Excerpt: The Strangeness of Dimity Bound

“I have a man in my bed,” she told Timtam, reminded by that thought, “and I’ve your servants to thank for it. I appreciate the loan of them, though perhaps they did not tell you what they would be about when they left you. I am headed to the cobbler, to see what clothes he might have for my guest. Would you care to join me?”

“You jest?” he asked uncertainly. He fell in with Jaya as she turned her steps towards the street again.

“Only by inference,” she admitted. “He fell into the sheep pastures this morning, and required a bath. Perhaps he will wake up. Perhaps he will not, in which case Rachel will find a home for him in one of her graves. She has more of them to spare than I have beds.”

“I have filled several of them with my enemies,” he said with sudden fierceness.

“How gratifying for your neighbors,” she said. “I trust you number us — all of us, I should say — as among your friends?”

Timtam dropped his hand on his sword, a ruby ring winking bright and bloody at her. “Creatures of corruption and foulness,” he declared, ignoring her. “I fought a great horned beast at the pass into the mountains, and rescued a man tied to him by a leash. Doubtless the animal wished to eat him. It was a difficult battle. The beast’s hide was tough and thick, and he was swift for his size. In the end, the blood royal prevailed, and I accepted the man’s thanks, though he expressed them strangely. I did not speak his language.”

“Ah.”

“I brought its head back to the village for Lady Rachel to put in a grave. She said, ‘Alas, the son of the McDonald, without the special sauce,’ which she told me is a mantra common among her people when a mighty foe is conquered. I find it peculiar, but her ways are not mine.”

“Ah,” Jaya said again, and then asked thoughtfully, “Did the beast say, ‘moo’ at any point, by chance?”

His face began to darken.

“Simply a notion I had,” she said.