wall-eyed beast, snaggle-toothed and orange-haired, whom she'd summoned from anearby hell to serve her-she still had Snapper, though lately he'd been takinghis spy's job of day-barkeep at the Vulgar Unicorn too much to heart, thinkingsilly thoughts of camaraderie with humans (who'd no more accept a fiend as oneof them than the Stepsons had accepted Roxane).

And she had her snakes, of course, a fresh supply, whom she could witch intohuman form for intervals (though Sanctuary's snakes weren't bred formasquerading and turned out small, sleepy in cold weather, and even more dullwitted than the northern kind).

Still, it was a pair of snakes-a butler-snake and a bodyguard-whom she called tobuild a fire in her witching room, to bring her chalcedony water bowl and placeit on a column of porphyry near the hearth, to stay and watch and wait with herwhile she poured salt into the water and words came from her mouth to make thesalt into her will and the water bowl into the open wounds in Sanctuary. Notwounds of flesh, but wounds of spirit-the arrogance of loyalty given andwithheld, the gall of greed, the acne of innocence, the lacerations of love, thepustules of passion which prickled such hearts as Straton's, as Randal's. asthose of the prince/governor and his flounder-faced consort, Shupansea (foolenough to keep snakes herself, thinking that Beysib snakes might be immune toNisibisi snake magic), and even as Niko's own consuming compassion for a pair ofchildren he wet-nursed like some useless Rankan matron.

And the water in her bowl took chop as the salt hit it, then began to cloud andthen to bubble as if salt had turned to acid in hearts all around the town. Thecolor of the water grew grayer, more opaque, and outside her skin-coveredwindow, snow began to fall in giant flakes.