because of course she had no particular idea. Haught was the witch’s servant;
Haught was the trouble they had had previous; and Ischade-was by far the more
interesting question.
Ischade was keeping a promise. Or she was not, and a bargain was off. That was
something it would take time to leam. The souls of his dead, she had promised
him. And the safety of his living comrades as far as she could guarantee it.
There was something deadly dangerous in the wind and the woman was onto it,
doing battle with it-if she had told the truth. The possibility that she had
lied was one of those lines down which he was quite willing to think, down which
he had been thinking continually.
“Find Ischade while you’re at it,” he said. “Ask her whose Haught is.”
Kama blinked. He watched her put it together. He watched the caution dawn in her
immature-pretematurally mature mind, and watched the predictable thoughts go on,
how she would do this, how she would need more caution than she had planned on
in the other business.
Good. Things in the lower town wanted more caution than Kama was wont to use.
“Get out of here,” he said then, staring past her and thinking what the world
would be like without Niko, if they lost; if they lost Niko they would lose a
great deal more than one man; and he, personally-Niko was one who engaged him on
all levels, on too many levels. Niko was one who could cause him pain because he
could give him so much else, and without Niko, that magnet for the world’s
troubles, that fool of fools who thought the world his responsibility-Niko