stable behind the mercenaries’ guildhall and gone venturing in the town. For
there was one thread of continuity, one sameness Niko’s maat sensed in Sanctuary
that had been with him since last he’d served here as one of Tempus’s Stepsons
and-with the exception of his time in far Bandara-had been with him ever since
as it was with him still: Roxane, the Nisibisi witch.
Sidling through the upscale crowd in the Alekeep to find the owner, a man Niko
had known well enough to court his daughter when he’d been stationed here before
and a man who had a right to know that the daughter’s shade, long undead under
the witch’s spell, had finally been put to rest by Niko’s own hand, the fighter
called Stealth was suddenly so aware of Roxane that he fancied he could smell
her musk upon the beerhall’s air.
She was here, somewhere. Close at hand. His maat told him so-he could glimpse
the cobalt-shining trails of Roxane’s magic out of the corner of his inner eye
the way some lesser man might glimpse a stalker’s shadow in his peripheral
vision. Niko’s soul had its own peripheral vision in the discipline of
transcendent perception, a skill which let him track a person or sense a
presence or gather the gist of emotions aimed his way, though he could not
eavesdrop on specific thoughts.
The Alekeep was freshly whitewashed and full of determined revelers, men and
women whose position in the town demanded that they show themselves at business
as usual, undisturbed by PFLS rebels or Beysib interlopers or Nisibisi wizardry.