hadn’t bathed in days and stank like a common workman. Limping, he followed his
scrivener up to the sanctum where Hoxa had laid out fresh linen, a basin of
faintly warm water and the somewhat soggy remnants of dinner. His glass windows,
he noted, had been replaced with dirty parchment; his gilt goblets with wooden
mugs and his Mygdonian carpet was gone. But she hadn’t dared to touch his work
table.
“Drink wine with me, Hoxa, and tell me how it feels to work with a disgraced
priest.”
Hoxa was a Sanctuary merchant’s son, without pedigree or pretensions. He
accepted the beaker, sniffing it cautiously. “The ladies and the other priests
they were the ones to leave the Palace. It seems to me that you’re not the one
in disgrace-“
He would have said more, but there was a screeching outside the window. His mug
bounced across the floor as the black bird sliced through the parchment with a
beak and steel-shod talons that were more than equal to the task. “It’s back,”
the young man gasped.
The raven-Molin felt it had begun its life as a raven, at least-carried messages
between the Palace and a ramshackle dwelling by the White Foal. It had made its
first journey long before the Beysib fleet set sail, offering the priest a
precious artifact: the Necklace of Harmony hot off the god Ils’s neck. Since
then he had trained other ravens, but none was like this bird with its
malevolent eyes and a glowing band around one leg to make it proof against all
kinds of meddling and magic.
“Get the wine,” Molin told Hoxa. “It has a message it would just as soon be rid