taking off his clothes when the damned door to her front room opened with a wind
behind it that nearly doused the fire in her hearth.
Accursed Haught, her trainee, stood there, arch mischief glowing in his eyes.
Strat hitched up his linen loinguard and said, “Won’t you ever learn to knock?”
feeling a bit abashed among Ischade’s silks and scarlet throw pillows and
trinkets of gem and noble metal-the woman loved bright colors, but never wore
them out of doors.
Woman? Had he thought that, said it to himself? She wasn’t exactly that, and
he’d better remember it. Haught, once slave-bait, looked at Strat and through
him as if he didn’t exist as he entered and the door closed behind him of its
own accord.
“Best remember that you’re mortal, Nisi boy. And that respect is due your
betters, be you slave or free,” Strat warned, looking at his feet where,
somewhere in a confusion of cushions, his service dagger lay buried. Best to
teach this witch’s familiar some manners before he’d have to do worse.
–
But behind him he heard a stirring and a soft step as sinuous as any cat’s.
“Haught, greet Straton civilly,” came her voice from behind him and then her
hand was on his spine, pouring patience into him where patience had no right to
be.
“Damned kid comes and goes like he owns the-“
Haught was abreast of him, then, speaking to the necromant beyond. “You’d want
this warning, if you weren’t so busy. Want to be ready. Trouble’s on the way.”
Then something unspeakable happened: Ischade, hushing the Nisi ex-slave, came