under amber skirts. “Lastel, I must have the night air, or faint away. Where is
our host? We must thank him for a more complete hospitality than I had thought
to find….”
The habitually pompous priest was simpering with undisguised delight, causing
Lastel to raise an eyebrow, though Cime tugged coquettishly at his sleeve, and
inquire as to its source: “Lord Molin?”
“It is nothing, dear man, nothing. Just so long since I have heard court
Rankene-and from the mouth of a real lady. . . .” The Rankan priest, knowing
well that his wife’s reputation bore no mitigation, chose to make sport of her,
and of his town, before the foreign noblewoman did. And to make it more clear to
Lastel that the joke was on them-the two Sanctuarites-and for the amusement of
the voluptuous gray-eyed woman, he bowed low, and never did answer her genteel
query as to the whereabouts of the First Hazard.
By the time he had promised to give their thanks and regards to the absent host
when he saw him, the lady was gone, and Molin Torch-holder was left wishing he
knew what it was that she saw in Lastel. Certainly it was not the dogs he
raised, or his fortune, which was modest, or his business … well, yes, it
might have been just that … drugs. Some who knew said the best krrf-black
and Garonne-stamped-came from Lastel’s connections. Molin sighed, hearing his
wife’s twitter among the crowd’s buzz. Where was that Hazard? The damn Mageguild
was getting too arrogant. No one could throw a bash as star-studded as this one
and then walk away from it as if the luminaries in attendance were nonentities.