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“You’re a dozy fucking cow with no business sense.”

“Watch your tongue, or I’ll have you blacklisted. You’ll have no more girls in the whole of London. You can dig up your dead mum and shag her bones.”

Scrope raised his hands. “Fine.Fine.There’s always tomorrow. Will you be here tomorrow, girl?”

Fairhrim, squeezing past Scrope’s chair, her eyes on the exit, made no answer. Scrope groped at her thigh as she passed. It would be one of his last acts on this earth.

Scrope speared the end of a sausage and held it up to her. “Have a little suck of my sausage at least.”

“That,” said Fairhrim, “looks exactly like a torn-off nipple.”

Having delivered this eight-word horror story, she left the pub.

Scrope stared after her; then he, too, made for the door.

He was wrong, by the way. There wasn’t always tomorrow. There wouldn’t, for instance, be one for him.

14

Cutlery, Dangers of

Aurienne

Aurienne winced as she stepped out of the pub. Scrope’s groping had turned to painful grabs as she had made her escape. A single touch of her tacn could have rendered him unconscious—but it would also have given the game away, and so she had refrained.

It didn’t matter. She had got what she came for.

A few steps away from the pub’s entrance, Cerys and some of Madam Miffle’s girls joined her and returned her satchel. They chatted for a few minutes—how this one’s baby was doing; how the other’s infection was clearing up; did anyone need contraceptives?—before Aurienne was able to break off towards the pub’s waystone. She was desperate for a wash and a change of clothes.

As she walked to the waystone, Aurienne thought she heard the heavy step of a man behind her. Glances over her shoulder revealed nothing, however, and she reached the waystone uninterrupted.

There was a tall shadow waiting for her there; the Fyren had decided to join her.

“Gods,” said Mordaunt, pulling his hood down as he stepped out of the penumbra. “The great seduction of the bath-wank bandit. What a show. What did he tell you? What was the name?”

“We can’t talk here,” said Aurienne. She spotted something shiny in Mordaunt’s hand—shiny and suspiciously drippy. “Erm, what’s that?”

“Nothing,” said Mordaunt, tossing the thing over his shoulder.

The shiny object spun away in the air—a dagger?

No. A fork.

“Why did you have a fork dripping with blood?” asked Aurienne as the thing clattered away.

“I was using it.”

Aurienne took a step in the direction of the fork. “For what?”

Mordaunt got in her way. “I thought you were leaving.”

“I was, but—”

There was a sort of groan in the direction of the fork. Aurienne sidestepped Mordaunt to pass him, but ran into his chest instead.

“You should leave,” said Mordaunt.

Aurienne pushed past him—admittedly not an easy exercise—and strode around the corner. There she found Scrope, studded with at least two dozen stab wounds. Not quite dead, but not quite alive, either.