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something like that not long ago.
    Where?
    He struggled to remember, then it came to him. On the counting table in Kesleer’s warehouse. A heap of charts and papers, the bambu rod and yellow-gold gleaming. Not coins. Not metal. Fluffy, flyaway filaments. Like sparks. Like silken threads. No, not quite…
    He concentrated, remembering.
    They’d been so light, moving in the slightest breeze, like goose-down from a pillow…
    They’d been feathers. Soft, downy feathers.
    What the pox?
    He had to have it wrong. Feathers weren’t valuable to a man like Kesleer, or the Regal; the idea was ridiculous. And of course, no one put feathers into a knife blade. If they did, the heated metal would frizzle them.
    Shivering, he drew the rough wool blanket up under his chin. He would have taken on an intruder without a second thought, but nothing, nothing at all, was going to entice him out of bed to pick up that dagger with its wicked, sinuous blade. Not when he was damned sure it could slither out of his pack and cross the floor like a snake. He’d stay awake till morning, staring at the thing.
    Half an hour later, he dozed off.
    When he did wake, it was in horrified panic as he realised that the first dawn had already pierced the dark, and the monks were ringing the bell for prayers. He sat bolt upright even before his eyes were fully open. The first thing his gaze sought was the dagger on the floor, but the flagstones were bare. He drew in a deep, calming breath. Obviously it was all some horrible nightmare, none of it real. He chuckled. What an addle-pate he was! The blade was still buried at the bottom of his pack, and always had been.
    He stood and went to grope for the piss-pot under the bed. And halted halfway, shocked.
    Lying on his pillow, next to the indent of his head, was the lascar’s dagger.

3
The Haunted Woman
    T he house was cold. It always was, even in the height of summer, and now it was well into autumn. Perhaps it was the pretentious size of the rooms and the lofty corridors that made it that way. Perhaps it was just that there was no warmth in this household for the wife of landsman Nikard Ermine.
    Sorrel Redwing pulled her shawl tighter around her upper body and shivered.
Loggerheaded fool that you are
.
This place is squeezing the life out of you, one drop of warm blood at a time. One day you’ll wake up to find you’re no more than a dry husk lying on the bed
…
    A murmur of conversation reached her where she sat, Nikard’s voice recognisable, although the words were indistinct. Drunk again, of course. He always was, when dicing with his friends, especially if his brother Hilmard was there, as he was tonight.
    Nikard and Hilmard, confound them both. Pretentious brothers with pretentious names for a Shenat family. And they
were
Shenat, born of the northern folk even if they no longer lived in the hills. Unfortunately, as landsmen rich enough to employ others to till the land, the Ermines believed they were better men than mere yeomen. Their parents had turned their backs on Shenat customs when their sons were born, eschewing names derived from nature. More recently, Nikard had even called their daughter Antonya.
    A pompous name for her little Heather. She’d never used it, of course.
    Va rot them all!
Because of them, she’d sunk this low, sitting upright in an uncomfortable chair in a cold passageway – just in case her gambler of a husband, or his sot of a brother, called her into the withdrawing room. The relative warmth of the adjacent ladies’ parlour with flames dancing in its marble fireplace taunted her, yet it wasn’t worth the risk to wait there. She might not hear his summons, and experience told her Nikard Ermine didn’t like being kept waiting.
    I should leave him, of course I should. But if I do, I lose everything of Heather…
    Silly, but true. Heather had been born here. Her baby gurgles still lingered in the nursery; her toddling footfall sounded in the corridors; her childish laughter