'Very good, Emancipor,' the grey-bearded necromancer groaned after a moment. 'Emancipor,' he called when the servant made to move away.
'Master?'
'I confess … to a certain … confusion. Do we possess some chronic flaw, Emancipor?'
'Sir?'
'Underestima- oh, never mind, Emancipor. Be about your tasks, then.'
'Aye, master.'
'Oh, and you've earned a bonus for your efforts — what do you wish?'
The servant stared down at Bauchelain for a dozen heartbeats, then he shook his head. 'It's all right, master. Part of my job. And I'll be about it, now.'
The necromancer raised his head to watch the old man trudge back into the house. 'Such a modest man,' he breathed. He looked down the length of his tattered, bruised body, and raggedly sighed. 'What's left in my wardrobe, I wonder?'
Insofar as he could recall — and given recent events — not much.
Shrouded once more in shadow, Quick Ben made his way down the rubble-littered street. Most of the fires had either died down or been extinguished, and not one of the remaining structures showed any light behind shutters or from gaping windows. The stars commanded the night sky, though darkness ruled the city.
'Damned eerie,' Talamandas whispered.
The wizard softly grunted. 'That's rich, coming from someone who's spent generations in an urn in the middle of a barrow.'
'Wanderers like you have no appreciation of familiarity,' the sticksnare sniffed.
The dark mass of the Thrall blotted the skyline directly ahead. Faint torchlight from the square before the main gate cast the structure's angled stones in dulled relief. As they entered an avenue that led to the concourse they came upon the first knot of Barghast, surrounding a small fire built from broken furniture. Tarps slung between the buildings down the avenue's length made the passage beyond a kind of tunnel, strikingly similar to market streets in Seven Cities. Figures lay sleeping along the edges down the entire length. Various cookfires painted smoke-stained, mottled patterns of light on the undersides of the tarps. A good many Barghast warriors remained awake, watchful.
'Try wending unseen through that press, Wizard,' Talamandas murmured. 'We'll have to go round, assuming you still cling to your bizarre desire to slink like a mouse in a hut full of cats. In case you've forgotten, those are my kin-'
'Be quiet,' Quick Ben commanded under his breath. 'Consider this another test of our partnership — and the warrens.'
'We're going straight through?'
'We are.'
'Which warren? Not D'riss again, please — these cobbles-'
'No no, we'd end up soaked in old blood. We won't go under, Talamandas. We'll go over. Serc, the Path of the Sky.'
'Thought you'd exhausted yourself back at the estate.'
'I have. Mostly. We could sweat a bit on this one.'
'I don't sweat.'
'Let's test that, shall we?' The wizard unveiled the warren of Serc. Little alteration was discernible in the scene around them. Then, slowly, as Quick Ben's eyes adjusted, he detected currents in the air, the layers of cold and warm flowing parallel to the ground, the spirals coiling skyward from between the tarps, the wake of passing figures, the heat-memory of stone and wood.
'Looks sickly,' the sticksnare muttered. 'You would swim those currents?'
'Why not? We're almost as insubstantial as the air we see before us. I can get us started, but the problem then is keeping me afloat. You're right — I've no reserves left. So, it's up to you, Talamandas.'
'Me? I know nothing of Serc'
'I'm not asking you to learn, either. What I want is your power.'
'That wasn't part of the deal!'
'It is now.'
The sticksnare shifted and twitched on Quick Ben's shoulder. 'By drawing on my power, you weaken the protection I offer against the poison.'
'And we need to find that threshold, Talamandas. I need to know what I can pull from you in an emergency.'
'Just how nasty a situation are you anticipating when we finally challenge the Crippled God?' the sticksnare demanded. 'Those secret plans of yours — no wonder you're keeping them secret!'
'I could have sworn you said you were offering yourself up as a sacrifice to the cause — do you now balk?'
'At madness? Count on it, Wizard!'
Quick Ben smiled to himself. 'Relax, I'm not stoking a pyre for you. Nor have I any plans to challenge the Crippled God. Not directly. I've been face to face with him once, and once remains enough. Even so, I was serious about finding that threshold. Now, pull the cork, shaman, and let's see what we can manage.'