A moment later there was a curious noise from the woman, which Nth tentatively identified as indicating unhappiness.

“I’m sorry,” she said indistinctly. “It’s just… I’ve known Lothern for years, and I always thought he was… decent, a good man, and he was just… he was just waiting for his fucking chance to get me on my own. I just want…”

“You want to have a lie down, probably,” Lief suggested. “Nth, get up, why don’t you.”

Apparently the little man’s authority was on a par with Cyrene’s, because Nth could abruptly uncurl and clamber to his feet, feeling very unsteady and somewhat ill.

Cyrene stared at him blankly and then, after a pause had stretched out between them, said, “What? You think I’m going to apologize to it?”

Lief shrugged. “I try to think as little as possible. Why don’t you go and have a rest. We’ve raised enough eyebrows around here, eh?”

She kept staring, though, and then she had reached out and twitched the dark glasses from Nth’s face, heedless of the current of revulsion that passed through the taproom. “Look at it,” she said quietly. “I mean, look at the thing.” In her eyes, Nth could see his own face reflected. In all honesty he had to agree with her.

“Blame Penthos. Blame us,” Lief said, and then he had abstracted the spectacles from her and put them back in place, as smooth a piece of legerdemain as any magician might manage.

“It makes me sick,” Cyrene remarked, but almost sadly, and then she was up and stumbling away.

“Wonder how long it’ll take for word of this to reach Darvezian,” Lief remarked. “Well, with luck he’ll die laughing and save us a trip.”

“It’ll just be a quiet visit,” Dion explained. “No fanfare. And it’s on the way. We’d actually have to go out of our way not to visit Armesion.”

The name obviously meant something significant to all of the others, but if Penthos knew much about it, he had not cared to gift the knowledge to Nth. The transformed spider just watched them all blankly, as most of them looked from Dion to him. The only inevitability seemed to be that, whatever was going on, he would not like it.

“With that,” Cyrene clarified, nodding at him with her usual venom. “You want to go to the Holy City with that.”

“Won’t it be like that stupid ranger’s little stone, only a whole city of it?” Harathes backed her up.