“Ssh.” Kama warned, and put her small hand to the flat of Strat’s back, pushing him toward the door like a wife who’d made a nightly trip o the Unicorn to bring her drunken husband home to bed. Snapper Jo aluted her with his raffish inhuman grin, dipping his bristly chin in a ;esture of respect.
Great. Homage from a fiend, friends in high places, estranged from her real friends because of that: because of Molin, who had another wife, Crit ind Gayle and Randal avoided her like the plague. Only Straton, in limilar circumstances, of all the men she’d campaigned with in the Wiz- ird Wars, acknowledged her. And Zip . . .
As Strat had jibed, Zip was another of her lovers. Men used their nuscle and their sex for intimidation, and no one thought ill of them for t. Kama was a different sort of operator, but used what she had to. Whatever worked to do the job. It stung her to the quick the way the men she’d fought beside treated her now, simply because she’d let the high priest wield his influence to help her. If her father had had a dozen lovers, or a hundred victims of his holy aping member, no Sanctuarite would have snickered or presumed to criticize. Maybe she should strip her next bed partner at knifepoint, prove herself her father’s daughter to one and all. Maybe then Crit would stop looking past her when they met . . .
Strat stumbled in the doorway, belched, and staggered down the stairs to the street. The bay horse whickered, its ears pricked. Kama shivered. The damned thing was dead as a doornail, just didn’t know it. Strat didn’t seem to know it either: he fumbled in his pouch, came up with a chunk of sugarbeet, and held it out on an open palm.