‘The Che’Malle struck you, its claws scoring deep. I have sewn almost three hundred stitches, from your right shoulder to below your rib cage on the left.’

She seemed to think about that for a moment, and then she said, ‘So we’ve seen the last of Faint’s bouncing tits.’

‘You did not lose them, if that is what you fear. They will still, er, bounce, if perhaps unevenly.’

‘So the gods really do exist. Listen. Precious Thimble—is she still alive?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then we have a chance.’

Mappo winced. ‘She is young, Faint, mostly untutored—’

‘There’s a chance,’ Faint insisted. ‘Beru’s black nipples, this hurts.’

‘She will attempt some healing, in a while,’ said Mappo. ‘It took all of her strength just to keep Jula alive.’

Faint grunted and then gasped. Recovering, she said, ‘Guilt will do that.’

Mappo nodded. The Bole brothers had followed Precious Thimble into this Guild, and she had joined on a whim, or, more likely, to see how far her two would-be lovers would go in their pursuit of her. When love turned into a game, people got hurt, and Precious Thimble had finally begun to comprehend the truth of that. You took them too far, didn’t you?

At the same time without the Boles none of them here would be alive right now. Mappo still found it difficult to believe that a mortal man’s fists could do the damage he’d seen from Jula and Amby Bole. They had simply launched themselves on to the winged Che’Malle, and those oversized knuckles had struck with more power than Mappo’s own mace. He had heard bones crack beneath those blows, had heard the Che’Malle’s gasps of shock and pain. When it lashed out, it had been in frantic self-defence, a blind panic to dislodge its frenzied attackers. The creature’s talons, each one as long as a Semk scimitar, had plunged into Jula’s back, the four tips erupting from the man’s chest. It had flung the man away—and at that moment Amby’s lashing fists found the Che’Malle’s throat. Those impacts would have crushed the neck of a horse, and they proved damaging enough to force the Che’Malle into the air, wings thundering. A back-handed blow scraped Amby off and then the thing was lifting upward.

Gruntle, who appeared to have been the Che’Malle’s original target—carried off in the first attack and presumed by the others to be dead—had then returned, an apparition engulfed in the rage of his god. Veered into the form of an enormous tiger, its shape strangely blurred and indistinct except for the barbs that writhed like tongues of black flame, he had launched himself into the air in an effort to drag down the Che’Malle. But it eluded him and then, wings hammering, it fled skyward.