got to rampaging through a warehouse full of beer. It was not, all in all, one
of Roxane’s better nights: the attack was desultory, Ischade was definitely
aiming at something else, and Roxane was willing to use the diversion while she
took wing crosstown-
“Damn!” Haught yelled. His sight picked that up, a pale blue arc headed across
Sanctuary with only one target in mind. He was earthbound. He ran for the river
and Ischade with all his might, and came pelting past the wards to find Ischade
sitting on the bed wrapped in orange silk and the skirts of her black cloak and
laughing like a lunatic.
Uptown the Lady Nuphtantei’s door went wide open and the elegant Lady
Nuphtantei, Harka Bey and not easily affrighted, went pelting down the street
naked as she was born, for the drunken demon that had materialized in her house
breaking porcelains and crunching silver underfoot was not a thing the servants
or her daughter had stayed to deal with, not for a moment.
She ran straight into a company of Walegrin’s guard and kept going, so fast the
guard hardly had time to turn and stare.
Then what was behind her showed up, and the troops scattered.
Arrows flew. A barricade was afire over by the Maze edge where Jubal’s gangs
tried to hold against rooftop archers, mage-illusions, and a handful of paired
riders who had the style and manner of the old Stepsons. And the fire spread to
buildings, which doubled the chaos. Men threw water and ducked arrows. A frantic
family scurried out with possessions and arrows pelted indiscriminate.