Free Dancer's Lament: Path to Ascendancy Book 1 by Ian C. Esslemont Page B

jewellery with her plain linen trousers and long loose shirt. As she passed it struck him once again that she possessed a good hand’s breadth in height beyond his own – and he was considered tall.
    He bowed deeply from the waist, not coincidentally keeping his gaze hidden.
    She paused, turning on the balls of her feet, and he smiled inwardly; she was trained in the ways of fighting. ‘Yes, Silk?’
    ‘News, m’lady.’
    ‘Yes?’
    He straightened, keeping his gaze on her feet where her toes peeped out from beneath the hem of her trousers. Unbidden, the thought assaulted him: judging from the effect of those bare toes, would he faint at the glimpse of a whole ankle? Swallowing to clear his throat, he coughed into a fist. ‘We met the priest of Hood and his acolyte earlier.’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Koroll and Smokey and I agree that he is legitimate.’ Silk dared raise his gaze to the shirt over her torso beneath the outward brush of her modest chest. ‘The cult of Hood, it seems, has returned to Heng in truth.’
    And then the impossible happened as the Protectress staggered. She tilted to the side, her feet tangling, and she would have fallen had not he, darting forward, caught her in his arms –
his arms!
– to gently lower her to the steps of the dais. His amazement at her reaction did not stop him from quickly yanking his guiding arm away, for the Protectress’s body burned with a vicious heat. The inner flesh of his biceps and forearm stung as if he’d brushed a kiln and he gasped, half in surprise and half in pain.
    ‘M’lady!’
    Recovering, the Protectress waved off the episode. ‘It is nothing. My thanks. I was merely . . . taken unawares.’
    He found it unseemly to be standing over her and so he dared sit at her feet, on the cool polished stone flags of the floor. ‘By what, may I ask?’
    The woman looked away, blinking. Her fine long white hair fell over one shoulder like a cascade of frost. ‘I had hoped the man was just another travelling impostor or swindler, trading on the natural fears of the populace.’ She sent him a quick glance and this close he thought her pupils dusted in flecks of shimmering gold. ‘But you say he is not.’
    He forced a breath deep within his vice-tightening chest. ‘Yes. Koroll judged that Hood was with them – and I concur.’
    She sighed. ‘Koroll would not be mistaken on such a matter.’
    ‘You fear him, then? Hood? Is that why—’
    Her raised hand silenced him. ‘Not Hood . . . as such. No.’ She let out a long low breath. ‘Long ago I was young and foolish, as all youth is. I was desperate to know my fate and I sought out the greatest reader of futures of the time – the power that some say created the means of reading in the first place. The Tiste Andii had given her a name, then. They called her T’riss. You know her by another name now. The Enchantress – the Queen of Dreams.’
    A shiver of wonder took hold of Silk’s spine. This woman had spoken with a goddess! The mistress – some say ruler – of a Warren. To others, the patroness of sorcery itself. He steeled himself to dare ask, ‘And . . . what did she say?’
    A thin smile haunted the Protectress’s lips as she gazed off across the hall. ‘At first she refused. Said it would be too great a burden. But I was insistent.’ She nodded to herself in wry memory. ‘And so did I learn how my death would come to me . . . it would come carrying the very face of death itself.’
    Silk surged to his feet. ‘We will fall upon the temple tonight. All five of us. It will be nothing but a smoking pit by morning.’
    The Protectress snapped up a hand. ‘No! I forbid it. There is nothing to be done. There is no stratagem, or trick, or flight to be made. One cannot outrun one’s fate. It is inevitable. You will not interfere.’ She turned her golden eyes directly upon him and he lowered his gaze. ‘Do I have your word?’
    He unclenched his jaws. ‘You do.’
    ‘Very good.’ A small gesture