‘And what finally happened with that Cintran princess?’ The older Scarra kept probing. ‘I mean you finally nabbed her, didn’t you?’

‘We did. If you could call it that. What’s the date today?’

‘September the twenty-second. It’s the Equinox tomorrow.’

‘Ah. Well, that’s a queer coincidence. Tomorrow, it’ll be a year to the day since those events… A year already…’

Kenna stretched out on her pallet, hands clasped behind her head. The sisters remained silent, hoping it had been an introduction to a story.

Nothing doing, sisters dear, thought Kenna, looking at the obscene drawings and even more obscene comments scrawled on the planks of the upper bunk. There won’t be any story. It’s not even that that bastard Kohut smells like a bloody nark. I just don’t feel like talking about it. I don’t feel like remembering it.

What happened a year ago. After Bonhart gave us the slip in Claremont.

We’d arrived there two days too late, she recalled, the trail had already gone cold. No one knew where the bounty hunter had gone. No one apart from the merchant Houvenaghel, that is. But Houvenaghel didn’t want to talk to Skellen, or even have him in the house. He communicated through his servants that he had no time and wouldn’t grant them an audience. Tawny Owl was cross and indignant, but what could he do? It was Ebbing, he didn’t have the necessary jurisdiction. And we could do nothing about Houvenaghel any other way–I mean our way–for he had a private army down in Claremont, and we couldn’t exactly declare war…

Boreas Mun sniffed around, Dacre Silifant and Ola Harsheim tried bribery, Til Echrade elven magic, I used telepathy and listened to his thoughts, but it wasn’t much use. All we learned was that Bonhart had left the town through the southern gate. But before he left…

In Claremont there was a tiny little temple with larches, by the southern gate and the small market place. Before leaving Claremont, Bonhart had cruelly beaten Falka with a knout in the square in front of the temple. Before everybody’s eyes, including the temple priests’. He yelled that he’d prove to her who her lord and master was. That he was flogging her with a knout as he wished, and if he so wished he’d flog her to death, because no one would stand up for her, no one would come to her aid. Neither people nor gods.

The younger Scarra was looking out of the window, hanging onto the grating. The older one was eating porridge from the bowl. Kohut took the stool, lay down and covered himself with a blanket.

The bell in the guardhouse tolled, the guards on the walls yelled out their presence…

Kenna turned her face to the wall.