watch the night and take them deep into shadowed alleys with all the confidence
a mage would flaunt. The youth had offered to teach him ‘controls’ of mind, to
take him ‘up through the planes and get your guide and your twelfth-plane name’.
But Janni was no connoisseur of witchcraft; like boy-loving, he left it to the
Sacred Banders and the priests. He’d gotten into this with Niko for worldly
advantage; the youth ten years his junior was pure genius in a fight; he’d
seen him work at Jubal’s and marvelled even in the melee of the sack. Niko’s
reputation for prowess in the field was matched only by Straton’s, and the
stories told of Niko’s past. The boy had trained among Successors, the
Nisibisi’s bane, wild guerrillas, mountain commandos who let none through
Wizardwall’s defiles without gold or life in tithe, who’d sworn to reclaim
their mountains from the mages and the warlocks and held out, outlaws,
countering sorcery with swords. In a campaign such as the northern one coming,
Niko’s skills and languages and friends might prove invaluable. Janni, from
Machad, had no love for Rankans, but it was said Niko served despite a blood
hatred: Rankans had sacked his town nameless; his father had died fighting
Rankan expansion when the boy was five. Yet he’d come south on Abarsis’s
venture, and stayed when Tempus inherited the band.
When they crossed the Street of Shingles and headed into Shambles Cross, the
pragmatic Janni spoke a soldier’s safe-conduct prayer and touched his warding
charm. A confusion of turns within the ways high-grown with hovels which cut off