Soul of the City Part 20

They think I am still blind to the finer workings, she'd said to the raven perched on the stone finial beside her. Their first mistake. Let's see if there are others.

No one bothered her as she picked her way across the open expanse of mud surrounding the new White Foal bridge. It was probable that none of the bravos running between Downwind and the more profitable riots uptown could see her though even she was uncertain how far her magic, or her curse, extended in such directions, now that her power had resumed its normal proportions.

Her house showed signs of her indisposition. The black roses brawled with each other, sending up bloomless canes armed with wicked thorns that flaked the rusted iron fence where they rubbed against it. And the wards? Ischade shuddered at the sight of the heavy blotches of power smeared stridently across her personal domain. With small movements of her hands, hands now less powerful but once again skilled and certain, she constrained the roses and reshaped the wards into a more acceptable pattern.

The gate swung open to greet her; the raven preceded her to the porch.

Once across the threshold, Ischade kicked the heavy-soled boots the Beysib soldier had given her into a comer where, in time, her magic would twist them into something delicate and brightly colored. She retrieved her candles, lit them, and settled into the small mountain of shimmering silk that was, in the final sense, her home.

Inhaling the familiarity-the lightness-of it, she gathered the tangled skein of imaginary silk which bound the Peres house to her and studied her options. She touched each strand gently, so gently that no one in the uptown house would suspect her interest as she reacquainted herself with what rightly belonged to her. Then she drew the thread that bound her to Straton as surely as it bound him to her.

Straton!

Ischade lived at the fringes of time, as she lived at the fringes of the greater magics practiced by the likes of Roxane or even Randal. She was older than she looked; probably older than she remembered. Straton was not the first who cut through her defenses-even her curse-to hurt her, but anguish had no sense of proportion: it was now. The Peres house, Moria, Stil-cho, even Haught; she wanted those back through pride but the sandy-haired man who hated magic had a different claim. Not love.

Partnership, perhaps-someone who, because he had shattered the walls which surrounded her, lessened the loneliness of existence at the fringes. Someone whose demands and responses were simple and who, like all the others, eventually broke the rules which were not. She'd sent Straton away for his own good and he'd come back, like all the others, with his simple, impossible demands. But, unlike the others, he hadn't died and that, the necromant realized with a shiver, might be- for want of a better word-love.

He would not die, or be stripped of his dignity, in the Peres house, if she had to destroy the world to stop it.

Walegrin paced the length of the dark, malodorous cellar. Life, specifically combat, had been much easier when he had been responsible for no more than the handful of men he personally led. Now he was a commander, forced to stay behind the lines of imminent danger coordinating the activities of the entire garrison.

They said he did the job well but all he felt was a vicious burning in his gut as bad as any arrow.

"Any sign?" he shouted through the slit window to the street.

"More smoke," the lookout shouted back so Walegrin missed Thrusher's hawk-call.

The wiry little man swung himself feet first through another window, landing lightly but not before Walegrin had his knife drawn. Thrush took the arrows out of his mouth and laughed.

'Too slow, chief. Way too slow."

"d.a.m.n, Thrush-what's going on out there?"

"Nothing good. See this?" He handed the blond man one of his arrows. "That's what the piffle-s.h.i.t are using. Blue fletch-ings-like the one that took Strat down up near the wall."

"So it wasn't Jubal starting all this?"

"h.e.l.l no-but they're in it now: them, piffles, fish. Stepsons-anyone with an edge or a stick. They're giving no quarter. It's startin' to b.u.m out there, chief."

"Are we holding?"

"Holding what-" Thrusher began, only to be interrupted by the lookout and the arrival of a messenger with a scroll from the palace. "There's no territory bigger than the ground under your feet."

Walegrin read Molin's message, crumpled the paper, and stomped it into the offal. "s.h.i.t-on-a-stick," he grumbled. "It's gonna get worse-a lot worse. The palace wants plague sign posted on Wideway and the Processional; seems our visitors have arrived."

"Plague sign?" Thrusher whistled and broke his remaining arrow. "Why not just b.u.m the whole place to the ground? s.h.i.t-where're we supposed to get paint?"

"Use charcoal, or blood. h.e.l.l, don't worry about it; I'll take care of it. I got to get out of here anyway. You find me Kama."

The little man's face blanched beneath his black beard. "Kama-she started the whole thing... taking Strat down with Jubal's arrow! There isn't a blade or arrow out there not marked for her back!"

"Yeah-well, I don't believe she did it, so you get her back to the barracks for safe-keeping. You and Cythen."

"Your orders, chief? She's probably meat by now anyway."

"She'll be alive-hiding somewhere near where we caught her that night."

"An' if she's not?"

"Then I'm wrong and she did start it. My orders, Thrush: Find her before someone else does."

Walegrin endured Thrush's disappointed sigh and watched as the little man left the same way he'd come; then he went up to the street.

Plague sign: the palace wanted plague sign to keep the visitors on the straight and narrow. It might work. It might keep the Imperials tight on their ship, away from the madness that was Sanctuary. But it would sure as h.e.l.l bring panic to what was left of the law-abiding community and, the way things were going, it would probably bring plague as well.

He wrenched a burning brand out of a neighboring building and, after sending the lookout down to the cellar, headed off to the wharves. It wasn't two hours since the afternoon sky had been split by a dark apparition streaking between the Peres house and the palace. d.a.m.n witches. d.a.m.n magic. d.a.m.n every last one of them who made honest men die while they played games with G.o.ds.

Understanding came slowly to Stilcho, which was not at all surprising. There was no peace in Ischade's one-time house for understanding and a man, once he understood himself to be dead, did not reconsider

His opinion hardened further when the globe was spinning madness into all of them and the injured Stepson had summoned the strength to reach into that dazzling blue array of magic to disrupt it. At first, all Stilcho had seen was the globe pa.s.sing from Haught to Roxane: from bad to worse; he had cursed Straton with all the latent power his h.e.l.l-seeing eye possessed. He had not been gentle getting his hands under Strat's shoulders and dragging him along the hallway while Roxane gloated and Haught wore a superficial obsequiousness.

Then he saw the little things they did not: the subtle wrong-ness in the globe wrought wards, the holes through which She might be yet able to reach. He felt the pulse of fear and antic.i.p.ation pounding at his temples, making his hands sweat-and that he had never expected to feel again; he even remembered, distantly, what it meant.

Haught had said She had cut him loose-had proved it- but now Haught had nothing except what Roxane had allowed and Death's Queen would surely have claimed him... if he'd been dead.

"I'm alive?"

He paused for a heartbeat's time and went immediately back to moving the Stepson, as they had ordered. What man could bear to lose such a precious gift?

But he tugged more gently now; Strat, whatever he had meant with his gesture, had given him life. He pushed the kitchen door shut with his foot and wiped the spittle from the fallen man's chin.

"Kill me," Strat begged when Stilcho bent over him.

Their eyes locked. Stilcho felt himself a.s.saulted and dragged to a level of consciousness he had never, living or dead, imagined.

Strat was going to be tortured; was going to be systematically stripped of every image his memory held. Death would spare him nothing but the pain and, for Strat, the pain would not be the true torture. Stilcho remembered his own torture at Moruth's hands. He shrank with the knowledge that no little heroics, like a slash to the carotid, would spare this man. He had never, at his best, risen above little heroics but he would now, for Straton. The determination came instantaneously and suffused the resurrected man with a glow that would have chilled the Nisi witches beyond the door-had they seen it.

"It won't work. Ace," he informed the Stepson as he contrived to make him a bit more comfortable on the floor. "Think of something else. Think of lies until you believe them. Haught can't see the truth; he can only see what you believe is the truth." He ripped a comer from Strat's blood-soaked tunic and tucked it up his sleeve. "Don't fight them; just lie."

Strat blinked and groaned. Stilcho hoped he'd understood. There wasn't time for more. The door was opening. He prayed he wouldn't have to watch.

"I said the table," Haught said in his soft, malice-laden voice.

Stilcho shrugged and thought, carefully, about being dead. But Haught had no energy for the likes of him, not with Roxane-Stilcho's empty eye saw Roxane, not Tasfalen-hovering behind him and Strat helpless at his feet.

"Find me Tempus's secrets," a man's voice with strange, menacing inflections commanded. "If they hide the son from me, I'll have the father."

The witch produced the globe from wherever she had hidden it. Stilcho clutched his sleeve where the b.l.o.o.d.y cloth was hidden and backed toward the door. They didn't notice him leaving-or perhaps they did. They were laughing, a laughter that rose in pitch until it blended with the maniacal whine of the globe itself.

But they didn't call him back as he edged around the newel-post and slunk upstairs.

It was not difficult to find Moria. She had only gotten to her bedroom doorway before succ.u.mbing to the horror around her. Stilcho found her with her arms wrapped around her ankles and her Rankan-gold hair spilling past her knees onto the floor.

"Moria!"

She lifted her head to look at him-blankly at first, then wide-eyed. Her breath sucked in and held, ready to scream if he came any closer.

"Moria, snap out of it," he demanded in an urgent whisper.

Her scream was nothing more than a series of mewling squeaks as she scuttled away from him. She froze, except for her eyes, when her spine b.u.t.ted into the wainscoting. Stilcho, no stranger to utter terror himself, felt pity for her but had no time to give in to it. Grabbing her wrist he hauled her, one-handed, to her feet and slapped her hard when the mewling threatened to become something louder.

"For G.o.dssakes get control of yourself-if you want to live through this at all."

He shook her hard and she went silent, but alert, in his arms. "Where's a window that overlooks the street?" He had never willingly come to the uptown house, never wanted to remember the times that he had.

Moria pulled back from him. Her bodice, much torn and retied, fell down from her shoulders. She did not seem to notice but Stilcho, with death still in his nostrils and h.e.l.l itself downstairs in the kitchen, knew beyond all doubt that he was as alive as he had ever been.

"Moria, help me." He took her arm again. Haught hadn't slighted her with his magic: tear-streaked and disheveled she retained her beauty. 0 G.o.ds, he wanted to go on living.

"You're ... you're-" She put a hand out to touch the good side of his face.

"A window," he repeated even after she fell against him, burying her face in a shirt that had seen better days. "Moria, a window-if we're going to help him and save ourselves."

She pointed at the window beyond her bed and sank back to the floor when he left her to fight, oh so silently, with its cas.e.m.e.nt.

Stilcho panicked for a second when the salt-rusted window swung wide open. Not from the noise, because Strat screamed then, but from the wards he could see shimmering like wh.o.r.ehouse silks flush against the outer walls. He forgot to breathe until his heart pounded and his vision blurred, but it seemed the wards were for larger forces and were not affected by the iron-and-gla.s.s cas.e.m.e.nt.

The horse was still out there: Strat's bay horse that Ischade had painstakingly restored to life. It danced away from the fires burning beyond the wards and the occasional bravo racing down the street but it had no intention of abandoning its vigil-not even when Stilcho reached out to it as he had learned to reach for all of Ischade's creations. Eyes that were red, vengeful, and not at all equine regarded him for a moment, then turned away.

Stilcho stepped back from the window, smiling. He retained the ability to see the workings of magic but magic no longer took notice of him. It was a very small price to pay for the ordinary sensations returning to him. Moreover, it was one he had antic.i.p.ated. He grabbed a handful of rumpled linen from the bed and had begun tearing it into strips before he noticed Moria huddled on the floor.

"Get dressed."

She stood up, examining the tangled ribbons of her bodice. Heaving an exasperated sigh, Stilcho dropped the sheets and gripped her wrists. The soft flesh of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s rested against his hands.

"G.o.ds, Moria-your clothes, Maria's clothes! You can't get out of here dressed like that."

Moria's face lost its complete vacantness as the idea penetrated through her terror that Stilcho-living, breathing Stilcho-would somehow get her out of here.

She yanked the ribbons free, tearing the dress and its memories from her, diving into the ornate chests where, beneath the courtesan's trappings which Ischade had endowed her with, her stained and tattered street clothes remained.

She made a fair amount of noise in her industry, hurling unwanted lace and satin to the floor behind her, but between the globe's whine and Strat's screams it was doubtful that anyone in the kitchen heard or cared about the commotion upstairs. Stilcho finished ripping the linen.

Blood would draw the bay horse. Stilcho pulled the b.l.o.o.d.y rag from his sleeve and tied it to the linen. He'd used blood to bring the dead across water into the upper town. Strat's blood would bring the horse into conflict with the wards, chipping away at the flaws in them.

"What are you doing?" Moria demanded, forcing the last of the rounded, Rankan contours into a now snug Ilsigi tunic.

"Making a blood lure," he replied, lowering the makeshift rope and swinging the dull red knot at its end toward the horse.

She bounded across the room. "No. No!" she protested, struggling to take the cloth from him. "They'll see; they'll know. We can get out across the roof."

Stilcho held her off with one arm and went back to swinging the lure. "Wards,"

he muttered. He had the bay's attention now. Its eyes, in his other vision, were brighter; its coat rippled with crimson anger.

But wards and warding had no meaning to Moria, though she was one of Ischade's.

She rammed stiff fingers into his gut and made a lunge for freedom. It was all he could go to grab her around the waist, keeping her barely inside the house.

The linen slipped from his hands and fluttered to the street below. Moria whimpered; he pressed her face against his chest to m.u.f.fle the sound. Ward-fire, invisible to her but excruciating nonetheless, dazzled her hands and forearms.

"We're trapped!" she gasped. "Trapped!"

Hysteria rose in her face again. He grabbed her wrists, knowing the pain would shock her into silence.

"That's Strat down there. Straton! They'll come for him. The horse will bring them, Moria. Ischade, Tempus: they'll all come for him-and us."

"No, no," she repeated, her eyes white all around. "Not Her. Not Her-"

Stilcho hesitated. He remembered that fear; that all-consuming fear he felt of Ischade, of Haught, of everything that had had power over him-but he'd forgotten it as well. Death had burned the fear out of him. He felt danger, desperation, and the latent death that pervaded this house and this afternoon-but bowel numbing fear no longer had a claim on him.

"I'm going to save Strat-hide him until they come for him. I'm going to save me, too. I'm lucky today, Moria: I'm alive and I'm lucky. Even without the horse...."

But he wasn't without the bay horse. The b.l.o.o.d.y rag had landed on the carved stone steps that had been, many years ago, the Peres family's pride. The bay pounded on the steps, surrounded but unaffected by ward-fire. It scented Strat's blood soaking into the wood planks of the lower hallway and heard his anguish.

Trumpeting a loyalty that transcended life and death, it reared, flailing at the ephemeral flames which engulfed it. Stilcho watched as the mortal image of the horse vanished and the other one became a black void.

"Moria, the back stairs, the servant's stairs to the kitchen, where are they?

It's only a matter of time."

Candlelight flickered over Ischade's dark-clad body. She had collapsed backwards into her silken lair. Her hair made tangled webs around her face and shoulders.

One arm arced around her head, the other fell limply across her waist; both were marked with dark gashes where the priest's gla.s.s had cut her. Ischade had death magic, not healing.

She was, if not oblivious to her exhausted body, unmindful of it. If her efforts were successful there would be time enough for rest and recovery. She continued manipulating the bonds which made all she had ever owned a focus for her power.

She set resonances at each flawed boundary, reinforced them as motes of warding eroded away and tried not to feel the tremors that were Straton.

It was not her way to move with such delicate precision- but it was the only way she had left. Balancing her power through every focal object within the Peres house which could contain it, she hoped to build her presence until she could pull from all directions and burst the warding sphere Roxane had created. She had discarded the thread tying her to the bay horse. She had never regarded the creature as hers but only as a gift, a rare gift, to her lover. Thus the moment when it had scented Strat's blood pa.s.sed unnoticed but the instant when it penetrated the wards was seared into her awareness.

Her first response was a heartfelt curse for whatever was causing havoc in her neat, tedious work. The curse soared and circled the wards until Ischade understood she had an ally within the house. She examined the small skein of living and dead within whom she had a focus and found that one, Stilcho, was no longer anch.o.r.ed. Stilcho, whom Haught had stolen and fate had set to living freedom.

Smiling, she pushed her imperceptible awareness past the ward-consuming emptiness.

"Haught," she whispered, weaving into his mind. "Remember your father. Remember Wizardwall. Remember slavery. Remember the feel of the globe in your hands before she stole it from you. She does not love you, Haught. Does not love your fine Nisi face while she wears a Rankan one. Does not love your aptness while she is trapped in a body that has none. Oh, remember, Haught; remember every time you look on that face."