Again, she could have run away. She could have taken the Minister's purse and moved on to the next slop-house. There were three shillings in there, and that could buy her cotton and trimmings for a month.

And Robin was... well, he was Robin. She could never trust him. But he was family. He had once come to help her when no-one else would. He had risked his life to help her deceive Jack in Lucknow. And, while this was probably more because he hated Jack than because he cared for her, she couldn't let him die.

She used the Minister's money to rent a room in one of the nearby lodging-houses, and paid a couple of dock-hands to carry him there. That wasn't cheap, because nobody wanted to touch him. He was raving by this point and, on closer inspection, covered in blood. He looked like some reanimated corpse – limp-limbed, but still possessed with a fury.

Even worse were the things he talked about, in that feverish state of half-sleep. He called out dozens of names – Ellini recognized one or two of them as those of his former victims – and picked over the details of their deaths in broken but horribly suggestive sentences.

"Sarah Brightman. To the throat. Gushing, gushing. Nearly drowned me. One side of her face, all gone. The other side so pretty. You could turn her – watch her change. And laughed – I laughed, laughed, laughed. Oh god."

After she'd paid the dock-hands, she sat alone by his bed, listening to these sad, crazed recollections. She lit a candle, but it had burned down to a stump by the time he finally lay quiet.

And she didn't weep. These were old stories, even if the tone was something new. Was he really feeling remorse? Could he?

When he stopped thrashing about, and his ravings died down to mutters, she blew out the candle and sat still in the pre-dawn light, wondering what to do next. Weak and wounded as he was, it would probably not be a good idea to leave herself unprotected.

She fumbled in the pockets of his long, stinking coat – which the dock-hands had eased him out of, and then thrown on the floor in disgust. As expected, she found his beloved, long-handled knife in there. 

She took it out and laid it on the bedside table, within easy reach. Then she unbuttoned his shirt, to see if he had any wounds that might need attention.

She was utterly unprepared for what she saw. At first, she couldn't even make sense of it. His torso just seemed... stripy. But then she began to realize that there were carved notches in his flesh. Hundreds of them. The more skin she uncovered, the more she found. Up and down his arms, across his chest – as though he'd been trying to recreate the handle of his knife on his entire body.

The cuts were quite deep, but some of them were more healed than others. Clearly, this was a long-term project. She supposed that made sense. How many of those notches could you carve before you passed out? You'd need to refuel, eat something, wait for your body to replace the lost blood before you could try again.

Ellini hovered over him with a cloth and bandage for a moment, and then decided she didn't even know where to begin.

She picked up the knife and counted the notches in its handle. It took a while. Then she counted the notches on his arms and chest. There weren't enough – unless he hadn't finished, or unless...

She was unbuttoning his trousers when he woke up. And it was a mark of his confused mental state that he looked startled first, and then smug. He half-sat up and leaned back on his elbows, smiling.

"Ellie, this is an extraordinary turn-around. It's usually me trying to tear your clothes off."

Ellini snatched up the knife and held it to his throat, forcing him to lean his head back. "What is this?" she demanded. 

"The knife?"

"You know I mean the-" She gestured at the horrible mess that was his chest.

"You're angry," said Robin, frowning. "For me or with me? Of course, you're always angry with me, but could you be angry for me too? If I told you someone had tied me down and inflicted these wounds on me, would you cry?"

For an answer, she brought the knife forward, until its point was resting firmly against his Adam's Apple. Robin chuckled silently, causing a pin-prick of blood to appear at the tip of the blade.

"Oh, that's my proud, pitiless girl," he said. "You'd never weep, would you? That's for lesser mortals."

"You did this to yourself," she said coldly. "Why?"

"So that I'd never forget."

"You'll never make believe that you're sorry."

"Good. I'll never try to."

"You're supposed to be dead," she protested, gesturing wildly with the knife, and forcing him to lean his head back again.

"I think I was," he said. "I just remember darkness and boredom. And, every now and then, a Cambridge academic would summon me down to her office and ask me questions for her new book." He paused and licked his lips. "By the way, when I was last down there, I heard that Jack had somehow managed to forget you. How did that work out?"

Ellini ignored him. "How did you come back?"

"I have no idea. One moment it was dark and I was bored, and the next, it was still dark but oh-so-entertaining."

He hesitated. There was a bright, hateful glow in his eyes, but she got the feeling that the hatred was not directed at her. "I woke up in the ice-house outside Myrrha's cottage, and I-" he faltered, looking half-embarrassed and half-defiant. "I could see my victims. Everyone I've ever killed."

"So what?" said Ellini, genuinely puzzled. "You've always been able to see them. It's not as though you murdered anyone invisible. That would have been far too subtle for you to enjoy."

"But this time I could see their pain," he insisted. "Taste their blood in my mouth."

"Again. Not new."

Robin glared at her. It was the first time in years that she'd seen him without some kind of mocking amusement in his eyes.

"But this time, it meant something." He was silent for a moment, his jaw locked, as though debating whether or not to say more. "I don't expect you to understand. I don't even really expect you to believe me. But you were always the nicest shoulder I had to cry on – and, since you hated me, that should tell you a lot about the sort of people I surrounded myself with."

"Or the sort of things you did to the people you surrounded yourself with."

Robin didn't seem to register this. His hands were raking at the sheet beneath him. "I saw my victims. I saw their pain. I saw what their lives meant. For the first two days after I woke up, I couldn't see or hear anything but blood and screams. I think I walked barefoot to London – I have no idea. But, when the fog lifted, I had to make sure I wouldn't forget, or – or I had to punish myself. Or something."

Ellini withdrew the knife from his throat and examined its blade thoughtfully. "This would all be very tragic if I believed a word of it. No, you know what? Even if I believed a word of it, you'd deserve everything you got. I didn't save your life to listen to your self-pitying stories. I saved your life so that you could do me a favour – and, as soon as you've done it, you can carve so many notches into your flesh that you become more notch than man, for all I care."

She stopped, because he was smiling at her. He always seemed to enjoy it when she treated him with disdain.

"What's the favour?" he said, his eyes sparkling.

"You're going to teach me how to fight. Like you taught Jack."

She was pleased to see the smug smile falter. "He was extraordinarily talented."

Ellini drew herself up haughtily. "I work very hard."

Robin gave a dark, hopeless chuckle. "God, you're adorable! I'm almost tempted to tell you I can do it."

"Don't tell me anything," said Ellini. "I won't believe it anyway. Just get to work."

"You're not intending to learn to fight so that you can beat him, are you? Because that's not going to happen."

"No. I'm intending to never see him again."

Robin sighed bitterly. "Well, that's not going to happen either."