I spotted the nocturnal visitor’s winged silhouette against the open window. For one instant I looked into those yellow eyes that gazed at me in cold disdain, with the arrogance of death itself, and then my finger squeezed the trigger of its own accord. The bowstring gave a dry twang and the heavy crossbow bolt struck the creature in the back just as it turned and leapt from the window with its wings outspread. There was a dull thud, as if the dwarf-made steel had struck a wet tree trunk, not living flesh. The creature melted away into the night without a sound. I don’t think it was bothered at all by the bolt in its back.

Time to run for it. There was nothing I could do to help the duke, and if they caught me beside the body, they would pin the murder on me. A serious crime against the crown like that means long, slow conversations in the torture chambers of the Gray Stones.

I dashed over to the shelves, grabbed what I needed—a gold statuette of a dog—and ran back out of the door.

The garrinch appeared again at the far end of the corridor. We spotted each other at the same moment.

The brute let out a roar of joy and came hurtling toward this new promise of supper, taking immense bounds. Still moving, I tossed the crossbow back over my shoulder, stuck my hand into my bag, and pulled out a phial of phosphorescent blue liquid. The most important thing in our business is to keep your nerve. When the garrinch was only two bounds away, I dashed the contents of the phial straight into its fearsome grin.

The brute’s face was shrouded in a cloud of blue mist. It pulled up sharply, sneezed in astonishment, and then, completely forgetting about me, started rubbing its front paws hard over its face in furious desperation. I ran past it as quickly as I could, in my heart wishing the loathsome creature deliverance from the magical itching—in perhaps two or three hundred years.