“We fought past dusk, and on into the night. The sky was clouded and the fire was out, but there are lights above the marshes in Ventgoria. Some say they are wraiths, but they sparkle and spit with energy, and a wraith has none. Whatever they are, they witnessed our fight. The Monk came at me with its hungry sword, and scored hits. You’ve seen the scars on my hip, the wound on my neck. I used weapon after weapon, getting in good hits but losing them all to the Monk in the end: throwing knives; my diamond ball; a handful of stinger eggs in its face; rotdust thrown into its wounds. I even ran for a time, circling as it stumbled after me, and I managed to score seven bolts from my wristbow before I tripped and lost the Mage-shitting thing in the marsh. And all the while it came at me, and all the while I was scoring hits. I was wounding it every time, Kosar. Every fucking time I went at it I’d take off a finger or push some rotdust into the wreck of its face.

“By dawn it no longer had any eyes, but it listened for me. And my only defense through all of this—the only reason I beat that damned thing, exhausted as I was, weaponless as I became—was that it was no real swordsman. Tenacity is a fine weapon, but I could dodge, sidestep, flip, shrink myself away from its sword. It was just a matter of stamina.”

A’Meer fell silent, took another drink of wine and looked around the tavern. It was emptying now, drunken people tripping over chairs as they left, laughing at themselves and their friends. The barman had started to glance over, obviously suggesting that it was time for them to leave as well. Kosar waited for A’Meer to finish her story, but he could not wait for very long. He was drunk and tired, and she was teasing him, whether she knew it or not.

“And?” he said. “And?”

“And eventually the Monk fell down. I took its head off with its own sword. That Mage-shitting thing screamed as I did it, and it was still whining as I threw it out into the marshes. Then I dragged the body until I found a small gas vent and dropped it in. I stayed the whole morning to watch for the next venting. There were bits of the Monk in the steam storm, small bits. I had to make sure. I was utterly exhausted, hallucinating from the exertion, and maybe . . . maybe I thought there was even more to them than that. Maybe sometime in the night I’d come to believe it was immortal.”

“Why did it fight you in the first place?”