One-Eye handled it better than Goblin. He managed to escape occasionally, going out to the old battlefield to prowl among his memories. Sometimes I joined him, halfway tempted to take up Lady's invitation to open a few old graves.

"Still not comfortable about what happened?" One-Eye asked one afternoon, as I stood leaning on a bowstave over a marker bearing the name and sigil of the Taken who had been called the Faceless Man. One-Eye's tone was as serious as it ever gets.

"Not entirely," I admitted. "I can't pin it down, and it don't matter much now, but when you reflect on what happened here, it don't add up. I mean, it did at the time. It all looked like it was inevitable. A great kill-off that rid the world of a skillion Rebels and most of the Taken, leaving the Lady a free hand and setting her up for the Dominator at the same time. But in the context of later events... "

One-Eye had started to stroll, pulling me along in his wake. He came to a place that was not marked at all, except in his memory. A thing called a forvalaka had perished there. A thing that had slaughtered his brother—maybe—way back in the days when we first became involved with Soulcatcher, the Lady's legate to Beryl. The forvalaka was a sort of vampirous wereleopard originally native to One-Eye's own home jungle, somewhere way down south. It had taken One-Eye a year to catch up with and have his revenge upon this one.

"You're thinking about how hard it was to get rid of the Limper," he said. His voice was thoughtful. I knew he was recalling something I thought he had put out of mind.