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“I know.”

“Well, let’s get to it. How do you know?”

“You read me, I read you.”

“So you’re the book.”

“That’s what I am now, yes.”

“All right and well. Why’d you call me here, book?”

“It is complex. I would not want you distracted by your hunger, nor would I want you thinking me a poor host. Eat, relax yourself, and I’ll tell you everything.”

The gravy did smell enticing, maddeningly so.

I took up a knife, meaning to spear a slice of roast beef and give it a wade in the sauce. But there was something about the way she was looking at me that put me in mind of a time I needed to feed my cat something to make him sleep without tipping off the assassin harboring in him. I made sure not to watch him too hard to see if he took it. But I also didn’t want to look away too hard, busying myself unnaturally or the like, and thus arouse suspicion. It seemed to me that the creature I was sharing this strange dream with was doing exactly that, messing about with her hair, flicking an eye and a smile at me, but then finding something else to look at. She wanted me to eat the roast beef.

I took up the meat, dunked it in the gravy, almost put it in my mouth just to bait her, then said, “What’s your name anyway? Unless you want me to call you ‘book,’ which seems a poor title—get it?—if a title is what you have.” I almost bit the meat again, then said, “But since you’re sitting before me as a dam, it seems you’d have a name.”

She had leaned in just that telling little bit when I dangled the meat before my open trap. I knew a drop of the sauce fell to the floor, and she blinked as it fell. Nothing most people would notice, I think, but the Low School teaches you to watch people for what they want. Find out what someone wants and you’ve got a lever.

I raised an eyebrow as if to say I was waiting politely to learn her name before I accepted her hospitality, marbled meat drooping on the knife like the banner of a fat, happy country.

“You may call me…”

And here her face did a strange thing. It, for want of a better word, flickered. Like a candle flame guttering. I had the impression she was about to give me a false name, then just blurted out “Filaine. I am called Filaine.” I wasn’t sure if that were true, but I had the idea it wasn’t not true. I can’t explain it better. There was something of a Filaine to this book, whether this was her or no.

“A great pleasure to know you, Filaine,” I said, and angled the knife down before any of the sauce could run on my hand. “I am…”

“Kinch Na Shannack of Platha Glurris, yes, I know.”

She now took the knife and its flag of roast beef out of my hand and put it back on its platter.

“Perhaps it is not meat you are hungry for.”

So saying, she pulled me down to sit on the bed next to her, and I didn’t resist.

She leaned closer.

I knew she was about to kiss me, and I knew that kissing her would be a terrible idea.

I will remind you that I was only twenty and five at this moment and hadn’t lain with my fair Norrigal or any other girleen for many weeks. So while I did lean away from her approaching mouth, it was not with great enthusiasm. We’ll say my mouth retreated at a leisurely walk while her mouth came on at a canter. I was caught in a kiss that, while unwanted in theory, was also not despised. I opened my lips in the way that a wary but curious citizen might crack a door just to peek at who’s knocking before deciding whether to lock it, which is of course too late. Her tongue entered my mouth less like a chainsman with a warrant and more like a peddler with a selection of furs; slowly, displaying her wares, smiling, saying, “I know you’ll love these, let me show you.”

My tongue, having only just the one room to live in and nowhere to flee to, did not advance to meet hers but held its place and soon found itself gently and not unpleasantly introduced to the intruder. If it now pushed back, it was in hopes of showing the impertinent second tongue the way back to its own mouth, but, once there, not retreating too quickly, but deciding to have a look around for politeness’s sake.

I hope you’ll forgive me for saying that if a wind blew through that room, there was very little danger of my pants collapsing.

Filaine Na Murderbook eased me back from sitting to lying and moved to straddle me. I might have raised my own leg as an obstacle, or turned my hips to the side, but the pressure in the middle of my trews insisted that it had everything under control and that if there was any pushing of this young lady to be done, it would see to the project. I became aware that Filaine was wearing nothing but goodwill beneath her kirtle, and as she ground against me, the scent of her ladygarden rose up as a new one always does, both fondly remembered and fresh-discovered. I found myself grinding back, if gently so, aware that but for my trousers we’d be full in the act.

That’s when the first of two badly needed intercessions took place.

Filaine moved her face down to kiss me again, and I did my very best to keep my lips closed, which wasn’t very good at all. But just as our lips touched, her face did that flicker again. And in the same way she had blurted out her true name before, she now moved quickly and bit my lip, but not a love bite.

It was a “fuck you” dingle-shrinking bite, and it shrunk my dingle proper.

But now she was, or perhaps wasn’t, herself again and touched my lip with her finger to say sorry, but I was well out of the mood, if I had truly been in it at all and not bewitched. I mean to say, men are stupid as a rule when it comes to sexual matters, and worst when they’re young, but I knew better than this. I fucking did. And there I had been, participating anyway.

But not anymore.