peace. Courted it. Congratulated himself that he escaped. That perpetual escape
had become meat and drink to him; the stuff of his self-esteem.
Think, Stepson. Why can’t you think about it?
-Horse wandering in the morning, pilfering apples, rider infant-helpless by
dawn- (He winced at the image. Is this a sane man?)
-Kadakithis dying, conveniently dead on the marble floor, the tread of military
boots brisk in the halls of the palace-
Good, Tempus would say, finding one of his men had anticipated him; the shadow
play came into sunlight, himself a hero, not the creature of the little room
upstairs, but a man who did the wide thing, the right thing, took the chance-
He shivered, there in the dark. There was the taste of blood in his mouth. He
leaned there against the wall, jolted as the bay took another kick to let him
know its opinion of this dark stable.
He suspected. He suspected himself-is this a sane man?
He had to go-there. To the river. To find out. Not by dark, not during her hour
but by his; by the daylight, when he might have his wits about him.
The river house huddled small and unlikely-looking in the tangle of brush that
ran the White Foal’s edge on town-side. If you asked a dozen people were there
trees in Sanctuary’s lower end they would say no, forgetting these. If you asked
were there houses hereabouts, they would say no, forgetting such small places as
this one with its iron fence and its obscuring hedge. This one was, well,
abandoned. There were often lights. Once or twice there had been fire