Bokelskere.no

She came out from the bushes. Two men crouched by a campfire, a pot steaming over it. One had a thick beard, a wood-axe in his fist. Before he lifted it halfway Monza slashed him across the eyes and he fell down, screaming. The other turned to run and she spitted him through the back before he got a stride. The bearded man roared and roared, hands clutching at his face. She stabbed him in the chest, and he groaned out a few wet breaths, then stopped.

She frowned down at the two corpses while the sounds of fighting slowly petered out. Benna crept from the trees, and he took the bearded man's purse from his belt, and he tipped a heavy wedge of silver coins out into his palm. "He has seventeen scales." It was twice as much as the whole crop had been worth.He held the other man's purse out to her, eyes wide. "This one has thirty." "Thirty?" Monza looked at the blood on her father's sword, and thought how strange it was that she was a murderer now. How strange it was that it had been so easy to do.

Easier than digging in the stony soil for a living. Far, far easier. Afterwards, she waited for the remorse to come upon her.She waited for a long time. It never came.

"I spent three years in the kitchens in Safety. The man who taught me used to be head cook to the Duke of Borletta."

"What was he doing in prison?"

"He killed his wife, and chopped her up, and cooked her in a stew, and ate it."

There was quiet around the table. Cosca noisily cleared his throat. "No one's wife in this stew, I trust?"

"The butcher said it was lamb, and I've no reason to doubt him. " Friendly picked up his fork. "No one sells human meat that cheap."

There was one of those uncomfortable silences that Friendly always seemed to produce when he said more than three words at once.