He struck with the dagger held underhand, and while there were circumstances when that could be advisable, for him it was just the standard beginner’s error, that any weapons trainer would have corrected. He swung the weapon sideways, just as if he were striking with the blade of his hand, a clumsy, bludgeoning stroke that drove the point into Feyn’s leer at around nose level and ripped most of the lower half of his face away with the sheer force of its impact.

There was a second’s appalled realization in the Doomsayer’s eyes, though the rest of his expression was all over the tabletop and spattered across Cyrene. Then he was down and Enth had followed him silently, striking and striking and striking. She saw only the raised blade, over and over, but Feyn’s awful sounds cut off very quickly. Still Enth raked away at him with the dagger until she heard the clear, sharp sound of the blade breaking from the hilt as he drove it through the brutalized corpse and into the flags of the floor.

Visler had frozen in utter astonished horror but, when Enth arose gore-slicked and terrible, he bolted for his cellar and Cyrene heard him bolt the hatch after him. As though that would help.

But Enth did not pursue. He just sat calmly at the table, where he had been before, and stared at the candle flame as it guttered and danced. It sparked kindred reflections in his several eyes. She could try to read all manner of thoughts there: whether he was considering taking off while Penthos’s conditioning no longer bound him; whether he was agonizing over his lot, what he had been and what he had become; whether he was simply staring vacantly at the flame without a thought in his head. She tried to read him and failed, because she could not read that face, not the human parts of it, nor the rest.

She found that the only conclusion she had come to was that he was not going to kill her, though the opportunity was still there.

The candle had burned out, the flame attempting one last despairing leap for freedom before drowning in the hungry pool of wax that it had created, and he sighed. A small sound; such a human sound.

There was a noise, a croaking and wordless sound. She realized it came from her own throat, forced through stiff lips. The poison was beginning to wear off. She fought and fought, trying to reconnect with muscles that had been severed from her, and at last she managed to force out the word, “Why?”