Sweetest Sufferance, who had been so named by a mother either resigned to the rigours of motherhood or, conversely, poisoned by irony, blinked rapidly as she was wont to do when returning to reality. She looked round bemusedly, saw her fellow suryivors seated with her, the table in their midst a chaotic clutter of cups, tankards, plates, utensils and the remnants of at least three meals. Her soft brown eyes flicked from one item to the next, then slowly lifted, out past the blank eyed faces of her companions, and took in the taproom of Quip’s Bar.

Quip Younger was barely visible on the counter, sprawled across it with his upper body and head resting on one forearm. He slept with his mouth hanging open and slick with drool. Almost within reach of the man there squatted a rat on the counter, one front paw lifting every now and then as it seemed to study the face opposite and especially the gaping dark hole of Quip Younger’s mouth.

A drunk was lying just inside the door, passed out or dead, the only other pa-tron present this early in the morning (excepting the rat).

When she finally brought her attention back to her companions, she saw Faint studying her, one brow lifting.

Sweetest Sufferance rubbed at her round face, her cheeks reminding her, oddly enough, of the dough her mother used to knead just before the harvest festival, those big round cakes all glittering with painted honey that used to trap ants and it was her task to pick them off but that was all right because they tasted won-derful.

‘Hungry again, aren’t ya?’

‘You can always tell,’ Sweetest Sufferance replied.

‘When you rub your cheeks, there’s a look comes into your eyes, Sweetie.’

Faint watched as Master Quell hissed awake with a sound no different from the noise an alligator might make when one stepped too close. And glared round 1 moment before relaxing into a relieved slump. ‘I was dreaming-’

‘Yah,’ cut in Faint, ‘you’re always dreaming, and when you ain’t dreaming, you’d doing, and now if only those two things were any different from each other, why, you’d actually get some rest, Master. Which we’d like to see, wouldn’t we just.’

‘Got you through, didn’t I?’

‘Losing five Shareholders in the process.’

‘That’s the risks y’take,’ Quell said, grimacing. ‘Hey, who’s paying for all this!”

‘You might’ve asked that once before. You are, of course.’

‘How long we been here? Gods, my bladder feels like I’m about to pass a pa-paya.’ And with that he reeled-wincing-upright, and tottered for the closet behind the bar.

The rat watched him pass with suspicions eyes, then crept n few waddles closer to Quip Younger’s mouth.

Glanno Tarp jerked alive in his chair. ‘No more bargains!’ he snarled. ‘Oh,’ he then said, slouching back down. ‘Somebody stopped bringing beer-can they do that? Sweetest, darling, I dreamt we was making love-’

‘Me too,’ she said. ‘Only it wasn’t a dream.’

Glanno’s eyes widened. ‘Really?’

‘No, It was a nightmare. If you want another round, you’ll have t’wake up Quip Younger.’

Ulanno squinted over. ‘He’ll wake up when he can’t breathe, soon as the rat goes for it. A silver council says he swallows instead of spitting out.’

At the voicing of a wager Reccanto Ilk’s watery grey eyes sharpened and he said, ‘I’ll take that one. Only what if he does both? Swallows then chokes and spits out? When you say “swallows” you got to mean he chews if he has to.’

‘Now that’s quibblering again and when you never done that, Ilk? It’s pointless you saying you want to wager when you keep rectivifying things.’

‘The point is you’re always too vague, Glanno, with these bets of yours. Y’need precision-’

What I need is… well, I don’t know what I need, but whatever it is you ain’t got it,’

‘I got it but I ain’t giving it,’ said Sweetest Sufferance. ‘Not to none of you, any¬how, There’s a man out there, oh, yes, and I’ll find him one day and I’ll put him in shacles and lock him in my room and I’ll reduce him to a pathetic wreck. Then we’ll get married.’

“The marriage prediceeds the wrecking,’ Glanno said. ‘So I might dream of you, darling, but that’s as far as it’ll ever go. That’s called sehvprevarication.’

‘Are you sure?’ Faint asked him, then, as the front door squealed open, she turned in her chair. An adolescent boy in a voluminous brown robe edged in warily, eyes like freshly laid turtle eggs. Lifting the robe he stepped gingerly over the drunk and padded across to their table and if he had a tail, why, Faint told herself, it’d be half wagging half slipping down between his legs.