Uneasy Alliances Part 3

And it was so easy, for a man so like every other man in Sanctuary, to the eyes of the invaders.

Wind and rain spatter at the eaves, rattle the shutters and bring cold into the room where Moria dresses, hastily, in the stink and the squalor of the tenement she shares with Stilcho, late oflschade's service. A gray, dim light reaches the bed where Stilcho rests, drugged with what krrfshe can buy him-sleep, peace which she can buy him, who has so little peace nowadays.

He is so handsome, so very beautiful to her whose beauty a mage gave her, whose beauty, Rankene-fair, Haught bespelled with stolen magic; Stilcho's, she had never seen-had been terrified of him, whom Ischade had raised from the dead; she had dreaded the sight of him, shrunk from the chance touch of his hand, which in those days had been chill, had seen only his scars, which the beggar-king had given him, a Stepson, in the long, long night that he had been the beggar-king's prisoner, and they had taken out his right eye, and were about to take the other when Ischade had intervened.

Ischade had claimed him then, since the Stepsons would not have him, a walking dead; and Ischade, whose curse took the life of her lovers, (except Strat, G.o.ds only knew why but Moria made guesses) had taken Stilcho in Straton's stead on those terrible nights when the black mood was on her, and she evaded Straton and drove all her servants from her presence-except Stilcho, on whom the curse fell with all its force, who could die, and die, and die, because she had strings on his soul, and could pull it up again from h.e.l.l- Moria had seen him on such mornings, had seen his face and shuddered at that look, that bleak terror, that awful intensity with which he would sit and feel of things, the table, the texture of the cloth, the flesh of his arm-as if it were precious and all too fragile.

She had heard him scream-had heard him, as no woman should hear a man, break down in tears and plead with Ischade, not again, not again, no more- She had shuddered at the mere sight of him in those days.

But those arms, however chill, had been there to hold her when her own world came tumbling down. And his goodness, his loyalty, had touched even Ischade's sense of justice: she had brought him all the way back. She had set him free-free as a man could be, who had suffered what he had, and who still waked screaming of nights, seeing h.e.l.l, and demons.

Krrf gave him peace. Krrf let him lie safe from his devils-so, so good to see, his quiet sleep, his face that was always so pale, at rest, the patched eye and the fall of dark hair, all that was dark about him: the rest was light, white-washed in the light that, like the chill wind, came through the shutter slats.

She tied a ragged brown scarf about her blonde hair. And from its place in the corner, disguised with clay, she took a lump that was heavier than any rock ought to be, a lump that weighed like sin-or pure gold.

She put it in the ratty basket she had, along with some rags of laundry, She was very careful going out the door, and left the latchstring inside, so only he could open it.

He would know, she feared, when he woke. The first thing he would check would be that comer where they hid the lump she had salvaged from the Peres house. Last night she had begged him to let her take it to old Gorthis, who would give her, she argued, fair price for it. He had fenced for the gangs, back before the war. She knew Gorthis, that he was an honest fence, at least, he gave the fairest rates in Sanctuary. He need not suspect that it was Ischade's gold.

No, Stilcho had said, absolute and angry. No!

What do you want? she had cried, too loudly, in this d.a.m.ned tenement where every sound found other ears. Us to starve?

Better that than some things, he had said, his hands hard on her shoulders, his voice the lowest of whispers. Moria, Moria, it's too dangerous, the d.a.m.ned thing's too big! It's too much! Your fence can't afford a lump like that, he can't pay you, he'll cheat you or he'll rob you, one or the other, d.a.m.n it all, Moria, you can't take that thing through the streets'

He was close to panic. His grip hurt her shoulders and the fear in him frightened her, who knew what his panics were like, how bad they were, how unreasoning and how difficult for her to bear, old nightmares, old memories (not so many months ago) of Stilcho's voice shrieking terror through the river house, haunting all their nights. A woman could not take that, in the man she loved. She did not want to remember that. She did not want him to break, who was at once so strong and so fragile.

We'll melt it down, he said.

When? she cried at him, and sucked in her breath and bit her lip. They had been over that territory. It was what he always promised whenever she talked about selling it- It took a fire bigger than they could raise in their apartment to melt a lump like that. They could not heat it and hammer it. The walls would carry every sound. The smell would go through the cracks and the gaps. There would be outcries: fire was the eternal terror in the tenements, and neighbors would come hammering on the door demanding answers, threatening them with violence, because they already knew that her man was . . . peculiar, and likely a fugitive mage: that was the whisper about him that she had heard, a dangerous kind of whisper, because mages were trouble, and a block of Sanctuary in ashes had proved it to the town at large.

And so, so easily in a place like this, a rumor could get started that would d.a.m.n them both, and have their apartment broken into.

Or their throats cut.

She would go to Gorthis. He would take the tump and set up an account for her, and there would be no money, except what it took to get a better place to live, and then the things they needed, and the lease of a shop-a little shop, that was what she wanted with that gold. A livelihood for herself and her man where he could find the quiet he needed to forget, and shutters and a stout door she could bar against the dark, where She walked, and hunted.

Down the stairs, out onto the streets, a woman with a basket of rags, a woman with a scarf over her head and a heavy shawl and long skirts to disguise her youth and her looks.

Uptown, like some cleaning woman going to work, for some middlingwell-to-do family not rich enough for servants. She was legion, in the midtown of Sanctuary: cook or maid, respectable enough and not soliciting, and not a mugger in the town would waste time on her, when there was richer prey abroad.

Straton slid from the saddle and caught himself, hanging from the bay's stirrup-leather, a little short of impaling himself on the iron spikes that thrust up through Ischade's hedge. The bay whickered, swung its head around and nosed at him with the roughness a big horse could use -warm, warm, not like Crit said, a dead thing, nor h.e.l.l-sp.a.w.ned. /; loved him. He took it for omen. He clung to that omen, that Ischade who had withdrawn every sign of gentleness toward him, did not take the horse back, but left it with him, left him one gift of hers, at least, which had no hidden thom.

He wept against the bay's neck, standing there in the rain, both of them wet and chilled. He was very drunk. And he knew that he ought to get back on the horse and ride, quickly- But he did not. He pushed himself away from the warmth of the horse and staggered a step to the gate. The cold of the iron burned his hand. A rose thorn p.r.i.c.ked his thumb and he carried his hand unconsciously to his mouth and sucked at the blood that welled up.

The gate swung inward and the way lay open through the yard, the maze of hip-high and scraggly weeds, the thornbushes and black, skeletal trees that all but obscured the little house, the gray stone porch.

He went, staggering a little and desperately trying to balance himself between the drunkenness it needed to come this far and the sobriety he had to muster to deal with her.

The thumb still bled, when he looked at it, and he wiped it on his breeches and looked up again at the door just in front of him, hearing the give of the hinges.

The sight of her hit him in the gut-so beautiful, all dark and light, her black dress blowing in the gusts, her square-cut hair flying like smoke about her face, about dark eyes that seized on his soul and threatened to uproot it.

"Ischade-" His jaw refused to work without his teeth chattering. He was cold through. The wind bit like a knife, here so much in the open, on the high sh.o.r.e of the White Foal. And there was no promise of yielding in the look she gave him. "Ischade, I hurt, I hurt so d.a.m.ned bad-" He held his arm, and the pain was there, even through the alcohol, worse, in the rain and the cold; aching so he could not sleep. "You healed the d.a.m.n horse, can't you help me?"

"There are physicians."

"For Vashanka's sake, Ischade-"

"Vashanka didn't help Tempus. I doubt he has power here."

"d.a.m.n you!"

"Better men have tried. Leave, Strat. Now."

He stood there, shivering, his teeth chattering and the pain in his shoulder a dull, bone-deep ache, the way it had been for days and nights of this weather, the way the pain got into bone and brain, and he wished he had the courage to kill himself, but he kept holding out some idiot hope that someone, somewhere made this pain worthwhile. He had had her. He had had Crit. Neither one was acting sane. Neither one had acted sane for months. A man who had been loved once and twice in his lifewent on expecting more of it, and believing things could be right again; a man who had seen the two people he most respected-yes, dammit, respected, for all she was a d.a.m.n woman-in the whole universe . . . lose their minds and act like lunatics-kept expecting that they would wake up one morning with their wits about them and come to him and tell him they were sorry.

A man couldn't kill himself, whose world was that badly skewed. A man could not go-wherever he had d.a.m.ned himself to go-with his whole universe gone crazy and right and wrong all tangled; most of all with the faith (still) that if he could just hold on, if he could just beat reason into one of them, that everything would somehow sort itself out.

"Ischade, dammit, I didn't mean what I did! I didn't understand! Ischade. dammit, it's enough, it's parking enough, open the d.a.m.n door!"

That was his voice, cracking and breaking like a teenaged boy's. That was himself, on his hands and knees in the wet weeds, because the world had suddenly spun around to the left, and gone black a moment, and he had landed there, and hurt his shoulder in the process. He nerved himself to push, and got the arm up against him and one foot and then the other under him, and turned and walked back to the gate, thinking that was about as far as he could walk before he fell down and lay there and froze to death in the rain.

But he did not. He made it to the bay horse, and hung there against its warmth a while till he could get his breath backTake him, why don't you?" he muttered to the hedge, the unnatural roses, the witch who had his soul in p.a.w.n. "You've taken everything else, Take him and be d.a.m.ned to you."

If she heard him, in her sorcerous ways of being aware of everything near the wards, she gave no sign. The bay horse stood rock-steady for him to mount, and bore him away, where it chose:, he did not care whether it was a shelter or over the cliffs: let it choose. The White Foal, beyond the trees, was roiled and muddy, and looked friendlier than the town did.

Ischade sat down, at the table in the house that was somehow larger inside than outside, and which had more rooms and windows than appeared from outside. She sat in her cluttered living room, where the cloaks of former lovers, like torn moths' wings, gave riotous color to the floor, the couch, the chairs, the bed, cloaks and bright cloth and here and there a trinket which a careless foot might tread upon and break ... of no interest to her these days, these gray and deadly daysShe rested her elbows on the table and her face within her hands, and went into that nowhere place which she had learned to find within herself, as the Stepson Niko had had it, that inner landscape which in her case was a maze of many doors, each one with a key and a lock.

The hallway was safe. It had turnings and there were dark places, and there were doors that rattled ominously and clamored with lost voices, doors which weakened if she thought of the thing behind themSo she did not.

But somewhere, somewhere down the hall, there was a door still open. She knew that there was. She sensed it. And it was in that darkness far down the hall, where she did not willingly go. She might go up to that door and try to slip up on it and slam it quickly and lock it. But she was paralyzed with dread of it, that what was inside would remain tranquil for years if she did not attempt it. There would be time. There would be time to gather strength- There was a room within which was treasure. A blue fragment spun within that room, power, secret power, filched from the ruin of magic in Sanctuary. She had hid it within herself, in that place where no other mage could go without killing her, and she, by the very curse that created her, could not die.

There was that place far away in the dark, where something waitedalmost she could see it, red-eyed and smiling at her within that room at the end of the hall.

And there were the doors behind which she had shut away everyone who trusted her. She held those keys. She kept them in the room with the fragment of the Globe of Power.

It was her virtue, her sole virtue, that she listened to their rattling and their clamor at her sanity, when everything in her ached to let them out, to have them with her, vulnerable to that thing that waited down there, in the dark.

Especially Straton- You healed the d.a.m.n horse, couldn't you help me? She hurt inside.

Heal him-yes. And prove to him by that, that she had not forsaken him, that there was hope for him and her. And after that, after that- She saw him lying still as all her other lovers, by morning light. It was the very fact that he loved her, that would d.a.m.n him. He could not, now, take his healing as a kindness. No, to him, it would be an absolution. It would bring him to her as he had been-but more insistent, more himself, more violent and more desperate to prove his manhood after what he had suffered- -and that was the very thing that would kill him. That was the nature of her curse.

The thing in the dark snickered filthily. I knew. It was amused by her helplessness, when she was one who held what it wanted.

Go to Randal, she thought. Seek help in the Mageguild.

But that would precipitate things for which she was not yet ready. She knew that she was not ready and would not be ready perhaps for years. She was far too unbalanced now. The tides of need and satiation which ruled her with the changing moon-were running too high, too violent. She prowled the Maze and the Downwind and sometimes the high streets near the palace, and dead happened, happened with more frequency than made her feel safe with anything she valued.

She needed, that was the unpalatable truth, needed s.e.x the way Strat needed drink, to deal with the dark and the pain. And she wanted him-so d.a.m.nably much.

The thing-was there again. Stilcho saw it, the red eyes glowing in the murk, the smile like a smug face lit from inside, leaking red light at nostrils and mouth and blazing behind the eyes like h.e.l.l itself.

It grinned, and the terror of that waked him with a yell that was still dying in his ears as he sat up, sweat-drenched and ashamed and expecting Moria's arms to hold him, Moria's voice to bid him hush, hush, and rest, Moria's lips to kiss him and whisper that he was safe.

"Shut up!" came the yell from somewhere else in the building. "Shut it up, dammit!"

He propped himself against the wall, blinked and shivered in the draft against his bare skin, still krrf-fogged and searching dazedly for Moria.

Not there.

She must have gone out to market.

But they were out of money. Flat broke, except- *

Except- "OG.o.ds."

He scrambled out of bed. He went to the corner and looked amid the junk and the clutter.

Not there. The gold was gone- So was Moria.

And he knew where.

Gorthis's shop was still shuttered at this hour, but he was stirring about inside by now, Moria knew his habits. The shop was on the lower floor of his apartment, in the building that he owned, and Gorthis, being more than prudent, never left his jewelry downstairs in the shop at night. He packed everything up and brought it upstairs, where a pair of vicious dogs guarded the upstairs halls.

In spite of the fact that no thief in Sanctuary tended to prey on a fence, whose good will was important as sunrise-such precautions were necessary because there was always the disgruntled customer.

Or the rival.

Moria seized the bellpull, of the doorbell in the shape of a smiling Shipri-better, she thought in the hysterical humor that came of having gotten this far unmolested with her cargo, that it should be Shalpa, G.o.d of thieves. The bell chimed inside, and she waited, her laundry basket on the doorstep, herself within the shelter of the alcove, out of the rain.

The little peephole opened. She stood on tiptoe, and back a little.

And suddenly remembered-0 fool!-that she no longer was darkhaired Moria the thief, Mona the Ilsigi.

It was a beautiful stranger stood on Gorthis's step, her blonde curls wrapped in rags, but her brows still pale, her eyes blue, and her complexion whiter and fairer than any Ilsigi's could be.

"Gorthis," she said, "let me in."

The peephole stayed opened a d.a.m.ned long while longer than its onceupon-a-time wont. She sensed the consternation on the other side of the door- "Who? What do you want?"

"Gorthis, it's Moria. Moria. You remember me. I bribed this mage-"

It was not the truth, but it was close enough to the truth, and simple enough to explain through a peephole.

The peephole shut. The door opened, on a fat, huge man who looked more apt to be a blacksmith than a goldsmith. Not a hair on his head except a tuft above either ear that stuck out like some brindled monkey's ruff. He utterly filled the door. His eyes, Ilsigi-dark, were wide and worried.

"Moria?"

"Makeup," she said, clutching her laundry basket, which had gotten heavier and heavier from block to block. "Corn' on. Gorthis, f'gawds'sake-it's me. Moria. Mor-am's sister."

He hesitated a moment longer, then backed out of the doorway and held it open for her and her basket, admitting her to the dim interior of counters and barred doors and barred sections: a goldsmith even in this section of town and in these days, had to worry, and Gorthis believed in defense. He always had.

"Shalpa's a.s.s," Moria breathed, setting down the basket and looking open-mouthed at the maze of bars, "whole Rankan army couldn't make its way through here."

"Whole Rankan army ner Piffles ner any other d.a.m.n pack of looters, girl, ain't n.o.body going to break into my place! I been respectable, I been respectable ever since the Troubles started. I ain't doing no more, so you can take yourself and whatever you got there-"

"This ain't no problem, Gorthis, I swear to you it ain't." She bent and dived after the lump in the middle of the laundry, held it up in both her hands, because that was what it took. "This here's gold. Gorthis. You don't got to fence it, you don't got to tell anybody, you just use it and gimme an account here-look, look-" She set down the clay-covered lump and stripped off her headscarf, shaking out blonde curls the sort that Moria of the streets never had had. "It's still Moria," she said in purest Rankene accents, "But I've come up in the world, Gorthis, Ipa.s.s, and I need the money. Do me this favor and I won't forget it when I'm back in society."

"Magery," Gorthis breathed, wide-eyed. "You been witched."

"Expensive magery. And it lasts." She picked up the lump and held it toward him. "Lift it. It's a lot of gold. A lot of gold, Gorthis. No plated rock, you can test it. You'll have it. Like I said, all you have to do is pay me out a little at a time, in silver I can spend without answering questions."

"Shalpa and Shipri." Gorthis drew out a handkerchief and mopped his face. "They said it was you uptown. They said it was you, Mor-am come in here-trying to p.a.w.n this knife, fie said you'd gone uptown."

"Where is my brother?" She did not want to know, she truly did not want to know. He was still Ischade's creature. He must always be, or suffer in terrible pain. But not to know whether he was living or deadthat uncertainty she could not bear.

"Ain't seen him since. I got no idea. Lemme see that thing."

She handed it to him. He hefted it.

"d.a.m.n-" he said.

"Told you, that's no rock inside."

He took it over to a work counter, through a barred gateway to a table where a barred shutter gave a little light. She followed, anxious, biting her lip as he brought the lump down hard on the table and shattered the clay around it.

Yellow gold shone in the light, veined with lines of soot.

"This's melted stuff," he said.

"It's not stolen." That was half a lie. She clenched her hands together. "It came from friends. They died in the riots. But I haven't got a place to melt it down. I know you're honest, Gorthis, you always were. You take your old cut, same as you always did, and you pay me out little at a time, isn't that fair?"

"Wait here. I got to get something." Gorthis hurried back past her to the cage door and through it.

He slammed it shut, and Moria stared at him open-mouthed in shock. But Gorthis was a little crazy about security. He always had been. She was willing to think it was that.

Until he turned the key and took it.

"It's my d.a.m.ned gold, Gorthis, I'm not going to steal it!"

"You ain't going nowhere," Gorthis said, and went and pulled on the cord that rang a bell somewhere way up on the roof, a thief-bell, that called the watch.

"What are you doing?" she yelled at him. She shook the bars of the gate, hopeless, because Gorthis's locks were always sound. "Gorthis, have you lost your mind?"

"I'm respectable," Gorthis said. "I been respectable ever since the Troubles started. I ain't getting into it any more, I got too many uptown clients." Another series of tugs at the bell rope. "Sorry, girl. Truly I am."

"I'll tell them! I'll tell them who you are!"