“About six of the piffs. Zip survived. He’s in lockup, for his own sake. And the city’s. Walegrin’s going to have a talk with him.”
“Who did it?”
Molin drew a careful breath and told him.
The headache had diminished. The malaise persisted, and discouraged attempts at philosophy; Ischade kept to her house, her hair immaculate, the mud scrubbed from her person, the salvageable roses off the damaged bush decorating a vase on the table, not for the beauty of them (they were black and the moisture-beads which stood on their petals from their watering shone blood-bright red in certain lights), but as a reminder of a task she did not want to undertake in her present mood and with her headache.
Having power, she set limits to it; having the ability to blast an enemy, she refrained from it for no altruistic motives, but because killing was very easy for her, and very seductive, and led to untidy consequences which resisted solution.
She had taken rare inventory of her stores, and tidied up a bit (rarer still).
Haught had kept things in some order. Stilcho had tried. She missed them, missed them today with outright maudlin melancholy, which both would have found bewildering.
Stilcho had fled, vanished. She might, she thought, find him.
The thought, as she paused with broom in hand, became quite inviting. Stilcho had shared her bed-many a night.
And died and waked. But that had been when her magic was unnaturally great. To do it now would risk him. And he had been loyal, he had saved Strat’s life, he had deserved some choice in his fate, which was patently and sanely not to come back to her.