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of the alley where the sun could never find it. There was no rail for the horses here so Gilan summoned a child and promised him a copper if he’d hold the horses while he and Ifan went inside. The child agreed.
    Gilan had never been inside a death man’s place. If the street outside had been gloomy, then in here it was dark. The lamps did little to dispel the darkness. Indeed, Gilan thought that their smoke added to it. He stood just inside the door and rapped loudly on the frame. Conir appeared out of a back room like a spectre, pale and thin and clothed in black.
    “Lawkeepers,” he said.
    “Aye,” Gilan said. “We’ve questions about what you’ve seen and what you know.”
    “I told the lawkeeper all that I know,” Conir said. He looked faintly alarmed.
    “It’s simple enough, man,” Gilan said. “You’re no suspect in this. We’re trying to find if the bastard killed any more children, and we thought your colleagues might know.”
    The death man seemed to relax at this and showed them through to a small parlour. It was a tidy room, spotlessly clean, but as gloomy as the rest. Three lamps burned defiantly and a window shed a reddish light, reflected off the brickwork of the house opposite. Conir insisted on serving them a glass of tea, which Gilan could have done without, and a plate of small pastries which Gilan found bland, though Ifan seemed to like them.
    Conir told them again all that he had told Hekman, and Gilan listened carefully. He knew he wasn’t particularly clever, but he had a good memory and a strong arm, and that would do for this work.
    “And the other child, the one that was the same?”
    “Here in the old town,” the death man said. “A girl. She was the daughter of a fisherman who lives down on Ship Lane, behind the Shining Wake tavern. Her body was found in the sea nearby. She had the same wound in the skull, marks on the neck and wrists.”
    “It happened on this side of the river?”
    “I can’t say where she was killed, lawkeeper, but she was taken from the old town and found there, though I suppose the sea could have brought her home.”
    Gilan made a mental note to check which way the sea washed things, but he suspected the murder had been done in the old town. It was too much of a coincidence for the body to be found so close. That meant the killer had two places, and maybe more than that. It also meant that he wasn’t just preying on Gulltown urchins.
    “We want to talk to other death men. If you’ve seen this before, they may have.”
    Conir looked at his hands. “I’ll go with you,” he said. “It will be easier.”
    They left the alley and walked their horses a few streets north. Conir walked silently, and the way he moved reminded Gilan of the herons that fished the river banks. He stalked along. They came at last to another house, larger and better appointed than Conir’s. It was on a main road, and so better lit, but it was still painted black, and stark white lettering modestly announced it to be the premises of one Aldus Peron.
    Conir knocked on the door frame.
    A man emerged from the shop, beaming at them out of a round face framed with blond curls. Aldus Peron was a head and a half shorter than Conir, but had twice the presence.
    “Bilan,” Peron said. “Who are your friends?”
    “Lawkeepers,” Conir said. He looked at Gilan. “They want to talk about the shrike.”
    Peron’s face went behind a cloud. He frowned. “Well, they’d better come in.”
    They knew. This killer had been at his work so long that the death men knew him, had a name for him. The shrike. Gilan knew the birds. They impaled their prey on thorns. It was a name he could understand.
    Peron took them through to a parlour many times the size of Conir’s. He didn’t offer them tea.
    Gilan didn’t wait for polite exchanges. “You know,” he said. “This has been going on for… how long? And you know.”
    “You want to know how long?” Peron said. “I don’t know. As