Page 23

“Is there?” she scoffed.

“Aye. One is a man talking because he has something to say. The other is a man talking because he cannae bear the quiet. Ye didnae strike me as someone who minded quiet.”

“I daenae mind it,” Freya shot back. “I mind yer quiet.”

“And what is wrong with me quiet?”

“It’s very loud.”

He made a sound that might have been a laugh, if a man could laugh through his nose without moving his face.

“Ye never answered,” she pointed out.

“Answered what?”

“Whether ye’ve killed as many people as they say.”

“How many do they say?”

Freya was silent for a moment. “Depends on who is telling it. Aileen said a hundred. The stable lad said a thousand. Dougal wouldnae give a number, which was worse.”

“And what do ye think?”

“I think that someone who’s killed a thousand men and women wouldnae have bothered saving a stranger from two drunks in an inn. He’d have turned his back and finished his ale.”

“Fewer than a thousand,” he admitted. “More than I’d like.”

“That’s nae an answer either.”

“It’s the only one ye’ll get, lass.”

He could see that she wasn’t going to let this go. She’d keep pushing until she got an answer.

“More than fifty?”

“Aye.”

“More than a hundred?”

“Freya.”

“More than a hundred, then.”

“I didnae say that.”

“Ye didnae say nay, either.”

“I daenae keep a tally, lass. It’s nae the sort of thing a man carves on a stick.”

“But ye ken. Roughly.”

“Roughly.”

“So?”

He looked at her. She looked straight back, chin up, grip on the reins loose, not a flicker of fear in her eyes, only that terrible stubborn curiosity, like a bairn poking a sleeping dog to see what it would do.

“Enough that I stopped counting,” he allowed. “And enough that I wish I hadnae.”