which force now drove him: he’d lost interest in which was right and which was
wrong.
Like the day around him, black and white and good and evil had lost their
character, merging like the sullen dusky noon in an unsavory amalgam to match
his mood.
But it bothered him that the Tr6s was nervous, sweating, and distressed. He
reined it down a side street, hoping to avoid the greater gusts of dust. For he
knew that dust as he knew the voices of the gods who plagued him: each particle
was a remnant of pulverized globes of Nisi power, magical talismans reduced to
pinprick size and myriad in number.
If Sanctuary needed anything less than a dusty cloak of Nisi magic wafting where
it willed, he couldn’t think what it might be.
And then he realized what lay ahead, down a shadowed alleyway, and drew his
sword: a little honest swordplay might cheer him up, and ahead, where PFLS
rebels in rags and sweat-bands fought Rankan regulars in the street, he knew
he’d. find it.
Though he was overqualified for street brawls-a man who couldn’t die and had to
heal, whose horse shared his more-than-human speed and more-than-mortal
constitution-numbers made the odds more honest: four Rankan soldiers, against a
mob of thirty, were trying to shield some woman with a child from whatever the
mob had in mind.
He heard shouts over the Tros’s hoofbeats as it lifted into a lope and trumpeted
its war cry as it sped gladly toward the fray.
“Give her up, the slut-it’s all her doing!” cried one hoarse voice from the mob.
“That’s right!” a shrill woman’s voice seconded the rebel demand: “S’danzo slut!