Chapter sixteen
A corpse speaksSteel! Steel! Useless...
That beautiful drexer fashioned in the armories of Valka, designed to take all the best of the Havilfarese thraxter, the Vallian clanxer and what we could contrive of the Savanti Sword — all that skill and cunning, that knowledge and craft — all wasted, impotent, useless...
I went down the stairs so fast I almost pitched onto my nose. The werewolf saw me. His eyes, reddened in the lamps’ glare, seemed to shoot sparks. The saliva that dripped between his fangs hung thick and clotted. He panted. He looked what he was, vicious and deadly and utterly without understanding of human mercy.
He leaped the girl to get at me. He snarled up the stairs, lips drawn back blackly to bare those curved sharp fangs. His hair spiked in a thick brist
