forbearance. He had been willing to overlook the fact that he had been paying
her debts with his soul ever since an archmage had cursed him on her account,
but he was not willing to ignore the fact that she refused to abstain from
taking down magicians. It might be her right, in general, to slay sorcerers, but
it was not her right to do it here, where he was pinned tight between law and
morality as it was. The whole conundrum of how he might successfully deal with
Cime was something he did not want to contemplate. So he did not, just then,
only walked, cold brown grass between his toes, to the near side of the chest
high wooden fence behind which, on happier days, his men schooled Ilsigs and
each other. Today they were making a bier there, dragging dry branches from the
brake beyond Vashanka’s altar, a pile of stones topping a rise, due east, where
the charioteers worked their teams.
Sweat never stayed long enough to drip in the chill winter air, but breaths
puffed white from noses and mouths in the taut pearly light, and grunts and
taunts carried well in the crisp morning air. Tempus ducked his head and rubbed
his mouth to hide his mirth as a stream of scatological invective sounded: one
of the branch-draggers exhorting the loungers to get to work. Were curses
soldats, the Stepsons would all be men of ease. The fence-sitters, counter
cursing the work-boss gamely, slipped to the ground; the loungers gave up their
wall. In front of him, they pretended to be untouched by the ill omen of
accidental death. But he, too, was uneasy in the face of tragedy without reason,