field star – Abarsis had slipped it over his head so long ago the ribbon had
crumbled away.
Content with the omens his private prognosticators gave, he collected them and
put them away. He’d wanted Tempus to ask him to join him, not hand him fifty
men’s lives to yea or nay. He took such work too much to heart; it lay heavy on
him, worse than the task force’s weight had been, and he’d only just begun. But
that was why Tempus picked him – he was conscientious to a fault.
He sighed and rose and quit the hostel, riding aimlessly through the foetid
streets. Damned town was a pit, a bubo, a sore that wouldn’t heal. He couldn’t
trust his task force to some subordinate, though how he was going to run them
while stomping around vainly trying to fill Tempus’s sandals, he couldn’t say.
His horse, picking his route, took him by the Vulgar Unicorn where Straton would
soon be ‘discussing sensitive matters’ with One-Thumb.
By rights he should go up to the palace, pay a call on Kadakithis, ‘make nice’
(as Straton said) to Vashanka’s priest-of-record Molin, visit the Mageguild …
He shook his head and spat over his horse’s shoulder. He hated politics.
And what Tempus had told him about Niko’s misfortune and Janni’s death still
rankled. He remembered the foreign fighter Niko had made him turn loose – Vis.
Vis, who’d come to Tempus, bearing hurt and slain, with a message from Jubal.
That, and what Straton had gotten from the hawkmask they’d given Ischade, plus
the vampire woman’s own hints, allowed him to triangulate Jubal’s position like