soon forget.
An hour later, mounted, they set off on their tour of the Maze, Niko thinking
that not since the affair with the archmage Askelon and Tempus’s sister Cime had
his gut rolled up into a ball with this feeling of unmitigated dread. The
Nisibisi witch might know him – she might have known him all along. He’d been
interrogated by Nisibisi before, and he would fall upon his sword rather than
endure it again now, when his dead teammate’s ghost still haunted his mental
refuge and meditation could not offer him shelter as it once had.
A boy came running up calling his name and his jug-head black tossed its rust
nose high and snorted, ears back, waiting for a command to kill or maim.
‘By Vashanka’s sulphurous balls, what now?’ Janni wondered.
They sat their mounts in the narrow street; the moon was just rising over the
shantytops; people slammed their shutters tight and bolted their doors. Niko
could catch wisps of fear and loathing from behind the houses’ facades; two
mounted men in these streets meant trouble, no matter whose they were.
The youth trotted up, breathing hard. ‘Niko! Niko! The master’s so upset. Thank
Us I’ve found you …’ The delicate eunuch’s lisp identified him: a servant of
the Alekeep’s owner, one of the few men Niko thought of as a friend here.
‘What’s wrong, then?’ He leaned down in his saddle.
The boy raised a hand and the black snaked his head around fast to bite it. Niko
clouted the horse between the ears as the boy scrambled back out of range. ‘Come
on, come here. He won’t try it again. Now, what’s your master’s message?’