“I believe the Magi will demonstrate it tomorrow,” said Kiron, his voice hard with anger. “Or the next day. Soon, at any rate. When they were set upon by common folk, it would hardly have pleased them, and they are going to want both revenge and a way to make the commoners fear them too much to interfere with them ever again. I believe that they will find some excuse—that there is a plague of rats there, or some other specious reason—to destroy the ruins in the neighborhood of the beer shop across the avenue from the Temple of the Twins. And I shouldn’t be at all surprised if perfectly repairable homes and businesses are turned to glass in the process.”

Toreth looked up sharply. “Why?” he demanded.

Kiron shrugged. “The Magi are men to whom little matters but their own good,” he said. “Like my old master Khefti. When anything bad happened to Khefti, as soon as he was over his first fright, he looked for revenge. I believe they will, too. If they have grown so great in their own minds as to place their power above the welfare of the folk of the city, they will have grown great enough to believe that whatever they want is also right and proper.”

“Ah, gods.” Toreth buried his face in his hands. “The rot goes deep,” he said, his voice muffled.

Kiron thought it best to leave him alone at that point. He had a lot to think about. In some ways, Toreth and Kaleth, raised amid the endless political infighting among the royal families, had been anything but sheltered. Still, there were other ways in which they had been very sheltered indeed. They had never seen evil, amoral men under conditions in which their evil was recognizable. They were so used to petty evil that they had a great deal of difficulty in believing in great evil. And they had not made the intuitive leap that those who practiced petty evil were perfectly capable of undertaking great evil, and lacked only the perceived need and the opportunity to do so. Kiron felt oddly sorry for him. He had once been certain that there were things in his world he could be certain of. Not anymore.

He stood in the corridor—still only partly cleaned up, and with fewer than a third of the lamps replaced—and debated telling Aket-ten what he had seen and heard. On the one hand, it could make her more angry, more fearful, or both. On the other—it might serve to warn her.

Not tonight, he decided at last. Not until things are closer to normal. Unless, of course, she insists on going where the Magi can find her.