‘My sweetness!’

She half turned and grinned at him. ‘Look how bad this is, Tor. See what you’ve done?’

‘It’s the temper, of course-’

‘It’s tired thighs,’ she said.

‘A common complaint?’ he asked, walking alongside the shelves and leaning in to study a stack of misaligned plates.

‘Pretty rare, actually. What you think you’re seeing up there, husband, isn’t. It’s the new style everyone wants these days. Symmetry is dead, long live the clumsy and crooked. Every noble lady wants a poor cousin in the country, some aunt or great-aunt with stubby fingers who makes crockery for her kin, in be-tween wringing chicken necks and husking gourds.’

‘That’s a complicated lie.’

‘Oh, it’s never actually stated, Tor, only implied.’

‘I was never good at inferring what’s implied. Unless it’s implicitly inferred.’

‘I’ve had precisely two lovers, Tor, and neither one lasted more than a few months. Want their names?’

‘Do I know them?’

When she didn’t reply he glanced over and found her looking at him. ‘Ah,’ he said wisely.

‘Well, so long as you don’t start squinting at everyone who comes in here or says hello to me on the street-if that’s going to be the case, then I’d better tell you-’

‘No, no, darling. In fact, the mystery is… intriguing. But that won’t survive my actually knowing ‘

‘That’s true. Which is why I won’t be asking you about anything. Where you’ve been, what you’ve done.’

‘But that’s different!’

Her brows rose,

‘No, really,’ Torvald said, walking over. ‘What I told you last night, I wasn’t exaggerating.

‘If you say so.’

He could see that she didn’t believe him. ‘I am stung. Crushed.’

‘You’d better get going,’ Tiserra said, returning once more to the lump of clay on the wheel. ‘You’ve got a debt to clear.’

“The loot’s not sticky?’

‘It’s all clean as can be, I made sure. Unless Gareb’s scratched secret sigils on every coin he owned he won’t know either way. He might suspect, though.’

‘I’ve got a good tale to explain all that, if necessary,’ Torvald said. ‘Foreign investments, unexpected wealth, a triumphant return.’

‘Well, I’d tone down the new version, Tor.’

He regarded her, noting her amusement, and said nothing. What was the point? That giant whose life I saved more than once, his name was Karsa Orlong. Do you think I could make up a name like that, Tis? And what about these shackle scars? Oh, it’s the new style among the highborn, enforced humility and all that.

Oh, it didn’t matter anyway. ‘I don’t plan on meeting Gareb in person,’ he said as he walked to the front door. ‘I’ll work through Scorch and Leff.’

The lump of wet clay slid off the wheel and splatted on the wall, where it clung lor a moment, then oozed down to glom on to the floor.

Surprised, Torvald turned to his wife and saw the expression that he hadn’t seen in… in… well, in quite a while. ‘Wait!’ he cried. ‘That partnership is over with, I swear it! Darling, they’re just acting as my go-between, that’s all-’

‘You start scheming with those two again, Torvald Nom, and I’ll take out a contract on you myself.’

‘They always liked you, you know.’

‘Torvald-’

‘I know, my love, I know. Don’t worry. No more scheming with Scorch and Leff. That’s a promise. We’re rich now, remember?’

‘The problem with lists,’ Scorch said, ’is all the names on ’em.’

Leff nodded. ‘That’s the problem, all right. You got it dead on there, Scorch. All them names. They must’ve had some kind of meeting, don’t you think? All the loansharks in some crowded, smoky room, lounging about with nubile women dropping grapes in their mouths, and some scribe with stained lips scratching away. Names, people down on their luck, people so stupid they’d sign anything, grab the coin no matter how insane the interest. Names, you got it, Scorch, a list of fools. Poor, dumb, desperate fools.’

‘And then,’ Scorch said, ‘when the list is gone, out it goes, for some other poor, dumb, desperate fools to take on.’

‘Hey now, we ain’t poor.’

‘Yes we are. We been poor ever since Torvald Nom vanished on us. He was the brains-admit it, Leff. Now, you tried being the brains ever since and look where it’s got us, with a damned list and all those names.’

Leff raised a finger. ‘We got Kruppe, though, and he’s already given us six of ‘em.’

‘Which we passed on and you know what that means? It means thugs kicking in the door in the middle of the night, delivering threats and maybe worse, People got hurt ’cause of us, Leff. Bad hurt.’

‘They got hurt because they couldn’t pay up. Unless you decide to run, and I do mean run, as in out of the City, as in hundreds of leagues away to some town or city with no connections to here, but people don’t do that and why not? Because they’re all caught up, tangled in the nets, and they can’t see their way clear be-cause they got husbands and wives and children and maybe it’s hard but at least it’s familiar, you know what I mean?’

‘No.’

Leff blinked. ‘I was just saying-’

‘What did they think they were doing, to get caught up in nets-swimmin’ the lake? Besides, not all of it’s loans, is it? There’s blackmail, too, which gives me a thought or two-’

‘No way, Scorch. I don’t want in on anything like that.’

‘I’m just suggesting we talk to Tor about it, that’s all. See what he conjures up in the way of plans and such.’

‘Assuming Tor ever shows up.’

‘He will, you’ll see, Leff. He was our partner, wasn’t he? And he’s back.’

The conversation ended abruptly, for no reason obvious to either of them, and they stood looking at each other for a dozen heartbeats. They were opposite the entrance to the Phoenix Inn. It was morning, when they did their best thinking, but that had a way of dying quick, so that by late afternoon they would find them-selves sitting somewhere, sluggish as tortoises in a hailstorm, arguing about nothing in particular with monosyllabic brevity and getting angrier by the mo-ment.

Without another word they both set out for the Phoenix Inn.

Clumped inside, looking round-just to be sure-then heading over to where sat Kruppe, plump hands upraised and hovering like hooded snakes, then striking down to one of dozens of pastries heaped on numerous platters in front of him. Fingertip fangs spearing hapless sweets right and left, each one moving in a blur up to his mouth, gobbled up in a shower of crumbs one after another.

Mere moments later and half the offerings were gone. Kruppe’s cheeks bulged, his jam-smeared lips struggling to close as he chewed and frantically swallowed, pausing to breathe loudly through his nose. Seeing Scorch and Leff approaching, he waved mutely, gesturing them into their seats.

‘You’re going to explode one day, Kruppe,’ said Leff.

Scorch stared with his usual expression of rapt disbelief.

Kruppe finally managed to swallow everything down, and he raised his hands once more, left them to hover whilst he eyed his two gurst. ‘Blessed partners, is this not a wondrous morning?’

‘We ain’t decided yet,’ Leff said, ‘We’re still waiting for Torvald-he had a runner find us down at the docks and said he’d meet us here. He’s already changing things all round, like maybe he don’t trust us. It’s a blow, I tell you, Kruppe. A real blow.’

‘Conflagration of suspicions climbing high into yon blue sky is quite unnecessary, shifty-eyed friends of wise Kruppe. Why, infamous and almost familiar offspring of House Nom is true to his word, and Kruppe asserts-with vast confidence-that the first name is about to be struck from dire list!’

‘First? What about the six-’

‘You’ve not heard? Oh, my. Each had flown, only moments before the cruel night-beaters closed in. Most extraordinary ill-luck.’

Scorch clawed at his face. ‘Gods, we’re back where we began!’