Hilith fell to the floor. She didn’t understand. She could barely lift her arms and her face was against the polished wood, and there was grit and dust between the boards. Rilt needed a whipping. They all did.

Envy looked at the small knife in her hand, saw how the blood from the miserable old witch sat on the polished iron blade in beads, like water on oil. Then she glanced down at Hilith who was lying on her stomach, head to one side and the eye that Envy could see staring sightlessly.

‘Stop gawking,’ Spite hissed.

‘We need a bigger knife,’ said Envy. ‘This won’t do for the men.’

‘It did fine for Hidast!’

‘He wasn’t much of a man, but Venth is. So is Setyl. Ivis-’

‘Ivis is away,’ said Spite. ‘I sent him into a dream. I can do that now. It’s easy.’

They had been busy. Slaughter in the laundry room. Murder in the maids’ cells. Dead cook, dead scullions — the knife in her hand they had stolen months past and Envy had thought to find something better in the kitchen, but the ones in there were too big to wield. She wished she were stronger, but so far everything had worked, and as long as she could strike from behind, with Spite distracting the victim, being a murderer was easy.

‘The men will be trouble,’ she said again.

‘Stab them in the throat,’ Spite said. She dipped a finger into a pool of blood creeping out from Hilith’s body and smeared her knee again. ‘Atran’s next. Let’s go, before the supper bell sounds.’

She’d heard from Corporal Yalad that Ivis had wandered into the forest, and for Atran the night ahead had fallen through a hole, and somewhere down there was oblivion, luring her, tempting her to find it. She decided that she wouldn’t wait for that first goblet of wine at the start of the meal, and so went into the surgery where she poured out a healthy measure of raw alcohol into a clay cup. She added a little water and then a small spoonful of powdered neth berries. She drank down half of the concoction and then stood, tilting back until she was against a wall, waiting for the burning shock to pass. Moments later she felt the first effect of the berries.

A dab of the black powder on an unconscious man’s tongue could stand him upright in a heartbeat, but she had been using it for so long that her body simply expanded, smoothly, warmth filling her limbs. Drinking invited sleep but the powder kept her awake, wildly invigorated. Without the alcohol in her blood right now she knew that she would be trembling, nerves twitching, vision fluttering. She’d seen a man punch through a solid door when spiked on neth powder.

The oblivion awaiting her was a delicious kind, especially when she could walk straight into it. The fall from the neth berries was swift and savage, and she would not move for at least a day from wherever she happened to collapse, but neither would she dream. And that was the bargain and she was content with it.

Ivis was gone for the night. Whatever haunted him she could not touch, and though she made her love plain to see, he was simply uninterested in her, and it was that disinterest that so wounded Atran, straight down through her body like a spear pinning her soul to the ground. She knew he took women to his bed — if his tastes had been for other men, then she would have understood and it would not be so bad. But it was her that he had no feelings for.

She was not ugly. A little too thin, perhaps, and getting thinner as the neth berries devoured her reserves, but her face was even, not too lined, not too wan or sunken. She had green eyes that men professed to admire, and the sharpness which had once made the same men uneasy was long gone, drowned away and for ever done with. Sharpness wasn’t a gift when bluntness was what was desired.

Spite limped into the surgery. ‘Atran? I hurt my knee! Come quick — I can’t walk any farther!’

The surgeon blinked. ‘Rubbish,’ she pronounced without moving.

The girl frowned. ‘What?’

‘That’s arterial blood and it’s smeared, not spurting. Did the cook slaughter another pig? You’re a sick little wretch, you know that?’

Spite stared at her, and then slowly straightened. ‘Just fooling,’ she said.

‘Get out of my sight.’

The girl scowled. ‘Father won’t like it when I tell him how you talk to me.’

‘Your father doesn’t like you, so why would he give a fuck how I talk to you?’

‘We’re going to kill you,’ said Spite. Envy stepped out from behind her and Atran saw the bloody knife in her hand.

‘What have you fools done? Who did you hurt? Where’s Malice?’