– and when they fled and hid, disappearing in the bogs, I kept hunting. I surprised them while they were helpless and hibernating for winter. I dug them from their burrows while they slept, dragging them out one by one.”
Harmless paused. He opened one fist, then the other weakened one.
“They had a name for me. The Painsmith – the greatest monster their kind had ever known.” Harmless stared down at the faded pattern of runes etched into his palms. “The ink that stains these hands was spilled from the Bog Noblins themselves.”
Harmless’s matter-of-fact tone could not hide a hint of remorse.
“I have many regrets,” he added finally. “But I’ve long since learned that regret is an emotion with few uses.”
Rye blinked with a sudden realisation. She’d often puzzled over how the extinct Bog Noblins could have returned, but sometimes the right answer was also the simplest one.
“You didn’t honour your bargain with the House of Longchance,” she whispered aloud. “You never finished the job. That’s why the Bog Noblins have come back.”
Harmless looked up from his hands.
“At the very end, when their numbers had been decimated and I could have made the Bog Noblins no more than fossils in a history book, I hesitated.”
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