Ithi'Ka shoots a sidelong glance at Nightshade... she'd hoped they might have narrowed the field, but clearly more work lies ahead.  Neither of the men seems to bear any particular value Nightshade... certainly, Ithi'Ka knows that to remove such major players in any power structure, from national borders to turf lines, causes fallout.<br/><br/>If Nightshade fell, her house would be in ruin, her workers made desperate to survive.  For Roland's girls, in the event of his untimely absence, it would be worse; they'd be free-marked property.  But Magus?  If Nightshade's estimate of his power holds true, it would be an underworld free-for-all that would paint the stormdrains red.<br/><br/>Maybe that wouldn't be so bad after all...<br/><br/>Ithi'Ka recalled the heady, stupified glares of the musk-seepign guardsmen downstairs, their stupified eyes as vacant as their slackened jaws.  She thinks on the stiffening corpse of the major's clerk, who must have flogged-- and been flogged-- to relieve the tension of his loins and the angst in his heart.  She considers the night-wails and croakings of the city, the darkness she's come to call home-- the jungle of stone and the plague of parasitic apes that inhabit it with their ledgers, their bottles, their straw-mats and toxic smoke-- and people, people... everywhere, and for what?  To devote their youth, their flesh, their minds and souls to some imbecile's promise of redemption, then to be extinguished like candles in the black tide's foamy spray?  The best of them-- human, elf, goblin-- how many would die?<br/><br/>Would Nightshade? Ithi'Ka studies the half-elf's exquisite face, the splendid curve of her mouth and the regal carriage of her head.  Then she turns to the curtain, the obscured part of the room-- what waits behind the veil?  This life is distraction... she will blame Roland, frame him if need be, to give the watch a head to split in retribution, a body to batter upon the on the cobblestones in the name of their pride and superiority.  Then she will find the truth of who has murdered the dead clerk, and it will matter only to Nightshade.<br/><br/>All this death, so easy and cold, proves that inevitable decay-- the looming servant named loss-- will claim even the most lovely of forms, will swallow every feeling into its dark endless belly, will make every page crumble to dust and every tongue mute.<br/><br/>The drow's black-gloved hands close on the curtain of some girl.  Some poor changeling whore, in the girl's abandoned room, where she might have had dreams, or hopes, or thoughts.  Ithi'Ka draws back that thin fabric on its soft-whispering hooks and smiles-- this is all that we truly can know.