There was a frozen moment, with Visler cringing away, hands before his face, and Enth just standing there.

Kill him! Kill him! But Cyrene’s tongue and mouth remained obstinately shut and silent, while her eyes flicked in anguish between the two of them. And Enth remained still as Visler started to back away.

“No, no, no,” the vintner was muttering. “Need help, need help. He’ll know. He’ll know what to do. Yes, yes, yes. Emergencies, he said. This is an emergency, yes.” He scuttled back behind the bar frantically, keeping one eye on Enth at all times. “Call him up,” came his fevered voice. “He’ll know.” Then he was back, with a bag in his hand, scattering some rust-colored dust on the ground to make a circle, and then biting savagely at his own finger and flicking a bead of blood into its center.

There was a tearing sound and a flare of heatless reddish fire, and a man was stood there, caught as though in the middle of a conversation. He was bald, with a ferocious beard, and he wore robes of black stitched with red sigils. The same symbols glowed fitfully on the metal plates of his belt and the spiked pauldrons that capped his shoulders.

Cyrene did not know the man, but she knew the uniform. Her innards went utterly cold. A Doomsayer, one of Darvezian’s own elite: a true servant of the Dark Lord.

For a moment the man looked comically puzzled, then he took in Visler and the inn’s dingy interior. “Oh for the Dark Lord’s sake, not again!” he snapped out, rounding on the vintner. “Didn’t I tell you? Emergencies, you filthy vermin. How have you even got any of that blood-dust left?”

“Feyn, Feyn.” Visler held out his hands appeasingly. “I need your help. It’s all gone wrong, yes, yes. I’ve done something foolish.”

“Spare me.” Feyn knuckled at his forehead. “I wish I’d never sponsored you, you little tit. You know how much I get laughed at, because of you? I could have had a bandit chief doing evil in my name, or a notorious assassin. Instead I’ve got a coward of an innkeeper who runs the worst fucking inn the world has ever seen. What’s this?” He gestured at Visler’s two guests. “They look under control to me.”

“She’s a pilgrim!” Visler exploded. “I told them, no pilgrims, no church folk, no, no. People come looking for them when they go missing! She even said she wasn’t, and she is! What’s the world like, Feyn, when you can’t even trust a traveler to say whether they’re holy or not?”