The meaning of it, remaining hidden, chilled her.

She could do only so much; she had certain words to say.

She said them and the dark witching room was lit with balefire. The light touched the globe in its hidey-hole of nothingness and the globe began to spin.

If there was some bond of fate between her and egregious Tempus, the thread must be cut. Even if it were Niko's life, she must do the deed. And the baby god could not be suffered to survive. Both children's lives and souls were promised to a certain demon of her recent, intimate acquaintance.

And the cold she felt, which raised gooseflesh on sanguine Nisi skin as smooth as velvet, which drew back lips as beautiful as any that had ever spoken death for men-that cold had to do with failing and winning, with perishing and surviving.

As the door to her outer chamber shivered from something scratching on its farther side, she decided.

She let the globe spin faster, let the colors from its stones bathe her in their light.

A rushing wind filled the scrying room and in its midst was a woman's form, changing shape.

Black mist spun around the comeliest of female guises. Black wizard hair grew long and covered limbs cut clean and meant to hypnotize any man. Her fine long nose grew chitinous, then hooked; her firm flesh sprouted feathers.

And by the time Snapper Jo, still wiping his claws on his barman's apron, thought he'd better open up the door himself, an eagle with a wingspan ten feet wide stood where Roxane was before.

And Snapper, her spy among the Sanctuary denizens, who tended bar at the Vulgar Unicorn, clacked prognathic jaws together and wrung his clawed and warty hands.

"Mistress," he gurgled in his fiendish, grating voice, "is that you?" His eyes that looked every which-way squinted at the eagle swathed in dusky light. He squatted down, gray gangly limbs akimbo in submission. "Roxane?" said the fiend again. "Call Snapper, did you? Here I be, for what? Some murder? Murder do, tonight?"

And the eagle cocked its head at him and let out a screech no fiend could misconstrue, then took wing and flapped by him, out the door, leaving him bleeding from a flesh wound made by claws much sharper than his own.

Muttering, "Damn and damn and murder damned," the fiend scuttled after her. Looking askance at her black shadow in the moonless sky. Snapper Jo chewed a long orange lock of hair in dark frustration. To be human was his wish; to be free of Roxane his hidden dream. But sometimes he thought he never would be free of her.

And the trouble was, at times like these, he didn't care. He was hungry as the night for blood; just the thought of carnage made him giddy.

So he scuttled on, following the eagle in the night, cackling wordlessly under his breath as Roxane, in eagle's guise, led him toward the winter palace, then lost him in Shambles Cross when he came across a fresh and bleeding morsel of a corpse.

Jihan was alone with the two children, her scale-armor discarded, cuddling one to either breast on Niko's bed in the nursery when the snake, man-sized but silent, slithered in.

The Froth Daughter was not human, but she was lonely. Tempus was no man for progeny-he considered nothing but himself.

Jihan had wanted children of her own and been refused by him. Now, thanks to her father, fate, and Niko, she had two fine boys to care for-one of them Tempus's own.

She would never give them up. She was ecstatic in her joy, and drowsy.

Thus she didn't see the snake until it reared, fangs wide and gaping, and struck like lightning, biting Arton on the arm.

Then, wide awake with two terrified babes to hold, one wounded and screaming, the other howling just as loudly, she cowered.

To reach her sword or freeze the snake, arching high above the bed and glaring fire-eyed down upon her, she'd have to put down one or both children.

This the frustrated mother could not do. She tried to shield Gyskouras with her body, interpose her own arm, even force it like a gag into the snake's gaping jaws.

But the snake was wise and quick and its jaws unhinged, so that it bit right through Jihan's arm and punctured the godchild's flesh and shook the Froth Daughter and the child, stapled together by its fangs.

Jihan wailed in rage and agony-a sound the like of which had not been heard in Sanctuary since Vashanka battled Storm-bringer in the sky at the Mageguild's fete.

And that brought help, though she barely knew it as her body fought the poison and her arms, about the snake's neck, grew weaker as she wrestled it. Even Tempus and Niko paused in horror at the sight of Jihan locked in bodily combat with the viper, the god-child being crushed in between.

Beside Tempus, Niko drew a breath and then reached out: "Riddler! Quickly! Take this dagger."

The dagger, like Niko's sword, was dream-forged and it felt hot in the Riddler's hand.

He raced his Stepson, on his right, to reach the snake and the two of them began to hack away.

With every stroke acid ichor spouted, so that Tempus's skin sizzled, blistered, and peeled.

There was no time to fear for Niko, beside him as if they were once more a bonded pair.

Jihan was wound in coils, protecting one child who was absolutely silent. The other, Arton, was curled up moaning, forgotten on the floor except when ichor struck him and he squealed at the pain.

The snake didn't flail or shrink from the damage Niko's sword did, though Tempus's deeper cuts could give it pause.

The Riddler realized just in time what must be wrong-just as the snake was tensing and Jihan, mouth open and eyes bulging as the breath was squeezed from her, called his name and the viper fixed Niko with a gaze that pushed Stealth backward and made him drop his sword.

For no snake, not even a Nisibisi snake, should be growing larger and bolder as it fought and bled.

Tempus looked up and around and saw the source of the snake's supernatural power: an eagle perched, bating, in the bolthole of the palace wall.

Beside him, Niko faltered, his face blistered, his ankles entangled in the ever growing coils of the snake.

Tempus knew he risked Stealth's life as he stepped out of striking range and raised his knifehand.

His eyes met the eagle's and it called softly, a cry like a baby's, and raised its head and clacked its beak.

Then the dagger Stealth had loaned him flew through the air and struck the eagle's breast.

A screech like a witch burning at the stake resounded, so that Niko lost his footing, hands clapped to either ear, and fell among the deadly coils.

But it was a chance Tempus had had to take.

And as he strode forward, faster than anything else within that room because, at last, his wrath had brought the gods awake and power rose within him, the eagle overhead burst into flame.

The flames began around the dagger in its breast and licked hot and higher as the bird took wing.

But Tempus had no more time for watching birds or taking chances; he heard a dagger fall from the bolthole's height as he waded amid the coils-first to Stealth, who still fought gamely though ichor had burned one eye shut and his limbs were bound with writhing snake.

Pitting all his strength against the failing power of the snake- now shrinking but perhaps not fast enough-the Riddler struggled.

Vaguely he heard voices behind him as palace praetorians gathered. "Stay back!" he shouted without looking.

He was watching Jihan's eyes pop, her more-than-mortal hands clutching the noose of snake still at her throat.

The damned thing was dying and as it did it was whipping back and forth, tossing Niko like a hook on a fishing line, crushing Jihan. And somewhere, in that thrashing mess of green slime and human limbs, a child was lost.