“What is it?” he asked, doing his best not to sound surprised. He had to assume Sassin had some good reason for stopping. He assumed the noble had some good reason for everything he did. The alternative to assuming that was turning Mrem. Lorssett might not have been the tallest hill in the range, but he was no abomination, either.

As for Sassin, he knew exactly why he’d halted. A sudden pain transfixed him, as if someone had driven a spear through his head. He knew what that meant: knew what it had to mean. One of his spells had just spectacularly fallen into ruin.

His first thought was to wonder which of his enemies-which is to say, his neighbors-had dared to thwart his will. He wouldn’t have believe Fykahtin had the nerve. And Pergossett was hardly stronger than Sassin’s own aide: so it seemed from the Liskash noble’s jaundiced point of view, anyhow.

But the way his magic had failed didn’t feel as it should have if another of his own kind had suppressed it. Which left…For a moment, the pounding ache behind his eyes made him doubt it left anything. But if the Liskash hadn’t defeated a sorcery of his, only the Mrem could have.

His hiss made Lorssett cringe. The idea that those hairy screechers could do anything that seriously impeded his own kind disgusted him. Everything about the Mrem disgusted him, in fact. If only the coming of the New Water had left them all as prey for the scavengers of the deep!

It hadn’t. All he could do about that was deplore it. He’d tried his best to make them think twice about invading his lands. Too much to hope for, no doubt: the Mrem commonly had trouble thinking even once. But if they thought they could despoil what was his, they needed to think again.

And, if he couldn’t frighten them out of coming this way, he would have to beat them. He wished he truly were as mighty as he’d made that slave believe. That made him hiss once more, although this time only in ordinary annoyance. He’d lost a slave and got nothing in exchange-one more reason to despise the Clan of the Claw. Well, he wished them joy of the escapee. Mrem subjected to the will of a Liskash noble were never the same again afterwards.