strings to his bow: trading in spices, for instance.’
For a while Jarveena had seemed enlivened by his discourse. Now she fell back
into gloom.
‘Why should I want to make myself rich, let alone him? Ever since I can remember
I’ve had a purpose in life. Ifs gone – carried to the sky with the stench of
Nizharu!’
‘It takes a very rich person to commission a spell.’
‘What would I want with magic?’ she said contemptuously.
A second later, and it was as though fire coursed all over her body, outlining
every mark that defaced her, every whiplash, every burn, every cut and scratch.
She had forgotten until now, but sometime during that extraordinary night when
she had lain with him, he had taken the trouble to trace her whole violent life
story from the map of her skin.
Now she also remembered thinking that it must be for some private magical
reason. Could she have been wrong? Could it have been simpler than that – could
it just have been that he sympathized with one whom life had scarred in another
way?
‘You might wish,’ he was saying calmly, ‘to cleanse your body of the past as I
think you have now begun to cleanse your mind.’
‘Even …?’ She could not complete the question save by raising her hand to the
right side of her chest.
‘In time. You are young. Nothing is impossible. But one thing is much too
possible. We’ve spoken of it. Now, act!’
They were almost at the gate, and the crowd was pressing and’ jostling; people
were setting their hands to their money-belts and pouches, for these were prime
conditions for theft.