The Queen’s Own Black Torrent Guards often drew duty of a ceremonial nature, such as greeting foreign ambassadors on Tower Wharf, and so they were more than normally concerned with the upkeep of their kit. This meant no lack of work for Tom and the other boot-blacks. And any congregation of humans required barbers to dress wounds and see to the removal of redundant hairs, whiskers, bodily humours, and necrotizing limbs. So Dart had been permitted to wind some bloody gauze round a pike and plant it outside a certain door in Cold Harbour as the customary hall-mark of his trade.