Predatory animals, such as lions, could be depended upon to attack the weakest members of a herd. Not so with trolls, whose habits of predation varied wildly according to preference, tradition, tribe, level of inebriation or sheer bloody-mindedness. In populated areas, though - or at least areas where the population included armed individuals tasked with protecting the others - experienced trolls sought out not the weakest members of the herd, but rather the least noticeable.

In large cities, this was almost laughably easy - there was usually no shortage of people who simply didn't count, as far as the authorities were concerned. Beggars were one example, but they were frequently filthy and distasteful. Leni's preferred hunting demographic was the mid-level prostitute, who was generally not too filthy, and also usually isolated, alone and, crucially, not missed when she disappeared. They were easy to find: you located a red light district and just hung around. An opportunity had so far never failed to present itself.

Without really thinking about it, this was what Leni did when she left the warehouse. She didn't even have to go far: three streets away, close to the river, there was a mid-sized agglomeration of cheap taverns, flophouses and grubby brothels. The area had probably been a small town in it's own right before Vyrinios gradually insinuated itself around it: now it was conveniently placed for the warehouse-workman market. The area had a plentiful supply of poorly lit alleys where freelancers, who did not work in one of the brothels, could find space to entertain clients. Leni attracted a lot of fearful stares as she entered the district, but she was expecting this. She ducked down one of the alleys and waited for an hour, hunkered down behind a pile of discarded crates. Humans never failed to forget her presence, if she was just quiet for long enough. Her patience was rewarded when a woman, dressed in a garish assortment of frilly clothes, led her latest customer into the alley.

"One silver, darlin'," the prostitute said.

The man gave vent to a low-voiced sentence of disagreement.

"Because it's not exactly warm, that's why the extra. If you want the clothes off in this weather, you pay for it."

The man didn't raise any further objections to the price. Some money changed hands, and then the woman proceeded to fulfil her contractual obligations.

"Hmph," the man said, a few minutes later, and departed.

"You're welcome," the prostitute said, under her breath. "Asshole."

Leni stepped out to have a proper look at dinner. Dinner was still stepping back into her dress, and was short but plump. Excellent. Leni got a hand over her mouth before she could scream, hoisted her up by her ankles and had a exploratory sniff.

"Someone smells nice," she said. Dinner squeaked in terror from behind her hand.

"Hey!" A man's voice barked. "She's protected! Aghkar, I mean, Iyanus'll hunt you down an' 'ave you skinned! You better put 'er down!"

A man was pointing the worst-maintained sword Leni had ever seen in her general direction, the tip of which was shaking madly.

"Put that away before you hurt yourself, boy," Leni advised the man, then began manoeuvering dinner into her mouth. Dinner had other ideas about this, and was twisting about madly.

"I mean it! He doesn't care if you're a troll like he is, if you take one of his girls he'll carve it out of your hide!" The man said.

Leni paused. The names Aghkar and Iyanus were familiar. Something to do with McKenzie's last trip out. Possibly usefully familiar, then.

"If you scream, I'll just carry on. Understand?" She asked dinner. Dinner nodded to indicate her understanding.

"Good," Leni went on, then removed her hand from the woman's mouth, which left her dangling upside down. "Is what this guy's saying true?"

"Iyanus has taken over Aghkar's crew," the prostitute said hurriedly. "You've heard of Aghkar?"

"Yeah, Aghkar I've heard of," Leni replied. That confirmed why she knew the name. "Go on."

"Iyanus is a troll. Like you. I work for him. If you, if you, if you-" The woman was unable to finish her sentence, at that point.

"Eat you," Leni prompted. "It's not a difficult concept."

"If you, um, yeah, eat me, he'll kill you. He's done it before, to trolls," the girl finished. "And he really fucking means it, at the moment. Aghkar's dead so there's chaos. Iyanus has to show he's not to be messed with. He's looking to make examples of people," she threatened, but in a pleading tone.

Leni grunted. She would say that, after all. On the other hand, it wasn't unheard of for trolls to run operations like this. Street people knew they were prey for trolls: seeking out the protection of a particularly violent one offered a degree of protection. For the troll, it offered a few perks, too: your own human livestock.

So a troll was running Aghkar's operation now. Interesting, Leni thought.

"Well, in that case, I reckon I'll have to be co-operative." Leni shrugged. "Do you know where I can find this Iyanus?"

The prostitute nodded eagerly.

"Tell me."

The prostitute hesitated, then shook her head. "I'll take you to him, ma'am. With the greatest good will. But I don't think I'm going to tell you."

Leni sniffed. "Smart girl," she said grudgingly. With a certain amount of regret she lowered the woman to the floor. "Get dressed. I want to go see your boss." The woman complied.

Leni was, normally, very much a lone troll, but she had realised something while she was crouched in the darkness. The curse was lifted. Gone. History. She was a free troll. First on her agenda now that she was free was to finally do permanently to Danandra what she'd temporarily done to her many times before, and, somehow, get McKenzie off her back. She wasn't going to be able to do that on her own, though. She'd need help.

She reckoned that she knew where to find some.

- o O o -

Iyanus was an odd sort of troll.

Many trolls turned to crime: their usual role was extreme muscle. They were very good at it, and in return they commanded high wages. They usually didn't even have to do much: their purpose was normally to offset the trolls employed by rival criminals. This was almost always achieved by simply agreeing with your opposite number to do nothing, so it was a laughably easy gig most of the time. Any other tasks that came along of the usual intimidation/violence sort were equally unchallenging. Trolls tended to stay in the job until they got bored and moved on, or, more usually, ate the wrong person and had to leave in a hurry.

Iyanus was different. Iyanus understood a bit about management, planning, negotiation: he could be a bit subtle, when the occasion called for it. So although he'd started out as what McKenzie had once described as a low-level henchtroll, he hadn't stayed one for long. Aghkar had an eye for talent, and had made Iyanus his right hand troll.

Iyanus hadn't exactly been ready for what happened to Aghkar, but he'd known the day would come, so as soon as he came to with a splitting headache (Iyanus had assumed the assassin must have used powerful magic – he hadn't been happy to find out it had just been a chair), he started issuing orders to his key people. They carried letters to other powerful crime figures within the city, reminding them of certain deals that had been made and assurances that had been given.

The gist of it was this: the Aghkar syndicate didn't have to end with Aghkar. Traditionally, the death of a crimelord would lead to a great deal of violence as his territory was carved up amongst the other crimelords, or seized by ambitious up-and-comers. This was bad for business all round, and often led to fatalities amongst the other crimelords. Iyanus, with Aghkar's agreement, had managed to ram through a deal where each signatory was entitled to a small share of the deceased's operations: in return they guaranteed that whoever inherited what was left would do so with the collective backing of the other signatories, and, crucially, whoever was found to have brought about the death of any of the signatories would face the wrath of all of them (that was the part that Aghkar had liked: it was a considerable disincentive for any potential killer to consider. These were some pretty scary signatures, so Iyanus had been given a breathing space during which he could consolidate what was left of Aghkar's empire – still a very hefty chunk of the Vyrinios underworld. He had congratulated himself on his forward planning.

Until The Meeting.

The Meeting had featured the men he'd started to think of as his fellow crimelords saying things like 'find Aghkar's killer - his real killer, not a scapegoat - and make an example of him', 'if we can't be seen to be able to protect ourselves, then we need to be seen to avenge each other', and 'one week, or you get to be the example'. It hadn't been pleasant. Iyanus might've been a ferocious troll, but these were not people to be put off by minor details such as that.

The other gang leaders had taken his idea and run with it, it seemed. It had morphed into a full scale Vyrinian mafia – and far from offering help with finding the killer, they'd dumped the whole problem into his lap.

Iyanus had assured his peers that he would root out the killer, and then wondered how the hell he would go about it. He'd sent men out to ask pointed questions - literally pointed questions - but nobody knew anything. The Assassins' Guild was almost certainly involved, but only a fool would annoy the Guild by trying to extract the name of their employer from them: they took a very dim view of that. Iyanus was even considering getting the city guardsmen involved, for want of a better idea. He was extremely talented at organising crime: at solving it, less so.

So, Iyanus didn't know what to feel about the nervous knocking on the rebuilt office door. Was this another annoying interruption? Or perhaps - just perhaps - someone had something useful to report about the crazy drunken assassin. Either way, it was an opportunity to shout at someone and thus make himself feel momentarily better.

"Open it." He said to one of the mages guarding the door. There were two mages either side of the office door, and four of his best henchmen in the room. His first act had been to beef up security. The mage nodded and snapped his fingers: the door swung open to admit Raniks.

Probably an annoying interruption then. Iyanus sighed. If Raniks didn't know so many useful details about the organisation, he'd've bitten the man's head off ages ago and spat it hard against the wall in irritation.

"What," he asked flatly, "do you want?"

Raniks coughed. "There are some people to see you, sir. One of our girls from the riverside warehouse area with her handler, and an, um, another one of your, um, ethnic group, sir."

Iyanus growled and laid a hand on his gold-tipped club. "If he's been eating our assets, I'll use him to furnish this fucking chair." Iyanus had had some troll-sized furniture made - a couple of chairs and a huge wooden desk. The chairs were incredibly uncomfortable - once everything had settled down, he was going to find the carpenter and beat him to death with one.

"It's a she, sir," Raniks said.

"Same difference," Iyanis grunted. Trolls, unsurprisingly, weren't particularly gentlemanly. Female trolls were obviously useful for one thing which male trolls weren't, but beyond that, if you couldn't find another use for them, they were just competition for food (or, if you were sufficiently determined to attempt it, they were just food themselves). To be fair to the male half of the troll population, the women felt exactly the same way about them. They were very egalitarian about their viciousness.

"Should I admit them, sir?" Raniks asked.

"Yeah," Iyanus said.

Two humans entered nervously: Iyanus vaguely recognised the man as one of Aghkar's- or rather his, now - low-level enforcers: this one was tasked with overseeing a patch of whores in some gods-forsaken shithole on the edge of town. The woman was presumably one of said whores.

"She tried to eat me, sir!" The prostitute blurted, as soon as she was in the room.

"She did, sir, I saw it. Stopped her, I did, sir."

The two humans were followed by a trolless, who entered entirely at her ease. This was a business context and Iyanus was not in a good place right now, but despite all this he was immediately struck by her.

"Sit down and shut up," Iyanus said. They all complied: the humans with wide eyed fear, and the trolless with a shrug. "That true?" He asked the trolless.

"Yeah, pretty much," she replied. "She ain't dead, though, is she?"

"A fact for which you should be profoundly grateful," Iyanus said. "Because otherwise I would, regretfully, have to initiate disciplinary proceedings against you."

"Like?" The trolless asked.

"The last trolless caught preying upon our assets I had sealed into a dungeon. She tried to live off rats for a while, but in the end, it was the rats that lived off her," Iyanus said.

"Like your style, Iyanus," Leni said. "I woulda just killed her, but then again I'm often pressed for time. Anyways, I'm not here to trade tips on how to make an example of someone. I have information to trade. Sensitive information that you'll really, really wanna know about."

"A lot of people say that to me," Iyanus replied. "In most cases, they're either flat-out lying, or have radically misjudged the value of their information."

"I know who killed Aghkar," Leni told him.

"That'll make you the third person to have told me that in the past day," Iyanus said, untruthfully - there had been no offers of information. "The first two were lying. They won't lie again."

"He was killed when one of your guards fell on top of him - the sword that'd been used to kill the man went into his throat, probably cut that big vein in his neck that humans have. His head was missing when you woke up from being hit across the head with a chair," Leni said.

Iyanus blinked. This information was known only to his most trusted guards and mages. "Go on," he said.

"Oh, you'll get your information. First I want a few assurances, though," Leni said.

"That depends on the quality of the tale you have to tell, girl," Iyanus countered.

"Names, places, descriptions," Leni said.

"We'll see, won't we?" Iyanus shrugged, trying to act unconcerned, although even Leni could tell he was burning to know. "What are your terms?"

"I need your help going after these people. A...deal...I had with them has broken down recently, and now they want me dead." Leni shrugged. "They're fuckin' dangerous. I'm usually a lone-troll sort of girl, but recent events have convinced me that the backing of a powerful, intelligent male with many resources at his disposal isn't a bad idea."

"Don't blow sunshine up my arse, girl," Iyanus said. "I know what I am: I don't need reassurance from every bit of troll-tail that wanders in my door looking for a handout."

Leni arranged a smile. "Every little helps,"she shrugged.

"Not with me," Iyanus said. "Is that everything you want?"

"Bit of gold wouldn't go amiss. Say a hundred Vyrinian Imperials, so I've got enough cash to make myself scarce after the dust settles."

Iyanus made a show of considering it, then grunted. "Alright. If your information leads to what I want, you can have your gold. In the meantime, consider yourself the most recent employee of Iyanus Leisure and Investments, at standard troll rates. You'll be looked after as if you were one of mine until Aghkar's killers have been brought to justice."

"Justice?" Leni asked.

"For want of a better word," Iyanus shrugged. "I haven't made my mind up between 'dragged through the streets until dead' or 'hung, drawn and quartered' yet."

"There's one of 'em I really wanna eat," Leni said. "You know how it is."

Iyanus shrugged again. "I can work with that," he said. "After we've got some confessions out of him, anyway."

"Her," Leni corrected him.

"They all look the same to me, apart from the wobbly bits," Iyanus said, then held out his hand. "Do we have an accord?"

"Swear it on your possessions in the afterlife," Leni said.

"Happy to," Iyanus said. "As long as you swear the same oath to tell me only the truth and not to fuck me about."

"I swear on my possessions in the troll afterlife to tell you the truth in the matter of Aghkar's killers, and not to play you false in the matter of tracking them down," Leni said, and held out her hand.

"And I swear to take you under my protection until the killers of Aghkar are dead or devoured, or are discovered to not be the fuckers I'm after, and to pay you your hundred imperials upon completion of aforementioned killing and/or devouring," Iyanus said.

They stood, and their hands met with a resounding thwack that made everyone else jump. For the next few seconds, they apparently attempted to crush each other's fingers. If McKenzie had been present, he would have felt a pulse of magic as the deal was sealed.

Iyanus sat down first, suppressing both the sensation of pain in his hand and a growing interest in the mysterious trolless he'd just entered into the most binding of troll contracts with. If either of them didn't keep their word, the other would receive all of the slaves and prey they believed they were accruing in the troll afterlife.

"You got a name, girl?" He asked her.

"I do," she said, "and it's Violentia. Leni to you, now, boss."

Iyanus' brows furrowed for a moment. "The Mirchanian royalty job?"

"My finest hunt," Leni beamed, pleased that her achievements in the field of royalty-eating were known in the troll criminal community.

"Fucking hell lads!" Iyanus said to the room in general. "Doff your hats: we're in the presence of a troll celebrity. You're a fucking inspiration to us all." His tone was semi-sarcastic, but not antagonistic.

All through this exchange, the pimp had gone from nervous to hopeful that he would be in for some sort of reward: it appeared (to him, at least) that he'd been instrumental in bringing important information to his powerful employer's attention. The prostitute, on the other hand, was a lot smarter.

"Mr Iyanus sir, beggin' your pardon, but you clearly have matters of great importance to attend to. We'll be on our way, sir," she said, and started to rise.

The pimp reached out and pushed her back down into her chair. He wasn't about to let her ruin his big chance. "Mr Iyanus hasn't given his leave yet, Ressa," he said, in what he hoped was a cowing tone.

Iyanus looked at them in irritation. "You still here?" He asked.

The pimp summoned up his courage and opened his mouth to speak. "Yes Mr Iyanus sir. Can I say, sir, that I'm right pleased that I've been able to bring you important information what will help track down the bastards what did for Mr Aghkar, sir."

"If you're gonna beg, boy, be honest about it and hold your fucking hat out," Iyanus advised him coldly, but then a thought occurred to him, and he smiled. "But you're right! This could be very important information. Very important indeed - and all the more useful if no fucker outside this room knows I have it."

"Sir, Mr Iyanus, I swear I won't utter a word to anyone, sir. Not one word," said Ressa, who had seen where this had been heading pretty much from the start.

"Time for us to have a private discussion," Iyanus said to the pimp. "Everyone out, apart from you two and Miss Violentia."

Iyanus's various staff left the room, most of them profoundly relieved that they wouldn't have to watch what was coming. The pimp's face was still wearing a vaguely hopeful expression. Ressa looked simply resigned as the door closed behind the last of them.

"Still hungry?" Iyanus asked Leni.

"Yep," she answered, grinning.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" Iyanus said, reaching over his desk to grab hold of the pimp. He slammed him into the table, knocking him cold, and then started to divest the man of his armour. "Dinner's on the house."

"What a gentletroll you are," Leni said.

Ressa started to scream, but it was stifled by Leni's hand over her mouth.

"Now," Leni said to her. "Where were we?"

- o O o -

"One of these Roman blokes thinks I was secretly gay. Was I? I mean, I'm not condemning it as a lifestyle choice, but I've never been that way inclined," McKenzie said. Over 2000 years old he might be, but he was definitely a product of the 21st century - the first thing he'd done following the Achilles revelation was to look his past self up on Wikipedia.

"To the best of my knowledge, no," Helen-Jadhara-Nightwing replied, wth a sigh. "Please recall that during the classical period attitudes were quite different to modern norms, or at least 17th century norms. At any rate, you were always trailing round after one mortal woman or another, hopelessly besotted - you wouldn't have had time for any alternatives. You managed to fall in love three times just during the siege of Troy."

"Is that a bit of annoyance I can hear in your voice?" McKenzie grinned, then the smile slipped. "We weren't an item, ever, were we?" He flipped to the wiki page for Helen of Troy. "Ah, a notable exception from her list of suitors is Achilles, who was too young," he read. "Oh crap, you're not my mum, are you?"

"No, I am not your mother. As you cannot have failed to have noticed, our kind do not reproduce," Helen said.

"Really? Says here you had a bunch of kids," McKenzie said.

"What is that device?" Helen asked.

"A phone," he said.

"It has to do with sound?"

"Mostly. Actually, these days, no, not mostly. It's complicated, but anyway one thing it can do is look up ancient history. I just looked up me and you," McKenzie explained.

Helen snorted. "I was actually there, Achilles. I would venture to suggest that I am a more reliable guide: even a few score years after the actual battle, people had begun to lose track of the details - by the time I left ancient Hellas the entire episode was little more than a collection of myths and competing fantasies of fusty old men with nothing better to do than add to history's store of speculation."

"I can definitely tell you were a classical greek princess, if you still talk all proper like that," McKenzie laughed.

"I'm merely communicating clearly with a basic regard for grammar, you should really attempt it sometime," Helen told him. "Anyway, to answer your earlier question, no, we were never 'an item', if by that you meant to enquire if we had ever shared a bed."

"My loss, I'm sure," McKenzie replied.

Helen let that subject drop. "Any children mentioned are also entirely fictitious," she said. "If I might enquire, how did you come to find yourself on this world?"

McKenzie was starting to feel the effects of the drinks he'd been knocking back to deal with the various revelations the night had inflicted on him, so he was no longer in much of a state to carefully consider what he should and shouldn't tell Helen.

"Since this is a magic'ly private conversation, I'm gonna run a name past you, you tell me if it's familiar or not, and why. Ready?"

Helen leaned forward and nodded.

"Lemuel," McKenzie said, hoping the privacy spell was as good as Danandra's.

"Lemuel the White? You were summoned to this world by Lemuel the White? Well, he would not lack the means, that cannot be doubted, but most had long thought him gone from this world," Helen replied.

"Most are probably right," McKenzie said, "or half right anyway. He didn't summon me here so much as send me here. I think he can flip between the two places pretty much at will, the bastard."

"Lemuel the White is an earthen mage?" Helen was amazed.

"Yep," McKenzie stated, then thought. "Come to think of it, though, that's jumpin' to a wotsit, innit? He could be from here, he could be from there. Back on Earth he could just make shit happen by thinking about it, it seemed like - last time I saw him here, he was doing some first division level magic in the local style. Could be that he's from here, and his apparent superpowers there are just how magic translates. Anyshit, he's active both places. About which, since we're apparently old muckers, there's summat you should know." He reached for his glass, but missed and knocked it over - fortunately it was empty.

"Can the great warrior Achilles no longer handle his wine?" Helen asked with a smile, as she refilled it again.

"The great warrior Achilles may nor may not have been able to handle his wine, but the not-so-great sort-of-assassin McKenzie is approaching shit-faced because this is a fuckin' magnitude stronger than wine," McKenzie said, sloshing the firewater around a little.

"Of that there can be no doubt, McKenzie," Helen said, saying his name as if she was trying it out for size.

McKenzie decided to emphasise that point: "It is McKenzie, by the way, if you don't mind, well, I mean obviously it's Crowbar once the wibbly thing comes down, but my name is definitely McKenzie not Achilles. On which point what should I be calling you? I mean when I'm not saying Poshblades. You can rule out Nightwing right now, by the way, it's proper ridiculous."

"I think I'll retain Jadhara, actually. It's grown on me somewhat," Jadhara said. "Although when the 'wibbly thing' comes down, please do revert to using 'Nightwing'. You are quite correct that the system of nomenclature is slightly on the ridiculous side, but they will insist on these things, and even for the likes of us these are not people to be lightly trifled with."

"Fair enough. So yeah, here's that thing you need to know: I work for Lemuel, and so do the mage, the cleric and the troll I mentioned earlier. No choice about it - there's a curse thingy, it's really kinda shitty. My actual reason for being here is that I've been ordered to infiltrate the guild, well, that's not quite it, my actual actual reason for being here is you, but you know what I mean," McKenzie told her.

The silence that followed was broken by a single pinging noise as a crack appeared in the glass Jadhara was holding with fingers gone pale from the pressure. She placed it carefully down on the table.

"You were actually listening when I explained that these are not people to trifle with, weren't you?" Jadhara asked McKenzie.

"Yeah," he said. "Curse: no choice. The Archmage of Melindron herself tried to break it with what I assume was an uber-complex and powerful charm backed up by, basically, a staggeringly huge amount of magical energy from two different worlds. It didn't go so well."

"It went so badly, in fact, that it deforested a large patch of eastern Vyrinian forest," Jadhara stated.

"You catch on quick: but you're only half right. The big bang in the big forest woulda been several orders of magnitude worse if all of those hoodoo-volts hadn't gone into the anti-curse instead, not that the bloody thing did anything afterwards. So anyway: now you know what you're working with here. You did say don't lie."

Jadhara sighed. "If I had any sense, I'd get up and immediately report you to the High Assassin."

"Go ahead if you want. I have to do what Lemuel says, I don't have to tie a fucking bow round it. I was told to infiltrate the organisation, and I did it. Couldn't give two shits whether I get found out now, next week or next year," McKenzie shrugged.

"You'll forgive me for pointing out that this curse appears to allow you a considerable amount of interpretation as to what constitutes 'infiltration'. You've just voluntarily admitted your purpose for being here to the very first person you spoke to," Jadhara observed.

"The curse seems oddly flaky at the minute - dunno why. To be honest it never seemed to have quite the same grip on me as it did the other three, but the last couple of days it's been proper squirrelly," McKenzie said.

"Life was never boring around you, and that hasn't changed, McKenzie, I'll give you that," Jadhara told him.

"Yeah: apologies, I do tend to bring a fuckload of complications into people's lives, recently. Anyways, really do dob me in if you want. I didn't come here to cause you any shit, especially if we really are cousins or something."

Jadhara looked at him levelly. "McKenzie, I hate to point out the obvious, but it strikes me that if you can sit there and not only admit to your mission but actively encourage me to scupper it, then the curse you refer to is, to all intents and purposes, broken."

McKenzie blinked. Then he blinked again.

"Okay. This is a really fascinating conversation an' all, but I've just remembered that there's a troll I urgently need to shoot. You wanna maybe meet up for breakfast in the morning?" He said. "There's quite a nice place just across the way from your friend Listra's establishment - eight bells sound OK?"

"Eight bells. Very well. I look forward to it greatly. I would offer my assistance, but as it transpires your imminent exit is well-timed: I have some business of my own to attend to."

"Appointment type business?" McKenzie asked, abruptly remembering that this woman killed people for money: he was suddenly uncomfortable with the fact that he'd been so, well, comfortable with her. "Y'know, there are many who live who deserve death and many who die who deserve life and who are we to judge, etc etc."

"You're hardly a Cleric of Peace yourself, McKenzie: but your conscience may rest easy," Jadhara said. "I'm picky about my Appointments, and restrict myself to chaps like Aghkar. Let us be brutally honest: he won't be missed."

"Yeah, in some cases it isn't exactly that much of an ethical quandary, can't argue with that," McKenzie said.

"Well then, I will not keep you any longer. Until tomorrow, old friend."

McKenzie stood up, then paused. "You keep saying 'old friend', but weren't we on opposing sides of the famous ancient-historical siege with the really improbable wooden horse? Which I also want to know about, by the way, because to be totally frank only a massive idiot would just wheel that bloody thing in through the gates without even checking it first. Also the super-fast kung-fu you did the other day, and the instant makeovers. And in fact also about 5000 other things."

Jadhara laughed. "Likewise. You've been missing presumed dead, from my point of view, since the end of that particular battle. We were technically on opposing sides, but it's a long story - and the role of the horse has been greatly exaggerated," Jadhara replied. As she spoke, her features blurred back into their original ninja-girl configuration, and Jadhara became Nightwing. "I suppose it had best be a very leisurely breakfast, if we intend to cover that much conversational ground."

"Well, if you're right about the curse, my diary just instantly emptied, so we'll have plenty of time," McKenzie replied. "See you tomorrow." And with that, he walked out in a state of high and extreme excitement (not to mention inebriation), although he did his best to cover it up.

"Revlius, is it, yeah?" McKenzie asked, as he approached the door.

"Crowbar. I trust you had a productive meeting?" The WDV replied.

"You have no idea. Anyway, is there any chance that this door could open out onto the square?"

"No, but the one on the other side of it will," the WDV told him. "We wouldn't want anyone peeking in from outside now, would we?"

McKenzie opened the door - as advised, there was another door beyond it, where previously there had been a bit of a corridor. So much had happened to McKenzie in the past hour or so that this didn't faze him in the slightest. He shut the club room door and opened the other one - the library square lay before him.

"Awesomesauce," he said. "Thanks."

"Until we meet again, Crowbar," the WDV said, and McKenzie headed off into the night.

He didn't see a shadow separate from the top floor of the building he'd just left and flit silently across the rooftops behind him: nobody did.