"I have no idea what half the words you just said even mean," Bert said cheerfully, relaxing a little and tucking his thumbs into his gunbelts. "But I'm sure they're delicious words." It would have taken someone as observant as Bert himself was to see that he was looking at Nariko out of the very corner of his eye, assessing. He had a nasty, sinking feeling in his gut that they had fucked up, and he wasn't entirely sure how badly.

Well, he told himself, rather darkly, one more fuck-up to add to the heap, then. He wasn't running at a particularly good streak, right now.

Roland, for his part, had lapsed back into his usual unreadable silence, striding on down the road with his hand in Nariko's and his eyes ahead.