“Maybe,” Pyrre said, picking at the dirt on her pants with a fingernail. She’d been forced to kill three men just an hour earlier, but she seemed most concerned about the damage to her clothing. “But I suspect it’s simpler than that.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning we’re not dead because Long Fist needs us alive.”

“For what?” Gwenna spat. “Fun?”

Pyrre looked up, lips pursed as though ready to make some crack, then paused. “How does a man become a chief?” she asked finally. “A chief of anything, let alone a million Urghul?”

“Kills the people who want to kill him,” Gwenna said. “That’s what I’m saying. Long Fist’s a fool to leave us alive.”

Pyrre shook her head. “If he tried to kill everyone dangerous, he’d never get done killing. There’s always someone who wants to murder a chief. Long Fist can’t protect against them all. His position isn’t fully secure.”

“The bastard looks pretty secure when he’s hacking out hearts.”

“That’s because,” Pyrre said, “no one can imagine him dead.”

“I’ve been imagining it since I met him,” Gwenna snapped, irritated with the assassin’s roundabout platitudes. “In fact, I’m about to do some more imagining right now.”

“You can imagine it,” Pyrre said, “but they can’t. When the Urghul look at him, they don’t see a man; they see a legend. All you need is a blade to kill a man.” She snorted. “All you need is fingernails, as you so ably demonstrated this evening. But a legend—a legend is unkillable, and he wears his own legend—uniter of the tribes, the man who made his own sacrifice to Meshkent, the one who plans to destroy Annur—just the same way he wears that bison skin. It’s a symbol of his power, his strength.”

“You’re saying he lets us wander around free because he believes his own bullshit?” Gwenna demanded, shaking her head. “That’s even stupider than I thought.”

“I’m saying that we are part of his legend: two Kettral and a Skullsworn tamed by the great chief to fight before his fires.”

“Tamed,” Gwenna spat. “Speak for yourself.”

The assassin raised an eyebrow, and Gwenna colored, the memory of the pleading soldier bleeding into her memory, the feel of his flesh as he died. “At least I haven’t quit yet,” she muttered.

Pyrre shrugged. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever spent time in the Bend?”

Gwenna shook her head, confused.

“A pity. It’s a marvelously barbaric place. I watched a man in the killing pits there once. I studied him all afternoon. He fought animals—bears, bulls, wolves—and always just near the end, before he put them down, he’d turn his back, lay down his blade, and wave to the crowd.”

“Pointless,” Annick said.