Soul of the City Part 8

And she was blind.

Knowing that, she came here, after a fruitless murder and a night's searching all of Sanctuary for Roxane's traces....

... To find the traces Roxane left on the future.

A light burned inside the little shop. So someone was astir this dawn. She rapped at a door she might have opened, waited like any suppliant at the fane.

Heavy steps came to it; someone opened the peephole and looked out and shut it rapidly.

She knocked a second time. And heard a higher voice than belonged with that tread, before the bar thumped back and the door opened inward.

The S'danzo Illyra stood to meet her, and that shadow to the side was Dubro, was a very distraught Dubro; and Illyra's face was tearstreaked. The S'danzo wrapped her fringed shawl about her as at-some ill wind sweeping through her door.

"So the news has come here," Ischade said in a low voice; and was p.r.i.c.klingly conscious of Dubro to the side. She forced herself to calm, concentrating on the woman only, on a mother's aching grief. "A mage is with your son since last night, S'danzo; I would be, but my talents are-awry tonight. Perhaps later.

If they need me."

"Sit down." Illyra made a feverish movement of her hands, and Dubro cleared a bench. "I was making tea...." Perhaps the S'danzo conceived this as a visit of condolence, some sign of hope; she wiped at her eyes with brisk moves of a thin hand and turned to her stove, where a pot boiled. It was placatory hospitality.

It was something else, perhaps.

"You see hope for your son in me?"

"I don't See Arton. I don't try." The S'danzo poured boiled tea through a strainer, one, two, three cups. Brought one to her and ignored the other two. / don't try. But a mother might, whose son lay sick in the palace, in company with a dying G.o.d. Priests or some messenger from Molin had been here already. Someone had told the S'danzo; or she had Seen it for herself, scryed it in the fracturing heavens, or tea leaves, G.o.ds knew.

And consolation might make a clearer mind in her service.

"Do you think they'll slight your son," Ischade asked, and sipped the tea, "for the other boy? Not if they value this city. I a.s.sure you. Randal's very skilled.

You certainly needn't doubt which side the G.o.ds are on in your son's case. Do you?"

"I don't know ... I can't see."

"Ah. My own complaint. You want to know the present. I can tell you that." She shut her eyes and indeed it was little work to do, to sense Randal at work. "I can tell you the children are asleep, that there is little pain now, that the strength of the G.o.d holds your son in life. That a-" Pain a.s.saulted her, an acute pain behind the eyes. Mage-fire. "Randal." She opened her eyes on the small, cluttered room again, on the S'danzo's drawn face. "I may be called to help there. I don't know. I have the power. But I'm hampered in using it. I need an answer. Where is Roxane?"

The S'danzo shook her head desperately. Gold rings swung and clashed. "I can't See that way-it's a present thing; I can't-"

"Find her tracks in the future. Find mine. Find your son's if you can. That's where she'll go. A man named Niko. She'll surely try for him. Tempus. Critias.

Straton. Those are her major foci."

The S'danzo went hurriedly aside, s.n.a.t.c.hed at a small box on the shelf. "Dubro please," she said when the big man moved to interfere; and he let her alone as she sank down on her knees in the middle of the floor and laid out her cards.

Nonsense, Ischade thought; but something stirred, something twitched at the nape of her neck, and she thought of the magic-fall that still swept the winds, recalling that prescience was not her talent, and she had not a way in the worlds and several h.e.l.ls to judge what the S'danzo did, how much was flummery and how much self-hypnosis and how much was a very different kind of witch.

The cards flew in strong, slim fingers, a.s.sumed patterns. Re-formed and showed their faces.

Illyra drew her hand back from the last, as if she had found the serpent on that card a living one.

"I see wounds," Illyra said. "I see love reversed. I see a witch, a power, a death, a castle; I see a staff broken; I see temptation-" Another card went down. Orb.

"Interpret."

"I don't know how!" Illyra's fingers hovered trembling over the cards. "There's flux. There's change." She pointed to a robed and hooded figure. "There's your card: eight of air. Lady of Storms-hieromant."

"Hieromant! Not I!"

"I see harm to you. I see great harm. I see power reversed. The cards are terrible-Death and Change. Everywhere, death and change." The S'danzo looked up, tears flowing down her cheeks. "I see damage to you in what you attempt."

"So." Ischade drew a deep breath, teacup still in hand. "But for my question, fortune-teller: Find me Roxane!"

"She is Death. Death in the meadow. Death on the path of waters-"

"There are no meadows in Sanctuary, woman! Concentrate!"

"In the quiet place. Death in the place of power." The S'danzo's eyes were shut.

Tears leaked from beneath her lashes. "Damage and reversal. It's all I can see.

Witch, don't touch my son."

Ischade set the cup aside. Rose and gathered her cloak over her shoulder as the S'danzo gazed up at her. She found nothing to say of comfort. "Randal's with them," was the best that occurred to her.

She turned and went out the door. The power was still a tide in her blood, still unabated. She inhaled it in the wind, felt it in the dust under her feet. She could have blasted the house in her frustration, raised the fire in the hearth and consumed the S'danzo and her man to ash.

It seemed poor payment for an innocent woman's cup of tea. She banked the inner fire and drank the wind into her nostrils and considered the daybreak.

"I can't, I can't, I can't!" Moria cried, and went down the hall in a cloud of skins and satin-till Haught caught her up, and took her by the arms and made her look at him. Tears streaked Moria's makeup. A curl tumbled from her coiffure.

She stared at Haught with blind, teared eyes and hiccuped.

"You'll manage. You don't have to say where I am or where I went."

"Then take him with you!" She pointed aside to the study, where a dead man sat drinking wine in front of her fire and getting progressively more inebriate.

"Get him out of here, I can't do anything with the staff, they know what he is for the G.o.ds' sakes get him out!"

"You'll manage," Haught said. He carefully put the curl where it belonged and adjusted a pin for her while she snuffled. He wiped her cheeks with his thumbs, careful of her kohl-paint, and of her rouge, and tipped up her face and kissed her gently on salty lips. "Now. There. My brave Moria. All you have to do is not mention me. Say I delivered my messages. Say Stilcho's with me and we're going to go down to a shop and see about that lock you want for your bedroom-now won't that fix it? I promise you-"

"You could witch it."

"Dear woman, I might, but you don't do a thing with an axe when a penknife will do. You don't want your maid blasted, do you? I doubt you want that. I'll find a lock / can't pick and see if you can. If it suits, I'll have it installed on your door within the week. I promise. Now go upstairs, fix your make-up-"

"I want you here! I want you to tell Her what you did to me, I want you to tell Her you made me beautiful!"

"Now, haven't we been over that? She won't care. I a.s.sure you she has quite a many things on her mind, and you are the very least, Moria. The very least. Do your job, be gracious, be everything I've helped you be, and the Mistress will be very happy with you. Don't ruin your makeup. Smile. Smile at everyone. Don't smile too much. These men have been a long time out of a house like this. Don't attract them. Behave yourself. There's a love." He kissed her on the brow and followed the sudden panicked dart of her eyes, the appearance of a shadow in the study doorway.

Stilcho leaned there reeking of wine, his thin, white face uncommonly grim with its eye-patch and comma of dark hair. "My lady," Stilcho said wryly. "Very sorry to distress you."

Moria just stared, stricken.

"Come on," Haught said, and caught Stilcho by the arm, heading him for the door.

"I can't find him," Crit said, reporting in to the palace where Tempus had appropriated an office, down the hall and up a stair from the uneasy business Crit had no wish to know about.

Tempus made a mark on a map. The place was a litter of scrolls and books and the plunder of the map room. They lay on the floor as well as the desktop and afternoon light shone wanly through the window, a murky afternoon, beclouded and rumbling with rain that never fell. He rose, walked to the window, hands locked behind him-stared out into the roiling cloud beyond the portico. Lightning flashed. Thunder followed.

"He'll show," Tempus said finally. "You've tried the witch's place again."

"Twice. I..." There was a moment of silence that brought Tempus around to face the man. "... went as far as the door," Crit said, much as if he had said gate of h.e.l.l. Stolidly. Eyes carefully blank. Tempus frowned.

"King of Korphos," Crit said then.

"I remember." A king invited his enemies to reconcile. Archers turned up round the balcony at dinner and killed them all. Witchfire might serve. And: Nothing new under the sun, an inner voice said; while another voice recalled dead comrades: tortured souls of yours and mine which must be released. ... At times the world went giddy, skidded between past and present. Korphos and a Sanctuary mansion. A missing Stepson, and a sorely wounded one, both prey to witches. A thing that had happened, would happen, inevitably happened? Sometimes he had run risks from mere expediency. Or perversity. He did not take his men into it to no purpose.

Crit stood there, statue-quiet. Too d.a.m.n willing. A snake had gotten in among them, and Stepson hunted Stepson and stood there with that look that said Anything you order.

"I've no doubt the witch can find him," Tempus said. "If he doesn't show up.

Don't worry about it." He gestured toward the door. Crit took the hint, and Tempus walked as far as the hall beside him. "Just see you're on time."

"Is Niko-"

"Better."

Maybe the tone invited nothing further. Crit went. Tempus stood there with his hands slipped into the back of his belt until Crit had dwindled into a shape of light and shadow on the white marble stairs that led to outer doors.

Niko was where Niko had no business being, that was where Niko was.

He struck his hand against his leg and headed down another stairs, past priests who plastered themselves and their armfuls of linen and simples to the narrow walls.

Through doors and doors and doors, till the thunder overhead diminished and the last door gave way to a sanctum sanctorum deep in the palace bowels. He stepped inside, saw the cl.u.s.ter around the bed, a half dozen priests, the mage, with enough incense palling the room to choke a man. A child whimpered, a thin, faint sound. And Tempus's eye picked out his partner standing in that group. "Get Niko," he said as a priest pa.s.sed him, and the priest scuttled into the cloying room where he had no personal wish to go. The stuff offended his nose, gave him the closest thing to a headache he was wont to have. He stood there with the pressure throbbing in his temples which might be rage at Niko or the whole d.a.m.ned business of priests and mummery and a mage's ill-smelling concoctions, or just the world gone awry. He stood there while the priest snagged Niko and led him into reach, Niko walking as if he would break, one eye running and filmed with gelatinous stuff, the other patched.

"d.a.m.n," Tempus snarled at the priest, "does it need the smoke?" He took Niko by the arm and led him out into clean air, closed the door. "I'm not asking this time; get to bed."

"Can't sleep," Niko said. The ashbrown hair fell loose across his brow, trailed into Jinan's unspeakable unguents. "No use-"

"You're raving." He took Niko's arm w.i.l.l.y-nilly, led him on.

"I saw Janni," Niko said, mumbled, in a sick man's disjointed way. "I saw him here-"

"You don't see a d.a.m.n thing, you're not going to see a d.a.m.ned thing if you don't get out of that foolery and leave those brats to the priests."

"Randal-"

"-can take care of it." He reached Niko's appointed bedchamber, opened the door and led him as far as the rumpled bed. "Now stay there, or do I have to set a guard?"

"Eyes aren't that bad," Niko murmured. But he felt of the bedside and sat down like a man with too many bruises.

Tempus had none. They healed. Everything slid off him and vanished. Only Niko had the bandages, Niko had the scars, Niko was fragile as all he loved. "Stay there," he said, too sharply. "I've too much else. I don't need this."

Niko subsided quietly. Lay back with his eyes shut. It was not what he had meant to say or do. He walked over and pressed Niko's hand, walked out then.

Call off the d.a.m.n dinner, he thought. What's to be gained? How did I agree to that?

It was before h.e.l.l broke loose; it was to calm a nervous town. It was to get the measure of a witch and her intentions. And to discover the threads that Strat had run here and here and here through the town. In that regard it made more sense than not. The affair was a stone in motion, downhill, and it would say something now to the town to break off this engagement. "... Souls of yours and mine..." Straton was one of those souls at imminent risk. And if there was a thing which might pull Straton into reach it was this, his own witch-lover's arranging.

Why meet with them? Why this courting of Stepsons?

That was the insane question. He thought ofKorphos again; and the arrows. And poisoned wine. And the Emperor.

He was not accustomed to direct challenge, but it was still possible.

The door stayed open to a steady stream of martial guests, arrivals afoot and ahorse out front, with the clank of swords in the foyer, the inpouring of wolfish men who towered and clattered with weapons they did not give up at the door. Hand after huge hand took Moria's as she stood sentry at the door of her borrowed house, a powdered, perfumed mannequin that said over and over How kind, thank you, welcome, sir and smiled till her teeth ached. Hands which could have crushed her lingers lifted them to lips smooth, bearded, mustached, olive skinned and white-skinned and unmarked and scarred; and each time she recovered her hand and stared a moment too long into the eyes of this or that man she felt the blue satin dress too low and the perfume too much and her whole self estimated for value right along with the vases and the house silver. And she was the thief!

Man after man and not a woman in the lot until a tall woman with one long pigtail came strolling in and crushed her hand in a grasp rougher than the men's. "Kama," that one said. Her hand was callused as the men's. Her eyes were smouldering and dreadful. "Pleased," Moria breathed, "thank you. Do come in.

Dining hall to your right under the stairs." She worked her fingers and thrust out her hand valiantly to the next arrivals, seeing more on the street. More and more of them. There could not be enough wine. A stray lock of her coiffure slipped and strayed down her neck, bouncing there. She borrowed both hands up to stab it back into place with a hairpin, realized the tall soldier in front of her was staring down her decolletage and desperately thrust out her hand. "Sir.

Welcome."

"Dolon," that one said, and headed in the wake of the woman with the pigtail while others came up the steps.

0 Shalpa and s.h.i.+pri, where's the Mistress, what am I doing with these Rankans?

They know I'm Ilsigi, they're laughing at me, they're all laughing....

A man arrived who was not a soldier, who came with servants: she mistook him for a pa.s.serby until he abandoned the servants and came up the steps, seized her hand and kissed it with a flourish of his cap.

He looked up. His hair was fair brown, his eyes were blue; he was Rankan of the Rankans and n.o.ble and he stared into her eyes as if he had discovered some strange new ocean.

"Tasfalen Lancothis," he murmured, and never let go of her hand. "You are the lady-"

"Sir," she said, quite paralyzed by a n.o.bleman who stared into her eyes in that way. And she was further baffled when he plucked a black feather from his cap and offered it to her. "How kind," she murmured, blinking at him and wondering whether she had gone totally mad or was another Rankan here to make sport of her. She put it in her decolletage, having no better place, and saw his eyes follow that move and lift to hers again with profoundest concentration. "My lady," he said, and kissed her hand a second time, which meant men standing in line behind him. Her heart raced in a sense of impending disaster, the Mistress's dire displeasure. Heat and cold chased one another from her breast to her face. "Sir-"

"Tasfalen."

"Tasfalen. Thank you. Please. Later. The others..."

He let go her hand. She turned desperately to the men next, pa.s.sed them through with a hand to each and caught her breath as she stared at the tall pair next, the taller one with the face that she had seen only at distance, riding through the streets on a fine horse. His clothing was plain. His face was smooth and cold and he was younger than she had thought until he took her hand and she looked up into his eyes by accident.

She stood there in mortal terror, mumbled something and surrendered a limp hand to the man next-"Critias," he named himself. "Moria," she said, never taking her eyes from the man who walked through the hall, an apparition as dreadful as anything the house had yet hosted. 0 G.o.ds, where is She? Is She going to come at all? They'll steal the silver, they'll drink down the wine and wreck the house and come at me next, they'll kill me, they will, to spite Her....

Thunder rumbled above the house, the light outside was stormlight, and never a drop of rain spotted the cobbles. She looked outside in mortal terror, expecting more apparitions. Wind skirled, committed indiscretion with her skirts. She held her threatened hair and watched wide-eyed as a last man came from around the comer where the hors.e.m.e.n had turned in, where the beggar-stableboys Ischade had provided did service with the horses, in the little stable-nook to the rear of the house. The man wore cloak and hood. For a moment she thought it was Stilcho and held onto her coiffure and dreaded his approach. But it was not, it was a different man, who came up the step with a matter-of-fact tread and looked up at her with an expression different than the rest-with an expression as if she were a wall in his way and he had suddenly realized something was in front of him.

For a moment as he threw his hood back he looked confused, which in these grim men was different in itself.

"I'm due here," he said.