but took that fatal fall-except for the hand that closed on his arm and kept him
from headlong flight.
“Does the river draw you?” Haught asked. “The place ef one’s death-has a hold on
a soul. I’d avoid the water, Stilcho.”
Straton’s eyes glazed, the pupils slid aside in slitted lids, as he lost
awareness for the dreams he dreamed, that were a drug more potent than any
apothecary’s.
And Ischade shivered, letting the spell wind and build till the candles
fluttered-she was lost a moment, self-indulgence. But only a moment.
She bent and whispered more things in Strat’s ear and he stirred and gazed up at
her with pupils wide and black and drinking down all she might give him.
“There are actions you have to take,” she whispered, “for Ranke’s sake, for
Crit’s-for Tempus. I’ll tell them to you, to save this city, save the Empire,
save what you’ve always fought for. You stand in the light, Strat, Ace, in the
clean sunlight-and never look into the dark; never try to see the shadows.
They’re far too dark for you-“
“Who was here just now?” Haught asked; and Stilcho twisted away, wishing to go
back from the river-edge. But the ex-slave, Ischade’s Nisi apprentice-had more
strength in his fine hands than seemed likely.
“Janni,” Stilcho said. “It was Janni.”
“That wants fixing,” Haught said.
Time was that Stilcho would have spat on the man; when he was alive and Haught
was no more than a slave. But Haught served Her now. And Haught had talent that
Her talent fed; and the stripping of a soul from a body was likely a negligible