had challenged them. With their twirling swords they’d seemed more than a match
for the poorly-armed quartet that had come charging out of the alley and she had
been grateful for the opportunity to slide into the shadows unnoticed.
The house had called out to her: her possessions, her lover, her magic, the tiny
ring now on Haught’s slender finger. Not long before-before her explosive
journey to the palace-the call would have been irresistible. She would have had
the power to sunder any wards Roxane had concocted. And she would have done just
that: gone blundering into another abortive confrontation with the Nisi witch.
If the battle within Niko’s rest-place had done nothing else it had vented the
excess of power which had blighted her vision since Tempus had returned to
Sanctuary and ordered the destruction of the Globes of Power. Purged and
refreshed, she perceived the wards not simply as Haught’s betrayal or Rox-ane’s
arrogance but as the finely strung trap that they were.
They think I am still blind to the finer workings, she’d said to the raven
perched on the stone finial beside her. Their first mistake. Let’s see if there
are others.
No one bothered her as she picked her way across the open expanse of mud
surrounding the new White Foal bridge. It was probable that none of the bravos
running between Downwind and the more profitable riots uptown could see her
though even she was uncertain how far her magic, or her curse, extended in such
directions, now that her power had resumed its normal proportions.