And Strat said, “You do that,” just about the time the bay horse trumpeted
joyously as he felt Strat’s weight on his back and Crit began the arduous
process of leading the mounted, wounded man out of the stable’s attic to safety
at least of the sort a Sacred Band partner could provide.
Fire raged inside Ischade, now that she had quenched it in her clothing and her
hair. It might have been her wrath that caused the houses across the alleys on
either side of her to flame up as she passed-uptown alleys she’d traveled before
and now again on her way to Tasfalen’s velvet stronghold.
An ache and a fury was in Ischade and perhaps it spread around her. But perhaps
it was just the pillar of flame and the young fires it set, so that better
uptown streets (where Sanctuary’s troubles never spread and rebels never sped)
were a smoking labyrinth like some upscale version of the Maze.
Rebels skulked here now, and peasants, looting: Wrigglies, arms laden with
pilfered, sooty treasure, jostled her, saw whom they bumped, and slunk away.
She saw rape and nearly stopped to feed-these mortal murderers wasted the best
part of their victims, let the manna go, let the essence, precious soul and
energy, escape. Ischade was weakened by the struggle in Peres’s, somewhat.
Somewhat. But not too much.
She moved on, through a day mercifully veiled in clouds and soot and a storm now
rising off the sea. She wondered, as the sky blackened with thunderheads boiling
up, if the storm was natural or summoned-then thought it didn’t matter: it was