Stands a Shadow

Chapter FIVE

Good Things Come in Life



His head was splitting with pain that morning, and he chewed on a dulce leaf as he stepped between the stalls of a thriving Q’os marketplace, peering out from the wet folds of his hood at a drizzle of rain that fell so fine it kept drifting, losing its direction.

Overhead, the bells of the nearby temples rang out the turning of the hour, sounding brash and overly loud after their dormancy of so many weeks. From the direction of the nearby Serpentine, the early morning chants of the pilgrims could be heard as they headed in a mass towards Freedom Square, celebrating the first day of the delayed festa that was the Augere el Mann, the period of mourning seemingly lifted.

Ash still wasn’t certain what he was doing here risking his neck in broad daylight for the sake of a little fresh bread. At the sight of so many people filling the streets the urge had simply come upon him, and no greater compulsion had countered it, so here he was, moving through the press of shoppers, with a scarf wrapped around his face and his hood low over his eyes, the smell of the closest bakery leading the way.

It was with a growling stomach that he found himself waiting his turn before a busy baker’s stall. From the leaden skies the rain continued to fall, dripping from the canopy overhead to patter onto his back. Ash cast his eyes around the walls and buildings that circled the market square. He paused to inspect the entrance points at either end of it, and the pair of auxiliaries who strolled around the stalls idly swinging their batons, looking for a reason to use them.

I shouldn’t be here in daylight, he told his stomach. This is reckless even for me.

An opening appeared before him and Ash squeezed his way into it, his purse in hand. ‘Yes?’ asked one of the aproned lads behind the counter.

‘Three seeded loaves. The largest you have. And something to carry them in.’

The lad tossed the loaves into a bag of twine netting and held it towards him. ‘One-and-a-half marvels,’ he informed him. ‘Plus a quarter for the bag. That’s one-and-three-quarters.’

It was an extortionate price, no doubt a result of the festa and the countless pilgrims, though he handed over two marvels and plucked the bag from the youth’s hand.

‘That’ll be an extra quarter.’

‘For what?’

‘For providing change.’

Someone shoved into Ash from behind as they tried to get closer to the counter. He shoved back without looking, restoring the inch of space around him. ‘You want me to give you a quarter, so you can give me a quarter back in change?’

‘I don’t make the rules,’ the lad said impatiently, already looking to the next customer before him.

Ash blew the air from his lungs. He waved the business away with his hand then pushed his way clear of the stall before he lost his temper with it all. He started back the way he had come, but he saw the two auxiliaries coming that way towards him. Instead he turned and walked for the other entrance at the opposite end of the market, wishing only to return now to the seclusion of his rooftop, where he could enjoy his breakfast alone with his own company.

‘Ken-dai!’ came a shout that stopped him in his tracks. ‘Ho, ken-dai!’

Ash turned swiftly, and instantly spotted a dark face above the passing heads, barely a dozen paces from where he stood; a man from Honshu like himself.

The man was looking down at him from where he sat upon a sedan chair borne by two muscled slaves, a scented kerchief held to his nostrils like a white blossom. When their eyes met the man raised a hand in greeting. Ash glanced around, pulling the scarf a little higher over the bridge of his nose; watched as the figure clambered down to the ground. His two armoured bodyguards were already clearing the vicinity by shoving people out of the way.

‘Ken-dai!’ the man exclaimed again in their native Honshu, while one of his bearers snapped open an umbrella to hold above his head.

Ash replied with a curt nod.

‘You’re wise to travel about like that. They’ve been arresting many of us in the city for questioning.’

Ash said nothing, and there was a moment of awkward silence between them. The stranger was of a similar age to Ash, and dressed in fine robes of Honshu silk. He was a little overweight, and Ash could not help but notice the many glittering rings of gold and diamonds upon his fingers. A silk merchant perhaps, drawn to the Midèrēs on the silk winds long ago; or perhaps even a political exile like himself.

‘How is the old country?’ the merchant asked in obvious hope that he would know.

‘I couldn’t say,’ Ash confessed. ‘It’s been many years now since I was there.’

The man’s nod was heavy with meaning. ‘Yes, such a voyage as that should be made once in a lifetime. I can’t imagine how these sailors do it, coming back and forth, playing such odds as that.’ He sniffed beneath the dripping umbrella, raised the kerchief to his nose again. As he did so, Ash saw the tattoo on his left wrist – a circle with a single eye within it.

‘You were with the People’s Army?’ he blurted.

The merchant saw what he was looking at, then dropped his hand as though guilty of something. ‘What of it?’

Ash looked at the rich clothes and jewels that he wore; at the slave holding up the umbrella, hair lank in the rain; at the other bearer still standing behind the sedan, eyes downcast; at the two armed thugs paid to do his bidding.

‘You have fallen far,’ Ash drawled.

His eyebrows shot up in surprise, levelled again in anger. He looked to one of his guards.

‘Grab this one!’ he snapped.

Ash was already moving, though, pushing his way through the crowd in the direction of the exit. ‘Bring him back here!’ he heard the man shout, and then Ash was dashing through a clear space between the stalls, his bag of bread swinging in his hand and people cursing in his wake.

He slowed as he neared the exit; stopped entirely as he found himself trapped by the Thief Toll that blocked it – a line of caged turnstiles with slots for quarters.

He was struggling for his purse when one of the bodyguards made a grab for him through the bars that had sealed him in. The man missed, shook the bars in angry impotence.

The second guard pushed into the adjacent stile, fumbled too in his clothing for a coin as his other hand snaked in through the side grille, groping for Ash’s hood.

Ash dropped a whole marvel into the slot, hardly surprised that it was accepted, and broke free from his grasp as he pushed through the stile into the Serpentine beyond.

As far as the eye could see, the thoroughfare was filled with snaking processions of red-robed pilgrims. On the opposite side of the road stood the old quarter of the district, with its winding alleyways and its tilting, top-heavy buildings of stone. Ash dived headlong into the procession, weaving through the pilgrims as he tried to get across. He glimpsed men and woman whipping their bloody backs and breasts in frenzy; others chanting as they sported skewered cheeks, their faces held aloft and ecstatic.

Then he was through them, trotting into the mouth of a narrow alley with the two bodyguards emerging close behind.

‘Clear away!’ he bellowed as he picked up speed. He dashed headlong past folk and pilgrim tourists bartering over trinkets and whores, trying to lose himself in the maze of passageways and small plazas that were the guts of the old district.

They were fast, these boys. Even in their boots and their leather armour they were keeping pace with him, pounding along the flagstones of the passageway in single file with their shoulders brushing the walls, whooshing air from their lungs in a manner suggesting they could keep this up all day.

Ash was wondering if he shouldn’t pick up his pace a little more, but then he saw the passageway open out ahead of him, and a less taxing option presented itself.

He reached for his sword from beneath his cloak, drew it the instant he was clear of the alley.

In his next two steps he had stopped himself and was spinning around on the ball of his foot, his other leg stretching out so that he was low, extended, his sword pointing in front of him.

In the last instant he adjusted the aim of the tip a fraction, and then the first guard ran straight into the blade, shoving Ash back a pace with the force of his impact. They both grunted, and then the second guard ran into the first one, right into the blade sticking out of his back.

Ash straightened from his stance, the hilt of the sword still in his grip. The two men grimaced and sweated and tried to pull themselves free while Ash inspected their wounds. The first guard looked at him; looked back down at the blade in his side.

‘I’ve avoided you organs,’ he told them both. ‘Keep the wounds clean and you should live.’

Without warning he jerked the blade free. They sagged to their knees, hands reaching for their sides. People nearby were staring in wonder.

Ash cleaned the blood from his blade on one of their backs, then picked up his bag of bread and trotted away.

Ché strolled home feeling light and loose-gaited, the taste of the Royal Milk still lingering on his tongue, his body trembling with the energy of a coiled spring.

His new and exclusive apartment was located in the southern side of the Temple District, that area which surrounded the Temple of Whispers, where lesser skysteeples rose above priestly mansions and apartment blocks and ornamented buildings of entertainment. He walked back through the steady rain listening to the birds singing from the parks and the rooftop gardens, wondering in his elevated mood if they were celebrating the return of life to the city streets, for there was an atmosphere of excitement in the air today, this first day of the Augere. In the streets, children watched the red-robed pilgrims march by in chanting processions, goggling at the numerous races of the Empire, drawn here in record numbers for the fiftieth anniversary of the Mannians’ seizure of power.

In his apartment, Whiskers was there already, tidying the large empty rooms in her meticulous way. Ché felt a moment of affection when he saw the woman; after only a few weeks, she had become a welcome detail of stability in his scattered life.

‘I leave in the morning,’ he announced to the house-slave, even though she couldn’t hear him, for she had been rendered deaf by hot oil some time during her captivity. ‘Whiskers,’ and he waved a hand to catch her eye, ‘no need for that now.’ But the woman continued to polish the shelving, paying him no mind.

He looked at the slate board that hung about her chest, swinging free as she bent forwards, along with a stub of chalk fixed to a length of string.

He had so far refused to use the board to communicate with the woman, largely because Whiskers refused to use it herself; as though she preferred to let it hang there uselessly like an accusation of all that had been done to her. Instead, he preferred to talk to the woman, persisting in the hope that some communication might still pass between them.

Besides, he liked to hear words spoken in the usual silence of the apartment, even if they were only his own.

Ché wandered into his bedroom and stared at his double-sized bed, with its silk covers of maroon tastefully chosen to match the pale golds of the wallpaper. He realized that he was still too energized from the Royal Milk and the previous night’s events to sleep, so instead pulled off his robe and changed into a loose-fitting tunic and trousers, and then a pair of soft leather shoes, which he laced tightly.

‘I’m going for a run!’ he hollered on his way out of the door.

Ché pounded along the wide, tree-lined avenue of the Serpentine. He ran with the city’s rhythms in his ears, the local priests calling out through bullhorns from their temple spires; the calls of hawking cart-merchants and street dealers; the doleful songs of slave-gangs going about their business. People turned to watch him pass or to step out of his way, drawn by the simple spectacle of a man running through the streets. Sweat beaded his skin, and the rain too. With every footfall he found his head clearing of all the thoughts that had been possessing him so compulsively of late; a clarity he struggled for ever more these days. Ché dodged past carts and groups of people, light-footed and free.

His usual route was a circuit of streets to the east of his apartment, an area that was prettified with the greenery of parks. He turned left at the Getti playhouse and followed a boulevard alongside the Drowning Gardens, seeing the rich greens of the trees and shrubs through the flicker of the iron railings, the contrasts of red-robed pilgrims scattered amongst them. In the street, building-sized paintings of the Holy Matriarch snagged his eyes, and the lesser placards for new restaurants, housing developments, brands of alcohol and food; he tried to ignore their simple messages, but the images flashed by and left their impression nonetheless, the smiling white-toothed faces of happy affluence.

Joy Street lay at the end of the boulevard, and next to it his mother’s Sentiate temple. Ché had been ignoring his mother of late, unable to bring himself to visit her. He didn’t wish to be reminded of what she represented in his life, nor of her role within the order. When he saw the Sentiate tower looming ahead, its scarlet flags raised high today to show that it was open once more for business, his mood began to falter along with his pace.

He turned away before he reached Joy Street, and entered the Drowning Gardens instead.

He followed a straight paved path between the shorn lawns. On the hottest of summer days he would sometimes run in these gardens of glittering pools and broken shadows to escape the clammy heat of the streets beyond. Today, though, he saw that it was a mistake to come here, for the pilgrims were drowning themselves in earnest.

Ché ran past stone pools with pilgrims kneeling all around their rims, heads plunged deep in the water. Occasional bubbles broke the surface, and some flailed their arms without control as they forced themselves to remain submerged; the more dedicated had their arms bound behind them with leather belts. He skirted around attendants of the Selarus, the priests working over prone forms, pumping water from lungs, breathing into mouths, slapping faces to revive them. One pair was carrying a limp form away.

He sprinted even faster, with the effort pulling the breath from him. Ahead was a congregation of dancing pilgrims, so thick he saw no way through them. Ché wasn’t in the mood for stopping.

With a feral grin he put his head down and charged into the crowd at full speed, shouldering the men and women out of his way. Like a raging bull he tore his way through the mass of pilgrims as men and women spilled to the ground or pursued him with their shouts of anger.

He emerged on the other side fighting for air. His brow was wet, and when he dabbed it with his fingers they came away red.

Onwards, with the rain gently cleaning the blood from him, the taste of it mingling with the taste of the Royal Milk in his mouth.

When he returned to the apartment he realized he’d forgotten to bring any coins with him to get back inside the building. He cursed and pulled the doors in vain, but then the door opened from within – one of his neighbours stepping out – and Ché ducked inside.

He jogged up the stairs and entered his apartment. Whiskers was just crossing the room and she glanced at him with a frown on her reddened features. A whistle was shrieking from behind her.

‘Good timing,’ he noted as he stepped past the woman, pulling off his clothing as he moved towards the bathroom and the source of the high keen. Whiskers hurried past him. When he entered the bathroom’s steamy atmosphere she was already turning off the gas flames beneath a great copper pot fitted tightly with a lid. A jet of steam was shooting from the whistle fixed in the lid, and it died quickly as Whiskers opened a spigot near the bottom of the pot, to release a flow of hot water into the tiled bath sunk into the floor.

Naked, his mood still high, Ché pinched her rump as he stepped around her, and gave a quick smile in return for the scowl on her whiskery face. ‘You’re too good to me,’ he told her as he stepped into the few inches of water in the slowly filling bath, and lay back and sighed as it rose gently around him. Whiskers eyed him scornfully.

He closed his eyes as his body grew lighter in the water. His skin burned pleasantly, and he heard the woman roll up her sleeves and kneel beside him. Ché sighed long and deeply as she scrubbed him down with a flannel of rough sharkskin and one of the balms his mother had insisted on giving him for his troubled skin. Methodically, she worked on the rashes that covered his body, and he groaned at one point, in something approaching sexual pleasure, at the relief it gave from his constant itching.

This life had its benefits, Ché reflected idly. Not least of all a hot bath every day if he wished for one; no small thing that, in a world where most people were lucky to wash in a basin of cold water with copal leaves for soap.

You’re getting soft, he thought, and wondered what his old Rōshun master Shebec would think of him now, if he’d still been alive to see him.

Whiskers cleaned the small cut on his brow, making no enquiries either by gesture or by look. When she finished, she sluiced the water from her hands and left him to enjoy his soak alone. His mind was still clear from his run. He placed a sodden flannel across his face and breathed through its clinging embrace, feeling tired all of a sudden, the effects of the Royal Milk finally fading. Perhaps he’d sweated them out of his body.

Ché yawned and knew he would sleep soon. His thoughts drifted like the steam in the room, and in small measures he allowed them to contemplate the bizarreness of the night now behind him, and what was to come the next morn.

War , he thought with a sudden sobriety. Tomorrow, I set off for war.

A letter was waiting for him on the table by the front door when he arose in the afternoon from his sleep. Whiskers was gone, returned to her slave quarters in the basement of the building.

He had an aversion to letters. They came bearing only bad news or reminders of responsibilities. Still, he picked it up anyway and opened it.

I hope the new ointment is working. Come and see me, my son. I miss you. Please come.



His mother. The leash they kept on him to ensure his loyalty to the order.

Ché held the letter for a while, not sure what to do with it. In the end he opened the drawer of the table, and took out a plain piece of paper and the stylus and ink. In careful lettering he wrote:

Dear mother. I must leave with the fleet in the morning. No, I do not know how long I will be gone. I will think of you, as I always think of you.



Your son.



He blew on the ink until it was dry, then folded the paper carefully, and scratched instructions for delivery to his mother at the Sentiate temple. He left it where Whiskers would see it.

For a moment Ché considered sending an invitation to Perl or Shale, or even to both of them. But the young women would expect their fair share of pleasure narcotics for the evening, and would expect him to join them in their vices. He didn’t feel like being intoxicated tonight, nor most nights for that matter; he didn’t like where his mind sometimes went in those altered states.

No, better if he remained inside tonight so that he was fresh for the morning. Besides, some peace to himself would be a luxury in itself. Best to make the most of that too while he still could.

Ché dug out his leather backpack and started to pack for the morning, wanting to be done with it so that he could properly relax. He packed some clothing without any great attention to what he was doing, though when he came to his bookcase he paused, and sat down to give some it proper deliberation.

It was Ché’s job to know as much of the world as he possibly could. Hence the shelves held many travelogues and diaries and books of maps, and texts of religion and history. It was this knowledge, Ché sometimes suspected, that really lay behind the sense of distrust he sometimes felt from his handlers; this abundance of learning of other cultures and the ideologies that ran contrary to Mann.

In the end he selected one of the works by Slavo, an account of the Markeshian’s travels – imaginary most likely – to the far side of the world and the foreign peoples he’d discovered there. It had been a while since Ché had read that one.

As an afterthought, he turned to his copy of the Scripture lying closed on top of the bookcase. Only once had he actually read the thing in its entirety since his return to his life of Mann. It had been part of his re-education after living all those years as a Rōshun apprentice in the mountains of Cheem, when the spypriests of the Élash had slowly reintegrated him into the ways of the divine flesh, before informing him that he was to become a Diplomat for the Section.

He lifted the thin volume and packed it only reluctantly.

In the darkening hours of evening, with the living room lit by gas lamps, Ché sat down in his armchair dressed in a clean white robe, his stomach comfortably full, a modest glass of Seratian wine in his hand, gazing out onto the street below, lost in thought.

His mood of earlier was long gone. Instead, he felt vaguely depressed now that his packing was done and there was nothing left but to wait for morning, the reality of it finally sinking in. This life of a Diplomat allowed him to exist in relative, blessed isolation from his peers. Now, though, for weeks on end, he would be expected to live shoulder to shoulder with his fellow priests, and the Matriarch and her entourage of sycophants. He would have to watch his every step, his every word. Not an easy thing that, not now with his thoughts running ever more contrary to everything around him.

Since Cheem and his betrayal of the Rōshun, a seething anger had been rising within Ché. He could feel it whenever his temper snapped in a dozen little ways during the course of an ordinary day, or when he said things he shouldn’t be saying, or when he provoked those of authority with his seeming arrogance towards them, which in truth wasn’t arrogance at all, but a nonchalant mental shrug, a lack of caring. It was as though he wished to be challenged on his behaviour, as though he wanted to have it out with the priests at last, regardless of the consequences. A kind of deathwish perhaps, gathering slowly in momentum.

Ché took another sip of the wine, appreciating the soft rasp of bitterness against his palate, the perfect accompaniment to the peppered rabbit he could still taste from dinner. In the kitchen, he could hear Whiskers cleaning the dirty pots and plates.

It had stopped raining at last, and people were stepping out to enjoy the evening entertainments of the streets below. For a while, Ché watched a pimp running his little empire from the corner of the street, the fellow strutting and preening himself beneath the streetlights. When he grew bored of that, he shifted his attention to a group of young men and women sitting on a low wall behind a tram stop, passing hazii sticks amongst themselves, chatting and laughing, warming each other with their companionship. They seemed not much younger than Ché, yet he watched them as though with the eyes of an old man.

At first he didn’t notice Whiskers as she emerged into the living area, her hands folded before her, waiting to be relieved for the night. The woman cleared her throat, and he turned and blinked and stared at her tired, sagging face.

Ché had no idea what this woman was really called. Non-indentured slaves weren’t allowed names as a rule, save for what their masters chose for them; hence he’d coined her nickname when he’d first been given the keys to this apartment, and laid eyes on the house-slave that came with it, this middle-aged woman with blonde downy hairs on her face and a pair of fierce blue eyes. He knew that she was from the people of the northern tribes, though only because of the colour of her hair, and the blue-ink tattoo he had once glimpsed on her upper arm.

Not much of a life, he’d often thought. Seven days a week at his beck and call with only the late nights truly to herself; and even then, only if she wasn’t required in her master’s bed. He imagined she had been well used by her previous masters, for she was womanly enough. He’d toyed with the idea himself for a while, before deciding he preferred more consent in these matters.

Behind Whiskers, shadows hung across the apartment in heavy veils that shifted in the gaslight. They hid the clock that ticked its isolated ticks on the far table, and the piles of reference materials stacked against the wall, and the lacquered globe of the world, turned so often it needed oiling again already. Not much else, though, save for emptiness and bare walls and the sounds of the world outside it.

‘Stay a while longer,’ Ché heard himself say to the woman, motioning with his open hands.

She seemed to misunderstand him, for a little colour came to her pale features.

Not for the first time, a suspicion crossed his mind that perhaps Whiskers really could read lips, as many slaves learned to do after they’d been rendered deaf – and that she was keeping the fact to herself for reasons unknown to him.

‘No, I didn’t mean . . .’ He shook his head and looked away, then noticed the ylang board on the small table before him. He gestured to it. ‘Perhaps you could join me for a game, if you play?’

Her stare took in his gesturing hand then returned to his eyes. Pity crossed her features. For an instant he saw it clearly, and he wondered what caused such an emotion towards him. The woman remained where she stood.

‘Wine?’ he asked, holding up the bottle above an empty glass.

When he looked up, it was to see the look of a cautious animal approaching.

Whiskers settled herself in the chair opposite as she held the slate board against her chest, then folded her hands neatly in her lap. He watched her as he poured out a generous measure of wine.

They played in silence, with the shouts and laughter from the street muted by the thick panes of window glass. Indeed she could play, at least enough to make a game of it at the beginning. Ché went easy on her anyway, wanting to make it last a while. She played along with that too, an amused awareness in the occasional glance shot from beneath her thick eyebrows.

With each move she made, she held the slate against her chest so it wouldn’t get in the way as she leaned forward over the game board. Ché finally pointed at the thing, catching her eye. ‘Please. Take that thing off.’

She blinked at him.

He pointed again, and made a gesture of removing it over her head.

She looked down at the slate, studied it for a moment. Then she pulled it off her with a rough hasty motion, and set in down against a leg of the table.

‘Now, how about the rest of your clothes?’

He watched her closely as she watched him. Was there a flush of colour on her face again, just a hint of it?

His curiosity only intensified.

Whiskers took a drink of wine, then deployed three of her pebbles, using them to flank one of his own, picking it up with her calloused fingers to place it next to her other captured stones.

‘I leave in the morning,’ he said, watching her eyes closely as he did so. ‘With the fleet. We go to wage war on the non-believers.’ Nothing. No change in her expression.

Ché carelessly drove his black stones against her gathered whites, now huddling for protection in one quadrant of the board. He allowed himself a few mistakes until his offensive stalled and she rallied with her own. She didn’t take long with her moves, as though she was hardly taking the game seriously herself. She seemed more interested in the wine.

He refilled her glass, and waited until she’d nearly finished that helping too. When next he caught her eye, he declared: ‘I’ve been told by my handler to kill the Holy Matriarch.’ And the words sounded loud in the dim quietness of the apartment.

Her eyes danced wildly, watching him. Ché could feel the sudden charge in the air between them.

‘If she runs from battle, that is. Or looks as though she might be captured. It seems they will not allow that. She must win or fall. Nothing else.’

He placed a pebble down, picked up another, placed it next to the first. A third snuggled in behind them. ‘Now, I mostly wonder who my handlers are. I wonder who I am really working for after all this time, if they can order the death of a Matriarch.’

Whisker’s face thrust towards him. ‘Hush now!’ she said with an uneven voice, the tones slightly off. Her hands gripped either side of the table.

For a moment, Ché was startled enough to say nothing. He simply swallowed hard.

‘What?’ he replied quietly, and gave a toss of his hand. ‘You think they’re listening in the walls?’

She looked up from his mouth, her chest rising and falling fast; a silent panting. ‘You will cause us both harm with talk like this. Why say these things to me?’ Her face was so close he could feel her hot breath against his own.

‘Because, I thought you couldn’t understand me,’ he said slowly. ‘You’ve been pretending as much since we first met. Pretending you couldn’t read my lips.’ And he fixed her with a hard, accusing stare.

‘I owe you no loyalty,’ she snapped back at him with her strange tone of voice. ‘I am not your wife, to be telling your woes to. And neither am I your mother.’

At once Ché’s mood darkened. It was like a lamp going out.

‘I know very well what you are,’ he growled, and of their own accord his eyes glanced at the slave collar about her neck.

Her eyebrows arched high. ‘Oh? And what is that, if not a slave of a slave, then?’ And her gaze darted around the walls of the apartment. ‘They afford you a finer cage than the rest of us, that is all.’

Slowly, Ché tipped over the ylang board until the pebbles began to slide one by one onto the wooden floor, where they clattered and rolled as the two players locked stares. As the final pebble settled and silence returned once more, he dropped the edge of the board back against the table with a snap.

Whiskers sat back trembling.

‘Are you working for them?’ he demanded. ‘Do you report to them about me?’

‘Who?’ the woman replied blankly.

Ché exhaled a long breath of air. He stared long at her, torn inside between anger and anguish.

‘Go,’ he told her. ‘Get out.’

She rose, lifting her slate as she did so. Walked without another word for the door.

‘Here,’ he snarled as she glanced back, and he corked the half-empty bottle of wine and tossed it into her hands. Her eyes widened in surprise for a moment, but then she composed herself. She took the bottle with her, closing the door behind as she left.

Ché leaned back in the chair, found that he was staring down at the scattered pebbles on the floor – something in the pattern of them he could not quite read.