'Mine are small vices and small virtues. To see the world recast according to my own great designs has never interested me. I have always been content with the world as it is, and so I am a dwarf among giants.' Her heavy-lidded eyes swept slowly over her guests, one by one. 'And yet dwarves crush no one underfoot.' Jezal coughed as her searching stare fell on him and gave careful attention to his rubbery meat. 'Long is the list of those you have trodden over in pursuit of your ambitions, is it not, my love?'

Bayaz' displeasure began to weigh on Jezal as heavily as a great stone. 'You need not speak in riddles, sister,' growled the old man. 'I would have your meaning.'

'Ah, I forgot. You are a straight talker, and cannot abide deception of any kind. You told me so just after you told me you would never leave me, and just before you left me to find another.'

'That was not my choice. You wrong me, Cawneil.'

'I wrong you?' she hissed, and now her anger pressed hard at Jezal from the other side. 'How, brother? Did you not leave? Did you not find another? Did you not steal from the Maker, first his secrets, then his daughter?' Jezal squirmed and hunched his shoulders, feeling as squeezed as a nut in a vice. 'Tolomei, do you remember her?'

Bayaz' frown grew frostier yet. 'I have made my mistakes, and still pay for them. Not a day passes that I do not think of her.'

'How outrageously noble of you!' sneered Cawneil. 'No doubt she would swoon with gratitude, if she could hear you now! I think on that day too, now and then. The day the Old Time ended. How we gathered outside the House of the Maker, thirsty for vengeance. How we put forth all of our Art and all of our anger, and could not make a scratch upon the gates. How you whispered to Tolomei in the night, begging her to let you in.' She pressed her withered hands to her chest. 'Such tender words you used. Words I never dreamed were in you. Even an old cynic like me was moved. How could an innocent like Tolomei deny you, whether it was her father's gates or her own legs she was opening? And what was her reward, eh, brother, for her sacrifices? For helping you, for trusting you, for loving you? It must have been quite the dramatic scene! The three of you, up on the roof. A foolish young woman, her jealous father, and her secret lover.' She snorted bitter laughter. 'Never a happy formula, but it can rarely have ended quite so badly. Father and daughter both. The long drop to the bridge!'