light. It was…
She ran to the window, flung open the shutters, flung wide the window and
launched herself from the floor of the bedroom to the incoming wind that swept
the curtains, never questioning whether she had the control or knew where she
was going: Randal’s outpouring was a shriek of utter panic, shuddering and
wavering in and out of focus in a wild undulation across the whole of the town.
Ischade! Help!
It’s Roxane!
“She’s gone,” Haught whispered, gathering himself to his feet. “Her attention’s
elsewhere. It all is-“
“What are you doing?” Moria gathered herself up off the dust of the warehouse
floor and the mouldering sacking which was the seating Stilcho had provided her.
Her foot still hurt, though the bleeding had stopped. She staggered, blinked at
the ex-slave turned magician, her Haught, who had stood straight up and looked
off toward a blank wall of the rotting building as if his eyes saw through
walls. Stilcho caught her arm when she wobbled on her feet, his hand cool but
not cold, certainly not the deathly cold she always expected to feel. He held
her there; she held onto him a moment; then Haught just stopped being there.
There was a thunderclap that rocked the building, a wind jerked roughly and once
at her clothing and her hair toward the spot where Haught had been, and her
skull all but split with Haught’s voice thundering in it and into her soul and
her bones and her gut.
Go home. She’s not there now. I’ll find you at the house.
There was threat implicit in that order. There was rage and jealousy and all