Wings of Omen - Thieves World 06 (23 page)

"I've got guests"-the noble wheezed (Siphinos was his name)-"guests, you understand...."

Mor-aro sucked air and stood taller, with a drawing of one eye, while in the comer of the good one he spied Ero spying out the other hall beyond the archway.

"I tell Her that?"

"Out." Siphinos waved at the servants, fluttering Mor-am toward a door, the accounts room: they had been there the last time. Siphinos closed the door himself. Ero stayed outside.

"You were to come after midnight-only after midnight-" Mor-am held up the packet; and the pig's face and the pig's eyes suddenly had sobriety and a furious red-cheeked dignity, amid all his jowls. Mor-am gave him back his own one-eyed stare and handed it over, watched him examine the seal.

"It'll be coming here," Mor-am said. "That's the word comes with this. They got their eye on you. Death squads move uptown tonight. You hear me, man?"

"Whose? When?" The flush went hectic. A sweat glistened on jowls and brow. "Give me names. Isn't that what we pay you-"

"Word for Torchholder this time. Get the word upstairs. Tell him-look out his window tonight. Tell him-" he tried to recall precisely the words he had been primed with, that Haught had told him a dozen days ago-"tell him he'll understand then what the help we give is worth."

No shrieking, no cursing, not the least cracking of the fat man's fury. Ilsigi dog, the look said, wishing him to heel. And fearing the bite he had.

"He knows," Mor-am said, neat and measured, and gods, gods, let the tic stay still. "He can tell the prince-g-govemor-" Damn the twisting of his face, the drawing of his mouth. "He'll know where his safety is. He'll pay the cost, whatever we ask. We got our means. Tell Kittycat look out his window too." Alarms were on their way, plainclothes and moving with deliberation, not panic, word back to the command post, to various places and offices. And Straton rode alone now-imprudence, perhaps; but a full troop of Stepsons clattering up the riverside slow or fast, plainclothes or not-drew too much attention. He slouched like a drunk, kept the bay to an amble, and sweated the entire last block. He had sent his three companions off the other way. Foalside was a mixed kind of street, wide near the bridge and well-used; but higher up the Foal, buildings crowded close and the street became a rough track with only the remnant of ancient stones for pavings. Trees grew untended on the Foalside in a widening lower terrace by the road. Weeds crowded close on that margin. And crouched like some lurking aged beast-a cottage occupied the upper terrace, the northern house on that black river, a tiny place like the southern one-both of which had been singed, both of which had been swept over with fire enough to blacken the brush and kill the trees that grew hereabouts. But nowadays neither showed traces of burning; and both stood just as before, surrounded with brush, and smelling that wet, old smell of places long untended in the dark, in the starlight, with old trees lifting autumn (unscarred) branches at the sky.

Ischade maintained a fence and hedge: her house clung to its strip of river terrace and faced beyond its yard and gates a row of warehouses, at a little respectful distance from the ordinary world, distance which the wise respected one of those places in every town, Strat thought, which had that dilapidated look of trouble and contagious bad luck.

Ischade's territory. He had been in it for the length of the solitary ride. And no squad he knew of dared that little strip of street or the warehouses near it. Strat slid down, looped the reins over the fence, and opened the ridiculous low gate. There were weeds, gods, everywhere. In so short a time. She grew nightshade like flowers.

His pulse quickened and his mouth went dry as he came up to the paint-peeled door and reached out to knock, half-expecting it to do the thing it had done before and swing open.

It opened, without his knock, without a sound on the other side. And he was facing not Ischade but the freedman Haught, Nisi-complexioned and dressed far too well and standing there as if he owned the room.

"Where is she?" Strat asked, vexed.

"I don't give out her business."

Something warned him-about that line that was the threshold. On the brink of hasty invasion, of drawing his sword and prying it out of pretty-lad, alarms went off. He stood slouched, hands on hips. "Stilcho here?"-as if that were what he had come for. He let his eyes focus however briefly on the dim room beyond. He remembered that place, that it always had more size than seemed right. And there was no sign of the man.

"No," Haught said.

The pulse was up again. Strat looked the ex-slave in the eyes-remarkable: Haught never flinched, and had before. Rage ticked away, a twitching of his mouth; gods, that he was reduced to this schoolboy standoff, eye to eye with a jealous slave who was-dangerous. No wilt, no bluster. Just a cold steady stare, Nisi and Rankan. And he thought of Wizardwall, and things that he had seen.

"Try the river," Haught said. "It's a short walk. You won't need the horse. You're late."

The door shut, with no hand on it.

He caught his breath, swore, looked back where his horse stood and snorted in the dark.

It was not a place for horses, down on Foalside, beyond the house, where the brush grew thick along the shore.

Fool, something said to him. But he cursed the voice and went.

* * *

"Siphinos's son." Molin Torchholder cast a misgiving look at the door and shrugged on his robe with the sense of something gone badly amiss. He waved a hand at the servant who fussed up with slippers while another stirred up the fire. "Move. Move. Let the lad in."

"Reverence, the guards-"

"Hang the guards-"

"-want to search the boy, but being nobility-"

"Send him in. Alone."

"Reverence-"

"Less reverence and more obedience. Would you?" Molin drew his lips to a fine humored line that betokened storms. The servant gulped and fled doorward, returned, and dropped the slippers face-about for him.

"Alone!"

"Reverence," the flunky breathed, and sped.

Molin worked one slipper on and the other, fought off the interventions of the other servant who drew near to fuss with his robe. Looked up suddenly as the fellow desisted. "Liso."

"Reverence." Siphinos's lanky blond son made a bow, all breathless, all courtesies. "Apologies-"

"It should be good, lad. I trust it is."

"It isn't. I mean, not-good." The boy's teeth began to chatter. "I ran-" He raked at his strawthatch hair. "Had my father's guard with me-"

"Can you get to it, lad?"

The boy caught his breath and, it seemed, his wits. "The witch-ours; she says-" Straton shoved the brush aside, more and more regretting this imprudence. He was not ordinarily a fool. Such was his foolishness at the moment, he reckoned, that he was not even capable of knowing for sure he was a fool; and that alarmed him. But the Nisi witch on the prod-that sent alarms of its own crawling up his back. You're late, the slave had said-as if Ischade had put it all together long before; as she would if that kind of alarm was ringing, audible to mages, wizards, and those wizardry had set its mark on-gods, that he tangled himself in the like, that he picked Roxane for an enemy or the vampire for an ally. He could not even remember clearly which way around it had been; except Ischade had agreed in Sync's case when there had been no other way, and in doing that, marked every Stepson her ally and Roxane's enemy.

Fool. He heard Crit's voice echoing in his mind.

Vis knew. The jolt of that caught up with his befogged wits and he hesitated on the narrow path, hanging by one hand to a shallow-rooted bit of brush, with one foot over black water and empty space. Vis knew where he was going. Damn.

Down the river, beyond the lights of the bridge, a flash of lightnings showed, and, gods knew, with Roxane stirred up, that lightning-flash set a panic in him. He hauled himself back to balance on the narrow path and kept moving. Faster and faster. No way to go now but straight on. His messengers were dispersed, alerting what wizard-help they had; one had headed the Prince Governor's direction, if he got that far. There was no calling back anyone for rethinking.

Another lightning-flash. A sudden wind swept down the black, light-rimmed chasm of the river, stirring the trees on the terraced shore. Brush cracked beneath his step on the eroded brink, beneath the sickly trees-she would know his presence, Ischade would; she had her ways. Had said once that she would know when she was needed, which intimation he had seized on with the misery and hope of all fools: so he was here, trusting a witch no sensible man would have sought in the first place-ignoring common sense and rules-gods, Crit-Crit would swear him to hell and back-What was wrong with him?

He feared he knew.

He came on an ancient stone, thrust away from it to fight the incline of the path. Hard-breathing, he climbed the treacherous slope and crested the top of it.

And if she had been an enemy, a simple shove could have pitched him backward into the Foal. He caught his balance and she gave him room there among the autumn-dead trees, on the river-verge with its strange stones. The night went away for him. There was her face, what she wanted, what she might say, nothing else.

"All sorts of birds," she said, "before this storm." It made no sense to him; and did. "Roxane-" he said. "Word's out she's on the move-"

"Yes," she said. Her face met the starlight within the confines of her hood. There was quiet in her, perilous quiet, and every hair on him stirred with the static in the air. "Come." She took his hand and drew him upslope, following the path. "The wind's getting up-"

"Not your doing-"

"No. Not mine."

"Vis-" He caught his balance against a waist-high stone, recognized where he was, and jerked his hand off it. "Gods-"

"Careful of invocations." She caught his arm to pull him further and he stopped, involuntarily face-to-face with her in the starlight: he saw no detail beneath the shadow of her hood, but only a slantwise hint of mouth and chin; but he felt the stare, felt the smooth cool touch of her fingers slide to his hand. "That's been days gathering. Are you deaf to it?"

"Deaf to what?"

"The storm. The storm that's coming... .The harbor, man. What if some great storm should break the seawall, drive those hulking Beysib ships one against the others, stave their timbers, sink them down-Sanctuary'd have no harbor. Nothing but a sandbar founded on rotting hulks. And where'd Sanctuary be then?-Death squads, riots, none of these things would matter then. The war's no longer at Wizardwall-no longer leagues away. There are ways to use the power for more than closing doors."

He was walking. She had him by the arm and the voice compelled, wove spells, though brush raked his face and he forgot to fend it off.

"I've interests here in Sanctuary," said Ischade. "It's been long since I had interests. I like it as it is."

Fool, said Crit's voice at the dim, dim, back of his mind, past hers and the rising sough of wind.

"You didn't have to hire me," she said. "Not for Roxane. That matter's free."

"I can get help." He recalled his wits and his purpose. "Get a message down there, move those ships to open water-"

"She'd eat you alive, Stepson. There's one she won't. One she can't touch. Make a little haste. You're late. Where did you go? The house?"

"The house-When-sent for me? Is Vis yours?"

"He has bad dreams."

He blinked. Balked. She drew him on. "Damn," he muttered, "could have had a horse-it's the other damn side of the bridge-We've got to pass under the checkpoint, dammit-"

"They won't notice. They never do."

They walked, walked, and the wind whipped the trees to a roar. Thunder boomed. Late, she had said; waiting on him, and late"For what?" he asked, out of breath. "For what-waiting on me?"

"I might have used Vis. But I don't trust him any longer-at my back. There'll be snakes. I trust you're up to snakes-"

The brush opened out on the terrace edge that became a rubble slope. The bridge was ahe'ad, the few shielded lights by the bridgehead still aglow on the Sanctuary side of the Foal. Rocks turned, clashed beneath hastening steps slipped and rattled.

They'll not see us. They never doHe was out of breath now. He was not sure about Ischade, whose hand held his and urged him faster, faster, while the wind whipped at her cloak and threw his hair into his eyes.

"Damn, we're too late-"

"Hush." Nails bit into his hand. They passed beneath the bridge. He looked up and looked forward again as a rock rattled which they had not moved, faint in the wind and the river-sound.

A man was in the shadow. Strat snatched his hand toward his sword, but an outflung hand, a black wave of Ischade's cloak was in the way: "It's Stilcho," Ischade said.

He let the sword fall home again. "More help?" he asked. If there had not already been a chill down his back, this was enough: Stepson, this one was... one of the best of the ersatz Stepsons they'd left behind; gods, one he'd well approved. Haunting the bridge-side. There was something appropriate in that; it was from this place the beggar-king had got him.

Dead, Vis swore. Stilcho had died that night.

Thunder rumbled. "Closer," Ischade said, glancing skyward as they passed out of bridge-shadow, three, where they had been two. Stars were still overhead, but in the south there were continued lightnings and rumblings; winds shivered up the Foal, roared in the trees downriver, on the further, southern, terraces. Beside him now, a dead man walked. It looked his way once that he caught, with its one remaining eye, its ungodly pallor. It went swathed in black, except the hood; a young man's dark hair-Stilcho had been vain-still well-kept. Gods, what did it want-camaraderie?