They rushed like the wind, like mad things, at breakneck speed. They rode through the days, now burgeoning with spring. The horses carried them in a light-footed gallop, and the people, straightening their necks and backs from toiling on the soil, watched them as they went, uncertain of what they had seen: riders or apparitions?

They rode through the nights, dark and wet from the warm rain, and the people, woken and sitting up on their pallets, looked around, terrified, fighting the choking pain that rose in their throats and chests. People sprang up, listening to the thud of shutters, to the crying of those wrested from sleep, to the howling of dogs. They pressed their faces to the parchment in their windows, uncertain of what they had seen: riders, or apparitions?

After Ebbing, tales of the three demons began to circulate.

The three riders appeared from God knows where and God knows how, completely astonishing Peg Leg and giving him no chance to flee. Neither was there any help to call for. A good five hundred paces separated the cripple from the outermost buildings of the small town. And even had it been closer, there was a slender chance that any of Jealousy’s inhabitants would bother about someone calling for help. It was siesta time, which in Jealousy usually lasted from late morning until early evening. Aristoteles Bobeck, nicknamed Peg Leg, the local beggar and philosopher, knew only too well that Jealousy residents didn’t react to anything during siesta time.

There were three riders. Two women and a man. The man had white hair and wore a sword slung across his back. One of the women, more mature and dressed in black and white, had raven-black hair, curled in locks. The younger one, whose straight hair was the colour of ash, had a hideous scar on her left cheek. She was sitting on a splendid black mare. Peg Leg felt he’d seen a mare like that before.

It was the younger one that spoke first.

‘Are you from around here?’

‘It wasn’t me!’ Peg Leg said, teeth chattering. ‘I’m nobbut gathering mushrooms! Forgive me, don’t harm a cripple—’

‘Are you from round here?’ she repeated, and her green eyes flashed menacingly. Peg Leg cowered.

‘Aye, noble lady,’ he mumbled. ‘I’m a local, right enough. I was born here, in Birka, I mean in Jealousy. And I shall no doubt die here—’

‘Last year, in the summer and autumn, were you here?’

‘Where should I have bin?’

‘Answer when I ask you.’

‘I was, good lady.’

The black mare shook its head and pricked up its ears. Peg Leg felt the eyes of the other two–the black-haired woman and the white-haired man–pricking him like hedgehog’s spines. The white-haired man scared him the most.