clinically, while he ducked staggering away with a boy’s weight slung over his
shoulder. That’s an expert handling that sword, that is. Past that mere thought,
and a flash of pained concern for the arrow-shot boy he’d been trying to save,
there was no time for anything but confusion.
The confusion had been a fixture in his mind lately. For one thing, the real
Stepsons had come back, and Harran was not finding their return as funny as he’d
once thought he would. He hadn’t reckoned on being counted a traitor for
supporting the false Stepsons in the true ones’ absence. But he also hadn’t
reckoned on having so much trouble with his lost goddess Siveni when he summoned
her up. Her manifestation, and her attempt to level Sanctuary-foiled by the
clubfooted beggar-girl he’d been using as idiot labor and “mattress”-had left
him confused to a standstill. Now Mriga the idiot was Mriga the goddess, made so
by the same spell that had brought Siveni into the streets of Sanctuary. And,
involved in the spell himself, Harran had briefly become a god too.
But his short bout of divinity had made the world no plainer to him. Suddenly
bereft of Mriga, who had taken Siveni and gone wherever gods go-stricken by the
loss of a hand during the spell, and by its abrupt replacement (with one of
Mriga’s)-Harran had retreated to the fake Stepsons’ barracks. He had taken to
wearing gloves and drinking a great deal while he tried to think out what to do
next with his life. Somehow he never seemed to get much thinking done.
And then the real Stepsons stormed their old barracks, slaughtering in