so full of taunt and anticipation. “Of course I know-me and my mistress both
know. But don’t you think, fighter, that by now Roxane’s looking for you? Come
in, don’t come, wait here, go your way-whatever choice, she’ll find you.”
My mistress, Haught had said. Someone else, then, had taught him what Niko saw
there-enough magic for it to be an attribute, not an affectation; real magic,
not the prestidigitator’s tricks that abounded in Sanctuary’s third-rate
Mageguild.
Niko shook his head and his hand of its own accord found his sword’s pommel and
rested there as he retreated a pace.
By then Vis was saying, “It’s not a thing I’d seek, soldier, were I you. But
we’ll give you what we can to help you on your way to her. Yes, by all that’s
unholy, we’ll surely give you that.”
When Roxane, in her Foalside haunt, an old manor house refurbished from velvet
hangings to weeds head-high in her “garden,” heard a footstep belonging not to
an undead or to one of her snakes-who occasionally took human form-outside her
window, she went personally to see who her uninvited guest might be.
It was a Nisi type, a youth she’d never noticed, some local denizen with a trace
of Nisibisi blood.
His soul was smooth and unctuous over customary evil; he was some familiar of
another power here. He said, far back in the dark with wards springing up
between them, “I’ve brought you something. Madam. You’re going to like him. A
gift from Haught, in case things go your way in the end.”
Then there was a soft “pop” and the presence was gone, if it had ever been