From Haught, a long silence: then, quietly: “Is it mistress or master?”
Tasfalen’s right eyebrow jerked in wrath. Then a grin spread over his face. “Oh,
I like you well, upstart. I do like you.” The pottery globe vanished from
his/her hands. “First lesson: don’t leave a thing like that in reach.”
“Where is it?” There was the ghost of panic in Haught’s voice, and Tasfalen’s
grin widened. Male hand touched male chest.
“Here,” Tasfalen said. “Or as close as hardly matters. I learned that trick of a
Bandaran.” He-Moria shuddered: it was impossible to look at that virile body and
think she- walked closer and stood looking down at the Stepson, who lay white
and still by Stilcho’s knee. “Ischade’s lover. Oh, you are a find, aren’t you?
And you’re not going to die on us, oh, no, not a chance of that-“
* * *
“… A chance of that,” a strange voice said; and another, hated: “I’ve no
intentions of it. Not with what he knows.”
“He has uses other than that. Her lover, after all. It has to play havoc with
her concentration. Even if personal pride is all that bothers her.”
“Oh, it’s more than that.” A grip closed on Strat’s wrist, lifted that, let go
and lifted the other, the wounded hand, with a pain that drove Strat far under
for a moment; he came back with the feeling of someone’s hands on him, roughly
probing among his clothing. “Ah. Here it is.”
“Hers?”
“I gave it to him. It should have come to you. In your other life.”
He thought what it was then. He would have kept the ring. He was sorry to lose
it. He had been a fool. He was sorry for that too. Play havoc with her