into the straw beside him without a heartbeat’s hesitation.
They returned to the palace after the sky had turned a soft, moist gray but
before, they hoped, any of those whom Molin had to see were awake. There was
nothing to set them apart from any other weary, soaked travelers coming to
shelter within the palace walls. Molin did not help her from the saddle or see
to the stabling of her horse. True, he found himself gripped by an emotion
uncomfortably close to sudden love, but not even that was enough to make him a
fool. He would have said nothing if she had wheeled her horse around and headed
back toward the Maze; he said the same when she followed him up the gatehouse
stairs.
He led the way to the Ilsig Bedchamber where, in consideration of all that
hadn’t happened during the night, he expected to find Jihan, the Stormchildren,
Niko, and the bedlam residents. He found, instead, a funereally quiet chamber
with only Seylalha hovering between the cradles.
“The mere’s guild?” Kama inquired, reading the same omens the priest did. “The
mage’s?”
Molin shook his head. His mind reached out to that distant comer where his Nisi
magic heritage, the gods, or his own luck sometimes placed reliable
inspirations. “With the Beysa,” he said slowly, then corrected himself: “Near
the snakes.”
When the Beysib arrived in Sanctuary they had brought with them seventy of the
mottled brown eggs of their precious beynit serpents. These eggs, packed in
unspun silk, had been installed in a specially reconstructed room where a