it feels like to have people flinch away from you- bothers you terribly, doesn’t
it, Stilcho? You ran right out there to collect this bit of dogmeat just because
Moria was going to do it, just because death doesn’t mean a damn to you and you
wanted to do something she wanted, you wanted her to look at you and not flinch,
you want her, don’t you, you sorry excuse for a living man?”
“Stop it,” Moria cried.
“I just want the ones I love to know themselves the way I know them. Isn’t that
fair? I think we ought all to know where we stand. You want to go to bed with
him? He’s dying to.”
“That’s very funny,” Stilcho said. “Excuse him, Moria, he’s not himself.”
She clenched her hands together to stop their shaking and clenched her jaw and
stared up the bit she had to go to stare Haught in the eyes. “Well, dead, he’s
still got a heart in him. Where’s yours? They beat it out of you?”
It scored. It scored all too well. For a moment she thought she would die for
that, and she ought to be scared; but she was what he had said, she was a
gutter-rat, and a rat was a coward until it got cornered, its back to two walls.
Then it would fight anything. And these were her walls. This was her house. “My
house, damn you, and mind your manners, I don’t care what you’ve brought in with
that damn jug. Get this man off my floor, put him to bed where he belongs, get
this other poor thing set down somewhere where he won’t scare my servants, and
let me go up and take a bath, I’ve had enough of this goings-on.”
“There’s a love.” Haught chucked her under the chin. She hit at his hand. “Go