The Face of Chaos Part 5

'Who from?' Moria's eyes blazed. 'You by-Shalpa double fools, you lifted it from where?'

Haught shrugged. 'A greater fool.'

She hefted coin and purse, down-browed. 'At this hour, a merchant abroad in the Maze? No, not likely, not at all. What did I teach you? Where did you get this haul? From what thief?' They neither one answered, and she cast the prize on to the table. Pour silver coins among the copper.

'Light-fingers,' Mradhon said. 'Share and share alike.'

'Oh, and share the trouble too?' She held up the missing coin and dropped it down her bodice, dark eyes flashing. 'Share it when someone marks you out? I don't doubt I will.' She walked away, took a cup of wine from the table, and sipped at it. She drank too much lately, did Moria. Far too much.

'Someone has to do it,' Haught said.

'Fool,' Moria said again. 'I'm telling you, there's those about don't take kindly to amateurs cutting in on their territory. Still less to being robbed themselves. Did you kill him?'

'No,' Mradhon said. 'We did it just the way you said.'

'What's this about beggars? You get spotted?'

'There was one near,' Haught said. 'Then - there were three of them. All at once.'

'Fine,' said Moria in steely patience. "That's fine. You're not half good. My brother and I -'

But that was not a thing Moria spoke of often. She took another drink, sat down at the table in the only chair.

'We got the money,' Haught protested, trying to cheer her.

'And we're counting,' said Mradhon. 'You go ahead and keep that silver, b.i.t.c.h.

I'm not going after it. But that's all you get, 'til you're worth something again.'

'Don't you tell me who's worth something. You'll get our throats cut, rolling the wrong man.'

'Then you by-the-G.o.ds do something. You want to lose this place? You want us on the street? Is that what you want?'

'Who's dead over by the bridge?'

'Don't know.'

'But beggars sent you running. Didn't they?'

Mradhon shrugged.

'What more do we heed?' she asked. 'Stepsons. Now Becho's vermin. Thieves.

Beggars, for Shipri's sake, beggars sniffing round here.'

'Jubal,' Mradhon said. 'Jubal's what we need. Until you come through with Jubal's money -'

'He's going to send for us again.' Her lip set hard. 'Sooner or later. We just go on checking the drops. It's slow, that's all: it's a new kind of business, this setting up again. But he won't touch us if you get the heat on us; if you go off making your own deals. You stay out of trouble. Hear me? You're not cut out for thieves. It's not in you. You want to go through life left-handed?'

'Stay sober enough to do it yourself, why don't you?' Mradhon said.

The cup came down on the tabletop. Moria stood up; the wine spilled over the scarred surface, dripping off the edge.

But Haught thrust himself into Mradhon's way in his own temper. Something seized up in him when he did; his gut knotted. Ex-slave that he was, his nerves did not forget. Old reflexes. 'Don't talk to her that way.'

Mradhon stared at him, northron like himself, broad-shouldered, sullen. Friend, sometimes. A moment ago, if not now. More, he suspected Mradhon Vis of pity, the way Mradhon stared at him, and that was harder than the blow.

Mradhon Vis turned his shoulder and walked away across the room, leaving him nothing.

He put his hand on Moria's then, but she s.n.a.t.c.hed it away, out of humour. So he stood there.

'Don't be scattering that mud about,' Moria said to Mradhon's back. 'You do it, you clean it up.'

Mradhon sat down on the single bed, on the blankets, began pulling off his boots, heedless of puddles forming, of their bed soaking and blanket muddied.

'Get up from there,' Haught said, pushing it further.

But Mradhon only fixed him with a stare. Come and do something, it said, and Haught stood still.

'You listen to me,' Mradhon said. 'It takes money keeping her in wine. And until she comes across with some cash out of Jubal, what better have we got? Or maybe -' a second boot joined the other on the floor. 'Maybe we ought to go looking for Jubal on our own. Or the Stepsons. They're running short of men.'

'Nof Moria yelled.

'They pay. Jubal dealt with them,.for the G.o.ds' sake.'

'Well, he's not dealing now. You don't make deals on your own. No: 'So when are you going out again? When are you going to make that contact, eh? Or maybe Jubal's dead. Or not interested in you. Maybe he's broke as we are, hey?'

'I'll find him.'

'You know what I begin to think? Jubal's done. The beggars seem to think so.

They don't think it's enough to take on hawk-masks. Now they take on Stepsons.

Nothing they can't handle. They're loose. You understand that? This Jubal - I'll believe he's something if he can take them on. The day he nails a beggar to that bridge, I'll believe Jubal's worth something. Meanwhile - mean while, there's a roof over our heads. A bar on the door. And we've got money. We're out of Becho's territory. And keeping out takes money.'

'We're never out,' Haught said, remembering the beggars, the ragged shapes rising out of the shadows like spiders from their webs, small moving humps in the lightning-flash that might have showed their faces to these beggar witnesses.

The chill had seeped inward from Haught's wet clothes. He felt cold, beyond shivering. He sneezed, wiped his nose on his sleeve, went over to the fire to sit disconsolate. Quietly he tried a small scrying, to see something. Once he had had the means, but it had left him, with his luck; with his freedom. 'I'll go out tomorrow,' Moria said, walking over near the fire. 'Don't,' said Haught.

There was a small premonition on him. It might be the scrying. It might be nothing, but he felt a deep unease, the same panic that he had felt seeing the beggars moving through the dark. 'Don't let him talk you into it. It's not safe.

We've got enough for a little while. Let him find us, this Jubal.'

'I'll find him,' she said. 'I'll get money.' But she said that often. She went and picked up the cup again, wiped the spilled wine with a rag. Sniffed loudly.

Haught turned his back to her, staring at the fire, the leaping shapes. The heat burned, almost to the point of pain, but it took that, to reach the cold inside his bones, in his marrow; easier to watch the future than to dwell on the past, to remember Wizardwall, or Carronne, or slavery.

This Jubal the slaver who was their hope had sold him once. But he chose to forget that too. He had nerved himself to walk the streets, at least by dark, to look free men in the eye, to do a hundred things any free man took for granted.

Mradhon Vis gave him that; Moria did. If they looked to Jubal, so must he. But in the fire he saw things, twisted shapes in the coals. A face started back at him, and its eyes - Mradhon came over and dumped the boots by him, spread his clothes on the stones, himself wrapped in a blanket. 'What do you learn?' Mradhon asked. He shrugged.

'I'm blind to the future. You know that.' A hand came down on his shoulder, pressed it, in the way of an apology.

'You shouldn't talk to her that way,' Haught said again.

The hand pressed his shoulder a second time. He shivered, despite the heat.

'Scared?' Mradhon said. Haught took it for challenge, and the cold stayed in his heart. Scared he was. He had not had a friend, but Mradhon Vis. Distrust gnawed at him, not bitter, but only the habit of weighing his value - to anyone. He had learned that he was for using and when he stopped being useful he could not see what there was in him that anyone would want. Moria needed him; no woman ever had, not really. This man did, sometimes; for a while; but a shout from him - a harsh word - made him flinch, and reminded him what he was even when he had a paper that said otherwise. Challenged, he might fight from fear. Nothing else.

And never Mradhon Vis.

'I talk to her like that,' Mradhon said, not whispering, 'when it does her good.

Brooding over that brother others -'

'Shut up,' Moria said from behind them.

'Mor-am's dead,' Mradhon said. 'Or good as dead. Forget your brother, hear? It's your good I'm thinking of.'

'My good.' Came a soft, hateful laugh. 'So I can steal again, that's the thing.

Because Jubal knows me, not you.' A chair sc.r.a.ped. Haught looked round as two slim-booted feet came beside them, as Moria squatted down and put a hand on Mradhon's arm. 'You hate me. Hate me, don't you? Hate women. Who did that, Vis?

You born that way?'

'Don't,' Haught said, to both of them. He gripped Mradhon's arm, which had gone to iron. 'Moria, let him be.'

'No,' Mradhon said. And for some reason Moria drew back her hand and had a sobered look. .

'Go to bed,' said Haught. 'Now.' He-sensed the violence beside him, sensed it worse than other times. He could calm this violence, draw it to himself, if there was nothing else to do. He was not afraid of that, viewed it with fatalistic patience. But Moria was so small, and Mradhon's hate so much.

She lingered, looking at them both. 'You come,' she said, in a quiet, fearful voice, 'too.'

Mradhon said nothing, but stared into the fire. Go, Haught shaped with his lips, nodded towards the bed, and so Moria went, paused by the table, and finished off the wine all at a draught. - 'Sot,' Mradhon said under his breath.

'She just gets started at it sometimes,' Haught said. 'Alone - the storm...'

The rain spatted against the door. The wind knocked something over that went skittering along the alley outside. The door rattled. Twice. And ceased.

Mradhon Vis looked that way, long and keenly. Sweat ran on his brow.

'It's just the wind,' Haught said.

Thunder cracked, distantly, outside, and the shingles of the small riverhouse fluttered like living things. The gate creaked, not the wind, and disturbed a warding-spell that quivered like a strand of spider web, while the spider within that lair stirred in a silken bed, opened eyes, stretched languorous limbs.

The visitor took time getting to the door: she read his hesitancy, his fear, in the sound of uneven steps her hearing registered. No natural hearing could have pierced the rain sound. She slipped on a robe, an inkiness in the dark. She wished for light, and there was, in the fireplace, atop the logs that were nothing but focus and never were consumed; atop candles that smelled musty and strange and perfumed with something sweet and dreadful.

Her pulse quickened as the visitor tried the latch. She relaxed the ward that sealed the door, and it swung inward, a gust that guttered the candles, amid that gust a cloaked, hunched man who smelled of fear. She tightened the ward again and the door closed, against the wind, with a thump that made the visitor turn, startled, in his tracks.

He did not try it. He looked back again, cast the hood back from a face fire had touched. His eyes were dilated, wild.

'Why do you come?' she asked, intrigued, despite a life that had long since lacked variety. In the casual matter of the door she had dropped pretences that she wore like robes; he knew, must know, that he was in deadly jeopardy. 'Who sent you?' He seemed the sort not to plan, but to do what others planned.

'I'm one of the h-hawkm-masks. M-mor-am.' The face jerked, twisting the mouth; the whole head nodded with the effort of speech. 'M-message.' He fumbled out a paper and offered it to her in a shaking hand.

'So.' He was not so unhandsome, viewed from the right side. She walked around him, to that view, but he followed her with his eyes, and that was error, to meet her stare for stare. She smiled at him, being in that mood. Mor-am. The name nudged memory, and wakened interest. Mor-am. The underground p.r.i.c.ked up its ears in interest at that name - could this man be running Jubal's errands again?

Likely as summer frost. She tilted her head and considered him, this wreckage.'

Whose message?' she asked.

'T-take it.' The paper fluttered in his hand.

She took it, felt of it. 'What does it say?' she asked, never taking her eyes from his.

'The Stepsons - t-there's another d-dead. They s-sent me.'

'Did they?'

'C-common problem. M-Moruth. The beggars. They're k-killing us both.'

'Stepsons,' she said. 'Do you know my name, Mor-am? It's Ischade.' She kept walking, saw the panic grow. 'Have you heard that name before?'

A violent shake of the head, a clamping of the jaw.

'But you are more notorious than I-in certain quarters. Jubal misses you. And you carry Stepson messages - what do they say to tell me?'

'Anyt-thing you a-asked m-me.'

'Mor-am.' She stopped before him, held him with her eyes. Her hand that had rested on his shoulder touched the side of his jaw, Stilled the tic, the jerking of muscles, his rapid breathing. Slowly the contorted body straightened to stand tall; the drawn muscles of his face relaxed. She began to move again, and he followed her, turning as she wove spells of compulsion, until she stood before the great bronze mirror in its shroud of carelessly thrown silks. At times in this mirror she cast spells. Now she cast another, and showed him himself, smiled at him the while. 'So you will tell me,' she said, 'anything.'

'What did you do?' he asked. Even the voice was changed. Tears leapt to eyes, to voice. 'What did you do?'

'I took the pain. A small spell. Not difficult for me.' She moved again, so that he must turn to follow her, with dreamlike slowness. 'Tell me - what you know.

Tell me who you are. Everything. Jubal will want to know.'

'They caught me, the Stepsons caught me, they made me -'

She felt the lie and sent the pain back, watched the body twist back to its former shape.

'I - t-turned - traitor,' the traitor said, wept, sobbed. 'I s-s-sold them, sold other hawkmasks - to the Stepsons. My sister and I -we had to live, after Jubal lost it all. I mean, how were we going to live? - We didn't know. We had to. I had to. My sister - didn't know.' She had let go the pain and the words kept coming, with the tears. His eyes strayed from her to the mirror. '0 G.o.ds -'

'Go on,' she said, ever so softly, for this was truth, she knew. 'What do the Stepsons want? What do you want? What are you prepared to pay?'

'Ge( Moruth. That's what they want. The beggar-lord. And this man - this man of theirs, they think the beggars have got, get him back - safe.'

'These are not trifles.'