Wings of Omen - Thieves World 06 (22 page)

"Tonight... .For Shalpa's sweet sake-"

"You'll find a way." Haught's eyes darted a quick, shy glance Mor-am's way, Moria's next, and flickered away again, somehow floorward: in such small ways he remained uncatchable. "It's very good, the wine."

"Damn you," Mor-am said with a tremor of his mouth. "Damn-"

"Hush," Moria said, "hush, Mor-am, don't." And to Haught: "There's food left-" It was reflex; there were times they had been hungry, she and Haught. They were not now, and she put on weight. She had drunk herself stupid then; and he had loved her when she had not loved herself. Now she was wise and sober and getting fat; and scared. "Won't you stay awhile?"

-Thinking of herself alone once Mor-am went out; and terrified; and wanting him this night (the servants she did not touch-her authority was scant enough; and they were crude). But Haught gave her that shy, cold smile that allied him with Her and ran his finger round the rim of the cup, never quite looking up.

"No," he said. He turned and walked away, into the dark hall. The door opened for him, swirling the dark cloak and whipping the candles into shadow.

"G-got to go," Mor-am said distractedly, "got to find my cloak, got to get Ero to go with me-gods, gods-"

The door closed, and sent the candles into fits.

"Ero!" Mor-am yelled.

Moria stood with her arms wrapped about herself, staring at nothing in particular.

It was another thing transmuted, like some malicious alchemy that left her strangling in wealth and utterly bereft. They lived uptown now, in Her house. And Haught was Hers too, like that dead man-Stilcho was his name-who shared Her bed-she was sure it was so. Perhaps Haught did, somehow and sorcerously immune to the curse attributed to Her. Mradhon Vis she had not seen since the morning he walked away. Perhaps Vis was dead. Perhaps the thing he feared most in all the world had happened and he had met Her in one of Her less generous moments.

"Ero!" Mor-am yelled, summoning his bodyguard, a thief of higher class. The fire seemed inadequate, like the gold and the illusions that had become insane reality.

There was little traffic on the uptown street-the watcher at the gate, no more than that; and Haught walked the shadows, not alone from the habit of going unnoticed, but because in Sanctuary by night not to be noticed was always best; and in Sanctuary of late it was decidedly best. The houses here had barred windows, protecting Rankan nobles against unRankan pilferage, burglary, rapine, occasional murder at the hand of some startled thief; but nowadays there were other, political, visitors, stealthy in approach, leaving bloody results as public as might be.

It had begun with the hawkmasks and the Stepsons; with beggars and hawkmasks; priests and priests; and gods; and wizards; and nowadays murder crept uptown in small bands, to prove the cleverness of some small faction in reaching the unreachable; and striking the unstrikable; thus fomenting terror in the streets and convincing the terrorized that to join in bands was best, so that nowadays one went in Sanctuary with a mental map not alone of streets but of zones of allegiance and control, and planned to avoid certain places in certain sequences, not to be seen passing safely through a rival's territory. Haught ignored most lines-by night. There were some foolhardy enough to touch him. Not many. He was accustomed to fear, and, truth, he felt less fear nowadays than previously. He was accustomed to horrors and that stood him in good stead. He had been prenticed once, up by Wizardwall; and his last master had been gentle, for one of Wizardwall.

"Why do you stay?" his present teacher asked.

"Teach me," he had said that morning, with a yearning in him only the dance had halfway filled: he showed her the little magic that he had remembered. And she had smiled, had Ischade of no country at all: smiled in a very awful way.

"Magus," she had said, "would you be?" He had loved Moria at that time. Moria had been gentle with him when few had been. And he had thought (he tormented himself with the dread that it was not his thought at all, such were Ischade's powers) that it was well to please the witch, for Moria's sake. So he would protect Moria and himself: to be allied with power was safety. Experience had taught him that.

But deep in his heart he had seen that Ischade was nec-romant, not hieromant; that the lighting of candles and the stirring of winds were only tricks to her. And he had breathed the wind and sensed the power, and he was snared for reasons that had nothing at all to do with love or gratitude, for he was Nisi and witchery was in his blood.

Tonight he walked the streets and crossed lines and no one dared touch him. And something cramped in him for years spread wings (but they were dark). He might have lived in the uptown house.

But he took the other way.

The sound of the river was very close here, where the old stones thrust up through newly trampled brush. Squith shivered, blinked, caught something darker than the night itself in this place unequally posed between two houses on the river.

"Squith," a woman said.

He turned, his back to an upthrust stone.

"No respect?" she asked.

He took his hand from the stone as if he had remembered a serpent coiled thereby. Vashanka's. All these stones were; and he would not be here by any choice of his.

"Moruth-Moruth couldn't come. 'S got a c-cold."

"Has he?" The woman moved forward out of the dark, dark-robed, her face dusky and all but invisible in the overhang of sickly trees. "I might cure him." Squith tumbled to his knees and shook his head; his bowels had gone to water.

"S-sent me, he did. Respectful, he is. Squith, he says, Squith, you goes and tells the lady-"

"--What?"

"Me lord does what you wants."

"He may survive his cold. It's tonight, beggar."

"I go tell him, go tell him." Squith made it a litany, bobbed and held his gut and sucked wind past his snaggled row of teeth. He had a view of a cloak-hem, of brush; he kept it that way.

"Go."

He scrambled up, scrabbling past thorns. One tore his cheek, raked his sightless eye. He fled.

Ischade watched him, and forbore spells that would have urged him on his way. Roxane was at home tonight, not so far away. Thorns regrew. Snakes infested the place. Burned patches repaired themselves with preternatural speed. A beggar sped toward the beggar-king Moruth. A black bird had landed in Downwind, on a certain sill. And Squith came. Moruth had a cold, and languished in mortal cowardice.

But Moruth had met something one night in a Downwind alleyway that mightily convinced him where his interests lay.

"Go to Roxane," she had whispered in Moruth's unwashed ear. "Go to Yorl, to whatever wizard you choose. I'll know. Or you can promise beggars they'll be safe on the streets again. At least from me. From other things, perhaps. Or at worst they'll be avenged. When a bird lights on your sill-come to Vashanka's altar on the Foal. You know the place."

A nod of a shaggy head. The beggar-king knew, and babbled oaths of compliancy. Wings fluttered nearby. She glanced up where the dead branches overhead gave rest to other shadows, inky as her robes. A messenger returned. It was a familiar room, one they had used before and had rather not use again; but it was Vis they had, and Straton operated under certain economies these days-not to let Vis see too much; and not to let Vis be seen. Vis glared at him, between two Stepsons-real ones-who had brought him to this attic unbruised. So one reckoned. Vis had a ruffled look-smallish and wide shouldered and dark, and with a look in those dark eyes under that shag of hair that said he had as lief kill as talk to them.

That was well enough. Straton had killed a few of Vis's sort, in this room, after they had been useful. Vis surely had the measure of him and of this place. There was outrage in that stare and precious little hope.

"You had news," Strat said. "I trust you-that it's worth both our time."

"Damn you. I came to you. I sent for you-I thought I could trust you-if they told you any different-"

"News," Strat said. Outside, on the stairs, a board creaked. But that was the watch he had passed. He sat down in the single chair at the single table which, like the ropes on the wooden wall, had their uses. Mradhon Vis stood there between two guards, all disarranged-they would have found a knife on him, at least; maybe a cord; seldom a penny, though Vis sold himself to at least two sides. Jubal's. Theirs. Gods knew who else. Hence the guard. Hence the forced meetings. The streets were quiet, too quiet. There had been nothing on the bridge but one one-eyed, halfwit beggar. Nothing stirring anywhere on the street outside.

"Get them out of here," Vis said.

"You want to talk this over, or just talk. Vis? You got me here. I've got all night. So have they."

Vis thought that over. So he had run his bluff and made his point. But he was not stupid; and knew where his remaining chances lay. "I get paid for this."

"One way or the other."

"There's rumor out.. .got something coming down."

"What?"

"Not sure." Vis came closer and began to lean on the table. Demas moved to stop him. Strat held up his hand and Vis stayed unmolested. "Something-I don't know what. Nisi squads-they've got a big one brewing. Heard talk about something down at the harbor. Uptown at the same time."

"What's your source?"

"I don't tell that."

"Huh." Strat rocked the chair back, foot braced "That so?"

"Word's out they've got help. Understand?"

"The Nisi witch?"

There was long silence. Vis stayed where he was. Sweat was on his brow.

"Something got your tongue?"

"I'm Nisi, dammit. She can smell-"

"Roxane might help you. Might not. I don't think I'd shelter with that one. Vis."

"Word's out she's looking for revenge. The harbor-some move there. That's what I heard. Heard someone's going to move there, hit the Beysibs; maybe warehouses. Death squads. I don't know whose. But I know who pays them." Strat let the chair thump down. "Don't leave town, Vis."

"Dammit, you're going to get me killed-you know what they'll do, with you bringing me in here?"

"You go on making your reports. If anything comes down and we don't find out understand? Understand, Vis?"

Vis backed away.

"Let him go," Strat said. "Pay him. Well. Let him figure how to get himself clear. Tomorrow. Whenever. When I'm clear. When this is proved one way or the other."

"You want a partner?" Demas asked.

Strat shook his head and gathered himself to his feet. "We've got difficulties. Stay here. Vis, mind you remember who pays you most. You want more-you tell us... right?"

Vis gave him a sullen look-not greedy, no. It was an invitation to a final meeting-more demands. And Vis knew it.

"I'll see to it," Strat said to Demas. "I don't think anything will happen here. Just keep him off the streets." He took a cloak from the peg by the door, nondescript as other clothes they kept here. The horse he rode was the bay, not nondescript, but it would serve.

"You're going to Her."

He heard the upper-case. Turned and looked at Vis, who stood there staring at him.

"You met the one she's got?" Vis asked. "She's finally got a lover she can't kill. Fish-cold, likely. But she's not that particular." Strat's face was very calm. He kept it that way. He thought of killing Vis. Or passing an order. But there was a craziness in the Nisi traitor. He had seen a man look like that who shortly after set himself on fire. "Be patient with him," he said. "Don't kill him." Because it was the worst thing he could think of for a man with such a look.

He left then, opened the door onto the dark stinking stairs and shut it behind. The footsteps thumped away below, multiplied; and Mradhon Vis stood there in a gray nowhere. Tired. Cold, when the room was far too close for cold.

"Sit down," one said.

He started to take the chair. A foot preempted it. The other Stepson leaned on the table. It left him the floor.

He went over to the comer, liking that at his back more than empty air, braced his shoulders, and slid down against the wall. So they all sat and waited. He did not stare at them, not caring to provoke them, recalling that he had tried that with their chief and recalling why he tried-a dim rage of sympathy for a fellow fool.

She. Ischade. It took no guesswork where the Stepsons would look for help when Roxane was on the move. Where that one would look for help, where his thoughts bent. He had kept a watch on Straton-for the pay he got from other sources; and he knew. That was a man infatuated with death, with beating it day by day. He recalled it in himself; until the day he had learned death's infatuation with him-and that put a whole different complexion on matters. Fool, 0 Whoreson. Fool.

Sanctuary's enemies ringed it round and, with the border northward cracking, Ranke went suicidal as the rest. The very air stank-autumn fogs and smokes; the fevered river-wind found its way through streets and windows, sweet with corruption; and there was no sleep these nights. There was nowhere to go. Part of Nisibis had slipped through the wizards' hands; but Nisi gold. Nisi training still funded death squads throughout Ranke-not least among their targets were Nisi rebels like himself. It was desert folk moving in Carronne; Ilsigi in Sanctuary port; gods knew where the Beysib came from, or what really sent them. He knew too much; and dreamed of nights, same as the Stepson dreamed: the Stepson's cause was tottering and his own was dead. And the river-wind got everywhere in Sanctuary, sickly with corruption, sweet with seduction; and promised - promised He had tried, at least. That was the most unselfish thing he had done in half a year. But no one could save a fool.

There were houses in the uptown more ornate than their own. This was one, with white marble floors and Carronnese carpets and gilt furnishings; a fat fluffy dog of the same white and gold that yapped at them until a servant scooped it up. And Mor-am thought hate at the useless, well-fed thing, hate at the servant, hate at the long-nosed fat Rankan noble who came waddling from his hall to see what had gotten past his gate.