and shades, said softly in a voice like the river coursing gravel, “No, not all.
A start. Take a unit of your choosing, find Straton, use what he has, destroy
Roxane’s power globe by dawn, then seek me in the palace.”
“And is that the whole of it. Commander?” Crit asked laconically, as if the task
were simple, not a death sentence or an invitation to mutiny.
Crit saw even Jihan’s feral eyes go wide. The Froth Daughter, achingly
attractive to a fighter with her form clothed in scale armor shining like the
dusk, looked between the two men and whispered something to the Riddler, then
looked back at Crit.
The long-eyed Riddler did not, just stroked his gray’s arched neck. “It’s
enough,” replied the man Crit served and often had thought he’d die to please.
That evening, later, riding alone through the Common Gate in search of Straton,
Critias was^ no longer so sure that an honorable death would be a privilege-not
when it was here.
Sanctuary hadn’t changed, or if it had, the change was for the worse. There were
checkpoints everywhere and Crit had to bully his way through two of them before
finding a soldier he knew-someone who had an armband he could commandeer.
By then he’d skirted the palace, green-walled because some sort of fungus or
moss was growing there, and entered the Bazaar where illicit drugs, girls and
boys, and even lives were hawked openly in twisting streets.
His back unguarded, his sorrel spooked and dancing, he was heading for the Maze,
a deeper slum than this one, against his better judgment because he didn’t want