Help the garrison commander and the hierarchy restore some order here, that’s your job. You’re a good intelligence collector. Collect, her fa- ther had said to her, but nothing more. Nothing personal, nothing be- yond what was said in that meeting where the rear guard was singled out.
And Crit had stared boldly at her across the table in the safe house, knowing already whom Tempus was intending to name as commander- in-chief of Sanctuary’s disparate armed forces. Knowing she’d have to come to him, be under his command.
It stank. She kicked her roan and slapped its poll and, under diverse and punitive instruction, it settled down. Jogging beside the half-drunken Straton toward the river, she wished she was anywhere else, doing any- thing else. Trying to keep Zip from making this sort of mistake wasn’t her job, but Crit’s.
Straton knew that, too, but hadn’t voiced it. Crit was head of the combined militias, including the fifty grunts that made up Walegrin’s regular army barracks, but Zip, like Aye-Gophlan, was an undercom- mander, responsible for the second and third shifts each day.
Only Crit, or someone from the palace hierarchy, could tell Zip to leave the riverside altar be and make it stick.
But Kama would die before she went to Crit and asked him to solve a problem she couldn’t. Bringing Strat into it made the message she was sending the more clear: We who love you won’t be treated this way. You’ve snubbed us both for your precious command, now live with it. But don’t expect us to bow and scrape.