The Dead of Winter Part 14

It was not a curse. It was an order. "For her-" Stilcho said, lips stammering.

"I go for her, that's all."

"Oh, it's in her service. Believe me."

2.

Strat blinked in the sunlight and rode past the Blue line checkpoint in the morning-the bay's shod hooves ringing hollow on the cobbles beside the bridge.

The misnamed White Foal flowed murkily by, with its scarce traffic on dark-brown water; a skiff or two; a scruffy little barge.

The scarred end-posts stood innocent in the sun. The reeking, rotten streets of Downwind on the other side lost their mystery by daylight and became the ugly thing they were. The poor shuffled about their eternal business of staying alive, whatever the business of the night. It was a peaceful day in Sanctuary and the other-side. The invisible lines still existed; but they weakened by day, descending to amiable formality, expecting no a.s.sault. The iron discipline of the gangs and the death squads gave way to pragmatic spot-searches, Ilsigi poor taking their little chances with the lines they could cross, beggars begging their usual territories. Death squads operated nightly; bodies turned up by daylight to impress the populace.

But a Stepson still rode through, down the invisible no-man's line of the riverside. Strat saw the blue graffiti on one wall; saw red on another, where rival gangs blazoned their claims at riverside.

He knew hate surrounded him. He felt it in the city, felt it when he rode up the daylit streets in Jubal's territory-toward the Black line where members of the Band and the 3rd Commando held their own, keeping the bridge and one long street open from the Stepson Yellow line in the west, through Red through Blue and into the Black of the Mageguild's territory, commerce maintained against every attempt of the individual militias and factions to shut it down. It was a demonstration Ranke was not yet done; and some wanted to demonstrate otherwise.

His eyes scanned the way that he rode, his skin absorbed the temperature of the glances that fell on him.

The mongrel crowds of Sanctuary were out by daylight. The workmen and the merchants-the few shops, graffiti scarred, marked with the Permissions of Jubal's gangs that ruled the sector-spread few goods. Merchants had few goods.

Took few chances. Many doors stayed shut; shop-shutters were boarded over.

Uptown did not see this danger-signal; there the shops hired more guards; there the rich doubled the locks on their doors. Walegrin of the Garrison knew: the meres the prince hired knew, and both prepared as best they could-to hold the other long street open, hill to harbor.

Straton lifted his eyes, blinking in the day. He let the horse carry him in that la.s.situde his mornings-after had; let his mind carry him in crazed thoughts that darted this way and that, through the streets, to the detail of a graffiti'd wall that informed him of some death squad active in the night-to the beggar on the curb that withdrew from his horse's skittish hooves. A cart of empty jars pa.s.sed him. A handbarrow groaned past under a load of rags and junk. A sewer opening afflicted his nostrils with its sweet-ugly stench. And a blue sky shone down on Ranke's slow death.

He blinked again, looked uptown through the haze of morning-smokes from Sanctuary's thousand fires, up the winding of one of the long streets.

And it seemed there was a line drawn in the world, with fools on one side and the other of it, and himself one of the few who could see himself as a fool. The high shining fine houses where Ranke frittered away its last hours barriered themselves in vain against the tide that was about to come uptown. Walegrin could not hold forever. Neither could they, below.

Sanctuary, with its backside to the sea.

With its mongrel G.o.ds and its mongrel merchants and the last lost rim of secure land in the Empire. Nisibis would sweep down to the sh.o.r.es; and the Beysib up from the south like a rolling wave; and for an intelligent man who had soldiered all his life away for the fools who wore the gold and the purple-there was in the end, riot and murder and death by stoning in city streets.

Fool, he thought, hating Kadakithis for what he was not. And had a vision of dark eyes and felt the feathery touch of soft lips and the dizzying descent into dark.

He took up on the reins. Looked uphill with thoughts moiling in him: And snapped the reins and sent the bay clattering along the Maze, through increasingly tangled streets. Red PFLS graffiti sprawled across a wall, once, twice, obscuring the usual obscenity, Jubal's blue hawk splashed over that. The bay spumed broken pottery, sent a girl shrieking for the curb. A rock pelted back and rebounded off the cobbles. The young were always the rebels.

The uptown house echoed to soft steps and the closing of doors and Moria came downstairs, wrapped in her robe. She cursed the servants, let out a gutter oath, and stopped dead on the steps, staring wide-eyed at what had gotten in. She clutched the robe about her, wiped at a frowsy tangle of hair and blinked in the dim light. Ex-thief, ex-hawkmask, she knew the elegant shape standing in the polished foyer by the Caronnese vase: the elegant, cloaked man who looked up at her and smiled.

Her heart thudded. "Haught." She came pelting down off the steps and remembered all at the same time that she was no longer the street-wiry sylph, no longer the tough woman who knew the ways Haught did not; he was all elegance and she was she was still Moria of the streets, gone a little fat and altogether terrified.

"Moria." Haught's voice was cool, but a s.e.xual roughness ran through it, and shivered on her nerves. She stopped in her dismay and he took her by the shoulders, in this fine house that was Ischade's, as they all were Ischade's. No one had let him in. He pa.s.sed whatever doors he liked.

"My brother's missing," she said. "He's-gone."

"No," Haught said. "She knows where he is. Vis and I found him. He's doing a little job. Now you have to."

Her mouth began to tremble. First it was outright terror for Mor-am, for her brother, who was half-crazy and bound to Ischade as she was; and second it was for herself, because she knew that she was in a trap and there was no way out.

Ischade gave them this fine house and came and collected little pieces of their souls whenever she wanted favors done.

"What?" she asked; and Haught put his hands up to her face and brushed the tangled hair back, gently, like a lover. "What?" Her lips trembled.

He bent and kissed them, softly, and the touch was both gentle and chilling. He gazed closely into her eyes.

Was it possible-Moria stood quite transfixed-possible that Haught still loved her? It was a fool's thought. She only had to remember what she was and look at what he had become and know the answer to that. She recovered her wits and stepped back with a small push of her hands. The robe gaped and she cared nothing for that, small and dumpy and wine-sotted woman who had given away all advantage.

"Where is he? Where's my brother?"

"Oh, about the streets. Going those places he can go." He reached into his shirt and drew out a thing that never could have come from the lower town. "Here." The red rose showed a little rumpling. It glistened and glowed then, dewed with the illusion of freshness. "I gathered it for you."

"From Her garden?"

"The bushes can bloom-even in winter. With a little urging. She doesn't care.

She cares for very little. You might bloom too, Moria. You only want a little tending."

"G.o.ds-" Her teeth chattered. She shook sense back into her head and looked up at him. At the man she had once known and no longer did, with his fine (foreign) speech. She held the rose in her hand and a thorn brought blood. "Get me out of here. Haught, get me out."

"No. That's not the game, Moria." His hands held her face, straightened her hair, smoothed her cheeks. "There, now, you can be beautiful." And there was a softer feel to her face and to his hands, cool, like the winter rose. "You can.

You can be anything you want to be. Your brother has his uses. But he's weak.

You never were. He's a fool. You were never that either."

"If I'm so smart why am I here? Why am I locked in this place with gold I can't even steal? Why do I take orders from a-"

His finger touched her lips but the silence was hers, sudden and prudent. She caught the shadow in his eyes, that perpetually evaded, darted, shifted in a slave's nowhere privacy-he had turned that apparent shyness to furtive purpose.

Or had always had it.

"She's calling in the debt," she said, "isn't She?"

"Trust me," Haught said. His finger wandered down her cheek to her throat.

"There are few women who attract me. Certainly I don't share her bed. Calling in the debt, yes. And when the world changes, you'll wear satins and eat on gold-"

"G.o.ds, Shalpa and Ils de-"

Her voice changed in her throat, lost its harshness and became Rankene-smooth, betraying her. She stopped and spat. "My G.o.ds!" (But it came out pure and clear.) "My rose has hurt your hand." Haught gathered her fingers to his lips and kissed the thorn-sting, and Moria, who had faced street gangs dagger in hand and sliced respect into more than one Downwind bully, stood and trembled at that touch.

Trembled more when he turned her toward the mirror and she saw the touseled, dark-haired woman who blinked back at her in shock. Rage flooded through her. He made her this. Witchery like the rose. She turned on him with fury in her eyes.

"I'm not your toy, dam- mit!"

(But the voice would not roughen and the accent was not Ilsigi.) "You're the way I always saw you."

"d.a.m.n you!"

"And the way She wants you. Leave Mor-am to the streets. He has his uses. Yours are uptown. Haven't you understood what you're for?"

"I'm not your d.a.m.n wh.o.r.e!"

He flinched. "Have I ever asked that? No. I'll tell you what you're to do. But I wouldn't use that word. I truly wouldn't, Moria, in Her hearing."

More messengers sped during the day. One great one lifted on black wings and scattered a flock of lesser on his way from the river-house roof. The little ones went a dozen ways.

And Ischade (she did sleep, now and again, but rarely of late) wrapped herself in a dusky blue cloak unlike her nighttime black and gathered up certain other things she wanted.

"Stilcho," she said; and having no answer, thrust aside the curtains that hid the Stepson's small room.

There was no one there. "Stilcho!" She sent her mind out in a light scouring of the immediate vicinity; and raised a thin, wan response.

She opened the door and took a look out back: and found him there, a shivering knot of cloak by the rose-bush.

"Stilcho!"

There was refuge of a sort in the house, one of half a dozen hidey-holes they maintained within the black zone for operations this far from base. And Strat paid listless attention to the bay and saw it strawed and fed and watered in the shanty-stable; and climbed the dirty stairs of the deserted place and pulled the vent-chain that let a little light through the shutters.

There was a little food here. A little wine. A waterpot and a few other odds and ends. He stumped about in the dusty silence and knew that he was safe from hearing: below was only the stable, and to either side were warehouses and the owners of them well-heeled and Rankene, uptown.

He had his breakfast. He washed. He found himself trapped in one of those days that had gotten common enough lately, with horror on either end and sheer boredom in the middle. Nowhere presently to go. Nothing presently to do, because it was all waiting, waiting, waiting. Something would break and the Srd's scattered vigilance would turn up something, but in the meanwhile commerce went on and down by the harbor hammering went on, sound echoing off distant walls.

Building going on while the world ended.

He sat there and chewed a tasteless bit of yesterday's bread and drank a cup of wine and most of what his mind wanted to go to was Her, and the river and the dark. Maybe he could have found something to do with himself, found some use for himself or some plan to pursue-but he had a deep and abiding conviction that there was nothing, presently, worth the doing. And that soon all h.e.l.l would break.

He grew prophetic since he had shared the witch's bed. Niko had gone down in such a trap and even that failed to alarm him, because he knew why, and accepted. He sat listlessly and heard his heart beat, thump, thump, like the hammer-blows and the thud of cartwheels on cobbles and the whole pulse of the city.

My city. Walls behind which the Empire could last if there were adjustments here.

More than one emperor of Ranke had risen (aye, and come to grief) at the will of the soldiery.

He could s.n.a.t.c.h up the sword Kadakithis left untouched. Be ready when Tempus returned.

Shock Crit to h.e.l.l, he would. h.e.l.lo, Crit. Meet the new emperor. Me.

He shivered. It was crazy. He tried to think back to the night and it was full of dark gaps. Memory of things he had done with Ischade that had all the improbability of efreets and krrf-dreams.

They came and went. Her face did. Her mouth hovered close and spoke words and he could read lips, but he could not read that, as if she spoke some language he knew and did not know when he was awake, or his brain would not let him put the sounds together.

And no man had nights like that, no one could, and have another and another and pay no penalties.

There were sore places; there were marks-(witch-marks?) bites and scratches that confirmed part of what he remembered; could a man's soul leak out through such little wounds?

A spider had spun an elaborate web over by the light-vent, across the slats. He found it uncomfortably ominous. He went and flung it down and crushed the spider under his heel; and felt a chill greater than the killing in the barracks had given him.

"Stilcho." It took an expenditure of energy to bring him back. Ischade put her hands on the Stepson and searched deep down the long threads that led where he had gone; and pulled, and rewove, and brought him up again, there on the cold ground beneath the scraggly roses and the brush. "Stilcho. Fool. Come up and let go."

He wept-tears from one eye and a thin, reddish fluid from the missing one. And he did come back-came rushing back all at once and into the world with a scream that would have drawn attention in any town but Sanctuary and in any neighborhood but this one.

"Well," she said, sitting there with her arms about her | knees and regarding this least willing of her servants, i "And where were you?"

He knew her then and scrambled back till he hit the rosebushes and impaled himself on the thorns. He began to shiver; and she caught a little remnant of magics about the place.

"That very fool!" she said, knowing of a sudden that signature and that willful pride. At times Haught amused her with his hunger for knowledge and his self convinced keenness to serve. This was not one of those times. "Where did you go last night?"

"H-h-here."

"Vanity. Vanity. What prodigy did you perform? What did he ask?"

"I-I-" Stilcho's teeth chattered. "Ask-a-ask me-go down-find-f-find-a-answer-"

She drew in a deep breath and slitted her eyes. Stilcho gazed into her face and pressed himself as far in retreat as he could, heedless of the thorns. He flinched when she reached and caught him by the arm. "Stepson. No, I shan't hurt you. I'll not hurt you. What did Haught want to know?"

"N-n-nik-o." Stilcho went into a new paroxysm of shivering. "T-temple-. Said said tell-you-Janni- Janni is out hunting Niko."

She was very still for a moment. A thread of blood ran down Stilcho's cheek from the thorns. "What side is he playing, Stilcho?"

"Says-says-you spend-" Stilcho trembled and a second runnel joined the first down his cheek. "Too much time on Straton. Says think of Janni. Think-"

It all died away very quickly, very quietly. She stared at him a moment, and he stayed still as a bird in front of a snake. And then she smiled, which made him flinch the more. She reached out and straightened a lock of hair above his ruined face. "You have a good heart, Stilcho. A loyal heart. An honest one.

Proof against corruption. Of all sorts. Even though you hate what I did. Haught is Nisi. Does that suggest caution to you?"

"He-hates the Nisi witch."

"Oh, yes. Nisi enemies sold him into slavery. But Stepsons bought him. I tell you, Stilcho, I will not have quarrels in my house. There, you're bleeding. Go in and wash. And wait-" She bent and pressed a kiss against his scarred mouth, another against his wounded cheek. He took in his breath at the second, because she had sent a little p.r.i.c.kling spell lancing into his soul. "If Haught tries you again I'll know. Get inside."

He scrambled out of his predicament with the rosebush, gathered himself to his feet and went up the steps into the house. In haste. With what of grace a dead man could manage taking his leave of a sovereign lady who crouched thus in the dust and meditated a few tattered, fresh leaves onto the rosebush.

The door slammed. The rosebush struggled into one further untimely surge, thrust out a wan limegreen shoot and budded. She stood and it unfurled, blood-red and perfect.

She plucked it and sucked her finger, sent out a silent summons and a dozen birds napped aloft above where they had clung like ill-omened leaves to the skeletal winter trees.

She tucked the rose into the dooriatch. So much for Haught, who thought that his mistress had grown soft-witted. Who thought that she needed counsel; and who took first a bit of lat.i.tude with his orders and then a bit more.

This rose likewise had thorns.

It was noon, and Straton headed to the streets again- quietly, or at least with enough attempt at disguise that those who recognized him would know better than to hail him. He left the bay stabled and went afoot; and wore ordinary clothes.

First he paid a visit to the backside of a tavern where messages tended to turn up, if there was a chalkmark on a certain wall there. There was nothing. So one informant failed, which meant two others had, down the line from that one.

But Sanctuary stayed uncommonly quiet-considering the carnage that had happened over by the barracks Downwind-side. Or because of it.

He fretted, and bought a hot drink at a counter, and stood there watching Sanctuary urchins batting something objectionable about the gutter. And took a further walk up the street, past an easy checkpoint into Blue, dodging round a fuller-wagon immediately after. A donkey had died in the street. That was the morning's excitement. The tanners from the Shambles were loading it into a cart with more help from local brats than they wanted. A sly wag spooked the tanner's horse and it shied off and dumped the corpse flat, to howls from watchers curbside.