Thrush and Cythen stood guard outside the open door.
“How is she?” Walegrin asked as they slid the bolt open.
“I’m fine,” Kama assured him herself, swinging long, leather-clad legs off of
Cythen’s bed.
A dark smear covered most of the right side of her face but it seemed mostly
soot. She wasn’t moving like she’d taken too much punishment.
“I guess I owe you my life,” she said uncomfortably.
“I didn’t think you’d kill Strat. You’d had too many opportunities before-better
opportunities. And you wouldn’t care if he was shacked up with the witch.”
She scowled. “You’re right on the first, anyway.”
“Piffles, Chief,” Thrusher interjected from the open doorway. “Two of them
guarding the cellar we found her in.”
Kama stood in front of Walegrin, looking through and beyond him. She had that
way about her-even dressed in scratched and rag-tied leather she had elegance
and, however unconsciously, the powerful demeanor of her father. The garrison
commander never had the upper hand with her.
“Personal?” he stammered.
“Personal? Personal? Gods, no. They saw me with Strat and you. They thought I’d
sold out-nothing personal about that,” she snapped.
Then why lock her up and put an arrow in Strat? And why Strat and not him?-he
was every bit as easy to find. It was personal, all right, as personal as the
sharp-faced PFLS leader could make it.
“You’ve got worse problems,” Walegrin told her.
Finally she turned away, watching the lamp-flame as if it were the center of the
universe. “Yeah, so they tell me. He used one of Jubal’s arrows, didn’t he? All