But the prince wasn’t receiving, and Tempus’s mood was ill -just as well; he had
been going to confront the young popinjay, as once or twice a month he was sure
he must do, without courtesy or appropriate deference. If Kadakithis was holed
up in conference with the blond-haired, fish-eyed folk from the ships and had
not called upon him to join them, then it was not surprising: since the gods had
battled in the sky above the Mageguild, all things had become confused, worse
had come to worst, and Tempus’s curse had fallen on him once again with its full
force.
Perhaps the god was dead – certainly, Vashanka’s voice in his ear was absent.
He’d gone out raping once or twice to see if the Lord of Pillage could be roused
to take part in His favourite sport. But the god had not rustled around in his
head since New Year’s day; the resultant fear of harm to those who loved him by
the curse that denied him love had made a solitary man withdraw even further
into himself; only the Froth Daughter Jihan, hardly human, though woman in
form, kept him company now.
And that, as much as anything, irked the Stepsons. Theirs was a closed
fraternity, open only to the paired lovers of the Sacred Band and distinguished
single mercenaries culled from a score of nations and diverted, by Tempus’s
service and Kitty-Cat’s gold, from the northern insurrection they’d drifted
through Sanctuary en route to join.
He, too, ached to war, to fight a declared enemy, to lead his cohort north. But
there was his word to a Rankan faction to do his best for a petty prince, and