'You are? And doing what?'

'I'm not sure.' He turned his head and raised an eyebrow at her. 'Maybe I'll find a good woman and settle down.'

'A good woman? Do you know any?'

'I was hoping you might have some suggestions.'

She pressed her lips together. 'Let me think. Does she have to be beautiful?'

'No, no, beautiful women are always so bloody demanding. Plain as ditchwater, please.'

'Clever?'

Jezal snorted. 'Anything but that. I am notorious for my empty-headedness. A clever woman would only make me look the dunce the whole time.' He dragged the other boot on, peeled her hands away and stood up. 'A wide-eyed and thoughtless calf would be ideal. Someone to endlessly agree with me.'

Ardee clapped her hands. 'Oh yes, I can see her on you now, trailing from your arm like an empty dress, a kind of echo at a higher pitch. Noble blood though, I imagine?'

'Of course, nothing but the best. One point on which I could never compromise. And fair hair, I have a weakness for it.'

'Oh, I entirely agree. Dark hair is so commonplace, so very much the colour of dirt, and filth, and muck.' She shuddered. 'I feel sullied just thinking of it.'

'Above all,' as he pushed his sword through the clasp on his belt, 'a calm and even temper. I have had my fill of surprises.'

'Naturally. Life is difficult enough without a woman making trouble. So terribly undignified.' She raised her eyebrows. 'I will think through my acquaintance.'

'Excellent. In the meantime, and although you wear it with far greater dash than I ever could, I will need my jacket.'

'Oh, yes, sir.' She pulled it off and flung it at him, then stretched out on the bed, stark naked, back arched, hands above her head, wriggling her hips slowly back and forth, one knee in the air, the other leg stretched out, big toe pointing at him. 'You aren't going to leave me alone for too long, though, are you?'

He watched her for a moment. 'Don't you dare move a fucking inch,' he croaked, then he pulled the jacket on, wedged his prick between his thighs and waddled out the door, bent over. He hoped it would go down before he had his briefing with the Lord Marshal, but he was not entirely sure it would.

Once again, Jezal found himself in one of High Justice Marovia's cavernous chambers, standing all alone on the empty floor, facing the enormous, polished table while three old men regarded him grimly from the other side.

As the clerk shut the high doors with an echoing boom, he had a deeply worrying sense of having lived through this very experience before. The day he had been summoned from the boat for Angland, torn from his friends and his ambitions, to be sent on a madcap, doomed journey into the middle of nowhere. A journey that had cost him some of his looks and nearly his life. It was safe to say that he did not entirely relish being back here, and hoped most fervently for a better outcome.