“Nox didn’t say a word. He waited, counting the seconds in his mind. Sometimes you counted bullets and sometimes you counted time. Either one could kill you.”

“She looked at her right hand, where the index finger was cut to a stump. Some said she lost it in an accident, when she was playing soldier with a live grenade. Others said she was taught a lesson by the law, and they took her trigger finger to make her keep on learning. Those were the lessons the Coilhunter liked. Why, he was quite the teacher himself.”

“That was the thing about bad dreams in the Wild North. You still had them when you woke up.”