Alekeep, still muttering orders. The Beysibs moved to haul him back.
“No, Jennek, let him go. He’ll be ready when we need him again; his kind always
is.”
“But, Torchholder,” Jennek objected. “He asks for the sun, the moon, and the
stars and offers you nothing in return. That’s not the bargain you described
back at the Palace.”
“And it’s not the bargain he thinks it is, either.”
The witch-hungers vanished as quickly as the Stepson. Molin grabbed the carriage
door to keep himself from collapsing. The door swung open, Jennek lurched
forward and Molin barely had the presence of mind to haul himself onto the bench
opposite the children.
“To the Palace,” he commanded.
Molin closed his eyes as the carriage rattled forward along the uneven streets.
He was weak-kneed and exhilarated enough that he held his breath to stifle a fit
of hysterical laughter. He had felt the naked power of his witch-blood heritage
and, much as it had horrified him, he had mastered it. He was revelling in the
wonder and simplicity of the strategies unfolding in his mind when Lalo’s
picture shifted under his arm. With a shiver, the priest reopened his eyes and
pulled it away from Gys-kouras’s candy-coated grasp. The child’s eyes glowed
more brightly than the lanterns.
“Want it.”
“No,” Molin said faintly, realizing that not even Storm-bringer could anticipate
the influence and desires of a Storm Child.
“/ want it.”
Seylalha, Gyskouras’s mother, tried to distract him, but he pushed her back into
the comer with a man’s strength. Her eyes were as fearful as the child’s were