For him… all that done for him. He could never get used to it. And no matter how many times Mriga and Siveni protested that it was nothing, that they would do it again, he could not believe them. Oh, they believed it when they said it.
But their faces from day to day, as Siveni came home looking drawn and grim from the job she had made for herself, as Mriga looked at her goddess-sister with pity, and at Harran with helpless, slightly sorrowful love-their faces betrayed them. They were exiled from the heaven where they belonged, and condemned to this wretched hole of a town, for his sake.
There must be something I could do, he thought.
The breath went out of him in annoyance as he sighted the enamel house not far away. He had been something of a sorcerer once; most of the priests of Siveni had been, since there was as much use for magic in the healing and building arts as anywhere else. But since Stonnbringer arrived, all other gods’ powers were diminished-that was half his problem-and after the globes were destroyed, spells tended to fall to pieces or produce unlikely results.
Just ahead of him, a small ragged man crouched in an alleyway, wearing a furtive look. He glanced up at Harran, looked very cautiously around him, and whispered,
“Dust? You want some dust, mister?”
Harran stopped and glared at the dustmonger, who shifted uneasily under the stare. “I don’t want anything of Storm-bringer’s,” he said. “As if that stuff does anything… which it doesn’t.” And he brushed past and made for the chamel house.