but maybe Byron hadn’t intended to kill after all. The knife had gone in, and the knife had come out, and a dark puckering remained, stitched tight shut with self-dissolving thread, no more than an inch across. More spectacular was the bruising, the swelling, the purple-redness around, as the flesh in the vicinity of the perforation had tried to work out what this change in status meant, and was confused to discover it meant very little at all.
