The servitor had dismounted. With a lurch like sea-swell, the gref-carrier rose and got underway again.

‘I was told you were coming,’ she said.

‘What?’

The woman reached into her fur coat – highland fox, if he wasn’t mistaken – and produced a wallet, which she flipped open to reveal the golden badge inside.

‘Germaine Macks, province Arbites.’

‘You were expecting me, officer?’

‘A squirt from the governor’s office. An expert on his way. I’m thrilled, of course. It’s about time. So, what’s the plan?’

‘Plan?’

‘Your m.o.?’

Drusher shrugged. ‘I suppose I’ll examine habitat, look for spores, collate cases and get a decent pict or two if I can.’ His voice trailed off. In seven years, no official had ever taken such interest in his work.

‘And how do you plan to kill it?’ she asked.

‘Kill it?’ he echoed.

‘Yes,’ she said, chuckling, as if party to some joke. ‘That being the point.’

‘I don’t intend to kill it. I don’t take samples. Just descriptive records, for the taxonomy.’ He patted his sketchbooks.

‘But you have to kill it,’ she said, earnestly. ‘I mean, if you don’t, who the hell will?’

By the firelight of the great hearth, Baron Karne went on expansively for several minutes.

‘The Lord Governor is a personal friend, a childhood friend, and when he makes it known that a scholar such as yourself is coming to my part of the world, I take pains to make that scholar welcome. Ask, and it will be given, magos. Any service, any requirement. I am happy to provide.’

‘Th–thank you, baron,’ Drusher said uneasily. He looked around the room. Trophy heads, crested with vast antlers and grimacing their fangs, haunted the shadowy walls. A winter storm battered at the leaded windows. Outer Udar was colder than he had dared imagine.

‘I wonder if there might have been a mistake,’ Drusher ventured.

‘How is that?’

‘Sir, I am a taxonomist. A scholar. My expertise is in the cataloguing of fauna-forms. The Lord Governor – your childhood friend, as you say – commissioned me to compile a concordance of Gershom’s animal life. I’ve come here because... well, there seems to be a curiosity out here I may have missed. A predator. I’m here to identify it for the taxonomy. Not to kill it. I’m no hunter.’

‘You’re not?’

‘Not at all, sir. I sketch and examine and catalogue.’

The baron bowed his head. ‘Dear me... Really?’

‘I’m truly sorry, sir.’

He looked over at the door into the dining room. It was ajar, and light slanted through the gap.

‘What will I tell them?’ the baron said.

Drusher felt desperately out of his depth. ‘If you have guests – I mean, to save face – I could play along, I suppose.’