ravaged the Maze, had passed his lips. Tempus blew out a noisy breath, grunted,
then pushed off from where he leaned against the whitewashed barracks wall. He
would go out to see what headway the band had made with the bier and the games,
set for sundown behind the walled estate. He did not need to question the boy
further, only to listen to his own heart.
He was not unaware of the ominous events of the preceding evening: sleep was
never his. He had made a midnight creep through the sewage tunnels into
Kadakithis’ most private apartments, demonstrating that the old palace was
impossible to secure, in hopes that the boy-prince would stop prattling about
“winter palace/summer palace” and move his retinue into the new fortress Tempus
had built for him on the eminently defensible spit near the lighthouse with that
very end in mind. So it was that he had heard firsthand from the prince (who all
the while was making a valiant attempt not to bury his nose in a scented
handkerchief he was holding almost casually but had fumbled desperately to find
when first Tempus appeared, reeking of sewage, between two of his damask bedroom
hangings) about the killer mist and the dozen lives it claimed. Tempus had let
his silence agree that the mages must be right, such a thing was totally
mystifying, though the “thunder without rain” and its results had explained
itself to him quite clearly. Nothing is mysterious after three centuries and
more of exploring life’s riddles, except perhaps why gods allow men magic, or