“Let me up. Randal. My back hurts, you know what it’s like to lie like this?
Just let me shift my arms a little. Just a moment or two. I’m fine now. I’ll lie
back down, I’ll let you put the ropes back again, oh, for the gods’ own sake,
Randal, it’s not your joints that feel like they’ve got knives in them. Have a
little pity, man. Just let me sit up a moment. Do for myself. All right?”
“I’ll have to put you back again.”
“That’s all right. I know that. I know you have to.” Niko made a face and
shifted his shoulders. “0 gods. My back.”
Randal bit his lip and put out a little magical effort on the strain-tightened
knots. They loosened, one after the other. He got the two closest, which tied
Niko’s feet to the bedframe. And got up off the end of the bed and carefully
undid the one on the left wrist, carefully, around the thick padding they had
put there to protect the skin. Niko sighed and flexed his legs and dragged his
arm down to his chest while Randal went around the bed to get the other one.
“Thanks,” Niko said, a ghost of a voice. “Ah. That’s better. That’s a relief.”
“Ought to give you a rubdown, that’s what.” Randal unwound the last rope, and
held onto Niko’s hand to work a little life into the arm.
Then something hit him in the side of the head and he went down blind and numb
and dazed from the impact of his skull on a marble floor.
“Niko,” he cried, trying to focus his eyes or his talent or to organize his
defenses, but the dark and the daze swirled around him in clouds and gray and
shooting flashes of red. He heard bare feet, going away at speed. “Ischade!” He