“I am cursed,” said Fury. She poured herself another tot. “Did you suppose ‘Fury’ is my birth name?”

Hereward shook his head slowly.

“Perhaps I am blessed,” continued the woman. She smiled her small, toothy smile again, and drank. “You will see when the fighting starts. Your puppet knows, doesn’t it? Those blue eyes . . . it will be safe enough, but you’d best keep your distance. It’s the tall men and the well-favoured that she must either bed or slay, and it’s all I can do to point her towards the foe . . . “

“Who is she?” asked Hereward. It took some effort to keep his voice calm and level. At the same time he let his hand slowly fall to his side, fingers trailing across the hilt of his parrying dagger.

“What I become,” said Fury. “A fury indeed, when battle is begun.”

She made a sign with her hand, her fingers making a claw. Her nails had grown, Hereward saw, but not to full talons. Not yet. More discoloured patches—spots—had also appeared on her face, making it obvious the permanent one near her eye was not a powder-burn at all.

“You were a sister of Chelkios, the Leoparde,” stated Hereward. He did not have Fitz’s exhaustive knowledge of cross-dimensional entities, but Chelkios was one of the more prominent deities of the old Kvarnish Empire. Most importantly from his point of view, at least in the longer term, it was not proscribed.

“I was taken from Her by slavers when I was but a novice, a silly little thing who disobeyed the rules and left the temple,” said Fury. She took another drink. “A true sister controls the temper of the beast. I must manage with rum, for the most part, and the occasional . . .”

She set her cup down, stood up and held her hand out to Hereward and said, “Distraction.”

Hereward also stood, but did not immediately take her hand. Two powerful instincts warred against each other, a sensuous thrill that coursed through his whole body versus a panicked sense of self-preservation that emanated from a more rational reckoning of threat and chance.