“I’m not a god.”

  “Master…”

  “I am not a god. Humans aren’t gods!”

  “But Xyn just said—”

  “Well, she’s wrong, okay?” I shouted, throwing my hands into the air. “We’ve stood in front of divinity, Jax. Do I feel like a god to you? Do I?!”

  “Mebbe you’re like a baby god,” Arx suggested in a stuffy sort of gurgle.

  It seemed Mia had been right. I may not have understood the reasons, but there were certain consequences to revealing forbidden things. Not only had Lynnria passed out, but Arx was having to tilt her head back to stem a wicked nosebleed. Jax was the only one of my girls who was still mostly okay. She was a little shaky, but that much was to be expected after such a revelation.

  Not that I agreed it was a revelation.

  “Mebbe dat’s why hoo-mens nebber get swallowed. Whad if dat’s what happens when hoo-mens gain Power?”

  I took a breath… then released it as slowly and patiently as I could. Intuitively, I knew she had to be wrong. I was just having trouble articulating why without doing more damage.

  “How odd,” Xyn commented. She had been staring at Arx’s nose with a befuddled expression. “I didn’t realize the details of my creation counted as forbidden knowledge. But that it is… I shouldn’t have been allowed to speak. How could this have happened?”

  “I would assume it was more to do with what was implied than with what was said,” Mia opined. “You appear to have stumbled upon a loophole.”

  “And what about what were implied, Faen?” Jax pressed. “I know ye got an opinion about all this.”

  “You are referring to his potential—foot fetish! I have a foot—I do not have a foot fetish. Blast it all!” Mia took a breath. “I care not for opinions. I am Faen. That I would serve divinity is without question. Whether others would consider the Lord Master so is no concern of mine.”

  Arx smiled toothily. “Zounds like zhe thinks he’s a baby god, too.”

  I spread my hands, practically shaking with exasperation. “Just because my normal, everyday dreams happen to be similar to certain mystical birthing practices, that doesn’t make me a god. It’s not like I can snap my fingers and have whatever pops into my head leap from the dream fabric and into reality.”

  “The dream fabric is reality, Donum,” Xyn countered. “It’s just a different layer.”

  “Well… I mean… but…” I sat back, perplexed as to what point she was even trying to make. “It’s imaginary! You can’t hurt people with dreams.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “Why not?”

  I blew out a flummoxed raspberry. She had me there. After all, she had herself been brought to life in the fabric—somehow—and I knew for a fact she could hurt people. But even had that not been the case, it was hard to laugh off what should have been speculative fiction when magic was on the table.

  “Alright, I can’t hurt people with dreams. And that’s what matters, right?” I glanced from one set of eyes to the next. “A god needs two things: belief and the power to back it up… and immortality. Three things. A god needs three things. I have zero things.”

  “Ye got some things. Them first two, anyway,” Jax countered before hiking a thumb toward Arx. “I, fer one, be agreeing with mine sister here. Ye be a wean god.”

  Was it common to want to strangle your wife? It seemed like it must be. How could she possibly be taking this seriously?

  “A following of two hardly counts.”

  “Three,” Mia corrected.

  “You only agree for the personal-status cred.”

  There was a distinct click, signaling her voice had gone private. “Is that so? Perhaps next time I shall have to pray louder.”

  I would have contended the point, but that would have involved arguing I was not a god of the bedchamber. And that was one delusion I was perfectly willing to suffer.

  “You godda admit,” Arx added over a mouthful of blood. “It’d go a long way toward explaining why a couple of goddesses are so in’erested.”

  “That… I mean, yeah, it would…”

  The first male god in who knew how long? Of course, a bunch of pent up goddesses would go to war over who would snatch me up. That did not make it true, but there were worse theories.

  “Do you want me to heal that?”

  “Yes, please.”

  With a distracted nod, I complied.

  I had to have cast Renewal of Consumption at least a thousand times by that point. The Words to it were so familiar that, despite not knowing their individual meanings, I sometimes caught myself mumbling them like the lyrics to an old favorite. So you can imagine my surprise when a thin filament of smoke wafted from my mouth, composed itself into a series of literal runes mid-transit, settled over Arx’s head, flashed a brilliant gold, then vanished like they had never been.

  And no one reacted!

  Well… Arx did, but only in the usual way. From the looks of things, she got to experience a mild nose-gasm as the ruptured membrane in her nasal passage knitted itself back together. Had circumstances been different, I might have enjoyed watching her eyes tearing up, the uncontrollable shivers bunching her shoulders together, and the violent sneeze that followed. But I was too agog for those kinds of distractions.

  Jax tilted her head curiously. “What is it, Master? Ye think of sommat to convince yerself, did ye?”

  My jaw snapped closed, and I let out an absent, “No, it’s just…”

  Those were Words. I saw Words.

  I knew the reason for it. It had to be. There was no other explanation, yet I hesitated to articulate it. My new ability was only supposed to lift the restriction on seeing Words that had already been engraved, like on the Stele. That was what Mia had insinuated, anyway. But if she were wrong… if she had somehow given me the ability to see all Words, even when they had only been spoken aloud…

  They were gold. A golden light. Where had I seen a golden light?

  My eyes widened with dawning realization. “Jax! Turn around and take your dress off.”

  She pulled back and stared at me while a smile of both bemuse-and-amusement overtook her features. “Master, ye know I be always up fer a nice stroke and tickle, but I weren’t born yesterday. Don’t think ye can distract me just by waving yer tadger about.”

  “I’ll do it if you’d rather not,” Arx volunteered, still scrubbing her over-stimulated nose on her sleeve.

  “I ain’t said—”

  Xyn held up a claw. “If we’re going down that road, I’m going to have to insist on seconds at a minimum.”

  Arx surged to her feet, growling in sudden threat. “The hell you are! I’m second, not you.”

  “What seconds? He were barely hinting firsts, ye daft bint,” Jax grumbled.

  It seemed neither was keen to listen.

  “Arx…” Xyn drew herself up until she was nose-to-nose with the other woman. “I’ve been patient. I’ve endured the lot of you sniping and snapping at me. I’ve even carried your garbage all the way up from that mud pit they call a town, and what has it gotten me? Nothing! I’ve watched for days while Mother’s influence raged through him, sensing his need, yet prevented from even so much as touching him! Prevented while the three of you were free to satisfy yourselves. I will not suffer this any longer, do you hear me?”

  A long blade slowly formed in the lilim’s hand, solidifying as though from liquid metal. But what had caught my attention was the flash of gold that had appeared in her palm the instant before.

  Baring her own fangs, Xyn snarled, “I will challenge for a place within this hierarchy if you force me. Don’t think I won’t!”

  Xyn could have wiped the floor with Arx with a missing foot and an arm tied behind her back, but I was not overly concerned. It was not as if she could do any permanent harm. And whatever hierarchy existed amongst my girls had been established through a combination of meritorious service and, though it pained me to admit it, by how much I individually cared for them. No amount of infighting was about to change that.

  So while there were quite a lot of things I could have said—and the not-at-all-surprising revelation that they had been feeding on my unconscious body was high on that last—my thoughts were firmly yoked to another ox.

  “Xyn!” I exclaimed, absolutely brimming with excitement. I made to stand, but my legs were still too overcome by the tingles to let me. So I settled for dragging myself forward. “Do that again!”

  My outburst drew a collection of second glances and surprised stares.

  “Do what again?” she rumbled, distracted.

  Snatching at her wrist, I tried to pull her down, but she was as solid as a rock.

  “Master.” Jax came to her feet nervously. “Have a care. That be her sword arm.”

  I waved her off. “Hush. I want to see this. Xyn, please. Sit.”

  A long moment passed before the ancient lilim complied, still baring her teeth at the other woman, but she was too primed for a fight to do more than settle into a ready squat.

  Arx began to shift from foot to foot as her snarls gave way to concern. “Dearest… what are you doing?”

  I ignored her and instead shook at Xyn’s arm. “Let go. Dismiss your sword. I want to see you make it again.”

  Her only reaction was to direct a brief glance at me before re-affixing her hostile glare upward.

  “Will you stop? I decide who I spend the night with, not them. And running Arx through is not exactly a turn on.” Seeing that my words were having no effect, I tried a different tack. “Do you want a reward or not?”

  That got her attention. And more than just hers.

  “Master!”

  “Dearest?! Don’t you dare!”

  “What kind of reward?” Her head had not turned, but Xyn’s eye was now focused entirely on me.

  My mouth twitched from side to side, thinking quickly. I knew what she wanted—she had made that plain enough. I wanted it, too. But I was not about to sell the farm for a single chicken.

  It was funny how experience and an excess of options could change your perspective on that sort of thing.

  “How about I stroke your horns?”

  Her brow knitted together. “Why would I—”

  “No!” Arx wailed. “She hasn’t earned that.”

  “Master…” Now Jax’s lips were beginning to crawl over her fangs. “Ye ain’t even touched my horns yet.”

  “Stroke my horns first.” Xyn favored the other two with a triumphant jeer. “Then I’ll show you whatever you want.”

  Nice job, girls. Way to sell it.

  I kept my face carefully neutral. “Agreed.”

  A pained little sound erupted from Jax’s throat before she took a hurried step forward. “Just the regular way, mind! Not with the Hammer.”

  “With the Hammer!”

  “Too late,” I said lightly.

  “Ha!” Arx exclaimed with a joyful little hop.

  “Damn it…” Xyn swore. “Fine. But you have to at least pretend like you want to.”

  I just looked at her. All of her. Slowly. My eyes tracing over every delicious curve. Enjoying myself. “What makes you think I don’t want to?”

  “Ooh…” She leaned toward me appreciatively. “Delicious. Are you sure I can’t tempt you with something more… interesting?”

  Tempt me? Ha! She was already tempting me with her every breath. Hers was a beauty no human woman could hope to live up to. But Arx was right; she had earned neither that body nor my attention. Mommy dearest had made it for her just as She had made me care for her, and I was not about to let some nepotism hire bed me that easily. She was going to have to work for it!

  So I ignored the bedroom eyes, the fang dimpling her moistened lips, and the scales doing laps around her exposed nipple—okay, maybe I was not doing such a great job of ignoring all of that—to deliver a gentle, “A deal’s a deal.”

  With that, I raised my hand as though to comb a strand of hair from the gorgeous blonde’s face, and in passing, only just grazed the side of one bull-like horn with a thumb. A shiver instantly raced through her body, ripping an unconscious moan from her throat before she jerked away. As her palm slapped to the spot, I noticed the sword she had been so firmly gripping was now gone.

  For a moment, she only rubbed at the bare bone while her scales clattered into random configurations.

  “How did you do that?”

  My eyebrow twitched. Hmm… no gold when she shifts her scales. Could it be a natural ability? Or maybe the Words controlling them are hidden somewhere. “Do what?”

  “Don’t play coy! You know exactly what.” She cast an accusatory glare at the two now-smug Dolilim. “I’ve never felt anything like it.”

  I smiled. “You enjoyed it then?”

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  She turned her glare on me, but a second passed before she spoke.

  “Do it again.”

  Jax straightened. “Hold yer wheesht! You’ve had yer stroking. Now do as he asked.”

  “The deal was to stroke my horns. Plural. I have two horns, that means I get one more stroke!”

  “So you did like it.”

  “I haven’t decided yet!” she snapped, though I noted a minute shift in her hips, giving away the lie. “But do it longer this time. That one was barely a graze.”

  It was hard not to laugh. She was being so obvious. Then again, it was not as if I needed to guess. I was the idealized mate of her entire race just as a matter of my Class. Even if I had not been saddled with a fragment of her divine Mother’s soul—now boosted by the addition of Her body—Xyn would have just as much difficulty resisting me as I did her.

  Also, she had been seconds away from coming to blows over the matter not a minute prior. Pretending she did not crave my touch was farcical.

  So I spared us both the argument and simply wrapped my fingers around her opposite horn. There I let them rest. Unmoving.

  I could tell she was trying to endure the contact with mute stoicism, acting as if she felt nothing when it was clear as day she was on the verge of complete rapture. My eyes caught every twitch of her lips. Every tremble in her shoulders. Every quiver of her breath. But if she wanted to put on airs, so could I.

  “Have you ever noticed how alike Xhinn and Ahnbe look?” I asked, just making casual conversation. “I know they’re supposed to be sisters, but… I mean, apart from the horns and the hair, you’d almost think they were identical twins.”

  Her mouth worked for a moment as she struggled to control herself. “They are… were identical. All… all of them were. Once. When… when they were… f-first creat~nnhah!”

  I averted my eyes, pretending not to have noticed the slip or the way my finger was innocently tapping against the smooth surface of her horn.

  “Really? Interesting.”

  That would include Bline, then. And Mia, if only technically—her features had been dulled in becoming Faen, so claiming she looked like her progenitor was a bit like saying a candle looked like the sun.

  “So they were created. Not born?”

  Xyn was still attempting to get her breathing under control. “Uh-huh.”

  “Not very human-like, then.”

  Arx folded her arms. “‘snails, Dearest, will you drop it? I said you were like a baby god. Not cut from the same cloth as the Five.”

  “Aye. It’d be weird, them lustin’ after ye, if’n ye was in the same family.”

  Arx turned to her sister. “Jax, we’re in the same family.”

  “Aye, but… ye know what I meant!”

  Not touching that one.

  “So why is that you and the other lilim don’t look much like Xhinn?” I asked instead.

  “That’s…” She might have hesitated, but it was difficult to tell with how much her chest was heaving. “That’s compli—”

  Abruptly, she knocked my hand away, and took a moment to let her breath still before she proclaiming, “Don’t ask me questions like that while you’re holding me at arm’s length, Donum. You’ve no right to the answers.”

  It was hard not to grimace. I should have known not to play games like that with such a powerful empath.

  “Sorry,” I said after a moment. “I didn’t realize it was a sensitive subject.”

  “It’s not sensitive—”

  “Lie,” Jax interposed.

  Xyn glared at her. “It’s Mother’s business, and I’d rather not talk about it. And anyway, it’s all ancient history.” With a shaking hand, she smoothed her hair, settling herself.

  Arx leaned forward expectantly. “It is nice, though, right? Him holding you like that?”

  Xyn glanced up at her from the corner of her eye. “Perhaps… somewhat.”

  “Feh,” Jax snorted. “Dunno why ye’re pretending ta be surprised. We done that loads of times in the Dungeon.”

  Xyn hesitated, her gaze darting between the three of us. “To be honest… we thought you were putting on a show for Donum’s benefit—that he must be getting off on it. It’s just bone. Yet somehow…” She turned to me. “How do you do that?”

  “No idea,” I admitted with a shrug, then tilted my head toward the other two. “They claim it’s comforting, though. Is that how it was for you?”

  “Comforting?” Her chin jerked once in the negative. “More like… intimate. Hauntingly intimate.”

  “Well, that’s… a description.” Whatever it means. “Guess it’s not for everybody.”

  She sucked in a tiny breath. “No… no, it’s just… never… never do that unless you mean it, Donum. Not to me. Please.”

  I nodded slowly. “So… not something to be handing out in exchange for favors, then.” Noted.

  Of course, normally, that would include sex, too. But I had to consider my audience.

  “Oh, that.” Xyn chuckled ruefully. “I feel a little bad about it now.”

  Without looking, she held out her hand and summoned a short knife into it. Of course, all I cared about was the flash of runes I had seen in her palm. There were two of them, one with five strokes and the other with three. I had a small collection of Words and their associated logograms forever burned into my mind, and from their example, I could assume this was a Verb-Noun pair—all you would need to perform a simple command. Unfortunately, they vanished again before I could commit them to memory.

  Strange. Why don’t they stay? I leaned in closer, peering as though to take in every microscopic crease of her hand. It took me a moment—and had I not already known what I was looking for, I would never have spotted them—but I could just make them out. It was a bit like one of those colorblindness tests, where a word or picture hides in a sea of multicolored dots, but in skin texture.

  Fascinated, I began to gently trace their outlines with the tip of one of my nascent claws. They were amazingly complex for having so few strokes.

  “For some reason,” Xyn was saying, “Mother decided it would be cute to engrave my flesh with an assortment of metallic themed abilities. It went along with my sword mastery, so I saw no reason to complain. Still, most of them are so niche, the likelihood of them ever coming up is… is…” She paused as her lips began to twitch. “Donum, what are you doing? That tickles.”

  “What do they mean?” I asked absently.

  “What does what mean?” she returned with an unwilling giggle. “Stop. You’re making me—ha ha—stop!”

  “Yer making her wet, Master,” Jax filled in dryly.

  “Really?” Arx squatted down next to us and opened her mouth just enough to take in the air. “Ooh, you’re right! What a precious little kink you’ve discovered, Dearest. Don’t stop. I want to see if the high-and-mighty Xyn will come from this.”

  “Ridiculous!” She was starting to squirm in earnest now. “I’ve taken thousands to their graves with nothing more than a… than a wink and a—ha ha ha!” An inhuman groan erupted from her throat. “Oh Donum, you beast!”

  I grimaced. “Please, hold still. I’ve almost got this first one… agh. It’s got to be… something like create? Or manipulate?”

  “It’s just Manifest, okay? Manifest Blade!”

  She froze for half a heartbeat, then effortlessly ripped her palm from my grasp. For a long while, she only stared at me, clutching her abused flesh to her chest while she struggled to collect herself. Then she unfurled her hand to look down on it, her expression going thoughtful.

  “You saw,” she accused. Abruptly, her hands flew to my shoulders, and she pulled me close, peering into my eyes. “You saw, and I told you their meanings like it was nothing! How?”

  Mia chuckled darkly. “It would seem your Mother’s gift was more potent than She knew.”

  “Mother nothing! I know what she intended, and it wasn’t this!” Xyn yelled. “What have you done to him, you Bline castoff?”

  “Mind who yer shaking, munter,” Jax growled. “What’s all this, then? What are ye on about?”

  I took a breath. Now was as good a time as any.

  “In order to wake up… even as soon as I did, I needed to make a sacrifice,” I informed them. Still somewhat unwilling, I held up my hand for their inspection. All three gathered close to inspect the incremental change. “By taking on a bit more of the Demon Queen’s essence, Mia and I were able to leverage her status as the Keeper of the Words to, uh… let’s say, enhance a certain oddity we had noticed within my dream fabric. Neither of us knows why, but the Veil of the Unknown doesn’t work so well there. On me, anyway. And now it doesn’t work so well out here. But the change destabilized my kind classification. I’m now a… questionably Greater Human.”

  “I’ll admit, I did not anticipate such a far-reaching ability to come of this,” Mia added. “It doesn’t even have a skill level.”

  No skill level? Does that mean it’s just… innate? My brow rose fractionally. Cool.

  “Can nay make his imaginings real, says he…” Jax muttered quietly.

  “Mia did that!”

  “And what of the rest?” Xyn shouted. “Damn it all, Faen. You’d better not have interfered with Mother’s plan.”

  Taken aback, I glanced at the other two for support, but they were still engrossed with my fingertips. And from their expressions, they were of two minds about it.

  “Don’t everyone congratulate me all at once…” I muttered.

  Mia ignored me. “Don’t you yell at me… dual servant! Spy! What plan? You can’t expect the tides of Power to carve a path without consulting its architect, and I heard nothing of any plan.”

  Xyn began to pace in her agitation, much like Xhinn often did. “Just before Mother left, she told me to lead you all to this mountain to find the Mouth roosting here. But it’s hidden. There is no way any of us could hope to find it unless we had an ability to track them, an ability he was supposed to have gained.”

  An ability to track Mouths? How was that—

  I blinked as a certain memory came flooding back, one of the Demon Queen pressing me to a wall. She had said I needed the scent of my prize. Her scent. And I knew exactly how I had been intended to track them.

  Xhinn, you absolute pervert.

  But Xyn had not finished.

  “Meanwhile, there’s a posse of at least twenty people trailing not half a day behind us, two of whom are at least in the third Layer. If we don’t find that Mouth—and soon—we’re doomed.”

  I straightened. “A posse?! Why is there a posse after us?”

  “My fault,” Jax admitted with a wince. Sighing, she left her examination of my fingers to stand, take a few strides away, and peer silently down into the valley below.

  All of which was less than helpful, so I glanced at Arx to elaborate.

  “After the Demon Queen attacked you,” she began.

  “It wasn’t an attack,” Xyn interrupted quickly. “She was blessing him with a drop of Her own essence. A divine gift! It’s not Mother’s fault that he was—”

  “—knocked unconscious for six straight days? Had to accept even more of Her just to wake himself up?” Arx grabbed my hand and shook it at the other lilim. “Just look at what She’s done to him!”

  “She’s a goddess! You can’t possibly begin to understand her actions—”

  “Alright, alright! Never mind all that,” I said quickly. “Just tell me what happened.”

  Still grumbling, Arx began again. “Anyway… we were all a little upset afterward. There might have been some yelling, I don’t know. Then Tips came banging on the door and threw us all out. After that—”

  “I had to get to me final,” Jax interposed, her back still turned. I could just make out the Stele past her knee, made by distance little more than a thin needle poking into the eye of the blue dome above.

  Arx nodded. “Right. After everything that had happened, I guess none of us were thinking too clearly. With our Purse empty and that debt hanging over our heads, Jax said she couldn’t not take the risk. The payout was too big. So we gathered you up and headed out. Then Tillem challenged her to a death match.”

  Tillem? I had to think for a moment to recall the name. Right… Mellit’s husband… brother… whatever-he-was. Jax’s opponent.

  “He was that pissed?”

  Arx shrugged. “I dunno. Angry, yes. But his emotions felt… off. Wrong. It was hard to tell with so many people around. Anyway, we talked about it, and Jax decided there was no reason not to.”

  Xyn scrubbed at her brow tiredly and slumped back to the ground. “Oh, there was a reason. I warned you not to take the bait.”

  “Ye hinted!” Jax turned only just enough to glare over her shoulder. “Ye hinted like all of yer kind do. That ain’t the same, and it ain’t what someone who cares would’a done. Now look where it’s got us.”

  “You lost,” I interpreted quickly. Then my eyes widened as I put together the rest. “You lost and erupted into blue flame.”

  “Just like a summoned beast,” Arx finished.

  Jax hurled a rock over the side of the mountain path. “That ain’t the worst of it. Fucker’s done that before. I know it in me bones. Ain’t no way someone with skill like that has been stuck in the Foundation Layers. He’s been holding his ownself back, him and his cunt wife both. That were the sham, see? With me ‘dead,’ there weren’t none to collect me purse! None save that kimon I already beat. The two of them took first and second place, and all we got were a posse ridin’ up our arses.”

  “Not a bad little hustle,” Xyn added. “I’m almost impressed. And that skill he used to pull it off wasn’t bad either… A tad one-note, perhaps, but surprisingly effective in such a limited combat environment. Compared to that, Jax’s technical immortality should have been a minor footnote.”

  “Accepting a death match when you can’t die is bound to ruffle some feathers,” I surmised. “But to chase us all this way?”

  Arx grimaced. “Yes, well… With you unconscious and Lynnria still gibbering like a lunatic, the rest of us were bound to draw a few glances. Once Tillem started screaming about a summoner being around, the crowd was pretty quick to finger the only people who looked even remotely similar.”

  “Bastard were just trying to draw the attention away from his ownself, I figure.”

  Arx shrugged. “After that, well…”

  “We had to fight our way out of town,” Xyn finished bluntly.

  My face drained of blood. “Ah, shit… you didn’t kill anyone, did you?”

  “It’s possible. I didn’t exactly stop to check,” Xyn admitted blithely. “You are my ward, Donum. No mortal will lay a finger on you while I draw breath.”

  “Very noble, I’m sure.” I let the yet-smooth points of my nails drag through my hair as my head drooped between my knees, dislodging my pointed hat. I ignored it. What was a little dirt and melted snow going to hurt at this point?

  “I was carrying you, so my only concern was getting us all to safety,” Arx assured me before nodding toward Lynnria. “But our little outcast over there was carving up faces like a wildcat. I don’t think she remembers much of it, though.”

  “Wonderful… just wonderful,” I grumbled.

  I doubted I would be Cursed from this. Jax had been required to take part in that tournament as a matter of her Boundary Trial, so everything should have been aboveboard up until the moment she fraudulently put her life on the line. What came after was mob-justice at best, so any decent lawyer could have argued their case as basic self-defense. The worst I could expect on that front was yet another fine—not that I needed one.

  But that assumed we could shake the posse.

  “What happens if we get caught?”

  “What always happens,” Jax informed me, turning. “They tie us up, beat us to within an inch of our lives, and bugger off. If we’s lucky, they won’t remember ye be a healer. If we ain’t, they’ll cut yer tongue out afore they go. Nature takes care of the rest.”

  Those rocks I had felt in my stomach since waking up were getting awfully heavy.

  “So we get lynched. Cool… Cool cool cool.” What a wonderful legal system this world has. “Remind me to avoid civilization for the rest of my life.”

  Xyn settled into a groove along the rock face with a sigh. “We can’t be blamed for defending ourselves, Gift. Give it a few months. By this time next year, none of those people will know our faces. The whole incident will be nothing more than a bit of gossip to share over drinks around the pub. All we need do is find that Mouth. It’s got to be up here somewhere.”

  “WHAT AN INTERESTING STRATEGY YOU’VE DEVISED, LITTLE WORM,” a voice from above us boomed. “TO SAVE MY CHOSEN FROM DANGER, YOU WOULD THROW HIM DIRECTLY INTO IT. YOU WOULD ALMOST THINK YOU WERE TRYING TO KILL HIM.”

  I did not bother to look up. After all, I knew exactly who this had to be.

  “Anybody got a club lying around? I think I’d like to go back to sleep now.”