Then Anna Blaume emerged from inside the Green Cricket to say:
‘There’s someone at the door. They want to see you.’
‘People?’ said Alfric, immediately beset by bloodstained visions of death and disaster.
‘Not dangerous people,’ said Anna Blaume. ‘People people.’
So Alfric went to the front door and found a most motley crew assembling outside. There were beggars and lepers, and widows in rags with bawling babies, and cripples and mutants, and more than a few people who were frankly insane.
Alfric realized then who these people were.
These people were Nappy’s constituency, those whose care Nappy had imposed upon him as the price of his life. Nappy must have spread the word before he ‘died in his sleep’, and obviously all of Galsk Ebrek knew by now.
Alfric began to suspect that he was going to pay a very, very heavy price for escaping murder at Nappy’s hands.
But he had no choice in the matter.
So he sighed, then said:
‘Come in.’
