joists and floorboards where Ischade’s web had touched them. Ischade covered her
hair with her cloak as she inched away from the conflagration swirling around
the globe. The Nisi witch was trapped, along with her accursed artifact; it was
time to see that Straton was safely away from the house and its outbuildings.
Straton-she put his face in the forefront of her mind and looked toward the
comer where the stairs had been.
An orange nimbus surrounded the image Ischade formed of her lover. A demonic
nimbus, she realized too late-after she had turned to face the throbbing cobalt
sphere again. No wards, Roxane had screamed: no wards to keep Niko’s demon at
bay. It had one soul but it could claim many. Her foot scuffed against the rough
planks, but Ischade moved forward as it beckoned.
“Straton.”
Haught kept himself small and low against the roofbeams. Insignificant-as he had
always been as a dancer or a slave; beneath the notice of witches and,
certainly, of demons. He saw the thing which had been Roxane flickering
between an awful emptiness and the dozen or more bodies the witch had taken
during her life. He saw Ischade think to escape-and fail, and lurch
inescapably forward. But mostly he saw the globe hanging midway between Ischade
and the demon: motionless and, for the moment, ignored.
Still keeping himself invisible in the demon’s perception, he drew himself into
a compact crouch. There was no need for the globe to be destroyed by this, he
thought while massaging the finger which bore Ischade’s ring. One leap would