“I wouldn’t have pegged you as the sort to rush when it comes to nasty murder implements,” Orfeus said. She clasped her hands behind her back, running her eyes over the weapons thoughtfully. “Give me…Luga’s sword.”

Faol didn’t respond to that.

“Give me a candle that grants wishes,” Orfeus said.

He wrinkled his face, lips drawing back from his teeth, and let out a frustrated breath, hgnh. He strode past her, irritation clear from the tension in his arms, and despite herself, she flinched back. Her arm still ached from his grip, her back was still scarred from his claws.

He didn’t come within half a metre of her, instead opening one of the drawers and sifting through it. He pulled something out and held it up to the light: a rectangle of black plastic capped on one end, the hilt of a knife with no blade.

Faol tested the weight of the thing in his hand and then held it out to her. “Knives are better for the untrained,” he said. She reached out for it, and his fingers closed over the stubby plastic. She hadn’t wanted this good a look at the heavy gauntlet over his hand, how it looked like the armoured plating that extended back over his wrist actually sunk into his flesh. “Can you use a knife without cutting yourself?”

It could sound insulting, and it did, but she’d heard plenty of stories in wayhouses about people chopping the tips of their fingers off with the onions. She knew to cut away from herself, knew how to handle a knife pretty well, actually, from whittling. But she didn’t want to make it easy for him. Orfeus scoffed. “I garden,” she said.

The Wolf closed his eyes briefly, but he didn’t say anything to that either. He was starting to respond less to her baiting. So he wasn’t entirely stupid, then.

“Everyone carries a cauterknife with their other gear,” Faol said. He thumbed a switch on the side, and a blade of solid blue light sprung out, unwavering. It was a little like a hole cut in the world.

He thumbed it off, demonstrating, then held it out again. Orfeus took it a little blankly. “Cauterknives?” she said. “But…surely you want your opponents to bleed.” Him in particular, with that hungry gleam in his eyes when he was near blades. Maybe all of them. She thought well of none of them.

And yet here she was.

“You want them afraid,” Faol said. He waved over his shoulder at the wall. “But you can take a metal knife if you want to make people bleed.”

Orfeus wrinkled her nose in slight distaste and tucked the knife hilt into her pocket.

She went to the drawer and rifled through, pulling out a matching knife and pocketing that as well. Faol said nothing.

She turned to him expectantly. He frowned. “Nothing else?”