had a message from Jubal. Because of his skin and his accent Tempus almost took
him prisoner, thinking to give him to Straton, for whom all manner of men bared
their souls, but he marshalled his anger and sent the young man away with a
pocket full of soldats and instructions to convey Jubal’s message to Critias.
Crit would be in charge of the Stepsons henceforth; what Jubal and Crit might
arrange was up to them. The reward was for bringing home the casualties, dead
and living, a favour cheap at the price.
Then Tempus went to find Jihan. When he did, he asked her to put him in touch
with Askelon, dream lord, if she could.
‘So that you can punish yourself with mortality? This is not your fault.’
‘A kind, if unsound, opinion. Mortality will break the curse. Can you help me?’
‘I will not, not now, when you are like this,’ she replied, concern knitting her
brows in the harsh morning light. ‘But I will accompany you north. Perhaps
another day, when you are calmer …’
He cursed her for acting like a woman and set about scheduling sorties and
sketching maps, so that each of his men would have worked out his debt to
Kadakithis and be in good standing with the mercenaries’ guild when and if they
joined him in Tyse, at the very foot ofWizardwall.
It took no longer to draft his resignation and Critias’s appointment in his
stead and send them off to Kadakithis than it took to clear his actions with the
Rankan representatives of the mercenaries’ guild: his task here (assessing
Kadakithis for a Rankan faction desirous of a change in emperors) was