I’ll ride up and ask Tempus what he wants to do-if anything-about the matter of
the godchild you so cavalierly visited upon a town that had troubles enough
without one. But one way or the other, the resolution isn’t going to help you
one whit. Get my meaning?”
The architect-priest winced and his face screwed up as if he’d tasted something
sour. “We can’t help you with the witch, fighter-not unless you want simple
manpower.”
“Good enough. As long as it’s priest-power.” And Niko began giving orders that
Torchholder had no alternative but to obey.
On the dawn of the shortest day of the year, Niko had still not come back to
Roxane.
It was time to make an end to Randal, whom she despised enough-almost-to make
the slight dealt her by the mortal whom she’d consented to love less stinging.
Almost, but not quite. If witches could cry, Roxane would have shed tears of
humiliation and of unrequited love. But a witch shouldn’t be crying over
mortals, and Roxane was reconstituted from the weakness that had beset her
during the Wizard Wars. If Niko wouldn’t come to her, she’d make him notorious
in hell for all the lonely souls his faithless, feckless self-interest had sent
there.
She was just getting the snakes to put aside the card game and fetch the mage
when hoofbeats sounded upon her cart-track drive.
Wroth and no longer hopeful, she snatched aside the curtain, though the day was
bright and clear as winter days can be, with a sky of powder blue and horsetail
clouds. And there, amazingly, was Niko, on a big sable horse of the sort that