Page 31

Not so shaky as she had been.

“You still have to take the rest of them pellets.”

She nodded, went to the wee table they were on, took one in her mouth. Grimaced. Washed it down with meltwater from the pot near the fire.

“We should leave soon,” she said, looking toward the entrance to the lair, where the snow was coming down hard, like we owed it money.

“Yah,” I said. “A word about that.”

I told her about everything; Norrigal, the episodes with the book. That we were going to head for a mysterious mountain with some cagey old three-pizzled goddie in it. Though, judging from the snow, we weren’t heading anywhere for a while.

She looked at me.

“You brought me back to health,” she said. “I would have gone to the Bride without you.”

“Sorry?” I said, shrugging.

“No, it is not for apologies. I have work here, with you, and with the queen. I am saying that you cared for me and that I am grateful. I was sick in Gallardia, before Goltay, sick to dying. And a woman cared for me like this. Her name was Inocenta.”

“Bet she was a proper whore. Name like that’s just daring fate.”

I thought she might be angry, but she laughed, her eyes gone soft with memory.

“Tell me more,” I said. “If you want to. You never speak of it.”

“None of us who went to Gallardia speak of it. Except to each other. Besides which, you would make jokes, and it is not for joking,” she said.

“Isn’t it, though?” I said. “Is there another way through it? If you know a better remedy for tears than laughter, I’d be pleased to hear it.”

She nodded.

“Inocenta would say much the same thing.”

“Sounds like a wise woman.”

“She brought me to Dalgatha.”

“The god or the bird?”

“First the one and then the other.”

Now she considered me for a long moment.

It made me uncomfortable.

“Maybe I will tell you, another time,” she said. “I think you are worthy of the story. But I am not yet strong enough to go back to that place.” I saw then how weary she still looked, and felt badly for having asked about that awful war against the biters so casually, as a child might have asked an elder for an amusing tale. If she ever did honor me with the story, it would cost her. But maybe it would also unburden her. I couldn’t say. I only knew that I wouldn’t ask her again. If I heard the story, it would be she that offered it.

And then I closed my eyes, stifling a gasp from a pain that wasn’t so much in my head as in my soul, if such a thing is possible. A scream rose up inside me, but it wasn’t my scream. It was the outraged keening of Filaine, the tortured girleen trapped in the book, furious that I wasn’t burning it yet, for what she saw as selfish reasons. It was the loneliest sound I’d ever heard, if hearing is the right word for a noise happening in your mind. At once, I understand that she was both the suffering girl and the terrible crab-headed monster.

The Guild had well and truly fucked her, in the very worst ways.

As bad as goblins were to us, we could be worse to each other.

I mean, a goblin would eat or poison your body, even destroy your mind.

But only a human will prey on your soul.

Or so I thought.