Cha-bos cried, the snake disappeared, and Illyra was surrounded by a mixed cohort of palace guards. Rankan, Ilsigi, and Beysib by the look of them. they were united by the steadiness with which they kept their well- sharpened spears pointed at her throat.
The guards saw their duty; no one would blame them for not following procedure when the child of an avatar of one goddess was bounced on the floor by the mother of another. For once Sanctuary proved itself a place of law and due process. Not even the protests of the prince and the Beysa combined could free the S’danzo from the ordeal of reporting to the watch commander.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” the prince assured Illyra as he joined the bristling circle escorting her from the nursery. (Shupansea remained behind, watching her daughter and looking for her snake.) “It’s just a formality. Sign your name a few times and it will all be over.”
This brought little comfort to the seeress who signed her name with an X like almost everyone else in Sanctuary.
It might have been different if Dubro had accompanied his wife-for he had begun life destined to be a scribe, not a blacksmith, and remem- bered what he now had little use for. Unfortunately Deibro wasn’t even at the forge when a liveried palace servitor made his appearance there, and Suyan was awed into incoherence.
Not that Dubro had told her where he was going when he banked the fire and lowered the leather awning that separated the entrance to his workplace from the entrance to Illyra’s. He could hardly admit to him- self that he was going to the back wall where the other S’danzo seeresses made camp, to ask their advice.