Before she could finish her thought, the door to the tent flapped open and a man stepped inside. He was tall, bent nearly double to get through the opening. At first Gwenna thought it was Long Fist, but when he straightened, his smirk took her in the gut like a fist.

Balendin Ainhoa.

Just discovering the leach was alive had made her furious. In fact, one of the tricks she had for staying sane during the unbearable drive west had been to remind herself that Balendin was still out there, that she needed to stay alive herself, stay sharp, so that one day she could kill him. When Long Fist started taking fingers, it had looked as though he might assume that responsibility himself. It didn’t look that way anymore.

The leach was no longer tied, no longer wearing the same stinking blacks in which he’d been captured, and though no one could put back his missing fingers, someone had provided him with clean cloth for bandages. He wore a dark bison cloak in the Urghul fashion over leather breeches and a tunic, a new set of necklaces draping his neck, a new array of rings on his fingers. The reversal was as terrifying as it was abrupt, and for a moment Gwenna sat speechless, trying to understand how things could have gone so wrong so quickly.

As if reading her thoughts, Balendin smiled. “Happy to see me, Gwenna?” When she didn’t respond, he shrugged. “I’ve certainly missed you. I’ve had a lot of favorites over the years, but there’s never been anyone quite like the volatile Gwenna Sharpe for sheer, unbridled, uncooked, untamed, brute-stupid passion.”

He paused, licked his lips. Annick had stopped cutting, one hand still on the haunch, the other holding the bloody knife loose between two fingers. Gwenna realized with horror that not only was the leach free and walking around, not only was he obviously the recipient of Long Fist’s sudden favor, he was undrugged. All trace of the adamanth was gone from his eyes, and the cocksure, predatory gleam was back.

Gwenna fought down the urge to go after him. He was only a few paces off, standing with his arms crossed just inside the door to the api, but she’d seen enough of the leach’s power to know she wouldn’t make it even halfway.

“You’re a sack of last week’s festering shit, Balendin,” she said instead. The words were a lousy substitute for a knife, but they were all she had. “Brave though, to come in here alone after the reaming we gave you in the mountains. Shame about the rest of your Wing—the bloody pieces are probably spread over a few square miles of mountainside by now. Shame about your fingers.”