Page 67

Loki walked as briskly as his twisted body would allow him, and didn’t notice for a long time just how slowly his new charge had to walk in order to keep pace. He didn’t say anything; the first thing Loki had had to rid himself of, upon joining the Ten Guards, was his propensity to be offended.

“If you’re to join us on the field,” Sister Nan-Tamé had told him, “and have the chance to prove yourself worth the sum we paid to get you here, then I don’t have time to listen to you complain. Particularly about your own pride. You are elite. You are a precious commodity. Or you will be. The only person you have to prove yourself to, anymore ... is me.”

There was no way that Loki was going to go back to his commanding officers and bitch about his pet giant’s strides being too long. Back at the Landing, where he and his mother had eked out a life before coming here to the ivory gemstone that was Moonguard, he would have been too incensed to think straight.

Now, he barely felt a twinge.

Or, at least, he tried to tell himself that.

“You’re big,” Loki said, “and you’re strong, and you have skills. But now we have to know if you can listen. You heard what they said. You’re my subordinate. Do you understand what that means, Sil’nathin?”

Loki stopped, turned, and waited.

The big man blinked. Then frowned. Then he said, “... Follow orders.”

Loki nodded. “That’s right. Are we going to have a problem with that?”

Another blink. Another frown.

Then: “... No.”