Dubro nodded to himself, letting her statements shore up his own convictions. The old S’danzo’s eyes narrowed. At her age, Sight was a secondary gift. Her chiefmost asset was her long knowledge of mortal behavior. The Termagant could read as much in a gesture as the S’danzo Sight might have revealed in her cards.
“If she waits much longer,” the crusty woman admitted, “that path may well rise up to bite her feet. It is not to be denied.” “But she will deny it, amoushka”-a S’danzo diminutive for grand- mother or elder seeress. “She sees Trevya wherever she turns, but her heart only grows harder.”
The Termagant snorted. “She is a little fool who should by now know what happens when children get tangled up in the Sight and fate.”
Even swollen with strong-backed workers from every comer of the empire, Sanctuary was still a small place where no one was by more than three or four degrees a stranger to anyone else. It took a determined insularity to live in rumorless ignorance; it was utterly impossible to live in privacy. The entire city had known about Illyra’s first children and the Termagant was informed about her well-cared-for but unwelcome not- daughter.
“The longer your wife denies what her Sight has shown her, the more inevitable it becomes, blacksmith. Glimpsed once, fate is a weak thing subject to change and uncertainty-especially for the young. But repeat- edly glimpsed and denied, as Illyra has done . . .” The Termagant shook her head and chortled softly to herself. “Ah, nothing in this life is acci- dental. Perhaps she knows what she’s doing; not even Illyra is stronger than fate.”