II.

The Beast's first memories are painful, but exciting.

'Don't touch yourself there! That's disgusting!'

Then, blows. The Beast tastes blood in its mouth. It sees a face in the mirror, with bruises. A face that could be anything, anyone. It doesn't have to recognize the face as itself. It is lumpy and bleeding, pathetic. It is just the face of the boy-shell. For the first time, the Beast roars. It does not have claws yet, but knows they will grow.

Later: 'Here, kitty-kitty here, let's play together. There now, there's a nice cat. Whose mama loves you, then? That's right. That's nice. Purr, purr for your mama'

A sharp claw appears in the Beast's hand. It slides through fur and skin, and punctures muscle.

The cat shrieks like a daemon.

'Here, kitty-kitty come to mama. Kitty? Kitty!'

Still later, a different voice.

'There now, slip into your trousers. What a fine, handsome boy you are. You'll make your father proud. What's this in your pocket? Careful, you'll tear the cloth. It's expensive. It's velvet. Like they wear at the Emperor's court in Altdorf. There now, you've torn it. I told you to be careful, boy!'

More blows. By now, the Beast is used to blows. It doesn't feel them, no matter how hurt the boy-shell is. The boy-shell stops crying eventually and with each hurt the boy recedes and the Beast becomes stronger.

When they are ten years old, the Beast kills again, for the first time since the kitten. The Beast is clever. It knows it is not yet as strong as it will become. So it picks Old Nikolas, the family's retired gamekeeper. Old Nikolas had to retire on a pension when gored by a hog during a hunt. His legs are bent and he spends most of the day in his hammock in the old lodge. He is slow and will not be able to escape the Beast. The boy-shell thins and the Beast pokes out its claws, taking down father's two-edged sword from his last campaign. It is heavy in the Beast's hands, but not too heavy. The weight is important. If the Beast can heft the weapon up high enough, the weight will increase the force of the blow, compensate for the weakness of the boy-shell's arms. It has all been thought out perfectly. The sword slices down and parts Old Nikolas's neck as if it were soft cheese, chopping also through the canvas hammock.

The gamekeeper's head rolls free and the Beast kicks it like a ball.

'It's horrible, horrible, horrible. My little boy mustn't see. He mustn't. Don't you understand?'

The Beast waits for a long time, pretending to be the boy-shell. They grow up, are educated in the arts of a gentleman.

On their twelfth birthday, the Beast comes out again and takes an axe to a drunken guest in the garden. It's Uncle Sergius, who had bounced the boy-shell up and down on his knee. He looks strange with the split in his face. The wound reminds the Beast of the forbidden places of the female body. Then the Beast makes its first and only mistake. Kneeling by Uncle Sergius to get a better look at the split, the Beast dips the boy-shell's fingers into the blood, probing the wound.

'Sigmar's hammer!'

It is Natasha, the girl who travels with Uncle Sergius. The boy-shell's father calls her his brother's mistress. The Beast knows what that means. They think that sort of thing is disgusting.

Natasha just stands there, not saying anything, her mouth getting rounder, her arms stuck out like a scarecrow. She looks funny. The boy-shell smiles at her and the Beast takes out the claw from its waistsheath.

'It's all right, 'Tasha. Don't be sad.'

The boy-shell gets up and slips an arm round Natasha's waist. She is shaking, but can't move. The Beast licks her face with a rough tongue. She doesn't flinch.

She enjoys it really, the Beast knows that. Women are disgusting like that. Absolutely disgusting.

The Beast takes its hard, straight claweight inches of sharpened steeland puts it into Natasha's stomach.

She gasps in delight and blood comes out of her mouth.

The Beast takes its claw out of Natasha's stomach and puts it into her chest. Then, it puts the claw somewhere else. And somewhere else.

Split-face Uncle Sergius looks up at the moons. And Natasha doesn't say anything.

This is the best thing the Beast has ever known. From now on, it will hunt only women. It will kill only women. The boy-shell agrees.

Women, it has finally realized, are its natural prey.

Women. Disgusting women.

III.

As usual, the tally was coming up three barrels short. Benning, the clerk, was scratching his chin with his quill, squirting a little ink into his beard as he looked in bored bewilderment at the cargo barge moored up by the Reik and Talabec Trading Company Warehouse. Ruprecht, the night man, was yawning enormously, making the point that he wanted to go home and sleep. Judging by his breath, the fat hog could have accounted for all three casks of l'Anguille wine by himself. If the shipyard dog licked Ruprecht's sweaty crotch one more time, it would be as drunk as a priest of Ranald on Trickster's Day.

'Count it again,' snarled Harald Kleindeinst.

Benning, who was sensibly afraid of him, complied, and began checking the cargo against his manifest.

The River Rat, pride of the Reik and Talabec line, had the Marienburg to Altdorf run, carrying wines from Bretonnia, cloth from Albion and scrimshaw baubles from Norsca. And, during its twenty-five year life, it had never arrived in Altdorf with exactly the same cargo that had left Marienburg. Rather, while the cargo might have entered Altdorf intact, it always seemed peculiarly diminished by the time the unloaded goods were inventoried.

Harald was going to do something today that would change that record.

'I wish you'd hurry up,' said Warble, the supercargo, 'I have business in the city that won't wait.'

Warble was a halfling, but he wasn't the fey, childlike creature halflings were supposed to be. He was chewing a cheroot and sitting on a deckstool, calmly waiting for Harald to let him disembark.

'Take your ease, Warble,' Harald told him. 'Nobody leaves the wharf until the cargo is accounted for.'

'I'm here on business, thief-taker,' the halfling said.

'So am I.'

Sam Warble shrugged and looked at the pointed toes of his boots.

The dock crew were also sitting around, impatient. Krimi, the young foreman, was fraying the end of a rope with a marlinspike and casting the occasional threatening glance at Harald when he thought the day watch wasn't looking at him. Krimi was a Fish, and in addition to the colours sewn onto his jerkin, had fish tattooed on his cheeks. That marked him as a war chief and made him think he was a tough character.

Harald knew better. Harald had met a lot of people who thought they were tough characters. They usually turned out to be pussies.

The Fish were losing ground to the Hooks and trying to get back by throwing in their lot with Yefimovich the fire-breather. The clerk continued his count, mumbling under his breath.

It had been a cold night, but it was a warmish day, the last of the autumn. The heat meant that the docks smelled worse than usual. The next barge was unloading a cargo of seafish that might possibly have been caught within the last ten years, although Harald wouldn't have put a bet on it. Chunks of ice were fast melting in the sunshine and the dockers were hurrying the job, trying to get the barge unloaded before the smell got too bad to bear.

Harald's hand rested on his right hip and happened to brush against the hilt of his throwing-knife.

After all these years, the weapon still hung comfortably in its sheath.

'Come down in the world, haven't you, thief-taker?' said Warble.

Harald raised his upper lip a little.

'The last time I was in Altdorf, you were a captain of the watch. Now, you're just doing sums for merchants.'

Harald looked at Warble, trying to place the face.

'Have I heard of you, halfling?'

Warble shrugged again. 'I doubt it. I keep to myself, mostly. I have a lot of respect for the law.'

'Still three barrels short,' said Benning.

The clerk looked at Krimi before he looked at Harald, which was their second mistake. Deciding to steal from the Reik and Talabec Trading Company, of course, had been their first.

Ruprecht could have stayed out of it, but he was too stupid. He was leaning against a stack of cotton bales on the dock, flapping a meaty hand at a fly that was buzzing around his eyes.

'I told you, Kleindeinst, there's no mystery. The barrels slipped their moorings and rolled overboard. They're with the fish.'

Harald just looked at the night watch. He felt sick to his stomach, as he always did around stupid, contemptible people.

'It's funny how many things just roll overboard on this run, isn't it?'

Ruprecht was sweating more than usual. He must be nursing a hangover from that l'Anguille wine. It had quite a kick and fat people could rarely hold their liquor.

'With the fish, huh? That's a believable story.'

Krimi looked up from his rope and raised an eyebrow. The Fish had originally got their name because they were always the people who seemed to come into possession of goods that 'rolled overboard.'

'Apart from that,' the clerk said, 'the tallies match.'

'Benning,' he said, 'if your tallies match, then you're either a terrible book-keeper or a clever thief. And I don't think you're a terrible book-keeper.'

The clerk jumped, almost falling off the quay. He turned round and his eyes stuck out.

In the quiet, he could hear the creaking of the barge as it drifted into the quay, grinding against the pilings and floated away again. The shipyard dog was panting, waiting for something to happen. Like everyone else.

'Do you have any idea how stupid you've been? These others don't know any better than to steal. But you're an educated man. You should never have doctored the tallies.'

The clerk looked around. Neither Krimi nor Ruprecht met his panicky eyes.

Warble pretended not to be interested and spat the wet end of his cheroot into the water.

'Three barrels, Benning. It's always three barrels. Whenever you count, Mr. Fish here unloads and Ruprecht stands around watching, the cargo always comes up three barrels short. You should have varied it. You thought the company wouldn't believe it if there was no pilferage, so you decided on three barrels.'

Ruprecht was shaking, ready to explode. Krimi was gently lashing the dock with his rope. His gang lolled around, half on the barge, half off, leaning on things, waiting.

The halfling exhaled smoke. 'I've been over all the tallies and it comes to a lot more than three barrels a trip. You're a conscientious man, you must know exactly how much you've cheated the company out of.'

Benning was about to crack. Harald could see the water in his eyes.

'I-I-I was I was fuh-fuh-forced'

'Shut up, quill-pusher,' shouted Ruprecht, leaning forwards. He slapped his own face, setting his chins wobbling, but still missed the fly.

Harald turned on the night watch and his knife was in his hand, the blade against his palm, hilt pointed at Ruprecht. It was a fine piece of workmanship, with an eighteen-inch blade honed to razor edges. Some men had daggers with designs carved into their hilts and the names of gods etched on the blades. But this was unadorned, a thing of smooth curves and sharp lines. It was not for show.

'It's a tradition of the docks, Kleindeinst nobody begrudges old Ruprecht his cut'

Harald didn't say anything. He always felt sick to his stomach when thieves broke down. And thieves always broke down.

Krimi said, 'Yevgeny Yefimovich says that property is theft.'

'Yes, well theft is theft too.'

Harald held up his knife.

'This was made by Magnin the steelsmith,' he said. 'It is the heaviest throwing knife in the known world. To be effective, such a weapon has to be balanced to within a thousandth of an ounce. To be thrown properly, the knife-wielder has to have an accurate sense of time, an unusual strength of wrist and the eye of a hawk.'

Ruprecht backed against the bales. The fly settled on his ear. The night man was blubbering, sweat darkening his shirt.

'You'd better hope, scum, that those five bottles of wine I drank last night have not affected my aim this morning'

Ruprecht sucked in a breath and closed his eyes, and the knife left Harald's hand, flipping end over end as if travelling through thick liquid There was a thud as the knife embedded itself up to the hilt and Ruprecht yelped.

The insect had stopped buzzing.

Ruprecht opened his eyes and found that the knife was stuck into the cotton bale, between his right ear and his skull. He was not even cut.

'Now, do I get a confession, or do things get unpleasant?'

Ruprecht was too busy praying to answer the question, but the Fish weren't impressed. They saw a man without a knife and made the familiar error of thinking he would be easy to take.

Krimi made a move with his eyes and came for Harald. He whipped out with his rope and raised his marlinspike to smash Harald's skull.

It was just like the old watch days. The scum seemed to move slower than a thick syrup, while he darted like a dancer.

Harald caught the rope as it snaked through the air and, with a deft turn, wrapped it around his wrists. He pulled and Krimi was off his feet.

When the Fish was within Harald's reach, he brought his knee up sharply into the other man's groin.