But Kama, absorbing the picture she presented, had thrown her head back and laughed heartily at some private joke. She’d extended her filthy hand toward him and, using him as a brace, jumped to her feet.
“Buy me a drink, Walegrin; buy me a tun of the sourest wine in the Maze and you can be the best.”
They said magic had vanished from Sanctuary, but there was a cold, bright spark of magic that moment as they led the lame horse from Tick’s Cross, Kama listing against his shoulder-her laughter a quaver short of hysteria.
Molin Torchholder trusted her, including her in any strategy session her other duties allowed her to attend, and frequently accepting her opinions about
Sanctuary’s darker byways without question. She had been the one to convince them to go along with Tempus’s PFLS schemes when he, Molin, and half a dozen others had demanded Zip’s last drop of blood. But she was also Molin’s woman.
She shared his bed-and not simply because the Torch’s betrothal offer had gotten her out of a tight spot with the Stepsons. There was genuine passion between them as well as a mutual understanding of intrigue that gave anyone who had known either individually a shiver of apprehension whenever they were seen talking intensely to each other.
So Walegrin used his privileged position as a keeper of Sanctuary’s peace to wring not sour wine, but carefully aged, wicker-wrapped flasks of brandywine from one of the town’s better-off innkeepers. Then, still leading her horse, they’d hiked beyond the walls to an abandoned estate, now occupied by one of the