knee while Isern rooted through her hair to look at the cut. It was then he realised Rikke was stark naked and he wasn’t far off.
‘We were just …’ Maybe Antaup could’ve pulled out an innocent explanation. He’d had the practice. But Leo had never been much of a liar and this needed a true master of the art. ‘We were just …’
‘I am a woman of the world.’ Isern-i-Phail didn’t even bother to look at him. ‘I can hazard a mad guess at what you were about, boy.’ She leaned down over Rikke, wiping the froth away with her fingers, smoothing her hair back from her face. ‘Shhhh,’ she breathed. Sang it, almost. ‘Shhhhh.’
Ever so gently she held her. Ever so softly she spoke. More gently and more softly than Leo would’ve thought that hard-faced hillwoman could have.
‘Come back, Rikke. Come on back.’
Rikke gave a feeble grunt, a last flurry of twitches running through her legs and up to her shoulders. She groaned, slowly pushed the spitty dowel out of her mouth with her tongue.
‘Fuck,’ she croaked.
‘There’s my girl!’ said Isern, the edge back on her voice. Leo closed his eyes and gave a sigh of relief. She was all right. And he realised he was still gripping her tight even though she’d stopped jerking, and he let go quickly, saw the marks of his fingers pink on her arm.
Isern was already working Rikke’s trousers over her limp feet and up her legs. ‘Help me get her dressed.’
‘Not sure I know—’
‘Got her undressed, didn’t you? Same thing, d’you see, but in reverse.’
Rikke gave a long groan as she slowly sat up, clutching at her bloody head.
‘What did you see?’ asked Isern, wrapping Rikke’s shirt around her shoulders and squatting beside her.
‘I saw a bald weaver with a purse that never emptied.’ Rikke’s voice sounded strange. Rough, hollow. Not like her voice at all. It made Leo feel a little afraid, somehow. And a little excited.
‘What else?’ asked Isern.
‘I saw an old woman whose head was stitched together with golden wire.’
‘Huh. What else?’
‘I saw a lion … and a wolf … fight in a circle of blood. They fought tooth and claw and the wolf had the best of it …’ She stared up at Leo. ‘The wolf had the best of it … but the lion was the winner.’ She caught him by the hand, staring into his face, dragging him close with a shocking strength. ‘The lion was the winner!’
Till that moment, Leo had been sure it was all guff. The Long Eye. Old tales and superstitions. What else could it be? But looking into Rikke’s wild, wet eyes, pupils swollen up so big there was no iris left at all but only black pits with no bottom, he felt the hairs on his neck rise and the skin on his spine tingle. Suddenly he began to doubt.
Or maybe he began to believe.
‘Am I the lion?’ he whispered.
But she’d closed her eyes, sagged back in the straw, her limp hand dropping from his.
‘Out you go, now, boy,’ said Isern, shoving his boots and his shirt into his arms.
‘Am I the lion?’ he called again, for some reason desperate to know.
‘Lion?’ Isern laughed as she pushed him out into the yard. ‘Ass, maybe.’ And she kicked the door shut.
No Unnecessary Sentiment
‘My father thinks very highly of you.’
Inquisitor Teufel’s permanently narrowed eyes swivelled from the sunny country slipping past the window to Savine, but she said nothing. To have called her hard-looking would have been an epic understatement. She appeared to be chiselled from flint. Her chin and cheekbones jutted, her nose was blunt and slightly bent with two marked creases above the bridge from constant frowning, her dark hair was shot with grey and bound back tightly as a murderer’s shackles.
Savine flashed her artfully constructed artless smile, the one people usually could not help returning. ‘And he’s not a man who gives praise lightly.’
Teufel acknowledged that with the faintest nod, but kept her silence. Compliments can coax more from some people than torture, and Savine had found compliments relayed from some respected third party most effective of all. But Teufel’s locks were not so easily picked. She swayed faintly with the jolting of the carriage, face as guarded as a bank vault.
Savine could not help shifting at a sudden pang. With impeccable timing, her menses were starting early, the familiar dull ache through her belly and down the backs of her thighs with an occasional sharp twinge into