Or not.
Down by the docks, alone, Critias ponders that question. Do the beg- gar armies deserve the warm sun on their face? Do the vampire’s undead, over in Shambles Cross, need the kiss of sunlight? Can there be a bright morning for the mages, barricaded inside their fortress where dusk al- ways reigns? Will Zip and his nightcrawlers among the Peoples Front for the Liberation of Sanctuary tip the balance for or against the seasons’ change? And does it matter if spring ever comes to this blighted thieves’ world again?
For Tempus has gone, turned his back on everything and everyone. No more eloquent an omen could be taken from a dozen slaughtered lambs with jaundiced livers or the birth of twins joined at the lips.
Gone and left . . . what? Left Crit, is what-Crit, in putative charge of the ungovernable, so that Crit’s partner, Straton, had turned and walked away without a word. Gone somewhere was Strat, and not to the departed armies, either. No, Strat hadn’t gone upcountry with the Rid- dier, west to meet Niko and then embark on a secret sortie for Theron, emperor of Ranke. Strat, Crit was sure, had gone another way: down to embrace the darkness that was his lover, Ischade the vampire who held sway in Shambles Cross, down to the White Foal River where corpses floated till they waked. Down into hell and this time it wasn’t Crit’s fault, but Tempus’s, who usually had more concern for the faring of his men.
But there’d been no reasoning with Tempus, who’d pulled the Stepsons out en masse, and the 3rd Commando with them, leaving the town to its own devices.