“Let me.” She moved in despite the hazard from both, put out a calm hand, and touched the Tros’s bowed forehead; it was a little exertion. Her head throbbed and it cost her more than she had thought. But the horse steadied, and his breathing grew more regular. “There.”
Tempus wiped and rubbed, walked the horse in a little circle on the level ground. And never said a word.
“He’s all right,” she said. He knew her magics, that they could heal-others with some skill; her own hurts with less effectiveness. He had seen her work before.
He looked her way. She demanded no gratitude, nor expected any. There was a sour taste in her mouth for this abuse of an animal. Their personal discomfiture she could find irony in. Not this.
She stood with her arms folded and her cloak about her while Tempus carefully, without a word, threw the sweated blanket and the saddle on. The Tros ducked its head and scratched its cheek on its foreleg, as if abashed.
He finished the cinch and gathered up the reins, looked once her direction, and then swung up.
And rode off without a word.
She heaved a sigh, the cloak wrapped about her despite the steamy warmth of the night. Hoofbeats diminished on the cobbles.
The wide focus had disappeared, along with the ennui. Dawn was lightening the east. She walked back along the path and closed the gate behind her, opened the door, arms folded and head bowed.
Her perspective had vanished, together with the ennui, from the time that they had met in the alley. And since that encounter in the ruin, something had nagged at her which said danger, which had nothing to do with human spite. It did have something to do with what they had carried out uptown, some misfortune which encompassed her and perhaps Tempus.