strength had taken it – in his back, and pushed at his limp body until it rolled to one side.

A desert woman for your last memory of love.

Scillara sat up, wanting to cough but swallowing until the urge passed. Heavy, and heavier still.

I am a vessel ever filled, yet there’s always room for more. More durhang. More men and their seeds. My master found my place of pleasure and removed it. Ever filled, yet never filled up. There is no base to this vessel. This is what he has done.

To all of us.

She tottered upright. Stared down at the guard’s corpse, at the wet stains spreading out beneath him.

A sound behind her. Scillara turned.

‘You murdering bitch.’

She frowned at the second guard as he advanced, drawing a dagger.

‘The fool wanted you alone for a time. This is what he gets for ignoring Febryl’s commands – I warned him—’

She was staring at the hand gripping the dagger, so was caught unawares as the other hand flashed, knuckles cracking hard against her jaw.

Her eyes blinked open to jostling, sickening motion. She was being dragged through rubbish by one arm. From somewhere ahead flowed the stench of the latrine trench, thick as fog, a breath of warm, poisoned air. Her lips were broken and her mouth tasted of blood. The shoulder of the arm the guard gripped was throbbing.

The man was muttering.’... pretty thing indeed. Hardly. When she’s drowning in filth. The fool, and now he’s dead. It was a simple task, after all. There’s no shortage of whores in this damned camp. What – who—’

He had stopped.

Head lolling, Scillara caught a blurred glimpse of a squat figure emerging from darkness.

The guard released her wrist and her arm fell with a thump onto damp, foul mud. She saw him reaching for his sword.

Then his head snapped up with a sound of cracked teeth, followed by a hot spray that spattered across Scillara’s thighs. Blood.

She thought she saw a strange emerald glow trailing from one hand of the guard’s killer – a hand taloned like a huge cat’s.

The figure stepped over the crumpled form of the guard, who had ceased moving, and slowly crouched down beside Scillara.

‘I’ve been looking for you,’ the man growled. ‘Or so I’ve just realized. Extraordinary, how single lives just fold into the whole mess, over and over again, all caught up in the greater swirl. Spinning round and round, and ever downward, it seems. Ever downward. Fools, all of us, to think we can swim clear of that current.’

The shadows were strange on him. As if he stood beneath palms and tall grasses – but no, there was only the night sky above the squat, broad-shouldered man. He was tattooed, she realized, in the barbs of a tiger.