‘Who?’

‘Er, your mate?’

Bedusk Agape selected one of the three crystal decanters on the marble table, sniffed at its contents, and then refilled their goblets. ‘Have you ever had a wile, Wizard?’

‘No not that I’m aware of.’

‘Yes, it can be like that at times.’

‘It can?’

The Jaghut gestured towards the window. ‘One moment there, the next… gone.’

‘Oh, the cliff.’

‘No, no. I was speaking of my wife.’

Quell shot Precious Thimble a helpless look. Off near the spiral staircase, Mappo stood examining an elaborate eyepiece of some kind, mounted on a spike with a peculiar ball-hinge that permitted the long black metal instrument to be swivelled about, side to side and up and down. The damned Trell was paying at-tention to all the wrong things.

Precious Thimble looked back at Quell with wide eyes.

‘Loss,’ stammered the wizard, ’is a grievous thing.’

‘Well of course it is,’ said Bedusk Agape, frowning.

‘Urn, not always. If, for example, one loses one’s, er, virginity, or a favourite shiny stone, say…’

The red-rimmed eyes stayed steady, unblinking.

Quell wanted to squeeze his legs together-no, better, fold one over the other-lest his snake start drooling or, worse, spitting.

Precious Thimble spoke in a strangely squeaky voice, ‘Jaghut Anap, the curse afflicting this village’s daughters-’

‘There have been twelve in all,’ said Bedusk Agape. ‘Thus far.’

‘Oh. What happened to the other nine?’

The Jaghut flicked his gaze over to her. ‘You are not the first trouble to arrive in the past few years. Of course,’ he added, after sipping his wine, ‘all the young girls are now sent to the next village along this coast-permanently, alas, which does not bode well for the future of this town.’

‘I thought I saw women down in the tavern cellar,’ said Precious Thimble.

‘Bearing a child prevents the settling of the curse. Mothers are immune. There-fore, if you or your fellow female companions have at any time produced a child, you need not worry.’

‘Um,’ said Precious Thimble, ‘I don’t think any of us qualify.’

‘How unfortunate,’ said Bedusk.

‘So how is it you got elected Provost?’ Quell asked. ‘Just curious, you see-I’m the nosy type, that’s all. I didn’t mean anything-’

‘I believe it was a collective attempt to ameliorate my grief, my solitude. None would deny, I now expect, that such an invitation was ill-conceived.’

‘Oh? Why?’

‘Well, had I remained in my isolation, this terrible curse would not exist, I am afraid,’:

‘It’s your curse, then?’

‘Yes.’

A long moment of silence. From near the staircase, Mappo slowly turned to lace them.

‘Then you can end it,’ said Quell.

‘I could, yes, but I shall not.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you are not that important.’

Quell crossed his legs. ‘May I ask, what happened to your mate?’

‘We argued. I lost. I buried her.’

There seemed to be, at least to the wizard’s thinking, something missing in that answer. But he was getting distracted by his bladder. He couldn’t think straight.

‘So,’ said Precious Thimble in a thin voice, ‘if you lose an argument to someone, you then kill them?’

‘Oh, I didn’t say she was dead.’

Mappo spoke from where he still stood, ‘She is now, Jaghut.’

Bedusk Agape sighed. ‘That does seem likely, doesn’t it?’

‘How long,’ the Trell asked, ‘was she pinned down? Your mate?’

‘Nine years or so.’

‘And the argument?’

‘I sense a certain belligerence in you, Trell.’

, ‘Belligerence, Jaghut?’ Mappo bared his fangs in a cold grin. ‘Your senses have dulled with disuse, I think.’

‘I see. And you imagine you can best me?’

‘I was asking you about the argument.’

‘Something trivial. I have forgotten the details.’

‘But you found yourself alone, at least until the villagers took pity on you and elected you their Provost. And then… you fell in love?’

Bedusk Agape winced.

Precious Thimble gasped. ‘Oh! I see now. Oh, it’s like that. She spurned you. You got mad, again, only this time you couldn’t very well bury the whole village-’

‘Actually, I considered it.’

‘Um, well, you decided not to, then. So, instead, you worked up a curse, on her and all her young pretty friends, since they laughed at you or whatever. You turned them all into Tralka Vonan. Blood Feeders.’

‘You cannot hope to break my curse, Witch,’ said Bedusk. ‘Even with the wiz-ard’s help, you will fail.’ The Jaghut then faced Mappo. ‘And you, Trell, even if you manage to kill me, the curse will not die.’ He refilled his goblet for the third time. ‘Your women will have a day or so before the curse takes effect. In that time, I suppose, they could all endeavour to become pregnant.’

All at once Quellsat straighter.

But when he saw Precious Thimble’s express, his delighted smile turned somewhat sheepish,

Down on the narrow strand of what had once been beach, at the foot of the raw cliff, waves skirled foam-thick tendrils through the chunks of clay and rock and black hairy roots, gnawing deep channels and sucking back into the sea milky, silt-laden water. The entire heap was in motion, settling, dissolving, sections collapsing under the assault of the waves.

Farther down the beach the strand reemerged, the white sand seemingly studded with knuckles of rust, to mark the thousands of ship nails and rivets that had been scattered in profusion along the shoreline. Fragments of wood formed a snagged barrier higher up, and beyond that, cut into the cliff face, weathered steps led up to a hacked-out cave mouth.

This cave was in fact a tunnel, rising at a steep angle up through the bowels of the promontory, to open out in the floor of the village’s largest structure, a stone and timbered warehouse where the wreckers off-loaded their loot after the long haul of the carts from the cliff base. A tidy enterprise, all things considered, one that gave employment to all the folk of the village-from tending the false fires to rowing the deep-hulled boats out to the reef, where the stripping down of the wrecks took place, along with clubbing survivors and making sure they drowned. The local legend, concocted to provide meagre justification for such cruel en-deavours, revolved around some long-ago pirate raids on the village, and how someone (possibly the Provost, who had always lived here, or the locally famous Gacharge Hadlom Who Waits-but he left so there was no way to ask him) had suggested that, since the sea was so eager to deliver murderers to this shore, why could it not also deliver death to the would-be murderers? And so, once the notion was planted, the earth was tilled, with mallet and pick and flint and fire, and the days of fishing for a living off the treacherous shoals soon gave way to a far more lucrative venture.

Oh, the nets were cast out every now and then, especially in the calm season when the pickings got slim, and who could deny the blessing of so many fish these days, and fat, big ones at that? Why, it wasn’t so long ago that they’d damned near fished out the area.

The beach was comfortable with half-eaten corpses rolling up on to the sands, where crabs and gulls swarmed. The beach helped pick the bones clean and then left them to the waves to bury or sweep away. On this fast-closing night, however, something unusual clawed its way to the shore. Unusual in that it still lived. Crabs scuttled from its path as fast as their tiny legs could manage.

Water sluiced from the figure as it heaved itself upright. Red-rimmed eyes scanned the scene, fixing at last on the steps and the gaping mouth of the cave. After a moment, it set out in that direction, leaving deep footprints that the beach hastened to smooth away.

‘Do you really think I can’t see what’s going on in your skull, Quell? You’re right there, first in line, with the three of us lying in a row, legs spread wide. And in you dive, worse than a damned dog on a tilted fence post. Reccanto waiting for his turn, and Glanno, and Jula and Amby and Mappo here and Gruntle and probably that damned undead-’