his arm.
“Leave him be,” he warned.
“What happened?” Torchholder asked, retreating until Tempus relaxed. “Randal
said-“
“You guessed right,” Crit interrupted with a bitterness that made the priest’s
blood run cold. “She made her move through Niko at about the right time.”
“It was Haught,” Tempus spat out the name. “Niko bolted for the window saying
‘Haught’. It was a warning.”
Critias ran his hand through dark, thinning hair. “But not for us. Haught was
making his own moves and Roxane had to stop him.”
“That’s what Strat says,” Jihan added.
“It doesn’t matter whether Strat’s right or not.” Crit had begun pacing like a
caged tiger. “It doesn’t matter whether Haught’s Ischade’s catspaw or Roxane’s.
It doesn’t matter if Jihan-“
“I didn’t.”
“-Told Niko about the double-shuffle with the globes. All that matters is that
the witch-bitch had Niko. Again.”
“What happened?” Molin repeated, though by this point he was getting a pretty
good idea and was more interested in the shifting alliances of the threesome.
“When Jihan tried to keep him from jumping out the window he went berserk. It
took four guards to hold him until she could get something down his gullet to
keep him quiet,” Critias explained calmly.
Molin moved closer to Niko, this time without Tempus’s interference. The young
man had taken a beating, but the priest wasn’t looking for bruises.
“What about the mongoose, Chiringee?” he asked, examining the bloody tears on
Niko’s hands and wrists. “Randal said it was attuned to Roxane.”
Jinan looked at Tempus, Tempus looked at the wall, and Crit’s voice was a