expedition and I’ll want you along.”
Something changed in Niko’s face, as if a tension had been drained. “You do? You
will?” Niko let the children slide off his lap and got slowly, carefully, to his
feet. The signs of all he’d been through then showed clearly: bruised bones,
favored muscles, a stiffness time would have to heal. “I’m glad.. .1 mean… you
might have thought me too much trouble-all I bring with me, wherever… my
witch-curse and my ghosts and all.”
“You’re the best I’ve got, Niko.” said Tempus levelly. “And the only man I’ve
called partner in a century. Some things can’t be changed.”
And although Theron might not have understood the last bit, Niko did, and moved
painfully to embrace him, stepped back, bowed as best he could to Theron, and
then, with a blush of humility, mumbled that he’d best begin preparations to
take the boys and make away.
Tempus took Theron out of there, then, and on the way back upstairs they chanced
to glimpse the skyline out the palace window, where a hair-thin column of fire,
a weakened pillar of flame, blew far right, then left, and then winked out.