and tied it to the linen. He’d used blood to bring the dead across water into
the upper town. Strat’s blood would bring the horse into conflict with the
wards, chipping away at the flaws in them.
“What are you doing?” Moria demanded, forcing the last of the rounded, Rankan
contours into a now snug Ilsigi tunic.
“Making a blood lure,” he replied, lowering the makeshift rope and swinging the
dull red knot at its end toward the horse.
She bounded across the room. “No. No!” she protested, struggling to take the
cloth from him. “They’ll see; they’ll know. We can get out across the roof.”
Stilcho held her off with one arm and went back to swinging the lure. “Wards,”
he muttered. He had the bay’s attention now. Its eyes, in his other vision, were
brighter; its coat rippled with crimson anger.
But wards and warding had no meaning to Moria, though she was one of Ischade’s.
She rammed stiff fingers into his gut and made a lunge for freedom. It was all
he could go to grab her around the waist, keeping her barely inside the house.
The linen slipped from his hands and fluttered to the street below. Moria
whimpered; he pressed her face against his chest to muffle the sound. Ward-fire,
invisible to her but excruciating nonetheless, dazzled her hands and forearms.
“We’re trapped!” she gasped. “Trapped!”
Hysteria rose in her face again. He grabbed her wrists, knowing the pain would
shock her into silence.
“That’s Strat down there. Straton! They’ll come for him. The horse will bring
them, Moria. Ischade, Tempus: they’ll all come for him-and us.”