shirts-all manner of such things. She threw it at him; went to the table and
wrote a message. “Take this back to them if you dare. Can you read?”
“No,” he said.
She chuckled. “It says you’re free.” She took a purse from the table (another
relic) and gave that into his hand. “Stay in Sanctuary if you choose. Or go.
Take my word. They might kill you-but they might not. Not if they read that
note. Do as you please and get out of here.”
“They’ll find me,” he protested.
“Trust the note,” she said, “or use the back door and the bridge.”
She waved her hand. He hesitated one way and the other, went toward the front
and then fled for the back, for the riverside. She laughed aloud, watching his
flight from her doorway, watched him run, run down the riverside until the dark
swallowed him.
But after the laughter was dead she read the message they had sent her a second
time and burned it in the lamp, letting the ashes fall and scorch an amber silk,
carelessly.
So Vashanka’s faction went on wanting her services, and offered three times the
gold. She cared nothing for that at present, having all she cared to have. She
cared not to be more conspicuous, no, not if they offered her a palace for her
services. And they could.
How would that be, she wondered, and how long till neighbors rebelled at the
steady disappearances? She could buy slaves… but enter the Prince’s court,
but live openly-?
The thought amused, the way irony might. She could herself become Jubal, in a
trade that would well suit her needs. A pity she had already taken hire-