Dorothea refilled her wineglass. She’d seen the slight sneer, the change in Greer’s eyes after he’d met the Dark Priestess. But what was she anyway? A bag of bones that didn’t know enough to fall to dust. A leech. A scheming little harpy who was still trying to get back at a man who cared for nothing in Terreille. Nothing at all. She wasn’t sure she believed this story about a child the Priest was besotted with, wasn’t sure what difference it made if he was. Let him have his toy. She’d thrown enough youths into the Dark Priestess’s lair. Now the walking carrion wanted her to give up the use of Sadi for a hundred years, and as gratitude for Dorothea’s willingness to make such an accommodation, was trying to sway her best servant, to make him untrustworthy.

Very well. Let Greer fawn. The day would come when he would realize his error—and pay for it.

Greer sat in a dark corner booth, sipping his second tankard of ale and watching the worn, weary faces of the men at the other tables. He could have gone to a tavern where he would have had a better dinner and the ale wouldn’t have left an aftertaste of wash water in his mouth, but he would have had to smile and fawn over the Blood aristos that crowded a place like that. Here, because they were afraid of him, he had the table of his choice, the best cut of meat, and privacy.

He drained the tankard and raised a finger at the barmaid, who hurried to refill it for him, fending off roaming hands as she passed between the tables. Greer smiled. That, too, in this place, he could have for the asking.

When he was sure everyone else was preoccupied, he lifted his right hand and laid it on the table.

He still didn’t know why Sadi had done that to him, what had provoked the Sadist to such calculated destruction. He’d been sitting quietly in a tavern not unlike this one, exploring a wench’s luxuries, when Sadi had walked up to his table and held out his right hand. Since Sadi had said nothing, since there was only that blank, bored face looking down at him, Greer had extended his own right hand, thinking Sadi had come to grovel for some favor. The moment Sadi’s hand had closed around his, everything changed. One moment there was only the firm pressure of a handshake; the next he felt his bones being crushed, his fingers snapping, felt himself held in a mental vise so he didn’t even have the luxury of fainting to escape. When the vise finally did allow him to escape…

His first thought when he came to was to get to a Healer right away, get to someone who could reshape the pulp that used to be a valuable tool. But someone had already done a healing. Someone had tenderly shaped his hand into a twisted claw and healed the bones sufficiently so that a Healer would have to crush them all over again in order to straighten the hand, and even Greer knew the best a second healing could do was make the shape a little better. It could never make that twisted claw into a usable hand.