‘Until they all come back out. And then you’ll be looking at paying a whole lot,’

‘I’m not paying. This is a business expense.’

‘Is it?’

‘1 bet. We have to ask Master Quell when he wakes up.’

‘He’s awake, I think.’

‘He don’t look awake.’

‘Nobody does, exceptin’ us.’

‘Wonder what everyone’s doing in the cellar. Maybe there’s a party or something.’

‘That storm sounds like angry women.’

‘Like Mother, only more than one.’

‘That would be bad.’

‘Ten times bad. You break something?’

‘Never did. You did.’

‘Someone broke something, and those mothers are on the way. Sounds like.’

‘Sounds like, yes.’

‘Coming fast.’

‘Whatever you broke, you better fix it.’

‘No way. I’ll just say you did it.’

‘I’ll say I did it first-no, you did it. I’ll say you did it first.’

‘I didn’t do-’

But now the shrieking storm was too loud for any further conversation, and to Gruntle’s half-deadened ears it did indeed sound like voices. Terrible, inhuman voices, filled with rage and hunger. He’d thought the storm was waning; in fact, he’d been certain of it. But then everyone had fled into the cellar-

Gruntle lifted his head.

At precisely the same time that Mappo did.

Their eyes met. And yes, both understood. That’s not a storm.

My finest student? A young man, physically perfect. To look upon him was to see a duellist by any known measure. His discipline was a source of awe; his form was elegance personified. He could snuff a dozen candles in successive lunges, each lunge identical to the one preceding it. He could spear a buzzing fly. Within two years I could do nothing more for him for he had passed my own skill.

I was, alas, not there to witness his first duel, but it was described to me in detail. For all his talent, his perfection of form, for all his precision, his muscle memory, he revealed one and only one flaw.

He was incapable of fighting a real person. A foe of middling skill can be profoundly dangerous, in that clumsiness can surprise, ill-preparation can confound brilliant skills of defence. The very unpredictability of a real opponent in a life and death struggle served my finest student with a final lesson.

It is said the duel lasted a dozen heartbeats. From that day forward, my philosophy of instruction changed. Form is all very well, repetition ever essential, but actual blood-touch practice must begin within the first week of instruction. To be a duellist, one must duel. The hardest thing to teach is how to survive.

Trevan Ault 2nd century, darujhistan

Gather close, and let us speak of nasty little shits. Oh, come now, we are no strangers to the vicious demons in placid disguises, innocent ? eyes so wide, hidden minds so dark. Does evil exist? Is it a force, some deadly possession that slips into the unwary? Is it a thing separate and thus subject to accusation and blame, distinct from the one it has used? Does it flit from soul to soul, weaving its diabolical scheme in all the unseen places, snarling into knots tremulous fears and appalling opportunity, stark terrors and brutal self-interest? Or is the dread word nothing more than a quaint and oh so convenient encap-nidation of all those traits distinctly lacking moral context, a sweeping generalization embracing all things depraved and breath takingly cruel, a word to define that peculiar glint in the eye-the voyeur to one’s own delivery of horror, of pain and anguish and impossible grief?

Give the demon crimson scales, slashing talons. Tentacles and dripping poison. Three eyes and six slithering tongues. As it crouches there in the soul, its latest abode in an eternal succession of abodes, may every god kneel in prayer.

But really. Evil is nothing but a word, an objectification where no objectifica-tion is necessary. Cast aside this notion of some external agency as the source of inconceivable inhumanity-the sad truth is our possession of an innate proclivity towards indifference, towards deliberate denial of mercy, towards disengaging all that is moral within us.

Hut if that is too dire, let’s call it evil. And paint it with fire and venom.

There are extremities of behaviour that seem, at the time, perfectly natural, indeed reasonable. They are arrived at suddenly, or so it might seem, but if one looks the progression reveals itself, step by step, and that is a most sad truth.

Murillio walked from the duelling school, rapier at his hip, gloves tucked into his belt. Had he passed anyone who knew him they might be forgiven for not at first recognizing him, given his expression. The lines of his face were drawn deep, his frown a clench, as if the mind behind it was in torment, sick of itself. He looked older, harder. He looked to be a man in dread of his own thoughts, a man haunted by an unexpected reflection in a lead window, a silvered mirror, flinching back from his own face, the eyes that met themselves with defiance.