for a year to a Nisibisi mage – her lover-lord. There was a string on Nikodemos,
ready to be pulled.
And when he felt it, it would be too late, and she would be at the end of it.
Tempus had allowed Niko to breed his sorrel mare to his own Tros stallion to
quell mutters among knowledgeable Stepsons that assigning Niko and Janni to
hazardous duty in the town was their commander’s way of punishing the slate
haired fighter who had declined Tempus’s offered pairbond in favour of Janni’s
and had subsequently quit their ranks.
Now the mare was pregnant and Tempus was curious as to what kind of foal the
union might produce, but rumours of foul play still abounded.
Critias, Tempus’s second in command, had paused in his dour report and now
stirred his posset of cooling wine and barley and goat’s cheese with a finger,
then wiped the finger on his bossed cuirass, burnished from years of use. They
were meeting in the mercenaries’ guild hostel, in its common room, dark as
congealing blood and safe as a grave, where Tempus had bade the veteran
mercenary lodge – an operations officer charged with secret actions could be no
part of the Stepsons’ barracks cohort. They met covertly, on occasion; most
times, coded messages brought by unwitting couriers were enough.
Crit, too, it seemed, thought Tempus wrong in sending Janni, a guileless
cavalryman, and Niko, the youngest of the Stepsons, to spy upon the witch:
clandestine schemes were Crit’s province, and Tempus had usurped, overstepped
the bounds of their agreement. Tempus had allowed that Crit might take over