“I am here at Mayor Thorin’s wish,” Susan repeated, knowing that was no real answer. She was frightened now—more frightened than when she had looked through the window and seen the old woman crooning to the glass ball. “His wife has come barren to the end of her courses. He wishes to have a son before he is also unable to—”

“Pish-tush, spare me the codswallop and pretty words. He wants tits and arse that don’t squish in his hands and a box that’ll grip what he pushes. If he’s still man enough to push it, that is. If a son come of it, aye, fine, he’ll give it over to ye to keep and raise until it’s old enough to school, and after that ye’ll see it no more. If it’s a daughter, he’ll likely take it from ye and give it to his new man, the one with the girl’s hair and the limp, to drown in the nearest cattle-wallow.”

Susan stared at her, shocked out of all measure.

The old woman saw the look and laughed. “Don’t like the sound of the truth, do yer? Few do, missy. But that’s neither here nor there; yer auntie was ever a trig one, and she’ll have done all right out of Thorin and Thorin’s treasury. What gold you see of it’s none o’ mine... and won’t be none o’ yours, either, if you don’t watch sharp! Hee! Take off that dress!”

I won’t was what rose to her lips, but what then? To be turned out of this hut (and to be turned out pretty much as she had come, and not as a lizard or a hopping toad would probably be the best luck she could hope for) and sent west as she was now, without even the two gold coins she’d brought up here? And that was only the small half of it. The large was that she had given her word. At first she had resisted, but when Aunt Cord had invoked her father’s name, she had given in. As she always did. Really, she had no choice. And when there was no choice, hesitation was ever a fault.