Uneasy Alliances Part 4

"Who are they going to believe, huh, girl, when I turn over you an' that great lump of gold to the watch? No, missy, this is going to be better fer me than fer you. I prove to 'em I changed my ways, that's what this'll do."

"I have friends uptown."

"No, you don't. I know what yow friends are, girl, the neighbors done talked, the neighbors what got burned out around Peres, uptown. They got a warrant out fer you, hiring mages and all, arson and murder-you know the law doesn't come down on mages, ain't no way the watch is going to arrest them. now, is they? But them as hires 'em, now, they're responsible, ain't they? You go burning the whole town down, come in here with a lump of witched gold-"

"It ain't witched!"

"It come from the burnin'! Ever'thing up there's witched! And I ain't makin' no jewelry out of it and sellin' it to my clients' You're goin' to the watch, girl, an' you can explain to your neighbors 'fore the magistrate what you done up there on the hill, / ain'tl"

"Let me out of here! d.a.m.n you, d.a.m.n you, I got friends, Gorthis, I got friends'H fry your insides, you d.a.m.ned snitch! I got wizard friends!"

"No way," Gorthis said, pale-faced and sweating, and still ringing the bell for all he was worth. "No way you got friends like that, missy, or they'd melt that there gold for you and not need no furnace- I ain't no fool! And you're going to hang, that's what's going to happen to you-"

An alarm was ringing in midtown, and Crit stopped the gray to listen. Not particularly his business: the watch and the guard responded to that sort of thing, and his own mind was on personal problems-a partner who had had a run-in with the watch last night, and who had been let go because the watch did not know what to do with him-and a PrinceGovernor whose orders were getting more and more arbitrary-now the d.a.m.ned be-curled and perfumed prig wanted a barrel tax and wanted all the taverns in town to pay a head tax ... per customer. And he was supposed to break the news to Walegrin, whose men were supposed to make the thing work.

An alarm was not the kind of thing the city commander took for a personal responsibility. But he was in a mood to crack heads. He debated it a moment, then, set the horse off at a good clip-no run, counting the slick cobbles, just a businesslike jog that cornered well enough in the twisting streets, with their ghostly drift of cloaked, hooded figures themselves heading toward the trouble-daytime reflexes, the more so that the watch was surely on the way and folk figured there was some kind of entertainment to be had, watching the guard putter about after a thief who had probably run like h.e.l.l when the bell went, and listening with delicious smugness to the shopkeeper tearing his hair and wailing ... a morning's worth of gossip, at least- And more of them would come, when they saw the city commander involved in it.

d.a.m.ned busybodies.

He had an idea where the bell-ringing was coming from when he found the right street, about the time the bell went silent and he had an idea the watch had gotten there ahead of him. There was a jeweler hereabouts notorious for his eccentricity-and a shady past; and he saw the crowd and the waiting horses that said that matters were tolerably well under control.

He almost turned the gray about to go back about his business, back to his troubles with Strat and with the Prince-Governor, figuring there was nothing here that needed intervention.

But the crowd ohhhed and aaaahed to a great deal of shouting, and pressed close upon the door, where there was evidently something going on. A guardsman was trying to keep spectators out.

Maybe, he thought, someone had cut the jeweler's throat.

But the place was supposed to be a real obstacle course. So the rumor ran. Real crazy man.

Curiosity drew him, since the morning's business was not that attractive. He nosed the gray on through the crowd, figuring the guard could use a little help-might well be a few neighbors there hoping for free samples, if there had been some fracas inside and some stuff scattered.

"Get out of here!" the beleaguered guard was yelling, shoving with his sheathed sword at a clutch of women who wanted to get their noses in the door. The crowd booed that, and guffawed when a fat man appeared behind the guard and screamed at them to get out of his door.

"What's going on here?" Crit asked the guardsman, forcing the gray into service as a living barrier, and its teeth and the stamp of its feet made a little room.

"Dunno, sir," the guardsman said. "We got a woman and a laundry basket and a d.a.m.ned great lump of gold old Gorthis says is witched and stolen and he locked 'er up and called the watch." The guardsman looked doubtful a second, then: "Woman looks Rankan, sir, and old Gorthis says she's a thief named Moria who lived in the Peres house, and we got a warrant out on her. The corporal don't know. We got a lot of warrants.

But she talks uptown."

"Moria. Out ofPeres." Crit drew in a deep breath, all at once awake in this slow and nuisanceful morning. He slid down and threw the gray's reins at the guardsman as he ducked under the horse's neck and put his head into the jeweler's shop.

The d.a.m.n place looked like the city jail, it had so many bars. And in the clutches of a trio of guardsmen was a blonde and distraught young woman, answering questions, shaking her head furiously, no, no, and no.

"Hey," he yelled, interrupting it all. The woman looked at him, and G.o.ds, it was for certain Moria, who had hosted the whole Sacred Band at the truce-feast in the Peres house.

Before it ended up a pile of blackened sticks and tumbled stone.

"Moria?" he asked. And listened to the whole thing over again, from the jeweler Gorthis shouting in one ear, the guard corporal shouting at Gorthis to shut up, the woman sobbing and shouting that she was innocent, that Gorthis was a crook who wanted her gold, which was hers, and Gorthis her enemy who had lured her here with promises of help.

"Gold might be hers," Crit said slowly. "Ease up a little. Let's just all be calm, can we? Ma'am, I think you and the gold and Gorthis here better plan to spend the morning uptown and get this straightened out. They say there's a warrant out on you- I don't know about that. I know I've got a few questions. Where are you staying?"

The woman's face might have been a waxen mask. An honest woman might have answered. There would not have been that desperate dart of the eyes, like something trapped. Crit had had a lot of experience, judging reactions like that. He pulled out his kit and rolled himself a smoke, giving her time to answer, if she would. Then, finally, lighting the smoke from the lamp by the door.

"Well, sergeant, I think you might as well take the whole d.a.m.n mess uptown. You can have Gorthis. Woman goes to my office. Gold goes to your captain and it d.a.m.n well better stay accounted for. Hear?"

"Yessir," the sergeant said, and Crit nodded, puffed on his smoke to calm his nerves and walked as far as the door. He had a rare impulse to chivalry, and turned back to the sergeant.

"Don't take her through the streets like that. Put a wrap on her and don't bruise her up any, all right?"

"Yessir."

He walked out, collected his horse and climbed up, riding out through the crowd, paying no attention to the shouted questions and the ohhhs and ahhhs and the rumors flying thick and fast. Up the street, then, where the last few shyer onlookers stood gawking, and around the corner.

A man fled his path. There was one with reason to avoid him. He was halfway moved to find out why, but the streets were slick and there was enough commotion hereabouts. The chance of overtaking the man was nil, without risk to the gray, and he was not about to take the chance. Dawn, and there were still some of the night-skulkers out, pickpockets, for sure, who worked their best in circ.u.mstances like the press and commotion back there.

Not his business, that. Not a soldier's business at all.

He rode on his way, down the mostly deserted street, at a walk, already back to the problem of the head tax.

And was halfway startled when a cloaked man came out of the alley and looked up at him and ran over to him. "Officer-officer-my son, f'G.o.dssakes, my son, they stabbed my son-"

"Who?" He reined in the gray, which was as like to take a piece out of the man as not. "How many of them?" The whole, d.a.m.n district watch was tied down back around the corner, and a purse-cutting that went to murder was the way of things in this d.a.m.n town.

"Come on!" the man cried, running back for the alley-merchant, to look at him. And distraught.

"h.e.l.l!" Crit threw down his smoke, gathered up his crossbow from the saddle-ties and turned the gray down the alley after him. He had wanted a head or two to crack. He was still in the market.

The iron gate flared blue as Stilcho brought up against it and pushed, sweating and gasping and desperate. Witchfire stung his hands and ached in his bones, but the gate gave to his push, and he waited for no other invitation from the river house. He ran as far as the gray stone steps before slick stone and his exhaustion betrayed him: he sprawled painfully against the edge of the steps and lost his wind, fighting even so to pick himself up.

"Stilcho," Her voice said, and he looked up, heart hammering, at the face that figured in so many of his bad dreams.

"Stilcho?"

He gathered himself up to his knees and to his feet, hanging onto the post which supported the roof. He was taller than She was, if he were not standing beside the porch and She, on it- But Her presence was overwhelming, so that all the warmth of running leached out of him, and all the months of hiding seemed useless. He was back. He had never been free. He had never owned his soul, from the night Ischade drew it back into him.

"The w-watch has M-Moria," he stammered, while the pain in his ribs bent him against the post that was the only thing keeping him on his feet. "They've arrested her-"

"For what?" Ischade asked, a soft voice, precise, and cold.

"Th-the-" 0 G.o.ds, there was no lying to Her. There could not be. He tried for breath and knew what bargain he had come to strike, a bargain for what She already owned. "The gold from P-Peres house. They say she stole it."

"She did," Ischade said, that same quiet precision. "From me."

He had no answer for that. It was truth. Claiming it was himself, claiming anything but what was-might end everything. "You can help her," he said. "P-Please h-help her."

"She left my employ. She stole from me. Why should I intervene?"

"I'll come b-back." His lips stumbled around the words. His sou! was cold to the roots, and he met that stare of hers with a vertiginous feeling that it was already sliding away from him. "1*11 come back to you."

There was long silence. Then: "You and Moria," Ischade said. "Love does make fools of us, doesn't it?"

"Please. Get her away from them."

"I thought that Moria would come, long since, wanting her fine things and her soft bed. I least of all expected you, Stilcho. And for her sake. How touching."

"My lady-"

"I confess I have missed you, in more ways and for more reasons than you know." She extended her hand and touched his cheek with the backs of her fingers, a touch which-he could not help it-made him shuddei; and She could not but tell that. "A good man. And hers. Why, Stilcho? Debt of honor? Or do you love her?"

"I I-I-love her."

"Poor man." She came close and folded her arms about his head, drew it against her breast. Her breath stirred his hair and he felt her gentle kiss, felt the unlikely warmth She gave despite the chill of her hands as She lifted his face. "I will help her. I will take you back. I will keep her with all the fine things she loves. You as well. And I shall be kinder. You know that there are times I cannot be."

"I know that-"

"She will be safe enough. I will send a message uptown. We'll do everything by town law. As the aggrieved party, I give her the gold. See? Solved. Come inside and I'll give you the paper with my seal on it. You take it to the Palace and tell them if they have any questions about it, come to me. Come. I shan't bite. You know better than that."

They had brought the gray horse in from the streets-no one had dared steal it, nor any of its gear; it had wreaked havoc on a storefront and kicked a man in the gut before the watch got a couple of riders to herd it up the street and one of them was horseman enough to talk it calm and get the reins without having his fingers taken off or his horse kicked.

Of Crit there was no sign at all, and Straton found himself coldly, terribly sober, interviewing everyone in the affair, no one of whom knew a d.a.m.ned thing, except the horse might have come from a dozen streets, all of which they were searching door to door; and as many alleys, more likely, all of which they were searching, down to the rubbish heaps and the refuse, looking for the body. Crit's bow was missing, not with the horse and not in any place he would have left it. He must have had it with him. Must have had reason to have it in hand when trouble came on him. So he had not been taken utterly off his guard. And they had still got him. Whoever it was.

There had been some kind of fracas involving a goldsmith and a lot of crowd in that area. Crit had been there. Had found the woman Moria in the middle of it and she was in custody, along with the jeweler and a lump of gold. That, Strat reckoned, had nothing to do with it. Crit had ridden out of there, the guard swore to that, ridden out of there and down the street and vanished somewhere within that district, to judge by where they had first reported the loose horse.

He began to build a scenario in his mind-the crowds, the likelihood of cutpurses and pickpockets, and Crit maybe spotting something- -running into trouble and ending up just a corpse someone had to get rid of, down some sewer, into some bas.e.m.e.nt, under some rubbish heap: G.o.ds, Crit, to end like that, in some d.a.m.ned alley, in a d.a.m.ned police action, in something that was not his job. because Crit, being Crit, tended to be all over what he was managing- -or maybe Crit had seen someone; or someone had seen him, who had a grudge. G.o.ds knew there were people with grudges. He had a vision of blood in the streets again, some new set of crazies with an agenda, murdering any symbol of Authority they could get their sights on. Sanctuary had seen blood and blood and blood, and it had been quiet a while, but the same d.a.m.ned lunatics were still in town, those some other lunatic had not killed.

He felt sick at his stomach, that was what he felt, sick and helpless and scared, because he had shot his mouth off with Crit and done everything wrong he could do- -he had been stinking drunk this morning when Crit had been riding the streets alone, because he had no partner he could rely on any more. And he hated himself. He despised himself. He could not figure out how he had become what he had become. As good as if he had run and left his partner to face his killers alone. That was what he had done. And if men shied off from him this morning and if he could not meet their eyes, there was reason for it.

Oh d.a.m.n, he wanted his hands on someone.

He wanted Crit alive, he wanted Crit to come walking in that gate all right and madder than h.e.l.l; and he would listen to everything Crit had to say and swear that it was right, and go back to him and make it right if Crit would have him, that was what he would do. Crit needed him, needed him in the worst way; and Ischade had thrown him out and battered his pride for the last time, he swore she had. It was over. Finished. He had no more intention to go crawling to her a second time.

G.o.ds, if he'd come walking in here-lost his horse, that's all; we'd give him a hard time, he'd curse us to h.e.l.l, I'd stand there and maybe he'd know without my saying a thing, know what h.e.l.l I've been through-we could talk, then. Let him swear me to h.e.l.l and gone, no matter, get him talking and maybe I could talk to him, the way we used to-way we used to be- A man came up on him, a guard sergeant, to report they had a man in hand, from the gate-"-asking after the woman, the one they arrested, says he can prove whose the gold is-"

He had told them he wanted to know everything about everyone involved. He had sent a man he trusted to ask Moria if there was anything she could tell him, though he doubted it. This man was at hand.

Was Stilcho. He saw Ischade's former lover, conspicuous in his shabby cloak and in the black patch which covered his missing eye. City guards hastened him along with a firm grip on his arms; and Strat's mind raced wildly, trying to make connections with facts which did not, no matter how he pushed and pulled them, fit any pattern he could understand.

And d.a.m.n it all, Ischade and her household were not what he wanted to deal with now.

Except Stilcho was no longer Ischade's. Nor was Moria. And somehow, for some terrible reason, they were here, under this wan gray sky, with Crit missing, himself and Stilcho who had met often enough in Ischade's house; and Moria under arrest: that was at least some vestige of connection in events, but it was on the wrong problem, surely it was the wrong problem.

"Stilcho," he said, and did not tell the guards to let him go. One of them handed him the paper.

Ischade's spidery, elaborate hand. Her signet. To Critias, under the authority of His Imperial Highness Theron, and His Grace Kadakithis. Commander of the City: You have arrested one of my servants for possession of property I gave her, to which she has legal t.i.tle. The lady Moria is therefore innocent of wrongdoing. I ask for her immediate release and will thank you for your prompt and earnest attention to this matter. Under my personal seal: Ischade, herself.

Straton read it through twice. To Critias.

Critias.

"Let him go," he said sharply, and when the guards did not take their cue: "Leave him!" And waited until the city guard was out of earshot, the paper trembling in his hand. "What's this have to do with Critias?"

"To do with-"

"My partner's missing, dammit, missing while the city guard hauled Moria and that gold out of a jeweler's shop, the last d.a.m.n place they saw him! Where is he?"

"I don't know," Stilcho said, bewildered-looking, and was not lying. Straton's heart sank. the little that that chance Jiad raised it. "I don't know. Moria got picked up-that's all. Critias was there. I saw him. Comer of Regent Land and High Street. He was on a gray horse. I didn't want to get picked up too; I ran and he didn't follow. That's the truth, Strat. I was one of you. My oath-it's the truth, it's all I know."

"Moria know anything?"

Stilcho shook his head. "I don't think so. I was there because she sneaked out with the gold, I knew she was going to get in trouble-" It was too much truth now. Stilcho let his voice trail off, with that desperate look in his eyes, the look of a man who had committed himself too far to a man no longer in the same game. "It's in the letter. Her seal."

"Her seal. Dammit to h.e.l.l, is this her game?"

"No! G.o.ds-no, I don't think so."

She wrote to Critias. She didn't know.

But by the G.o.ds, she can find out.

"Sergeant!"

"Sir!"

"Tablet. Fast." He grabbed Stilcho by the arm, pulled him close. "I thought you'd left her house. Alive."

"I'm g-going b-back." Stilcho pulled to free the arm, desisted when he did not make it easily. The single eye was desperate, distraught. "N-not easy b-being on the streets."

"I can slip you into the guard. Call it a favor. You could have come to me. I owe you one."

"Too Mate." There was all h.e.l.l in that look. "Too late."

"She's got you." Dead again? In the chill of the wind, there was no way to tell.

"She's got me. And M-Moria. No help for us. Strat, for G.o.dssakes, get Moria out of there-if you owe me anything, get her out of that hole-"

The sergeant came up with the tablet and a stylus. Straton took it and wrote: Walegrin-and a long scratch that stood for all the d.a.m.ned protocols. Send the woman Moria to the palace guardstation with this messenger and your order to hold her there until I sign the release. Straton, for Critias- Another long line, for all Crit's authorizations. He slammed his ring into the soft wax of the tablet and shut it. "No d.a.m.n time for an overseal. Get this to Walegrin at his headquarters and hurry about it."

The sergeant left at a run.

"I'll go with him," Stilcho said, and Strat caught him a second time.

"She's not free."

"Not-"

"If Ischade wants her out, Ischade can find Critias. Come on, man. We're going to go tell her that."

Stilcho said nothing, only came as fast as he could, exhausted as he was.