Snell had widened his eyes as wide as they could go. He made his chin tremble. ‘Harllo,’ he whispered, ‘but I never hurt him-I swear it!’

Oh, he hadn’t wanted to lie. It just came out.

‘Past Worrytown or Two-Ox Gate?’

‘The gate. Two-Ox.’

‘Did you go with him or did you follow him? What happened out there, Snell?’

And Snell’s eyes betrayed him then, a flicker too instinctive to stop in time-down to where Mew and Hinty were lying.

The man’s eyes flattened just as Snell had feared they might.

‘I never killed him! He was breathing when I left him! If you kill me they’ll find out-they’ll arrest you-you’ll go the gallows-you can’t kill me-don’t!’

‘You knocked him out and left him there, after stealing the dung he’d collected. The hills beyond Two-Ox Gate.’

‘And I went back, a couple of days-the day after-and he was gone! He’s just run off, that’s all-’

‘A five-year-old boy doing everything he could to help his family just ran off, did he? Or did you drive him off, Snell?’

‘I never did-he was just gone-and that’s not my fault, is it? Someone maybe found him, maybe even adopted him.’

‘You are going to tell your parents everything, Snell,’ the man said. ‘I will be back tonight, probably late, but I will be back. Don’t even think of running-’’He won’t,’ said a voice from the door,

The man turned. ‘Bellam-what-’

‘Master Murillio, I’ll stay here and keep an eye on the fucker. And when his parents show up, well, he’ll spill it all out. Go on, Master, you don’t need to worry about anything happening back here.’

The man-Murillio-was silent for a time, seeming to study the rangy boy who stood, arms folded, leaning against the doorway’s frame.

And then he set Snell down and stepped back. ‘I won’t forget this, Bellam.’

‘It’ll be fine, Master. I won’t beat the bones out of him, much as I’d like to, and much as he obviously deserves it. No, he’s going to sit and play with his little sisters-soon as they come round-’

‘A splash of water should do it.’

‘After a splash, then. And not only is Snell going to play with them, but he’s going to make a point of losing every game, every argument. If they want him to stand on his head while picking his arsehole, why, that’s what Snell will do. Right, Snell?’

Snell had met older boys just like this one. They had calm eyes but that was just to fix you good when you weren’t expecting.nothing. He was more frightened of this Bellam than he’d been of Murillio. ‘You hurt me and I’ll get my friends after you,’ he hissed. ‘My street friends-’

‘And when they hear the name Bellam Nom they’ll cut you loose faster than you can blink.’

Murillio had found a clay bowl into which he now poured some water.

‘Master,’ said Bellam, ‘I can do that. You got what you needed from him-at least a trail, a place to start.’

‘Very well. Until tonight then, Bellam, and thank you.’

After he’d left, Bellam shut the door and advanced on Snell, who once more cringed against the back wall.

‘You said-’

‘We do that, don’t we, when it comes to grown-ups.’

‘Don’t touch me!’

‘No grown-ups anywhere close, Snell-what do you like to do when they’re not around? Oh, yes, that’s right. You like to torment everyone smaller than you. That sounds a fun game. I think I’ll play, and look, you’re smaller than me. Now, what torment shall we do first?’

In leaving them for the time being, all grim concern regarding anything unduly cruel can be thankfully dispensed with. Bellam Nom, being cleverer than most, knew that true terror belonged not to what did occur, but to what might occur. He was content to encourage Snell’s own imagination into the myriad possibilities, which was a delicate and precise form of torture. Especially useful in that it left no bruises.

Bullies learn nothing when bullied in turn; there are no lessons, no about-face in their squalid natures. The principle of righteous justice is a peculiar domainwhere propriety and vengeance become confused, almost indistinguishable. The bullied bully is shown but the other side of the same fear he or she has lived with all his or her life. The about-face happens there, on the outside, not the inside. Inside, the bully and everything that haunts the bully’s soul remains unchanged.

It is an abject truth, but conscience cannot be shoved down the throat.

If only it could.

Moths were flattened against the walls of the narrow passageway, waiting for something, probably night. As it was a little used route to and from the Vidikas estate, frequented twice a day at specific times by deliveries to the kitchen, Chal-lice had taken to using it with all the furtive grace of the insouciant adulteress that she had become. The last thing she expected was to almost run into her husband there in the shadows midway through.

Even more disconcerting, it was clear that he had been awaiting her. One hand holding his duelling gloves as if about to slap them across her cheek, yet there was an odd smile on his face. ‘Darling,’ he said.

She halted before him, momentarily struck dumb. It was one thing to play out the game at breakfast, a table between them cluttered with all the false icons of a perfect and perfectly normal marriage. Their language then was such a smooth navigation round all those deadly shoals that it seemed the present was but a template of the future, of years and years of this; not a single wound stung to life, no tragic floundering on the jagged shallows, sailors drowning in the foam.

He stood before her now, tall with a thousand sharp edges, entirely blocking her path, his eyes glittering like wrecker fires on a promontory. ‘So pleased I found you,’ he said. ‘I must head out to the mining camp-no doubt you can hear the carriage being readied behind you.’

Casual words, yet she was startled, like a bird; flash of fluttering, panicked wings in the gloom as she half turned to register the snort of horses and the rustle of traces from the forecourt behind her. ‘Oh,’ she managed, then faced him once more. Her heart’s rapid beat began slowing down.

‘Even here,’ Gorlas said, ‘there is a sweet flush to your cheeks, dear. Most becoming.’

She could almost feel the brush of fingertips to grant benediction to the compliment. A moth, startled awake by the clash of currents in the dusty air, wings dry as talc as it fluttered against her face. She flinched back. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

This was just another game, of course. She realized that now. He did not want things to get messy, not here, not any time soon. She told herself this with certainty, and hoped it was true. But then, why not an explosive shattering? Freeing him, freeing her-wouldn’t that be healthier in the end? Unless his idea of freeing himself is to kill me. Such things happen, don’t they?

‘I do not expect to be back for at least three days. Two nights.’

‘I see. Be well on your journey, Gorlas.’

‘Thank you, darling.’ And then, without warning, he stepped close, his freehand grasping her right breast… ‘I don’t like the thought of strangers doing this,’ he said, his voice low, that odd smile still their, ‘I need to picture the face, one I know well. I need a sense of the bastard behind it.’

She stared into his eyes and saw only a stranger, calculating, as clinical and cold as a dresser of the dead-like the one who’d come to do what was needed with the corpse of her mother, once the thin veil of sympathy was tossed aside like a soiled cloth and the man set to work.

‘When I get back,’ he continued, ‘we’ll have a talk. One with details. I want to know all about him, Challice.’

She knew that what she said at this precise moment would echo in her husband’s mind for virtually every spare moment in the course of the next three days and two nights, and by the time he returned her words would have done their work in transforming him-into a broken thing, or into a monster. She could say All right, as if she was being forced, cornered, and whatever immediate satisfaction he felt would soon twist into something dark, unpleasant, and she would find herself across from a vengeful creature in three days’ time. She might say If you like, and he would hear that as defiance and cruel indifference-as if for her his needs were irrelevant, as if she would oblige out of pity and not much else. No, in truth she had few choices in what she might utter at this moment. In an instant, as he awaited her response, she decided on what she would say and when it came out it was calm and assured (but not too much so). ‘Until then, husband.’