“It’s jest the way I laugh, ma’am, lady. Ma used to say I coulda honked with the brashest o’ geese an’ given ’em a run fer their silver, make no mistake.”

“Well, you sound like a constipated mallard, you’ll have to stop that.”

“Stop whut?” she asked.

“Laughing.”

“Stop laughin’?”

“Yes, entirely. I will not suffer such a cacophony in my household.”

Perfidy looked around, wondering if she’d missed seeing some big old mansion somewhere. Nope. Only rustic buildings sat within the bounds of the clearing, nothing that could be described as a ‘household’. “I’ll try, ma’am, but Ma used to say a laugh a day keeps the plague at bay an’ I took that to heart so I laugh a lot an’ ain’t never bin sick a day in my life, that’s the hand to heart gods’ honest truth, ye cain shove a needle in my eye if I’m lyin’.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“Suit yerself. Also, whut’s a mallard?”

“A type of duck, of course.”

“Then why not jest say ‘duck’?”

“Because I was comparing you to a specific type of duck—a mallard. Have you received any education at all?”

“Course I have, do ye think my parents were uncouth? Pa taught me to shoot the brains outta a boundin’ hare from twenny paces with my crossbow. O’ course, that was ’fore he abandoned his family an’ skipped town like a turd buried in a latrine.”

“That’s…grotesque.”

“Not really. My pa wasn’t a bad lookin’ fella, jest a right bastard who didn’t deserve the air he breathed into his lungs, least that was whut Ma always said.”

“I meant what you said about shooting the poor hare. And the comparison to the latrine.”

“To who? Tis a mercy killin’, it is. The hare is dead ’fore he knows whut hit him an’ we use ever’ part o’ the creature, we do. Ma used to say that to waste one of the gods’ creations is the quickest way to find yerself burnin’ fer eternity in the void. An’ as fer the turd, we all have ’em, don’ we?”

“Whom,” Lady Brenner said dryly.

“Beg yer pardon, ma’am?”

“You said, ‘to who’. The correct phrasing would be ‘to whom’.”

“Sounds funny to my ears, it does, but I’ll take yer word fer it. Now is there a ripe puddle I cain use to tease the knots outta these vines?”

The woman blinked rather pointedly, as though trying to clear Perfidy herself from her eyes. When her eyes reopened, she looked rather disappointed to find Perfidy still standing there. “I’m certain I don’t understand a single word of your request.”