and hid and lurked down by the shambles, where there was always blood to be had.
Janni, she thought; that was a soul she sought. It wailed and cursed its feeble
curses; not Janni, but a Stepson of the later breed. She overpowered it with a
thrust that shriveled its resistance and the only sign of this exertion was a
momentary tension of her closed eyelids and a slight lift of her head as she sat
with hands clasped before the fire.
She had grown that powerful. Power hummed and buzzed deafeningly in her veins,
straining her heart.
Small magics stirred about her, which she supposed was Haught at his practice
again; but she paid it no heed. She might summon the Nisi slave and use him to
take the backload, but that led to a different kind of desire, and that desire
was already maddening.
There was Stilcho. There was that release, which was not available with Straton.
But what was in her tonight even a dead man might not withstand; and she had
sworn an oath to herself, if not to gods she little regarded, that she would
never destroy one of her own.
She hunted souls through the streets of Sanctuary and never budged from her
chair, and most of all she hunted Roxane.
She smelled blood. She smelled witchery, and the taint of demons which Roxane
had dealt with. She felt the shuddering of strain at gates enough for a mortal
soul, but not yet wide enough for things which had no part or law in the world
to linger.
One there was which Roxane had called. It was cheated, and vengeful, and
demanded the deaths of gods which a mage tried to prevent. It had intruded into