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Mordaunt ate a grape. “This feels rather like eating…eyes.”

“What’s this?” asked Aurienne, holding up a bowl of things.

“Earlobes,” said Mordaunt.

Aurienne found a plate of scrambled eggs that looked like boogers, which she pushed towards Mordaunt. He traded it for a wrinkled saucisson. Aurienne inspected its mouldy white edge.

“Smegma,” said Mordaunt.

“You’re disgusting,” said Aurienne.

Mordaunt found a carton of something, which he tossed into the centre of the table. It exploded like a full nappy.

“Bechamel?” proposed Aurienne.

“Think it might be a bit off?”

“It’s blue.”

“Here,” said Mordaunt, and he heaved an enormous pumpkin onto the table.

“How am I meant to eat this?”

“Unhinge your jaw.”

“It’s rotten,” said Aurienne, pointing at an ominous crevice in the pumpkin—information which Mordaunt received with stoic dignity by saying, “That smells like a Dreor’s arsehole.”

“How would you know what that smells like?”

“I’m surmising based upon one encounter.”

“You fought a Dreor?”

“Absolutely not. I’m not that mad. I ran away.” Mordaunt lifted the lid off a tray of, possibly, pasta. “Thoughts?”

Aurienne inspected it. “Have you ever seen what comes out when someone’s taken a tapeworm tablet?”

“Gods,” said Mordaunt. “You’redisgusting.”

“I’d kill for just a cup of tea,” said Aurienne. She searched the cupboards.

Mordaunt said that he would kill for a cup of tea, too, only literally, unlike her, the coward. Aurienne found a battered pot. Mordaunt found a tin labelledTeacontaining desiccated remains of things. When consulted, Aurienne opined that it might’ve been tea, or perhaps floor sweepings; Mordaunt said it was hair from a mermaid’s armpit. They boiled it.

Mordaunt gave his mug an aristocratic sniff, as one might when working out the notes of a fine wine. “I’m getting—fish got wanked off into a pot.”

They set aside the tea.

At length, the tide receded,and Aurienne and Mordaunt made their way down the lighthouse’s spiral stair, and back across the bridge.

As they approached the waystone at the remains of the Woolf, they became aware of an imminent problem.

There was a large group of men gathered at the waystone, sitting, standing, milling about. Men who looked rather like bandits who had scampered off to find reinforcements.

Aurienne said that this was Most Inopportune.

Mordaunt made the unoriginal suggestion that he should kill them all.

“No,” said Aurienne. “We can find another waystone.”