He tipped two green pills into his palm, and threw them into his mouth, and swallowed.
For one second, nothing happened.
Whiff Inkos stood in the lantern light with the empty tin in his hand and a look on his face as if he had been cheated.
Then the lantern went out. Both lanterns did. The grass round his boots lay down flat in a ring, as though something heavy had sat on it, and the ring spread outwards through the rows.
The people in the rows didn't lean away from it. They didn't lean away from anything.
Whiff's coat split down the back.
It went like a seam going, from the collar to the hem. The shoulders under it were already too wide for it, and they kept getting wider. His neck thickened until it was the same width as his head. His jaw dropped, and kept dropping, and the teeth that came up in it were too many and too long. The skin on him went from pink to grey to a wet green, like the underside of a stone.
He didn't grow fur. Alex had been braced for fur.
