Fortunately there was plenty of work to be had in Sanctuary these days. The new city walls were being made from cut and dressed stone; there were picks and mauls in need of constant repair and replacement. Dubro had both a journeyman and an apprentice working beside him at the forge these days, and he talked of building a larger furnace beyond the rising walls. Verily, a fortune could be made these days in Sanctuary, but the pump needed priming and it seemed to Illyra that their coin hoard shrank rather than increased.
She was half S’danzo, fully gifted with their preternatural clairvoyance but bereft of their tolerance for haphazard poverty. She was half Rankan, through her father’s blood, and craved the material security that was the heritage of that empire’s middle class. And, of course, her S’danzo Sight could offer no assurances to her Rankan anxieties. Even without Trevya, Illyra would have lost many a night’s sleep this season.
As it was, she balanced on the edge between dreaming and waking, and her thoughts spiraled far beyond her control. Trevya’s face drifted toward her, like a leaf on the wind or driftwood with the tide. Illyra called her mind’s eye back, but it did not come and the face grew into a full Seeing of a child running through a neat flower garden, arms out- stretched, silently laughing and singing a single word over and over again.
Illyra cried out, breaking the thrall of the Seeing but not disturbing her husband who, in truth, was accustomed to her cries in the night. The seeress, still bound in Dubro’s protection, stared into the night deter- mined now to remain fully awake. The vision would not be denied and inserted itself mto her thoughts, demanding interpretation.