When Adwyn high walked back down the corridor, he curled his wings besides him.  Frills pressed against his neck, and his tongue was sifting for something out of place.


    clung. It didn’t seem to have gone anywhere.


    scheme?  Yet she lacked the opportunity or desire to scheme anything relevant.


    you should have planned, but subtler than you can manage.


    some did not, and knowing the high secretary would check and transcribe every report, this was one of the few times some species of pity for the wiver gleamed in Adwyn.)


    no church of Dyfns), liaison with the apes, and no doubt the one who’d sown chaos in Rhyfel-ann’s guard.


    known that some scarred, tailless plain-dweller, one Brigg of Aludu Dymestl, had stood hidden atop the empire of drugs that had rooted in the cliffs.  Fruitless dances had flown by, and the problem had festered.


    he were the prime mover, the one alone who saved Gwymr/Frina, it could look quite bright under his name.


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    There was no sound of footsteps padding up, no swish of robes, no huff of cyclic breath.  And not even that ghostly nerval hum which haunted living things.


    severe,” he said with a hisslaugh.  “I glimpse that inquiry is dark work, but Dyfns’s breath, have a drop of sweetness.  Are you this dour in the bedroom?”  It was easy, to joke, to stoke the giddy flames in his soul.  An inquirer.  Was this luck?  Dyfn’s plan?  Had he caused this?


    inquirer, yet isn’t committed to parchment?”


    almost as though the term has come to mean something more.”


    important and confidential.”


    you?”


    * * *