“Look, you could have killed me. Maybe you’d have suffered for it later, from the geas, maybe not. But you could have done me instead of the Doomsayer. Or as well, even. You could be a mile away from here, right now. And I admit, I’ve never been fond of you, and I’ve never trusted you, and I…” She stared into that face, trying to see it other than it was: human; monster; monster; human, until she found some squinting way of looking at him that did not make her stomach curdle. He could never pass for human, and it was trying to see him as that—as something as human as a Ghantishman even—that caused the queasy disconnect. If she looked at him as something entirely other, then he was still alien but a layer of horror was taken from him. As a singular thing unto himself there was a completeness to him, a sureness of movement, a comfort in his own frame that surely had not been there a few days ago. He had the lean and admirable lines of a hunting creature, a thing well made. Not a man; not a monster; just Enth.

“I will try,” she finished lamely. “I swear to the L—I will try. And now we must leave.”

He stood again, willing to follow her lead without questions because that was what he had been doing all along.

“A Doomsayer has been killed,” she told him, though. “Other agents of the Dark Lord will know. They will come here for vengeance.”

A nod from Enth. He understood. Then he spoke, of his own accord and just as though he were a companion engaged on a common mission. “What about the other one?” His hands were still, head cocking to indicate the hatch to the cellar. No doubt he could haul it from its fittings without straining.

“You want to kill him?”

“He is not threatening you. I am not defending myself.” He spoke precisely, hunting through the maze that Penthos had set about his mind. “Are you instructing me to kill him?”