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the prospect none. There was also the possibility she was invisible, and that was a whole other level of tricky. That was the problem with husks: there was no limit to what they might be, what they could do. Anything the Maker could dream, was the truth of it, coz that’s what the husks were, folks older and wiser than Jeb said: nightmares of the Cynocephalus, the god at the heart of the world. Then it struck him: if Ilesa was the husk—and it was still a big ‘if’—then what about Davy? Assuming they had the same mother… If that were true, though, any husk nature Davy might have had must’ve been dormant. It had been barely a whiff Jeb had picked up. No, it was better to assume nothing about the boy at this stage. He couldn’t imagine Davy being the one doing those things to the victims, least of all not to the Outlanders so far from Portis. If Davy turned out to be a husk, let someone else discover it. Last thing Jeb wanted was to be making decisions over whether the boy lived or died. Everyone deserved a chance, but not the kind of chance Mortis had slung Jeb’s way.
    He stifled a yawn, failed with the next one. The creak of the stairs roused him for a moment, but when the thud of booted feet passed his door, he supposed it was a drunk patron turning in for the night. He was torn between lying back and giving sway to the night horrors again and making an even earlier start, scouting out the town while most folk were still asleep. Neither struck him as particularly desirable, and so, for want of something better to do, he pulled out the flintlock and took to appraising it in the lamplight.
    Sure looked pretty, even with the greenish patina coating the brass trimmings. He turned it over and over, found himself thinking it would look good above a mantel, if ever he had a mantel.
    That was a new one—a new thought: Jebediah Skayne taking off and finding himself a cottage out in the sticks. He shook his head and scoffed. Maybe he was getting soft; or maybe he was just too darned tired of moving from place to place, all so he could kill one husk and go after the next. The idea struck him he’d need a woman for a place like that; a woman who could keep it clean, raise him up a couple of kids. A woman like Maisie the barmaid: hard-worker from what he’d seen, and partial to a bit of pleasuring when the mood was on him—which was pretty much all the time.
    Trouble was, he thought, shutting down that particular fantasy, the Maresmen would never let him go. The minute he left their service, Mortis or some other scary bastard would be on him like a ton of manure.
    He peered down the barrel and cursed. There was a buildup of black residue from where he hadn’t cleaned it properly the last couple of uses. Here and there were tiny pocks of corrosion eating away at the metal. And it wasn’t liked he’d used it more’n a handful of times, just trying to get the measure of the weapon. Worse than useless, it was, but something about it—its reputed antiquity, or the evident craftsmanship, he couldn’t say which—kept him from slinging it away. He was about to pull off the silver-tipped, hickory ramrod, when there was a light rap at the door.
    Jeb rubbed his finger along the barrel, a smile he knew was smug tugging at the corner of his mouth. Spinning the flintlock, he stood and holstered it at the same time, smoothed down his hair, and crossed to the door. Not too quick, mind; always best to keep them waiting.
    “Maisie,” he said as he twisted the doorknob. “What’s up, can’t sleep?” With one arm on the jamb, he swung his head through the opening—
    —and pain exploded in his face from a skull-jolting punch.
    Jeb fell back under a barrage of follow-ups that had him reeling. He raised his hands, but his vision was so blurry, he couldn’t tell where they were in relation to his face.
    Through the haze, he saw Terabin Sweet snarling at him, spittle flying with the whuff that accompanied every blow. The man knew