burst past a gaggle of old housekeepers on their way up from market. Apples and
potatoes tumbled and bounced after her on the pavement, old women yelled after
her, but Moria dived into an alley down a track she knew, ran dirty-puddled
cobbles and squelched through mud and cut herself on glass and rubbish, mud
spattering up on her satin skirts and silk petticoats, blood as well, while the
breath ripped in and out of her unlaced chest.
The old warehouse was there. She prayed Haught was. She flung herself against
that door, bleeding on the step, pounded with both her fists. “Haught! Haught, o
be here, please be here-“
The door opened inward. She gaped at the dead man’s eye-patched face and
screamed a tiny strangled sound.
“Moria,” Stilcho said, and grabbed her by the arms, dragged her across the
threshold and into the dark where Haught waited, in this only refuge they knew,
the place Haught had told her to come if ever there was a time she had to
escape. He was here.
And the change in him was so grim and so profound that she found herself
clinging to Stilcho’s dead arm and pressing herself against him for dread of
that stare Haught gave her.
“She,” Moria said, and pointed up the hill, toward the house, “She-“
Only then in her terror did it sink in that she was half-naked from another
lover’s bed, and that it was rage which turned Haught’s face pale and terrible.
“What happened?” Haught asked in a still, steely voice.
She had to tell him. Ischade’s anger was worth her life. It was all their lives.
“Tasfalen,” she said. “He-forced his way in. She-“