Now comes the part which fills me with irrational shame, it’s almost comic. Of all the ways to be discovered—I mean, there were about three hundred other likely ways for me to be discovered, if Fate insisted on it, but no, it has to be the classic way, the way heroines (and usually child-heroines, at that)

were always discovered in the books I was actually allowed, to read in my own childhood.

I sneezed.

The nearest sentry heard at once. He came straight towards me leisurely, holding up his torch.

I tried to creep back among the rustling swaying shrubs, but I’d’ve done better to run madly and not bother about concealment. He saw my face anyway. That was that. He recognized me. He didn’t yell out to his comrades; he wanted the reward all to himself.

He talked to me like a hunter to an animal trapped but edging away from him, like a soldier in a sacked town bothering to seduce a frightened girl he could rape.

“Come here, little coney, there’s no safety behind you. only the sea’s, there, now, now, don’t dash like that, it won’t do you no good, you’re only entangling yourself in the foliages, you’re getting yourself in a panic, you need to keep your pecker up for what’s coming, you’ll have a bit to face but remember while they skin you that you’ve won an honest sentry a fat purse of lovely metal—Ah, now, you’re really getting excited—Here, just hold out your hand and I’ll have you. No need to struggle any more for it ain’t no use—”

His voice had belied the harshness of his grip when eventually he got me. He twisted the bundle from me, puckered his lips as we regarded each other.

“This your cloak? Best put it on, them legs are a bit bare, aren’t they? Good thing your shift isn’t a coupla inches shorter.” He flipped at its hem with heavy fingers and laughed as I recoiled. He laughed again as he looked at my face, I hadn’t taken my eyes off his, I suppose I looked mesmerized already as a skinned rabbit. “You don’t want to interest my mates too much, do you now? Nor do I—they’ll ask too many questions. Pull your hood over your sweet face, now.” The rhythm of his conversation reminded me of Kond’s which used to come up from the blank impersonal grating: I felt almost homesick, for those had been safer moments.

His comrades were calling. “Found what the noise was, Number 58?”