“Why—” The door juddered open and cut through my nineteenth question.

“Good lord, it stinks in here!” A calm and depressingly familiar voice. “Stand our guest up, why don’t you, and let’s see if you can’t sluice some of that filth off him.”

Men loomed to either side, strong hands grasped the table, and the world turned through a right angle, leaving the table standing on end, and me standing too, still bound to it. A bucket of cold water took my breath and vision before I had a chance to look around. Another followed in quick succession. I stood gasping, trying to get a breath—no mean task with your nose clogged with blood and water everywhere—whilst a fragrant brown pool began to spread around my feet.

“Well, bless me. There seems to be a prince hidden under all this unpleasantness. A diamond in the muck, as they say. Albeit a very low-carat one.”

I shook the wet hair from my eyes, and there he stood, Maeres Allus, dressed in his finest as if bound for high company . . . and an opera perhaps?

“Ah, Maeres! I was hoping to see you. Had a little something to hand over towards our arrangement.” I never called it my debt. Our arrangement sounded better. A little more as if it was both our problems, not just mine.

“You were?” Just the slightest smile mocking at the corners of his mouth. He’d worn that same smile when one of his heavies snapped my index finger. The ache of it still ran through me on cold mornings when I reached for the flagon of small beer they put by my bed. It ran through that same finger now, secured at my side.

“Yes.” I didn’t even stutter. “Had it with me at the opera.” By my reckoning the business with Snorri had bought me in the region of six months’ grace, but it never hurts to sound willing. Besides, the main thing when tied to tables by criminals is to remind them how much more valuable you are to them when not tied to a table. “The gold was right in my pocket. I think I must have lost it in the panic.”

“Tragic.” Maeres lifted a hand, cupped his fingers, and a man came from the shadows to stand at his shoulder. A dry rustling accompanied his advance and stopped when he did. I didn’t like this one at all. He looked too pleased to see me. “Another fire with no survivors.”

“Well . . .” I didn’t want to contradict Maeres. My eyes slid to the man beside him. Maeres is a slight fellow, unremarkable, the kind of little man you might find bent over the ledgers at some merchant’s office. Neat brown hair, eyes that are neither kind nor cruel. In fact, remarkably similar to my father in age and appearance. Maeres’s companion, though, he looked like the sort of man who would drown kittens recreationally. His face reminded me of the skulls in the palace catacombs. Stretch skin over one and press in some pale staring eyes, and you’d have this man, his smile too wide, teeth too long and white.