“Fine,” Crit sighed, holding up empty hands and feigning a smile. “Done.”
Strat stared a moment at him, then nodded and freed the horse. “Let’s go,
then… partner?”
“After you, Strat. As you say, you’re in command-at least till morning.”
Inside Roxane’s Foalside home was a smell like burning feathers and a glow as if
the whole place smouldered.
Ischade was well aware that any instant, the premises might burst into flame.
She said so to Randal.
They’d never worked this close, the Tysian Hazard and the necromant.
It was an eerie feeling, especially when Randal drew his kris, a recurved blade,
and said, “It directs fire. Don’t worry, Ischade. I didn’t fight the Wizard Wars
for nothing,” in his tenor voice.
They walked over boards that creaked as if the place had been abandoned for
eternity and Ischade’s neck grew cold with trespass.
Randal said, waxing more the fighter with a woman watching, more the expert
First Hazard of the Mageguild with a famous witch pacing by his side, “I’ll open
the rent where she keeps it, get it out for you. But you’ll have to destroy it.
I can’t.”
“Can’t?” she said, disbelieving.
“Shouldn’t, really. You see, I’ve got one of my own. I wouldn’t want it to think
I’d turned hostile. You should understand.”
She did.
It was odd to work so closely with a rival mage of rival power. She wondered if
there would be a price.
And there was, of sorts, though it did not fall on them directly.
When Randal had made the requisite passes with his hands and a flap in space
fell down and the globe lay revealed, Ischade’s soul wrenched: she loved beauty,