more than omens fit for days to come. And he shivered, upon his horse, wishing
his partner were there up ahead instead of Janni, and that his maat was within
him, and that they rode Syrese byways or the Azehuran plain, where magic did not
vie with gods for mortal allegience, or take souls in tithe.
When they dismounted at the Alekeep, he had come to a negotiated settlement
within himself: he would wait to see if what Tempus said was true, if his maat
would return to him once his teammate’s spirit ascended to heaven on a pillar
of flame. He was not unaware of the rhythmic nature of enlightenment through
the precession of events. He had come to Ranke with his partner at Abarsis’
urging; he remembered the Slaughter Priest from his early days of ritual and
war, and had made his own decision, not followed blindly because his left-side
leader wished to teach Ran kans the glory of his name. When the elder fighter
had put it to him, his friend had said that it might be time for Nikodemos to
lead his own team-after Ranke, without doubt, the older man would lay down his
sword. He had been dreaming, he had said, of mother’s milk and waving crops
and snot-nosed brats with wooden shields, a sure sign a man is done with damp
camps and bloody dead stripped in the field.
So it would have happened, this year, or the next, that he would be alone. He
must come to terms with it; not whine silently like an abandoned child, or seek
a new and stronger arm to lean on. Meditation should have helped him, though he
recalled a parchment grin and a toothless mouth instructing him that what is