the whereabouts of the Nisibisi witch.
The second shadow spoke, as the drunken beggar clawed at its clothes and Niko’s
sight grew sharper, showing him bluish sparks swirling round the taller of the
two shadows solidifying despite the moonless dark. “Mor-am, you idiot! Get up!
What’s Moria going to say? Fool, and worse! There’s death out here. Don’t get
too cocky….” The rest was a hostile hiss from a lowered voice, but Niko had
placed this man easier than the first: The deeply accented voice, the velvet
tones, had made him know the other speaker was an ex-slave named Haught.
This Haught was a freedman. The Nisibisi witch had freed him. And Niko had saved
him from interrogation, long ago, at Straton’s hands. Strat, the Stepsons’ chief
inquisitor, was no man to cross and one who was so good at what he did that his
mere reputation loosened tongues and bowels.
So it was not that these were strangers, or even that they picked the beggar up
between them and carried him toward the open gate beyond which lights blazed in
skin-covered windows, that gave Niko pause. It was that Haught, who’d been
little more than a frightened whelp, the slave’s collar bound ’round his very
soul, when last Niko had chanced across him, was giving orders with assurance
and had, by the way his aura glittered blue, magical attributes to back him up.
There was nothing magical about Vis’s aura, just the red and pink of distress
and passion held in check-and fear, the spice of it tingling Niko’s nerves as he
moved to intercept them at the gate, sword drawn and warming as it always did