“All right.” She sighed. “I guess I’d better tell you Klikitagh’s story.”
“I’d rather hear about the deals with-“
“Tomorrow will do!” she interrupted. “Or more likely the day after.”
“I was afraid of that,” the master scribe muttered. “On the first full day of each of your visits to Sanctuary, you invariably have urgent busi- ness . . . Still, if this time you can afford to have Enas Yorl charm away the scar on your forehead”-brightening-“you’ll no longer present such an alarming aspect every time you shake aside your forelock.”
“It’s true that I intend to wait on Enas Yorl tomorrow, as I always do.” Jarveena wasn’t looking at him, but at the fading glories of the painted ceiling, on which the lamps and the flames from the dying logs combined to cast curious and intersecting shadows, as though some ma- gician were eavesdropping on them and letting his attention wander now and then from the spell that assured his invisibility. “But this time, not for my own sake.”
“For . . . his?” Reaching for his own mug, Melilot was so astonished he almost spilled the contents.
“Yes indeed.”
After that there was a lengthy silence, broken only by the occasional sputtering of a jet of gas boiled out from the dampest and longest-lasting log across the fire dogs.
Eventually noise drifted from outside: the tramp of booted feet on cobblestones. One of the night patrols was passing, composed of men trained locally to Hell-Hound standards of discipline; yet even they did not dare to venture abroad except in twos, so lawless and unruly was this premier melting pot of cities. The geese were accustomed to the sound of their passage, and the boss gander marked it with no more than an evil- sounding hiss.