'That's good,' said Logen, voice hushed. He'd never guessed that it could come out half so well. Luthar's jaw looked slightly bent in the firelight, like he was biting down on one side. There was a ragged notch out of his lip, and a forked scar torn from it down to the point of his chin, pink dots on either side where the stitches had been, the skin around it stretched and twisted. Nothing more, but for some swelling that'd soon go down. 'That's some damn good stitching. I never saw any better. Where d'you learn healing?'

'A man called Aruf taught me.'

'Well he taught you well. Rare skill to have. Happy chance for us that he did it.'

'I had to fuck him first.'

'Ah.' That did shine a bit of a different light on it.

Ferro shrugged. 'I didn't mind. He was a good man, more or less, and he taught me how to kill, into the bargain. I've fucked a lot of worse men for a lot less.' She frowned at Luthar's jaw, pressing it with her thumbs, testing the flesh round the wound. 'A lot less.'

'Right,' muttered Logen. He exchanged a worried glance with Luthar. This conversation hadn't gone at all the way he'd imagined. Maybe he should've expected that with Ferro. He spent half the time trying to prise a word out of her, then when she did give him something, he didn't have a clue where to go with it.

'It's set,' she grunted, after probing Luthar's face for a moment in silence.

'Thank you.' He grabbed hold of her hand as she moved back. 'Truly. I don't know what I'd have—'

She grimaced as if he'd slapped her and snatched her fingers away. 'Fine! But if you get your face smashed again you can stitch it yourself.' And she got up and stalked off, sat down in the shifting shadows in the corner of the ruin, as far away from the others as she could get without going outside. She seemed to like thanks even less than she liked any other kind of talk, but Luthar was too pleased to finally have the dressings off to worry much about it.

'How does it look?' he asked, peering down cross-eyed at his own chin, wincing and prodding at it with one finger.

'It's good,' said Logen. 'You're lucky. You might not be quite so pretty as you were, but you're still a damn sight better-looking than me.'

'Of course,' he said, licking at the notch in his lip, half-smiling. 'It isn't as though they cut my head right off.'