“That’s all right.” He turned and gathered up the bay’s dangling reins. “I’ll
manage. Maybe I will ask him.” He flung himself up to the bay’s back, felt the
life in it like a waking out of sleep, a huge and moving strength under him.
“It’s all right.” He turned the bay and rode out of the courtyard, down the
narrow alley.
Then the malaise came back again, so that the street began to go away from his
vision, like an attack of fever. He touched his waist, where he carried the
little ring, the ring that would fit only his smallest finger.
She had sent it by Haught.
Haught attacked the column and tried for-whatever Tempus was on the other side
of. Tempus and the priest. And the gods.
Damn, it shaped itself into pattern, it shaped all too well: Ischade owned no
gods. Haught and the dead man, who made a try that might, succeeding at
whatever they were after-have shaken the town.
Ischade had sent him back to Crit that night Crit came to the riverhouse and
nothing had been the same.
He slipped the ring into the light and slipped it onto his finger, the breath
going short in his throat and the touch of it all but unbearable; it was like a
drug. He had not dared wear it into Crit’s sight, a token like that. But he wore
it when he thought there was no one to see, no one but the Ilsigi passersby who
might see him only as the faceless rider all Stepsons were to the town: he was a
type, that was all, he was a power, he was a man with a sword and everyone in
town wanted to pretend they had no special reason to look anxiously at a Rankan