He gave Crit the chance. He walked the stable aisle and got his tack off the
rail, flung it up onto the rim of the bay’s box stall. He kept listening through
the sorrel’s ruckus, for the soft stir of straw that would be Crit walking up
behind him.
Try it. From disspirited suicide, to a gathering determination to fight back, to
the imagination that he could beat Crit, beat him to the ground, sit on him and
make him listen. Not kill him when he could. Then Crit would come to sanity.
Then Crit would be sorry. Then Crit would go and tell Tempus it was all a
mistake, and his partner had done the best that any man could do, tried his damn
heart out and done what no one else had been able to do, gods, had held the Nisi
witch at bay, had worked out at least a fragile truce with the key factions, had
patched the whole hellhole of Sanctuary together and held onto it.
He deserved thanks, by the gods. He deserved something besides a partner trying
to murder him.
Come on, Crit, dammit. Not a sound in the straw, not a move.
He turned around and looked. Crit was not there at all; had gone-somewhere.
Upstairs again, maybe. Maybe to pass an order.
Straton turned and flung the blanket on the bay, stroked its shoulder. The horse
bent its head back and delicately nipped at his sleeve, nosed his ribs. He flung
his arms about its neck, which indignity the bay protested by backing and
fidgeting; gave the warm neck a hug and a slap and tried to stop the stinging
of his eyes and the pain in his heart by holding onto something that simply