Krimi gasped in agony and his marlinspike fell onto the quay.

Harald let him go and pushed him away.

'Hurts, doesn't it?' he said.

The Fish would be too busy thinking about pain to be any more trouble. Harald picked up the rope and, pulling Krimi's hands away from his bruised balls, tied his wrists.

'Ruprecht,' he said, 'bring me my knife.'

Without thinking, the night man pulled the Magnin out of the bale and handed it to him. Harald sheathed it.

He looked at the remaining dockers. None of them wanted any more trouble.

'What are you waiting for?' he said. 'Get the cargo on the dock and don't forget the secret compartments in the fore hold.'

The Fish snapped to and started moving barrels and boxes like the marionettes of an especially dextrous puppeteer.

Warble stepped off the barge and looked at Krimi, who was still rolling on the dock, his knees locked together.

Harald yanked on the rope, hauling Krimi upright, and slipped an iron collarbrace around the Fish's neck, clicking the catch tight. Spikes dimpled the criminal's throat, drawing a little blood. If he struggled, he would gore himself badly. Harald playfully tugged the collar, drawing a howl from the Fish.

'Tell me,' Warble said, 'is that why they call you 'Filthy Harald'?'

IV.

'Let me through, I'm on the Emperor's business.'

It was not strictly true but, along with his distinctive green courtier's cloak, it impressed enough people to get Johann through the crowd on the Street of a Hundred Taverns. Even discounting the curiosity-seekers and ghoulish layabouts, there were more people in the narrow alley between the Mattheus II and Bruno's Brewhouse than he would have thought possible.

'Captain Dickon,' an officer of the watch was saying to his superior, 'one blanket isn't enough to cover the corpse.'

'Sigmar's hammer,' swore the captain.

More than one person had been sick in the gutter.

'It's incredible,' said a slender elf in minstrel's clothes. 'She's all over the place.'

'Oh, shut up, pointy-ears!'

A scuffle was in the offing. Several, in fact. Johann got the impression that this crowd could be even more dangerous than Yefimovich's mob.

They had already been given their first whiff of blood and now they were thirsty for more.

The officers were standing with two battered sailors, one sergeant asking questions. A watchman produced a pair of handcuffs and rattled them threateningly in a sailor's face.

'It's that sailor boy,' shouted an old man. 'He's the Beast!'

'String him up!' someone shouted.

'It's too good for him,' put in someone else. 'Cut him up like he cut up poor old Margi!'

The crowd was pressing forwards, pushing Johann towards the alley. He felt fingers reaching for his purse and slapped them away. Someone small apologised in a high, shrill voice and scuttled off to rob someone else.

The captain turned, and raised his voice. 'Back, all of you. This man is not a suspect. He found the body.'

There was a palpable air of disappointment. The crowd had wanted to do someone violence. Now, it was cheated. The sailor looked relieved, but his shipmate was too sick to notice his narrow escape.

'Captain,' said Johann. 'I am Baron von Mecklenberg.'

'The Elector of Sudenland?'

'Yes.'

The captain stuck out his hand. 'Dickon of the Dock Watch.'

Johann shook the watchman's hand. Lying, he explained, 'The Emperor has asked me to observe your investigation. He is very concerned with these Beast killings.'

Dickon tried to look as if he was pleased to have an aristocratic overseer. He wore a long coat and a peaked cap with a tiny feather. His nose had been broken and badly set some time in the past. He wasn't in uniform, but he had his watchman's copper badge pinned to his breast.

'Really? Could you do something about my requests to the palace? I've been trying to get the troops down here. The Dock Watch can't cope by itself. We're undermanned.'

Johann wondered if he had got himself in too deep without thinking. 'I'll try my best, captain.'

The crowd were pushing in towards the alley again.

'Look, it's her arm!'

'That's disgusting.'

'I can't see, mama. Hold me up.'

'Ought to be strung up.'

'Where's my purse? I've been robbed!'

'She was a mean old cow, though, that Margi. Vicious.'

'Disgusting!'

'Ought to be burned at the stake in the Konigsplatz.'

'Bloody coppers. Never around when someone's ripping your bowels out.'

'They say he eats their hearts.'

'I bet it's a Bretonnian. Filthy people, Bretonnians.'

'Nahhh, it's a dwarf. All the wounds are below the chest. Never touches their faces.'

'It's a curse.'

'We're all doomed. Repent, repent. The wrath of the gods has descended upon the unrighteous.'

'Bloody coppers.'

'Shut up.'

Johann was pushed against Dickon. The crowd was turning in on itself, a few blows had already been exchanged. The dwarf-hater and the woman who had no love for Bretonnians were squaring off against each other. The ragged cleric of no particular god was starting a sermon.

'This is ridiculous,' said the captain. 'You men there, get these people out of here.'

Four officers, one looking distinctly queasy, pulled out their clubs and advanced at the crowd. Luckily, they didn't have to hit anyone. Grumbling, the people dispersed. The taverns were open. Murder was evidently good for business. At least, it was in the daytime when the Beast wasn't about. The cleric loitered a while, telling the officers that the gods were angry. But when a sergeant remarked that the man resembled a pickpocket due to have his fingers trimmed if he were ever caught, the cleric disappeared in the direction of the Black Bat.

'Where's that scryer, Economou?' Dickon asked the sergeant.

'On her way from the temple, sir.'

'I wish she would damned well hurry up.'

Johann and Dickon were near the entrance to the alley now.

'Would you care to take a look, baron?' the watch captain asked, a little insolence oozing into his habitual deference to the green velvet.

'Uh, yes,' Johann said. He realized that the captain thought he was a morbid sensation-seeker, using his position to get an eyeful of the latest atrocity. The watchman evidently had a very low opinion of people. Just now, Johann couldn't bring himself to mind. If Dickon thought he were just another degenerate, then he would never think of checking with the palace to expose his story of being the Emperor's representative. That would make things a lot easier.

Dickon nodded to an officer in the alley and the watchman bent down to lift the blanket.

In his years of wandering, Johann had come across a great many dead bodies in a great many states of abuse and decay. But this was the worst thing he had ever seen.

'Was it a woman?'

He couldn't relate the remains to anything human, much less distinguish their sex.

'Oh yes,' said Dickon. 'Her name was Margarethe Ruttmann. She was a whore and a thief, and probably killed her pimp a few years back.'

Dickon spat. The officer let the blanket fall. The stains were spreading on the cloth.

'A proper little minx with a blade, too. Let's hope she put up a fight and marked our man.'

An officer who had been on his hands and knees at the rear of the alley, where water was dribbling from a hole in the wall, cried out. Dickon and Johann walked to him, carefully stepping around Margarethe Ruttmann.

'It's her knife, sir.'

He held up a pathetic little pig-sticker.

'and here's her other hand.'

'Merciful Shallya!'

The hand lay under the stream, washed white and clean. It looked like a fat, plucked bird.

'Put it with the rest. The scryer will want to see it.'

The copper took out a kerchief and wrapped his fingers, then plucked the hand out of the stream and, holding it with his thumb and fingertips, walked very fast over to the blanket and popped it under the cover. Standing up, he rubbed at his hand with the kerchief. He was shaking.

'Not like thumping drunks and roughing up weirdroot suppliers, is it, Elsaesser?'

The young officer shook his head.

'It's what I have to work with, baron,' Dickon told Johann. 'This is the Dock Watch, not the Palace Guard. These people don't just have copper badges, baron, they have copper heads.'

The sun was shafting down into the alley. It was almost overhead. The morning was gone. Shadows were thin and things not meant to be seen were in full view.

'And put that knife in a bag, Elsaesser. Maybe the scryer can get something from it.'

They came out of the alley. Dickon pulled out a pipe and a tobacco pouch. He lit up and inhaled a suck of thick, foul smoke. He did not offer Johann a chew.

Carts were trundling by, mainly carrying barrels to the street's famous hostelries. Life was going on. Across the way, three young women were soliciting passersby. The watchmen took no notice, so Johann assumed they had met their payments to the Luitpoldstrasse Station this month. He wondered how much it would cost to get the watch to be unwatchful while a murder was being committed. Not too much, he supposed.

'Skipper,' asked one of the sailors, 'can we go now? We were supposed to rejoin our ship just after dawn. Things will go bad for us if we're any later. Captain Cendenai is a hard woman.'

Dickon looked at the man and he shrank visibly.

'No you cannot go, sailor boy. I stopped that crowd ripping you apart because I don't want you dead until I'm completely sure you didn't cut old Margi up, you understand?'

The other sailor was heavily bruised about the face and holding his stomach. He was standing in a pool of his own vomit and still heaving occasionally, even though there was nothing left inside to come up.

'Bloody amazing isn't it, baron? This fellow is so used to the rolling waves that he gets seasick on dry land.'

Nobody bothered to laugh.

'What do these men have to do with the killing, captain?'

'Who bloody knows? They were on leave last night and were responsible for a bit of a disturbance down at the Sullen Knight. Incidentally, if you ever want a good punch-up that's the inn to drink in. A couple of our officers broke them up and administered a street sentence'

'What's that?'

Dickon grinned. 'That's when the cells are too full to bother with idiots like this, and you give them a couple of headaches with the clubs, then leave them somewhere where people won't trip over them. They invariably wake up with a few lumps and a newfound respect for the Emperor's laws.'

'Damn the Dock Watch,' said the less-sick sailor. 'Bastards all!'