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long as I’ve been in the trade. Twenty years at least. Others say longer.”
    The enormity of what Peron was saying sent as shiver up Gilan’s back. Twenty years? How many children? It could be hundreds.
    “You told no one?” he asked.
    Peron shrugged. “Who was there to tell? The Faer Karan? Ocean’s Gate? The King? None of them gave a damn.”
    “And nobody tried to stop it?”
    “One or two,” Peron said.
    “And?”
    “They went missing, some of them. Some of them found nothing at all. Are you going to look for him?”
    Gilan bristled at the question – that it should be a question at all. “We’re law keepers,” he said. “We will keep the law.”
    Peron looked at him. “You’ll try,” he said. “I believe you will.”
    “How often does he kill?”
    “Sometimes two in a week. Sometimes a year will go by, but we might not see them all. Some in the trade don’t look. Some don’t want to look.”
    “And it’s always the same,” Gilan asked. “The wound in the head, the restraint?”
    “More or less.”
    Gilan questioned Peron for another hour, extracting the details and locations of every murder, every kidnapping, every corpse that he knew of. There were a lot of them. It seemed impossible that this had gone on so long, that so many children had been stolen, tortured and killed without him knowing about it. It should have been the topic of conversation in every tavern, the subject of every street corner gossip, but instead it was a secret, a dark, hidden shame.
    It did not seem worth the trouble to seek out other death men. Peron had told them all they needed to know. The city was littered with the dead. They came from every social stratum, every neighbourhood, almost every street it seemed, and the slaughter had been going on for year after year – decades of blood.
    Gilan was angry. He rode briskly back to the law house and Ifan rode beside him, silent as he had been on the way out. It was not until the law house was in sight that he finally spoke.
    “Damn, Gilan,” he said. “I thought the Faer Karan were monsters. But this…”
    “Aye,” Gilan said. “I’ll see the bastard dead if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

Nine – The Shining Wake
    Arla was asleep when the physic came. She was surprised to be woken. She thought the pain would have kept her awake, but it had not. It came back, though, with a rush.
    The physic seemed to know her job. She examined Arla’s burns and produced a cooling salve that lessened the hurt. She had gentle hands, and the process wasn’t especially painful.
    “Drink this,” the physic said, pushing a blue glass bottle at Arla.
    “What is it?”
    “Good for you,” the woman said. Arla eyed the bottle. She’d never been given anything like this at Ocean’s Gate, but then at Ocean’s Gate they had the Faer Karan, and they could cure all ills with a few words and gestures. It was ironic that of all the great Faer Karan strongholds in the world only Ocean’s Gate still had its shapeshifting lords. Now they were in thrall to the Mage Lord, but they were still there, could still cure or kill.
    “All of it?” she asked.
    “All of it.”
    Arla did as she was told. The liquid was sweet. She suspected that it had been mixed with honey and alcohol to make it more palatable, but that was fine with her.
    “What was it?” she asked.
    “A restorative. It will help to deaden the pain and keep you free of fever.”
    Arla gave the empty bottle back. She could already feel the pain fading, her weariness being washed away by the potion. The physic was packing up her things. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” she said. “Your burns are not serious, but should be watched. Try not to do anything violent.”
    She left. Arla sat on the bed for a while. She didn’t feel tired any more. There was a window, but all it showed her was a house on the other side of the street from the law house and rooftops rising up to the opulence of Morningside and the cliffs above