still, then turned around to Crit and the empty bow. His knees had gone weak for
a moment. Now the anger came.
“I just wondered if you’d wake up,” Crit said.
“I am awake. I assure you.” He turned on his heel and headed down the stairs
with his knees gone undependable again, so that he used the lefthand rail,
shaking and shaken, and hoping with the only acute feeling he had left, that
between the wine and the shock he would not stumble on the way. That it was Crit
up there watching him, Crit who knew how to read that white-knuckled grip on the
rail, made his shame complete.
Damn Crit to hell.
Damn Tempus and all such righteous godsridden prigs. Tern-pus had dealt with
Ischade. Tempus had said something to her at that table, in that room, and she
had said something to him at great length, concluded her business like some
visiting queen, before she went running off, leaving him for a fool in front of
the whole damned company. He had not gone back after his cloak. Had not been
able to face that room.
But suddenly it occurred to him that Crit might know what Tempus and Ischade had
said together. He stopped at the bottom, by the bay horse, his hand on its neck,
and looked up the stairs where Crit stood with the unarmed bow dangling by his
side.
“What’s the Riddler’s dealing with her?” Strat asked.
“Who? Kama?”
Strat frowned, wondering whether it was deliberate obtuse-ness. “Her, dammit, at
the Peres. What was she after?”
“Maybe you ought to ask him. You want to shout his business up and down the
stairs? Where’s your sense, for gods-sake?”