“No,” he replied, which wasn’t exactly a lie, but it wasn’t exactly the truth either.
“Then why are we headed there?”
“Because we must,” he answered with finality.
But she clearly didn’t understand the conversation was over. “For something other than the prophecy?”
Before he could retort, Kaz leaned out around him and snarled back at her. “Do not pester Master Bloodthorne with inane questions and mindless prattle!”
Damien didn’t need to see the girl to know she had been offended by that; it was clear in the small, vexed noise she made.
“Master,” said Kaz, turning fully to him and balancing between the knoggelvi’s pointed ears, “why are we dragging this harlot along behind us?”
“Harlot?” Her voice was barely more than a breath as she repeated the word like it had never been spoken in her presence before.
Kaz hissed, baring all his crooked teeth then looked back to Damien, composed once again.
“She is…integral to my machinations.” The imp didn’t need to know the details of this particular screw up.
“Surely there are warm bodies all across the realm, Master. Why totethisprostitute the entire journey?”
“I’m not a prostitute!” she chirped. “Tell him I’m not a prostitute.”
Kaz hopped up onto Damien’s shoulder, talons digging into his leather armor. Damien would have knocked him right off if the imp didn’t just as quickly propel onto the rump of the knoggelvi. “You will address Master Bloodthorne only as Master or My Lord, wench!”
“Well,myname is Amma.” There was a quiver to her voice as she struggled to retain the last bit of her poise. “Can you please use that instead of insults?”
“Never, you filthy whore!”
Damien’s temple twitched at the imp’s screeching. “Kaz, that’s enough. I would prefer less bickering, regardless of her profession.”
“But I’mnota prostitute.” Her voice was pivoting from offended to a full-on whine, and Damien had a brief vision of just tossing her and the imp right off the mountain before blowing out a long sigh.
He glanced back at her, sitting astride the knoggelvi in baggy clothes and wearing a look like she might cry, neither particularly attractive. “Clearly you are not—you’re nowhere near as virtuous as a prostitute, are you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re a thief—you don’t fairly exchange services for coin.”
“I…” her voice trailed off into a squeak.
“The strumpet should still address you properly and with respect!” Kaz’s talons were beginning to irritate the knoggelvi as he stomped on its rump. “She dares make demands of you and does not even bother to call you master!”
“She does not need to call me master.” He glared back out at the road ahead, cold and empty. “In fact, she does not need to speak to me at all.”
“Ah, you see!” Kaz snickered in a watery, annoyingly satisfied way. “The harlot should keep her mouth shut. No more stupid questions and no more pestering Master Bloodthorne.” As the imp scrambled up Damien’s back, he winced, and then Kaz propelled himself off his shoulder and landed on the neck of the knoggelvi again with a useless flap of his wings. The girl clicked her tongue, but remained otherwise silent. “But, my lord, that does not explain why she is with us at all on so important a mission. Is she for eating? Sacrificing? She doesn’t seem very useful.”
Damien peered over the imp’s head. Craggy earth rose up on either side of the pathway, and just ahead, two curved, stone columns were set into the mountainside. Massive and towering, the crescent shapes marked the border of the lands wholly under the control of Aszath Koth. The mountain’s miasma was weaker, and beyond those gates it would quickly dissolve. “She is useful,” said Damien absently, feeling the change in the air.
Kaz grumbled, taking another look at her by peering around Damien. “You said she’s a thief?”
“Not a very good one.”
“Is she also a mage?”
Damien could only assume not; she’d given no hint she used arcana nor radiated any magical aura, something Damien could typically feel. “No.”
He scrunched up the snub of his nose. “An assassin?”
