If Long Fist didn’t like the men on the Wing, he was well rid of them. Valyn, Talal, and Laith had ridden out the day before, strapped with arms and laden with provisions, packs filled with anything that might kill—poisons, arrows, even a blowgun. It was an insane mission—going to kill the Annurian kenarang—but the shaman had made sure they had everything they might need to get it done. Everything, that was, except for half of the fucking Wing.

“You will remain here, my honored guests,” he had said to the women—almost an afterthought. When Gwenna told him how she felt about that, told him that she intended to make her own decisions, he had only spread his arms in invitation: “Certainly you must decide your own fate: honored guest, captive, or corpse.”

Valyn tried to step in then, but the ugly fact of the matter was that they had no leverage. They were free only because Long Fist had set them free, and for all the tall bastard’s talk of cooperation and mutual understanding, he wasn’t suffering from an overabundance of trust. Valyn’s word was all well and good, but Long Fist wanted something more substantial, more persuasive, and so Annick, Gwenna, and Pyrre had graduated from captives to honored guests.

Honored guests. It was worse than collateral.

“You should relax,” the assassin continued. “Life is an eyeblink. Try to enjoy some of the largesse spread before us.”

“You’re so busy guzzling the rotgut,” Gwenna snapped, “that you might not have realized Long Fist’s largesse doesn’t include a single weapon. We’ve got one pathetic belt knife between us,” she said, gesturing to the slender blade Annick was using to saw at the meat. “A dull belt knife.”

“Probably,” Pyrre said, “because the last time we had weapons, we tended to leave the sharp parts of them inside his soldiers. Besides,” she went on, eyeing Annick’s belt knife, “it’s simple enough to kill men with a belt knife. If we decide there’s a pressing reason to trade the meat, drink, and fire for an unwinnable fight.”

“You were fighting hard enough when they had you tied up,” Gwenna snapped. “And the fight was even less winnable then.”

The truth was, Pyrre made her all sorts of uncomfortable, and being uncomfortable made Gwenna mad. It wasn’t just that the Skullsworn was good at killing—everyone on the Islands was good at killing. The thing that really set Gwenna’s teeth on edge was Pyrre’s indifference, her obvious failure to give half a shit about all of the things Gwenna herself was ready to die for. Squaring off against an entire Urghul army was daunting enough without having the Skullsworn mocking her the whole way.

“When I was tied up,” the assassin said with a shrug, “I was tied up. Now that we have—”