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“What did you do?” gasped Aurienne.

“He fell,” said Mordaunt.

“Hefell?”

“Yes. On the fork.”

“He fell on the fork? Twenty times?”

“Yes. Due to…fear.”

“What was he afraid of?”

“The fork.”

Aurienne tore off her glove to heal the dying man. “You’re utterly unhinged.”

“I’m perfectly hinged,” said Mordaunt. “You, on the other hand, have got the survival instincts of a crumpet.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“He followed you out here. You can’t tell me you think it was to ask you to dinner. He saw you talking to Cerys and the girls. He could’ve squeezed any one of them for information about you. And I need you alive and well, so—”

“You can’t just kill people who inconvenience you,” said Aurienne. Scrope’s pulse was feeble under her tacn; he was almost gone.

“I can and I do,” said Mordaunt.

“People will want to know why he was murdered, and by whom. He’ll be missed.”

“Missed? A man like this?” Mordaunt nudged Scrope with his boot, as one would a sack of rubbish. “That remains to be seen.”

Scrope twitched and died.

“Never mind,” said Mordaunt. “The remains are right here. We’re seeing them. And look—no one has come running.”

“He’s a human being.”

“Was. A human was.”

“Really? Pedantry? Now?”

Mordaunt ushered Aurienne back to the waystone. “Clutch your pearls over here.”

“Might we,” asked Aurienne, “go anywhere without subtracting from the population?”

“Would you prefer,” asked Mordaunt, “that we add to it?”

He dragged Scrope’s body into the cesspit behind the Bunghole. There was a splash and a nauseating whiff. He replaced the cesspit lid with a clang and asked, in a chirpy sort of way, “Where to? We need to talk.”

Aurienne pressed disbelieving hands to her cheeks. “He’s just going to—just going to rot in the cesspit.”

“Yes. That’s the idea.” Mordaunt dusted off his gloves. “This is how one disposes of shit. Shall we go to a clinic?”

“I want a bath. I can still feel his hands on me.”

“My house, then.”

“What?”