“Are you?” Plainly she had other ideas. They padded down another street: Armesion was a dead town at night, and surprisingly poorly lit. The locals simply did not care to be abroad after dark. I should do a stint here again, have the run of the place? Lief considered, but he had never liked the city. The sheer reek of righteousness about it meant that even lifting a fat purse from a fatter archprelate brought unwanted pangs of guilt.

“You’re going to fetch Dion and the others. I’m going in to try and spring Enth.”

“Really?” Still unconvinced.

“Yes,” he hissed. “And for two good reasons. Firstly, I don’t wish to be kicking my Heathen boots in some minor cleric’s waiting room for three hours because they decide that any business brought by me must be too profane to be urgent. Secondly…”

Abnasio and his Brotherhood of the Dawn were slowing, becoming more confident. They had been failing roundly at “spot the pursuers” before, but apparently they were on their home turf now and barely even glancing behind them. Possibly there were other watchers, but Lief and Cyrene were flitting from darkness to darkness like ghosts.

“Secondly what?” Cyrene demanded.

“I don’t trust you,” he said.

She almost broke cover, with the outrage of that. “You slimy little turd,” she told him, sotto voce, “I’m a true servant of Dion, an enemy of Darkness, and you’re just a shabby little thief rubbish enough that you got caught with your hand in the poor-box. You don’t trust me?”

“Yeah, don’t know why, maybe it’s that lovely judgmental streak.”

This time she grabbed his shoulder and pushed him into a doorway. At the end of the narrow street, the Brotherhood were filing into a two-tier building.

“Talk fast, before I send you to Dion with a split lip,” she warned him.

“I don’t trust you to keep Enth alive,” he told her flatly, not giving an inch.

“We need the monster for our quest. Hence it lives that long.” And only that long, was the unspoken implication.

“And if Big-Nose in there gives you some holy spiel about how his plan’s better, you know what, I think you might just go for it. Because his plan involves killing Enth, and you’ve been spoiling for that since there was an Enth.”

She stared at him and a couple of retorts died on her lips. “What, are you buggering the thing now, that you’re so in love with it?”

“Please, save the cheap shots, you’re bad at them.” And she was: the venom in the words was forced.

“You seriously think I’d compromise our mission just to spill the monster’s blood?”

“Wouldn’t you?”