Downwind, and ignored the barriers the Beggar-king and his kind had erected.
Ignored the PFLS and its flung stones and its naphtha-bottles and the fires:
that demi-legion had seen the fires of hell and were not impressed. They had
already passed the Yellow line, and they swaggered along Red territory, the
winding streets of Downwind, with a swiftness no ordinary band could achieve,
faster and faster.
“They’re coming,” Stilcho said to Haught, and the Nisi magus hardly liked the
satisfaction in Stilcho’s face. Haught snatched the skin of blood and shook out
a few more drops to keep the Shambles-ghosts on the track- glanced a second time
at Stilcho, thinking uncomfortably of treachery.
“Janni. Where’s Janni? Have you located him?”
“Oh, I can guess where he’ll go,” Stilcho said.
“Roxane.”
Stilcho laughed and grinned. He had a patched eye and was missing one tooth on
the side, but in the dark when the scars showed less there was a ruined
handsomeness about him. An elegance. He snatched the skin from Haught and hurled
it, spattering the cobbles. “Run!” he yelled at Haught, and laughed aloud.
“Stilcho, damn you!”
“Try!” Stilcho yelled. Ghosts streamed and gibbered about them, swirled and
whirled like bats, and Haught assessed the situation in an eyeblink and whipped
his cloak about his arm and ran as if the fiends of hell were on his track.
Stilcho howled. Slapped his knees. “Run, you friggin’ bastard! Run, Nisi, run!”
He would pay for it in the morning. Haught would see to that. But he had Her
orders, direct.