“I don’t think a massage counts as revenge.” “You haven’t been with my masseuse.” He laughed, and coughed, and spit. His spit landed with a solid fleshy sound in the sand, startling up a seven-legged sand-colored beetle that reared, bared sickle mandibles in protest, then scurried away. “She’s from those jungles south of the Shining Empire. Girls there are born with chisels for fingers and pistons for arms. Every other Thirdday she avenges each acre of forest I burned in the God Wars.” “She know you talk about her this way?” “Hells, I talk about her this way to her face. She only really opens
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