Delia looked marvelous in a robe of lavender, and her feet were bare. She did not wear toe rings. I wore a plain lounging robe of yellow, girded by a scarlet sash. As for Deb-Lu, well, he wore what was clearly a brand new robe, plain, yet contriving to look as though he’d slept in a haystack all night. His turban toppled, as ever, dangerously over one ear. Khe-Hi and his bride, Ling-Li, looked perfectly turned out in correct and expensive and yet not sumptuous robes.“The task was interesting, if difficult,” said Khe-Hi-Bjanching. He looked at his wife. “Ling-Li was fantastic.”Deb-Lu let rip a dry wheeze of a chuckle. “By Hlo-Hli! These two lovebirds make me wonder why I never married!”With all the sedateness of a Witch of Loh, Ling-Li said: “Dear Deb-Lu. Who’d have you?”Delia turned her laugh into a sound that frizzled me right down to the backbone. We all knew Ling-Li, after that start that could have been so awkward, was fitting into the group easily. She and Khe-Hi shared a special relationship in sorcery that made them far more powerful as a team than they were individually.“And this Hood of Misalignment?”“It means, in layman’s terms, that if Csitra uses her kharrna for a sending, tries to inflict another plague, it will strike dwaburs away from its intended target.”I said: “I don’t want innocent folk suddenly embroiled in sorceries — frogs and insects and suchlike falling out of the sky on their heads.”“We can deflect the plague accurately enough to drop it into the sea, for example.”“Pity the poor sailors on a plague night like this.”“We can,”
