Taen shifted uneasily. "Your wife is safe until the spies of The Assassin report they see her alive, that the skar failed. Skars are expensive. He won't send another till then. We have at least until morning to do the only thing we can do, to go to him, to give him presents and please him with us so that he will rub the most expensive poison on the beak of the next skar and let your wife die as painlessly as possible."
Jeff flashed Taen a look of utter hatred. With a curse he smashed the skar against the pillar. Then he swung his fist against it with a grunt of pain, again, as though he would smash the inevitable.
"Don't punish yourself, sire. It is Konrad who must suffer."
Kit ran down the hallway to them with her hair streaming across her sleep-swollen face and her negligee clutched tight across her swelling bosom. She threw her arms about Jeff.
His face must have been very strange, for she said, "Jeff, have I done something? You wanted a baby, you said you did."
Wearily he stroked her brow. "I'm all right. Nightmare. Walking in my sleep."
Taen nodded eager assent, then stalked off as he always did in the face of sentimentality.
"Smile, Kit. I dreamt I was defending you--and our son. Of course I want a son. What gives you such funny ideas?"
She sniffed and rubbed her cheek against his chest. "I don't know. Sometimes when I start thinking of all the planets you've seen, the strange and wonderful people, the monsters and kings you've healed, I get frightened. This one planet--and I--won't be enough to hold you. I'll wake up some morning and where your head should rest I'll find a dent in the pillow. I'll hear the rockets blast off and you'll be gone wandering among the stars the way Konrad said you would."
He stiffened at Konrad's name. But she rushed on: "He used to call you The Wanderer, you know." Then she smiled at him. "I think wanderers are afraid of babies, just like seafaring men in story books were afraid of reefs and mudbanks."
Jeff managed a smile. "You're wrong, dimple cheeks, babies aren't mudbanks, they're anchors. Sure they're troublesome. You have to lug them around, hoist them up and down, clean off the rust. But without an anchor in a storm, a ship, a man and a woman, will go on the rocks.