accompanying Theron on his ocean voyage.
But straight answers were lacking in the Rankan Empire this season, and Tempus,
with Jihan around, was more obscure than usual.
So it came to pass that Tempus said to Crit as they came down the General’s Road
to the ford at the White Foal River: “Make your own way henceforth. Stepson,
among the pigs in their mire. Find Straton and reconvene your covert actors:
I want the whereabouts of Roxane and her power globe by midnight.”
“Is that all?” Crit asked, sarcasm finding its way into his tone-no disrespect,
but gods whispered in the Riddler’s ears and never spoke to Critias at all, so
that orders like these always seemed impossible, issuing from nowhere, though
he’d hardly ever failed to carry through a task, however vague, that the Riddler
set him.
But this time, as his sorrel stallion pawed the White Foal’s mud and lewdly eyed
the blue roan Jihan rode, Crit was more than usually defensive: Down in
Sanctuary, across the Foal somewhere, was Kama, Tempus’s daughter, whom Crit had
got with child. It had been in the Wizard Wars, against the Riddler’s orders,
and ill had come of it for everyone involved. He’d not thought of her-an act of
will, not fortune-until this moment, but looking out across the Foal where the
lights of Sanctuary’s whorehold, the Street of Red Lanterns, were twinkling in
the dusk, suddenly the mercenary fighter could’ think of nothing else.
And Tempus, who understood too much too often, who healed from every mortal cut
he took, who buried everyone he loved in time and enjoyed the confidence of gods