'Softer than stone,' hissed Severard, 'but she's nothing like us.' He took a knife from the table, the blade briefly flashing orange in the darkness, leaned forward and carved a long gash into Shickel's thin forearm. Her face barely even twitched while he did it. The wound hung open, glistening angry red. Severard dug his finger into it and twisted it round. Shickel showed not the slightest sign of being in pain. He pulled his finger out and held it up, rubbed the tip against his thumb. 'Not even wet. It's like cutting into a week-old corpse.'

Glokta felt his leg trembling, and he winced and slid into the spare seat. 'Plainly, this is not normal.'

'Unnerthatement,' grunted Frost.

'But she's not healing the way she was.' None of the cuts in her skin were closing. All hanging open, dead and dry as meat in a butchers shop. Nor were the burns fading. Charred black stripes across her skin, like meat fresh from the grill.

'Just sits there, watching,' said Severard, 'and not a word.'

Glokta frowned. Can this really be what I had in mind when I joined the Inquisition? The torture of young girls? He wiped the wet from under his stinging eyes. But then, this is both much more and much less than a girl. He remembered the hands clutching at him, the three Practicals straining to pull her back. Much more and much less than human. We must not make the same mistakes we made with the First of the Magi.

'We must keep an open mind,' he murmured.

'Do you know what my father would say to that?' The voice croaked out, deep and grinding raw, like an old man's, oddly wrong from that young, smooth face.

Glokta felt his left eye twitching, the sweat trickling under his coat. 'Your father?'

Shickel smiled at him, eyes glinting in the darkness. It almost seemed as if the cuts in her flesh smiled with her. 'My father. The Prophet. Great Khalul. He would say that an open mind is like to an open wound. Vulnerable to poison. Liable to fester. Apt to give its owner only pain.'

'Now you want to talk?'

'Now I choose to.'

'Why?'

'Why not? Now that you know it is my choice, and not yours. Ask your questions, cripple. You should take your chances to learn when you can. God knows you could do with them. A man lost in the desert—'

'I know the rest.' Glokta paused. So many questions, but what to ask one such as this? 'You are an Eater?'