rumbled.
‘If I had met you long ago, or if you liked horses, there would be a chance. You
have done me a great service. More than that pouch holds. I am seldom in any
man’s debt, but you, I own, can call me anytime.’
‘You paid me. Hell Hound. I am content,’ Hanse had demurred, confused by
weakness where he had never imagined it might dwell. Then he saw the Hell Hound
fish out a snuffbox of krrf, and thought he understood.
But later, he went back to Amoli’s and hung around the steps, cautiously petting
the big man’s horse, the krrf he had sniffed making him willing to dodge the
beast’s square, yellow teeth.
4
She had come to him, had Cime. She was what she was, what she had always been.
It was Tempus who was changed: Vashanka had entered into him, the Storm God who
was Lord of Weapons who was Lord of Rape who was Lord of War who was Lord of
Death’s Gate.
He could not take her, gently. So spoke not his physical impotence, as he might
have expected, but the cold wash of wisdom: he would not despoil her; Vashanka
would accept no less.
She knocked and entered and said, ‘Let me see them,’ so sure he would have the
stolen diamonds that her fingers were already busy on the lacings of her Ilsig
leathers.
He held up a hide-wrapped bundle, slimmer than her wrist, shorter than her
forearm. ‘Here. How were they thieved?’
‘Your voice is hoarser than I have ever heard it,’ she replied, and: ‘I needed
money; there was this man … actually, there were a few, but there was a tough,
a streetbrawler. I should have known – he is half my apparent age. What would