“Don’t you go worrying your head about nothing,” he told her. “All we were told was to bring you here. Nobody needs to get hurt now unless you do something stupid.”

“Something stupid?” she said. “We’re way past something stupid, you little shit.”

She stood in a defensive position, hands held at the ready in front of her. It was a warrior’s stance, Rabedy realized. She might look like some skinny little useless human girl, standing there barefoot in nothing but a thin T-shirt the length of a dress, but she had backbone. He remembered the way she’d fought at the crossroads. Backbone and skill.

“The problem with your kind,” Gathen was saying, “is you don’t know well enough to respect your betters.”

She spat on the grass between them.

Oh, don’t, Rabedy thought. There was no need for anyone to get hurt if she would just back off. But no, she had to get Gathen going.

Gathen shook his head, pretending sorrow. “Bring you here, the boss said, but he didn’t say anything about what condition you needed to be in. I’m thinking you need to be taught a bit of a lesson, you pluiking little cow.”

“Try me, asshole.”

“Let’s just leave it,” Rabedy said, catching hold of Gathen’s arm as the other bogan took a step toward the woman.

Gathen shrugged off his grip and gave him a glare, then turned back to the woman with a grin Rabedy recognized all too well. It was the look Gathen wore when he gave a couple of hard whacks to some miserable little treekin who happened to get in his way. It was the look he had when he cut open a still howling cat and ripped out its intestines to shape one of the runes Odawa had taught them.

Sod it, Rabedy thought. Let him make a mess of this, as well.

He stepped back and folded his arms, refusing to take part in Gathen’s game.

“Oh, I’m so scared of you,” Gathen told the woman.

“You should be,” she told him.

After that, it all happened so fast. Gathen lunged for the woman, but instead of trying to dodge him, she stepped in close, and delivered a powerful straight-armed blow into his solar plexus that stole all the breath from him, dropping him to his knees. She danced out of his fumbling reach, turned gracefully, and kicked him in the throat, delivering this second blow with her full weight behind it.

Rabedy heard an awful popping sound as her foot connected, then Gathen collapsed on the ground. Rabedy realized that she’d crushed his windpipe.