that the nightly procession of Fledglings to the Tower of Wisdom had just begun.
He stopped, and stared. What were they thinking? The city lay disorganized and, in places, in ruins! Surely they could put off their regular magics for a few nights!
Then he realized that by gawping at them, he was making himself conspicuous, and put his head down, walking onward, trusting to his coating of dust to make him anonymous.
And as he drew nearer, he also realized that a good half of the people trudging slack-faced at the orders of the Magi in charge were far too old to be Fledglings.
Nor was he the only one to have noted this.
“Hoi!” shouted an old man, face contorted with anger, and so covered in dust from stone and brick it was impossible to see what color his complexion really was. “Where are you a-goin’ with them Winged Ones?”
He planted himself firmly in the path of the Magi, and stood there with his hands on his hips, staring defiantly at them.
The Magus in the lead drew himself up in affront. “Just who—” the man began.
The commoner interrupted him. “They was supposed to warn us!” he shouted, growing more angry by the moment. “They was supposed to tell us so none got hurt! And how come they didn’t, eh? Eh?”
By now, the shouting had attracted a crowd—angry people, most of them, who were surrounding the Magi and their charges, looking daggers at them. No—not at the Winged Ones, who were oblivious to all of this. All the anger was directed straight at the Magi.
“I don’t—” said the Magus in charge haughtily, but what he “didn’t,” Kiron would never know, for he was shouted down again by a different commoner.
“We know why!” the man cried out. “We seen you, comin’ here every night! First ye drag off the young ’uns, and they come back looking like ye sucked ’em up dry and threw back the husk. Then that’s not good enough for ye, and ye start a-takin’ the Winged Ones, them as is supposed to be our protection, and they come back a-lookin’ the same! Ye think we be blind? Ye think we be stupid?”
Since this was probably precisely what the Magi had thought, they exchanged bewildered and alarmed gazes.
“Well, we ain’t!” shouted the first man. “We know what’s what! ’Tis your fault my sister’s boys are dead! ’Tis your fault innkeeper’s girl’s lost a leg! Without your meddlin’ we’d have had our warning’, as is proper! ’Tis your fault, all of it!”
The crowd began to shout, and just as the Magi belatedly realized their danger, the crowd became a mob.
At that point, the Winged Ones seemed to come out of their stupor, and with looks of alarm, scuttled back to their temple. They needn’t have worried; they weren’t the targets of the mob’s anger. The Magi, however, were.
Not just anger either. People at the rear were picking up stones and pieces of wood, and there just happened to be quite a bit of that sort of thing lying around at the moment.
And at that point, Kiron decided that the smart thing would be to leave.
He doubled back on his path and took the long way back to the compound, leaving the shouting behind him as he dropped any pretense of dignity and ran. A mob of a few dozen people wasn’t going to win against the Magi, of course. But he didn’t want to get caught in the middle of it.
And besides, he needed to get back to Toreth, and tell him that their surmise was correct. If anyone could get the ear of the Great Ones with the truth now, it would be him.
FOURTEEN
TORETH went white. “No—” he said, aghast. “Surely not—”
But Kiron saw by his expression that he really didn’t need to repeat his assertion; Toreth’s reply was not an indication that he didn’t believe his wingleader, it was more that the very idea of leaving the city defenseless against its worst threat was so unthinkable and appalling.
“I—” Toreth said, staring blankly into space for a moment. “This is evil hearing,” he said at last. “I would not have thought any creature of this city, be he never so base, would have put his own desires ahead of the safety of all.”
Kiron had had plenty of time to think about this before he took Toreth aside after dinner and told him what he’d seen. Several things had occurred to him.
Now, although he had been perfectly willing to accept as a given