Stilcho was the best, thus far, this dead man who, whenever he could, gave her more gentleness than anyone had ever given but a strange doomed lord who still filled her dreams and her daydreams. Stilcho held her gently, Stilcho never demanded, never struck her. Stilcho gave something back, but he took-Shipri and
Shalpa, he took; he drained her patience and her strength, waked her at night with his nightmares, harried her with his wild fancies and his talk of hell. She could not provide enough money to get them out of this misery, and a single mention of seeking help from Ischade drew irrational rage from him, made him scream at her, which in her other men had ended with blows, always with blows.
So she flinched and kept silent and went out again to steal, her bright Rankene hair done up in a brown scarf, her face unwashed, her body anonymous and all but sexless in the ragged clothes she wore.
But desperation drove her now. She thought again and again of the things she had known, the luxuries she had had in the beautiful house, the gold and the silver that would have melted in the fire that ended that life. And even among
Sanctuary’s brazen thieves there was a notable reluctance to venture into that charred ruin; they came, of course. But none of them knew building from building or where the walls had stood, or where certain tables had been.
So when evening fell she went back again and began her sooty search, furtive as the rats which had become common in this stricken district, hiding from other searchers. She had never yet found a thing, not the silver, not the gold, which must exist as a flat puddle of cold metal somewhere below; but she had tunneled for weeks into the sooty ruin, and searched what had been the hall.