“Wh-what?” I didn’t understand what I was seeing, or perhaps some part of my brain was sensibly stopping me from understanding.

Cutter John circled his own lips with one finger. The trophies along his arm whispered together as he did so. “Open wide.” His voice slithered as though he were something not human.

“You shouldn’t have come here, Jalan.” Maeres spoke into the silence of my horror. “It’s unfortunate that you can’t unsee my poppies, but the world is full of misfortunes.” He stepped back to stand by Daveet at the door—the lights flickering across his face providing the only animation, a shadow smile there and gone, there and gone.

“No!” For the first time ever I wanted Maeres Allus not to leave. Anything was better than being abandoned to Cutter John. “No! I won’t talk! I won’t. Not ever.” I put some anger into it—who would believe a sobbing promise of strength? “I’m saying nothing!” I strained at my ropes, rocking the table back against its legs. “Pull my nails. I won’t talk. Hot pincers won’t drag it from me.”

“How about cold ones?” Cutter John raised the short-handled iron pincers he’d been holding all this time in his other hand.

I roared at them then, thrashing, useless in the ropes. If one of Maeres’s men hadn’t been standing on the table legs, it would have tipped forwards and I’d have gone face first into the flagstones, which bad as it sounds would have been far less painful than what Cutter John had in mind for me. I was still roaring and screaming, working my way rapidly towards sobbing and pleading, when a hot wet something splattered across my face. It was enough to make me unscrew my eyes and pause my bellowing. Although I’d stopped yelling the din was no less deafening, only now it wasn’t me screaming. I’d drowned out the crash of the door bursting open, too far gone in my terror to notice it. Only Daveet stood there now, framed in the doorway. He turned as I watched, slit from collarbone to hip, spilling coils of his guts to the floor. To the left a large figure moved at the edge of my vision. As I turned my head the action shifted behind the table; another scream and a pale arm wrapped in bracelets made from men’s lips landed on the flagstones about a foot from where Daveet’s head hit the stone when he tripped on his intestines. And in one moment there was silence. Not a sound save for men shouting far down the corridor outside, echoey in the distance. Daveet appeared to have knocked himself out or died from sudden blood loss. If Cutter John missed his arm, he wasn’t complaining. I could see one more of Maeres’s men lying dead. The others might be dead behind me or taking a leaf from my book and sprinting for the hills. If I hadn’t been tied to the damn table I would have been overtaking them on the way to the aforementioned hills myself.