“Don’t!” Kosar said, shocked. He stepped back and held the sword to his side, looking around to see if anyone had noticed. There were several people watching, too interested to let their fear drive them away.

“It didn’t hurt,” she said, smiling. “Believe me, once drawn, the sword won’t settle until it’s wet.”

He looked down at the weapon, expecting it to curl around his hand like a snake. He touched one fingertip to its flat surface and a drop of A’Meer’s blood slicked across the metal, catching the morning sun.

“You speak as though it’s alive.”

“No.” A’Meer shook her head. “Of course not. Not alive, not magical, just . . . hungry. The Monks’ swords are the same, but fed by their owners’ madness so that the effect is magnified. With me it’s more tradition, I guess, something that was drummed into me by the Mystics in Hess. But every tradition like that has some root cause.”

As Kosar strapped on the scabbard—it was uncomfortable, as if molded specially for A’Meer’s hips and not his own—he asked where they would go now.

“The woman I mentioned,” A’Meer said. “She’s a madam. Works out of an old machine a little way from here. Five girls, a couple of them fledgers. She even has a fodder. Novelty value, I guess, although I wonder how she stops men from biting her.”

“You know the most charming people.”

“Hey, I work in a tavern full of criminals, wrongdoers and misfits.”

“Where you met me.”

“That’s right, thief.”

They smiled at each other, not knowing what to say next. Banter did not feel right given the circumstances. Things were winding up, like a sling spinning and ready to release its shot. The direction it fired in depended wholly upon what happened over the coming day. By evening they may be on the run from Red Monks, taking with them the boy from Trengborne. Or perhaps they would be burying his remains, A’Meer mourning the magic that might have been. Or maybe they would both be dead.

“How did this happen?” Kosar said, not sure exactly what he meant.

“These things do.” A’Meer stretched on tiptoes and planted a kiss on Kosar’s lips, and then she turned and walked on.

THE WOMAN WAS huge. Her name was Slight—a misnomer if ever there was one—and Kosar had no idea how she could move. Her arms rested on massive hips, her legs were all but hidden beneath rolling waves of fat, and her eyes were tiny beads in a face that looked like a ball of pasty dough.

“A’Meer!” she screeched upon seeing them. “You’ve decided to come to work for me after all, then! But what’s with the blades, vixen? You know I don’t cater for that side of things.”