The Face of Chaos Part 6

'They'll pay - I'm sure - they'll pay.'

She unfolded the note, perused it carefully, holding it before the light. It said much of that. It offered gold. It promised - immunities - at which she smiled, not humorously. 'Why, it mentions you,' she said. 'It says I might lend you back to Jubal. Do you think he would be amused?'

'No,' he said. There was fear, multiplying fear: she could smell it. It p.r.i.c.kled at her nerves.

'But when you carry messages for rogues,' she said, 'you should expect such small jokes.' She folded the note carefully, folded it several times until it was quite small, until she opened her hand, being whimsical, and the paper note was gone.

He watched this, this magician's trick, this cheap comedy of bazaars. It amused her to confound him, to suddenly brighten all the fires 'til the candles gleamed like suns, 'til he flinched and looked as if he would go fleeing for the door.

It would not have yielded. And he did not. He stood still, with his little shred of dignity, his body clenched, the tic working at his face as she let the spell fade.

So this was a man. At least the remnant of one. The remnant of what had almost been one. He was still young. She began to pace round him, back of him, to the scarred left side. He turned the other way to look at her. The tic grew more and more p.r.o.nounced.

'And what if I could not do what they wish? I have turned their betters down before. You come carrying their messages. Is there nothing - more personal you would want?'

'The p-pain.'

'Oh. That. Yes, I can ease it for a time. If you come back to me. If you keep your bargains.' She stepped closer still, took the marred face between her hands. 'Jubal, on the other hand, would like you the way the beggars left you.

He would flay you inch by inch. Your sister -' She brushed her lips across his own, gazed close into his eyes. 'She has been under a certain shadow for your sake. For what you did.'

'Where is she? Ils blast you, whereT 'A place I know. Look at me, go on looking, that's right. That's very good. No pain, none at all. Do you understand - Mor-am, what you have to do?'

'The Stepsons -'

'I know. There's someone watching the house.' She kissed him long and lingeringly, her arms twined behind his neck, smiled into his eyes. 'My friend, a hawkmask's a candle in the wind these days; a hawkmask other hawkmasks hunt - hasn't a chance in the world. The contagion's even gotten to your sister.

Her life, you understand. It's very fragile. The Stepsons might take her.

Hawkmasks use her only to talk to Stepsons. Right now they're not talking at all. Not to these. Not to stupid men who've thrown away every alliance better men had made. Moruth, too - Moruth the beggar knows your name. And hers. He remembers the fire, and you, and her, and it's a guess where he casts the blame - as if he needed an excuse at any time. What will you pay for my help? What coin do you have, Mor-am?'

'What do you want?'

'Whatever. Whenever. That does change. As you can. Never forget that, hear? They name me vampire. Not quite the case - but very close. And they will tell you so.

Does that put you off, Mor-am? Or is there worse?'

He grew brave then and kissed her on the lips.

'0 be very careful,' she said. ' Very careful. There will be times - when I tell you go, you do not question me. Not for your life, Mor-am, not for your soul, such as it is.' Another kiss, lighter than all the rest. 'We shall go do the Stepsons a favour, you and I. We shall go walking - oh, here and there tonight.

I need amus.e.m.e.nt.'

'They'll kill me on the street.'

She smiled, letting him go. 'Not with me, my friend. Not while you're with me.'

She turned away, gathering up her cloak, looked back again. 'It's widely said I'm mad. A beast, they call me. Lacking self-control. This is not so. Do you believe me?'

And she laughed when he said nothing. 'That man of theirs -go outside. Tell Dolon's spy to keep to his own affairs tonight. Tell him - tell him maybe.' She dimmed the lights, unwarded the door, a howl of wind and rain. Mor-am's face contorted in fright. He ran out to do as he was told, limping still, but not so much as before. She took back the spell: he would be limping in truth when he reached the watcher, would be the old Mor-am, in pain, to convince the Stepsons.

And that also amused her.

She shut the door, walked through the small strange house, which at one time seemed to have one room and disclosed others behind clutter - oddments, books, hangings, cloaks, discarded garments, bits of silk or brocade which had taken her fancy and lost it again, for she never wore ornament, only kept it for the pleasure of having it; and the cloaks, the men's cloaks - that was another sort of amus.e.m.e.nt. Her bare feet trod costly silk strewn on time-smoothed boards, and thick carpet of minuscule silk threads, hand knotted, dyed in rarest opalescent dyes - collected for a fee, provenance forgotten. Had someone plundered the h.o.a.rd, she might not have cared or missed the theft - or might have cared greatly, depending on her mood. Material comfort meant little to her. Only satiation - when the need was on her. And lately - lately that need had quickened in a different way. One had affronted her. She had, in the beginning, dismissed the matter, clinging to her indolence, but it gnawed at her. She had thought upon this thing, as one will think on an affront long after the moment, turning it from one side to the other to discover the motive of it, and she had discovered not malice, not anger, but insouciance, even humour on the part of the perpetrator, this witch, this northron demiG.o.ddess, be she what she was. The affront lay there a good long while, gnawing at the laissez-faire on which her peace was founded - for, without that habit of laziness, she hungered more often; and that hunger led to tragedies.

Such a thing had happened because she was lazy, because there were costs of power she had never wished to pay. This witch slaughtered children, plucking them from her hands; and dropped the matter at her door. This witch went her way, indifferent, having fouled her nest, her eyes set on further ambitions, in professional disregard. This was worth, after thought, a certain anger; and anger eroded itself a place and grew. She ought, Ischade thought, to thank the Nisi witch for this discovery, that there were other appet.i.tes, and one great one which could a.s.suage that moon-driven hunger that had held her, so, so long.

She understood - oh, very much of what pa.s.sed in the streets, having been on the bridge, having been everywhere in Sanctuary, black-robed, wrapped in more than robes when she chose to be. The world tottered. The sea-folk intruded, a.s.suming power; Wizardwall and Stepsons fought, with ambitions all their own; Jubal planned - whatever Jubal planned; young hotheads dealt in swords on either side; death squads invaded uptown; while across the White Foal the beggar-king Moruth made his own bid. All the while the prince sat in his palace and intrigued with thieves, invaders, all, a wiser fool than some; priests connived, G.o.ds perished in this and other planes - and Ranke, the heart of empire, was in no less disarray, with every lord conniving and every priest conspiring. She heard the rain upon the roof, heard the thunder rattling the walls of the world and heard her own catspaw returning up the path. She shod herself, flung her cloak about her, opened the door on Mor-am's rain-washed presence.

'Take a dry cloak,' she said, catching up a fine one, dark as hers. 'Man, you'll catch your death.'

He was not amused; but she unwound the pain from him, cast one cloak aside, and adjusted the finer one about his newly straightened shoulders, tenderly as a mother her son, looking him closely in the eyes.

'Gone?' she asked.

'They'll try to trick you.'

'Of course they will.' She closed the front door, opened the back, never glancing at either. 'Come along,' she said, flinging up her hood, the wide wings of her cape flying in the wind that swirled the random, garish draperies of the house like multicoloured fire. The gust struggled with the candles and the fireplace and failed to extinguish them, while mad shadows ran the walls, 'til she winked the lights out, having no more need of them.

Something rattled. Mradhon Vis opened an eye, in dark lit by the dying fire in its crooked hearth. Beside him Haught and Moria lay inert, lost in sleep, curled together in the threadbare quilt. But this sound came, and with it a chill, as if someone had opened a door on winter in the room, while his heart beat in that blind terror only dreams can give, or those things that have the unreality of dreams. He had no idea whether that rattle had been the door - the wind, he thought, the wind blowing something; but why this night-terror, this sickly sweat, this conviction it boded something?

Then he saw the man standing in the room. Not - standing - but existing there, as if he were part of the shadows, and light from somewhere (not the fire) falling on golden curling hair, and on a bewildered expression. He was young, this man, his s.h.i.+rt open, a charm hung on a cord about his neck, his skin glistening with wine-heat and summer warmth as it had been one night; while sweat like ice poured down Mradhon's sides beneath the thin blanket.

Sjekso. But the man was dead, in an alley not so far from here. In some unmarked grave he was food for worms.

Mradhon watched the while this apparition wavered like a reflection in wind blown water, all in dark, and while its mouth moved, saying something that had no sound - as, suddenly, treacherously swift, it came drifting towards the bed, closer, closer, and the air grew numb with cold, Mradhon yelled in revulsion, waved his arm at it, felt it pa.s.s through icy air, and his bedmates woke, stirred in the nest - 'Mradhon!' Haught caught his arm, held him.

'The door,' Moria said, thrusting up from beside them, '0 G.o.ds, the door -'

Mradhon rolled, saw the lifting of the bar with no hands upon it, saw it totter - it fell and crashed, and he was scrambling for the side of the bed, the bedpost where his sword hung even while he felt the blast of rain-soaked air, while Haught and Moria likewise ' scrambled for weapons. He whirled about, his shoulders to the wall, and there was no one there at all, but the lightning flashes casting a lurid glow on the flooded cobbles outside, and the door banging with the wind.

Terror loosened his bones, set him s.h.i.+vering; instinct sent his hand groping after a cloak, his feet moving towards the door, his sword in hand the while he whipped the cloak about himself, towellike. He leapt out suddenly into the rain swimming alley, barefoot, trusting the corners of his eyes, and swung at once-to that side that had anomaly in it, a tall shape, a cloaked figure standing in the rain.

And then he was easy prey for anything, for that cloaked form, its height, its manner, waked memories. He heard a presence near, Haught or Moria at his back, or both, but he could not have moved, not from the beginning. That figure well belonged with ghosts, with witchery, with nightmares that waked him cold with sweat. Lightning flashed and showed him a pale face within the hood.

'For Ils' sake get in!' Moria's voice. A hand tugging at his naked shoulder.

But it was a potential trap, that room, lacking any other door; while somewhere, somehow in his most secret nightmares he knew, had known, that Ischade had always known how to find him when she wished.

'What do you want?' he asked.

'Come to the bridge,' the witch said. 'Meet .me there.'

He had gazed once into those eyes. He could not forget. He stood there with the rain pelting him, with his feet numb in icewater, his shoulders numb under the force of it off the eaves. 'Why?' he asked. 'Witch, why?'

The figure was blank again, lacking illumination. 'You have employ again, Mradhon Vis. Bring the others. Haught - he knows me, oh, quite, quite well.

'Twas I freed him, after all; and he will be grateful, will he not? For Moria indeed, this must be Moria -1 have a gift: something she has misplaced. Meet me beneath the bridge.'

'G.o.ds blast you!'

'Don't trade curses with me, Mradhon Vis. You would not proft in the exchange.'

And with that the witch turned her back and walked away, merged with the night.

Mradhon stood there, chilled and numb, the sword sinking in his hand. He felt distantly the touch against him, a hand taking his arm - 'For Ils' sweet sake,'

Moria said, 'get inside. Come on.'

He yielded, came inside, chilled through, and Moria flung shut the door, barred it, went to the fire and threw a stick on it, so that the yellow light leapt up and cast fleeting shadows about the walls. They led him to the fire, set him down, tucked the blanket about him, and finally he could s.h.i.+ver, when he had gotten back the strength.

'Get my clothes,' he said.

'We don't have to go,' Moria said, crouching there by him. She turned her head towards Haught, who came bringing the clothes he had asked for.' We don't have to go.'

But Haught knew. Mradhon took the offered clothes, cast off the sodden blanket, and began to dress, while Haught started pulling on his own.

'Ils save us,' Moria said, clutching her wrap to her. Her eyes looked bruised, her hair streaming wet about her face. 'What's the matter with you? Are you both out of your minds?'

Mradhon fastened his belt and gathered up his boots, having no answer that made sense. In some part of him panic existed, and hate, but it was a further and cooler hate, and held a certain peace. He did not ask Haught his own reasons, or whether Haught even knew what he was doing or why; he did not want to know. He went in the way he would draw his hand from fire: it hurt too much not to.

And with scalding curses at them both, Moria began getting dressed, calling on them to wait, swearing impotence on them both in Downwind patois, in terms even the garrison had lacked.

'Stay here,' he said, 'little fool; you want to save your neck? Stay out of this.'

He said it because somewhere deep inside he understood a difference between this woman and the other, which he had never fully seen, that Moria with her thin sharp knife was on his side and Haught's because they were fools themselves, and three fools seemed better odds.

'Rot you,' Moria said, and when he took his muddy cloak and headed for the door, when Haught overtook him in the alley, Mradhon heard her panting after, still cursing.

He gave her no help, no sign that he heard. The rain had abated, sunk to a steady drizzle, a dripping off the eaves, a river down the cobbled alley, which sluiced filth along towards the sewers and so towards the bay where the foreign s.h.i.+ps rode, insanity to heap upon the other insanities that life was here, where the likes of Ischade prowled.

If he could have loved, he thought, if he could have loved anything, Moria, Haught, known a friend outside himself, he might have made that a charm against what drew him now. But that had gone from him. There was only Ischade's cold face, cold purposes, cold needs: he could not even regret that Moria and Haught were with him: he felt safe now only because she had summoned them together, and not called him alone, not alone into that house. And he was ashamed.

Moria came up on his left hand, Haught on his right, and so they took that street under the eaves of the Unicorn and pa.s.sed on by its light, by its shuttered, furtive safety that did not ask what prowled the streets outside.

'Where?' Dolon asked, at his desk, the sodden watcher standing dripping on the floor before him. 'Where has he gotten to?'

'I don't know,' the would-be Stepson said: Erato, his partner, was still out. He stood with his hands behind him, head bowed. 'He -Just said he had a message to take, to carry for her. He said her answer was maybe. I take it she wasn't sure she could do anything.'

'You take it. You take it. And where did they go, then? Where's your left-hand man? Where's Stilcho? Where's our informer?'

'I -' The Stepson stared off somewhere vague, his face contracted as if at something that just escaped his wits.

'Why didn't you do something?'

'I don't know,' the Stepson said in the faintest, most puzzled of voices. 'I don't know.'

Dolon stared at the man and felt the flesh crawling on his nape. 'We're being used,' he said. 'Something's out of joint. Wake up, man. Hear me? Get yourself a dozen men and get out there on the streets. Now. I want a watch on that bridge not a guard, a watch. I want that woman found. I want Mor-am watched. Finesse, hear me? It's not a random thing we're dealing with. I want Stilcho back. I don't care what it takes'

The Stepson left in all due haste. Dolon leaned head on hands, staring at the map that showed the Maze, the streets leading to the bridge. It was not the only thing on his desk. Death squads. A murder uptown. Factions were armed. The beggars were on the streets. And somehow every contact had dried up, frozen solid.

He saw things slipping. He called in others, gave them orders, sent them to apply force where it might loosen tongues.

'Make examples,' he said.

The streets gave way to one naked rim along the White Foal sh.o.r.e, an openness that faced the rare lights of Downwind, across the White Foal's rain-swollen flood. The black water had risen far up on the pilings of the bridge and gnawed away at the rock-faced banks, trying at this winding to break its confinement and take the buildings down, this ordinarily sluggish stream. Tonight it was another, noisier river, a shape-changer, full of violence; and Mradhon Vis moved carefully along its edge, in this soundless darkness of deafening sound, in the lead because of the three of them, he was most reckless and perhaps the most afraid.

So they came up in the place he had aimed for, in the underpinnings of the bridge on the Mazeward side; in this deepest dark. But a star glimmered here like swampfire, and above it was a pale, hooded face.

He felt one of his two companions set a warning hand on his arm. He kept walking all the same, watching his footing on this treacherous ground. He could look away from that face, or look back again, and a strange peace came on him, facing this creature who was the centre of all his fears. No more running. No more evasion. There was a certain security in loss. He stopped, took an easy stance, there above the flood.

'What's the job?' he asked, as if there had never been an interlude. The light brightened fitfully, in the witch's outheld hand.

'Mor-am,' she said. A shadow moved from among the pilings to stand by her. Light fell on a ruined, still-familiar face.

'0 G.o.ds,' Mradhon heard beside him, Moria lunged and he caught her arm. Hers was hard and tense; she twisted like a cat, but he held on.

'Moria,' her twin said, no longer twin, 'for Ils' sake listen -'

She stopped fighting then. Perhaps it was the face, which was vastly, horribly changed. Perhaps it was Haught, who moved in the way of her knifehand, making himself the barrier, too careless of his life. Haught was a madman. And he could win what no one else could. Moria stood still, still heaving for breath, while Mor-am stood still at Ischade's side.

'See what love is worth,' Ischade said, smiling without love at all. 'And loyalty, of course.' She walked a pace nearer, on the slanted stones. 'Mor-am's loyalty, now - it's to himself, his own interests; he knows.'

'Don't,' Mor-am said, with more earnestness than ever Mradhon had heard from the hardnosed, streetwise seller of his friends; for a moment the face seemed twisted, the body diminished, then straightened again - a trick of the light, perhaps, but in the same moment Moria's arm went limp and listless in his hand.

'You'd live well,' Ischade said in her quiet voice, an intimate tone which yet rose above the river-sound. 'I reward - loyalty.'

'With whatT Mradhon asked.

She favoured Mradhon with a long, slow stare, ophidian and, at this moment, amused.

'Gold. Fine wines. Your life and comfort. Follow me - across the bridge. I need four brave souls.'

'What for? To do what for you?'

'Why, to save a life,' she said, 'maybe. The b.u.med house. I'm sure you know it.

Meet me there.'

The light went, the shadow rippled, and in the half-dark between the pilings and the flagstone bank, one shadow deserted them. The second started then to follow.

'TTie patrols -' he said to the dark, but she was gone then. Mor-am stopped, abandoned, his voice swallowed by the river-sound. He turned hastily, facing them.

'Moria -1 had a reason.'

'Where have you been?' The knife was still in Moria's hand. Mradhon remembered and took her by the sleeve.

'Don't,' Mradhon said, not for love of Mor-am, the G.o.ds knew; rather, a deep unease, in which he wished to disturb nothing, do nothing.