“As a woman?”
“Yes.” After a moment’s silence: “I do not mean to offend you.”
“I’m not offended. Puzzled, more like. Outside of a few in the movement, who understand me, I’ve always found that I intimidate men. Or, what’s worse, they see me as some sort of bizarre challenge.”
She sat up and stirred the fire into life. She motioned to me and I moved over beside her.
“I don’t understand your loyalties,” she said.
“That’s because they are so different from yours,” I replied. “You don’t really understand, I think, how little being an Ozarine means to me. Just as I don’t understand, I think, how you can be so devoted to your cause.” I hesitated, groping for words. “My whole life has been—how can I put it? I think only in terms of individuals, specific people. People in general are an abstraction to me.”
“That seems kind of narrow.”
“It probably is. I’m not boasting about it, it’s just the way I am. When I think about it, I actually admire the way you look at things. But I can’t feel it myself.”
“So why did you agree to help me escape from Goimr?”
“Because it was you.”
She fell silent for a moment, then started weeping. I was utterly astonished. She was such a formidable person, that I had never imagined her crying. And even her crying had a kind of basal agony to it. These were not dainty tears dabbed up with a handkerchief, the kind I had seen shed by many a lady. Her sobs were a deep racking, which echoed ancient pain.
“I’m sorry,” I said, after she regained control. “I didn’t mean to—”
“You don’t have to apologize. It’s just—when you said, ‘because of you,’ it reminded me. My brother said that to me, once. After I threw him out—” Her face grew suddenly stiff and hard. “Never mind that. I didn’t see him for several years. Refused to see him. But then I was captured by the police—stupid, really, but I was so tired I’d fallen asleep because I’d been— Never mind. Anyway, they had me chained up and were drooling over the prospect of interrogating me. Interrogation, that’s what they call it. We lowlifes call it rape and torture. Anyway, that’s when my brother came into the police station.”
She smiled. “I didn’t know whether to be happy or mad! But at the time, I was mostly just laughing to watch the porkers. I think two of them died of fright before my brother even got his hands on them. And, by the smell, all of them had crapped their pants.” Her smile became utterly wicked. “I’ll say this, their fear was short-lived.”
Seeing my frown of puzzlement, she said: “Obviously, you’ve never met my brother.”
“No. Not so far as I’m aware, at least.” Suddenly a thought came to me. I suspect my jaw fell. “Wait a minute. Wolfgang called you Gwendolyn Greyboar.”
“It’s my last name—Greyboar.”
“Your brother isn’t—the Greyboar?”
“You’ve heard of him?”
“Who hasn’t? The world’s greatest strangler, my uncles say. They’re quite the fans of him, actually. There’s some Ozarine strangler who’s all the rage in Ozar nowadays, but my uncles sneer at him. ‘All your great historic chokesters have been Groutch,’ they say, ‘and Greyboar’s as good as the legends.’ They also say that—”
“I don’t want to hear about it!” she snarled. The iron mask was back on her face. But after a few seconds, her expression softened.
“I just don’t want to talk about it. I hate this mystique about stranglers. No different from cheap thugs, as far as I’m concerned, except they’re not cheap. Oh, no! Only work for top dollar, stranglers. Exclusive clientele. Professional murderers, that’s all they are, with a shiny respectable gloss.”
She took a deep breath. “So anyway, here’s my brother, gets me out of there. And afterward I told him—’There’s people being murdered, raped and tortured by porkers all over Grotum, and you never gave a damn. So why’d you come here?'”
She looked at me. “‘Because it was you,’ he said.”
“I see. I reminded you of him.”
“Yes. And no. You’re a lot alike, actually, in some ways.”