had given him any peace over it since. It was that, as much as the conclusion
that the Temple teachers didn’t know how to train him, that had driven him home
again.
“How did you get that?” he asked sourly. “I thought His High and Mightiness kept
it closer than an Imperial pardon.”
“I borrowed it,” said Randal enigmatically. “Look at it!” He brandished the
paper under Lalo’s nose. “Do you understand what you have done?”
“That’s what Molin kept asking me-you should talk to him!”
“Perhaps I can understand your answers better than he did …”
“The answers are all no!” Lalo said harshly. “I don’t know what happens if you
destroy one of my portraits. I’ve never tried to animate a portrait, and I’m not
about to start experimenting. Not after the Black Unicorn…. You’re the mage
you tell me what I can do!”
“Perhaps I will,” Randal said winningly, “if you’ll help us in return.”
“Us? What ‘us’?” Lalo eyed him warily. Badly as he needed knowledge, he was even
more desperately afraid of being used.
This time it was Randal who hesitated. “Everyone who wants to see some kind of
order restored to Sanctuary,” he said finally.
“By kicking out the Fish-eyes? My daughter serves one of their ladies at the
Palace. They’re not all bad-“
Randal shrugged. “Who is?” Then he frowned. “We just don’t want them running us,
that’s all. But the Beysib are hardly the worst of our problems-” His long
finger stabbed at the woman’s face in the picture, that searingly beautiful face
whose eyes were like the eyes of the Black Unicorn.