Uneasy Alliances Part 5

"Horses," Straton yelled, and the horses were waiting at the gate.

Crit moved, tried to pull himself up from the upside-down position in which he had waked, in which he had already suffered h.e.l.l, coming to soaking wet and staring upside down into the face of a lunatic with a knife.

He had lost consciousness several times, and vomited his gut out along with a good amount of the water he had swallowed when the Ilsigi who avowed he wanted to kill him slowly had lowered him upside down into a rain barrel and waited till he choked. Again. And again. And again. And in between times had let him down, trussed hand and foot, to lie heaving and puking on the floor of the bas.e.m.e.nt.

He had screamed before his voice went. He was not proud. He had hoped to h.e.l.l a dozen of his men would be searching by then, would hear the ruckus and come break the door down. But this place, wherever he was, was down deep, lantern-lit, and with some sort of padded baffle all round, so that there was precious little sound going to get up to the streets, if that was even where they were any longer.

This fine, this upstanding citizen with the kid in trouble-had got behind him and hit him with something that stung like h.e.l.l in the back of his neck and then weakened his knees and dropped him helpless as a baby to the alley cobbles, whereupon this fine citizen had kicked him in the groin, in the gut and in the head, and the light had gone out for he had no idea how long, or through what.

Right now he wanted only to get air past the bubbling of whatever was in his nose and his throat, and upside down, he could not do that, the blood was hammering in his neck and his head and his gut hurt too much to let him get that breath.

The rope paid out suddenly and dropped him onto his arms, his shoulders and the back of his head, driving the breath out of him.

He could not get it in again. He went out, And came to propped up against something lumpy and solid, and with the self-same lunatic squatting there with a knife in his hands.

"I'm not going to kill you," the man said. "You'd like to know my name, but I'm not going to kill you, not going to give you a thing to give your friends, either. All us Ilsigis look alike-don't we, pig?"

He thought: I'll remember you, Wriggly. But he was not about to argue. Never argue with a lunatic with a knife.

"What'll you describe? Medium build. Black hair? Do you a lot of good, pig. I got your partner. Now I have you. Witch has your partner. Maybe the witch can bring back your eyes. Can she? What would your partner pay for that? It might be worth it to me, pig-just knowing that."

0 G.o.ds. 0 G.o.ds. We've got trouble, haven't we?

h.e.l.l-bent through the streets, too fast, for the weather, but the bay horse made it without slipping and the borrowed sorrel made it, somehow. Strat did not stop to see, reckoning Stilcho would follow as he could.

And this time he pulled up in front of the river house and slid down to drop the bay's reins in front of the hedge, he was cold sober and in a deadly hurry. He shoved at the gate and got a shock, kicked at it then.

"Ischade, dammit! You want that d.a.m.n girl, you get out here, fast!'"

Stilcho rode in behind and slid down, ran up to the gate and got it open -him, it did not shock.

For him, Ischade's door opened, and Ischade came out and stood on her porch, waiting.

"Come on," Stilcho said nervously, and grabbed Strat by the arm.

He needed no pull. He all but beat Stilcho to the porch steps; and held Stilcho's distance from her, who stood cloaked and dark and ominously frowning.

"Somebody waylaid my partner," Strat said. "Ischade, I'm asking you -personal favor, if I've got any credit left. Tell me who and where."

"Where is Moria?"

"Guard custody. She's safe. She'll be fine. I'll let her go when I've got Crit, hear me? You want a favor out of us, we want one out of you. Fair trade."

Prolonged silence.

"Fair trade," he yelled at her. "d.a.m.n-lit!"

"A remarkable day," she said. "So many people want favors of me. And magic comes so dear nowadays. You don't want me. You want a fortune-teller. A finder of lost objects. Surely you can find one down at the bazaar with the jugglers and the mimes."

"Don't put me off, woman, I'm not in the mood for your jokes!"

"You mistake me. Do you want my help?"

"Yes." Breath came short. "Dammit, I have to have it."

She turned her shoulder and the door opened wide. "Come in."

He mounted the steps, Stilcho treading behind him. Not like old times in this familiar room that was somehow the same and somehow more chaotic in its disorder and the litter. He was where he would have given a great deal to have been this morning. And now there was ice in his gut, because there was suddenly his partner's life on his hands, and Ischade's temper to deal with, that he had provoked, he, when it was Crit's life in the balance.

If Crit was still alive at all.

Ischade took the back of a chair and flung it, shoved the table back, rumpling a litter of cloaks, and simply sat down cross-legged on the floor, hands before her. Her eyes rolled back. Her lips parted.

And a light grew between her hands, spinning and spinning in a way he had seen once and more than once.

Like a small Globe of Power, whirling and staining her hands and her face and all the room with its cold glow.

He hunkered down with his hands clasped against his lips and waited, waited, because what she was doing was not the magic he knew in her, pyromancy and necromancy. This was another thing, a thing that was not supposed to exist.

"I don't find him on the surface," she murmured-no mummery, either; Ischade could talk and wield power at the same time, carry on a running dialogue while doing what would raise a sweat on many a talent in the Mageguild. "There's a far-seer over across town. I'll see. She's erratic. Sometimes she's right."

"For G.o.dssake, find him!"

"What-" Her eyes snapped shut and open again, present and shocked, as she clapped her hands together and smothered the light.

"Aaah!" Stilcho cried, and held his hands over his eyes.

Straton and Ischade exchanged a look then which understood something Stilcho did not.

"What is it, dammit?"

Ischade bit her lips and drew in her breath. "Nothing. Nothing need concern you." She gathered her skirts to rise. "I will find him. There's nothing I can do from here. We'll have to search out the trail. Stilcho." She gave him her hand, and he helped her to her feet.

"What is it?" Strat asked again.

But Ischade did not answer him. She flung her cloak about her and walked out the door, which had a disconcerting way ofopeningjust when it had to.

He was last out, and it shut behind them with a thump, as the gate swung open. Stilcho's horse shied and pulled at its tether.

The bay simply stood. And when he got there, Ischade was holding the reins.

"I'll ride behind," she said.

Old habits came back. He had his mouth open, and shut it. Useless, with Ischade. One did things her way, or one did not, and they might go to h.e.l.l for all she cared; he wanted her help in the worst way, with a life at stake.

He rose to the saddle and cleared the stirrup for her. She rose lightly up behind and put her arms about him, too d.a.m.n familiarly.

"Hyyyyaaa!" he yelled at the bay, and it wheeled about and might have unseated her and him; but not him, and d.a.m.ned well not the likes of Ischade, no such luck.

No chance of falling on the road, slick as the stone was. He laid his heels to the bay, and such was the uncertainty of the misty air and the echo off the buildings, sometimes it seemed like it was only Stilcho's horse striking the cobbles.

"My son," Nas-yeni said. It was safe to tell him that much. There were a lot of sons. There had to have been. "You killed my son. Threw him out like garbage." He sat cross-legged, close to his victim in the lantern light. "You, I'd like to take to the same place when I'm done with you. Maybe I will."

The Stepson never had said much, just took in his breath when Nasyeni got to work on him, and screamed sometimes, in what voice he had left, but the vomiting had left him with very little voice for screaming. He could still see. Nas-yeni had saved the eyes for last. And the tongue, that last of all. Right now it was the fingernails; and Nas-yeni pulled the needle, heated, from the little cooking brazier he had full of coals.

"Come here, Critias. Let's try another one."

Critias spat at him and tried to kick him, but there was panic in his face now, and that kind of hard-breathing sob a man got before he fell apart. Nas-yeni knew. He had practiced, before this.

There was panic in the attempt to scream, too. It was in the pace of things. Nas-yeni had studied these matters. Had done this service for certain of the gangs, who wanted something from one of their own. Rankans he had never touched. He had never risked himself. His mission was too holy, his revenge too important, to risk Rankan trouble. Just internal matters.

Never too hasty. Take one's time. Never let the victim get his defenses together either, or forget there was worse to come.

"He was seventeen, pig."

Slowly, through the afternoon streets, still in drizzling rain, the shops' business slow, the citizens who did find reason to be out on the streets moving about all m.u.f.fled up in cloaks.

But no few stared at the sight of a Stepson with a black-cloaked woman riding pillion behind him, slowly and deliberately through street and street and street; and a one-eyed man beside them, where Stepsons had searched frantically all day, and rousted citizens and searched warehouses.

Perhaps it was the fey, dire feeling about them, that coursed through Strafs bones and set his teeth on edge.

"Wrong," Stilcho said softly, above the soft clip and clop of hooves on cobbles. "Wrong-"

"Is it me you see?" Ischade whispered. "Or else?"

"I don't know," Stilcho said hollowly, in a voice which itself could raise the hair's at a man's nape.

"Hereabouts," Ischade whispered. "Hereabouts. Steady, Straton. Don't flinch."

He felt something at his back-felt it, like fire and ice, burning through his armor, into his bones. And suddenly the horse whickered and gave a thrust of its hindquarters, skittering forward and taking an undirected turn into an alley, into a maze of balconies and rubbish and discarded barrels. It was crazed. It headed them up a nook and stopped, facing a dead end.

"Here," Ischade said.

'Where?" Blank walls surrounded them, windowless, doorless. Strat looked about them in desperation, and twisted about as Ischade slid down.

"The horse knows. It has the scent."

He dismounted and dropped the reins, drawing his sword, looking above them, for some window, any aperture.

The horse pawed the cobbles, put down its head and nosed the rubbish.

Above a hinged iron plate set in the cobbles.

"d.a.m.n," Strat said. "d.a.m.n."

And dropped to his knees and pulled at it with his fingers. It would not move.

"Bolted," he said. "Dammitall!" Desperation welled up in him.

Blue fire ran around the opening, down the hinges, dim in daylight. Metal grated.

"Now," Ischade said.

He pulled and it lifted.

And the sound, the half-human sound that came from somewhere in the depths, ran right through his nerves.

He did not stop. He saw the steps and he went, writhed his way through a hole too small for a man to take easily, down into the echoing dark.

"Stilcho!" he heard Ischade whisper urgently. He heard the slither of someone behind him, but another such moan wrenched at his gut. He felt his way down and down, one hand for the sword, one for the wall, his eyes straining at dark absolute except the little gray light that got through from the open trap above, and that fitful, with his partners leaning over it.

He heard laughter echoing through the vault, soft and awful, coming from everywhere.

And caught himself with his heart in his throat as his foot missed a step and he saved himself at an unexpected landing. There was a chain there. He grasped it and felt it to find the steps, descending again, till he heard the sound in front of him- He felt ahead of him with his sword, probing the dark till it suddenly touched stone. He felt either side and found nothing, and, with his bare hand, in front of him, and felt a wooden door. He put his ear against it.

And pulled it open, carefully, carefully as dim lamplight spilled against his eye.

". . . friend," he heard.

And a sound hardly human at all.

He saw a light, old columns, watermarked, a pair of figures low to the ground against a mound of dirt. He eased his way in, flexing his hand on his sword-hilt, hardly daring to breathe.

The d.a.m.ned hinge creaked. The man looked around.

"Haiiii!" Strat yelled, for what shock could do, and was halfway across the room before the man jerked Crit up by the hair and brought the point of a dagger right up under Crit's left eye.

"You want him blinded? Drop it! Drop the sword!"

Crit tried to say something Fool, probably And arched his back and struggled as the knife jabbed "Drop it'"

Strat dropped it, and saw the man drop the knife and s.n.a.t.c.h twohanded at something in the straw beside him, but he was already moving, launched with all his strength and speed across that intervening s.p.a.ce- Crossbow Cut's Firing The bolt tore into him He spun with it, staggered and kept moving, clawing his way up again, tearing the dagger from his belt, hurling himself and the weapon missilelike against the man with the spent bow He hit the man in the gut, he felt that, felt the rush of blood over his hand, the tumble of threshing limbs tangled with his as he went down with the bolt shocked by the fall and the dark closing around him "I couldn't stop it," Stilcho said "I couldn't reach him-"

Ischade held up her hand, dismissal, absolution-whatever Stilcho would accept-and looked down at the carnage that spread blood through the straw "Witch-" Crit said, or tried to say, looking at her through the one eye that still would work It came out a raven's croak And after so much else, he spat at her "Grat.i.tude Of course." Straton washer concern She tucked her robes away from the blood that was everywhere and felt of his back and his neck, where a pulse still beat The bolt had hit high The bad shoulder Again.

"d.a.m.n you," Crit whispered, "d.a.m.n you to h.e.l.l, let him be."

She touched Strat's face when Stilcho had turned him over He was b.l.o.o.d.y everywhere. He was half-conscious, and he tried to say something, but she touched his lips and his brow and put him to sleep She did other things too, and bent and kissed him on the brow and on the lips, b.l.o.o.d.y as he was "Let him be, you d.a.m.ned ghoul'"

Somewhere Critias had found that much voice, and struggled to an elbow, to try to throw his body into her, if only that She whirled and stopped him, her hand on his throat, and flung him back down, spat at again But she restrained herself "He came after you He came to me for you But you will not remember that " She held him with her eyes only now, cut him free with the knife she drew from the dead man, then put her joined hands to Crit's face, and let the mage-fire flow, mending the eye, the hands, everything that might cripple a man "Sleep, Critias "

It was part of her curse and her talent, that mesmeric talent that could erase her very pa.s.sage from a mind, make seeing eyes blind, create elaborate memories that had never been Such, largely, had been her affair with Strat until she began to take risks, with Stilcho to die his deaths, a.s.suage her needs, fulfill the curse "Come," she said to Stilcho, taking him by the hand "We have Mona to see to Crit will take care of things " And drew Stilcho with her, hesitating at the last, bewildered, surely But she turned his face to her with a touch of her finger, and erased his memory of this place, before she led him up to the light It was luck, surely, that a searcher spotted Strat's bay horse m an alley searchers had been down a dozen times that day, spotted the trap left up, and investigated, all on a hunch that had come on the man even to go down that often-searched alley Crit had run out of strength, dragging Strat's half-conscious weight toward the stairs, collapsing there in the dark with Strat d.a.m.ned near bleeding to death and the stairs yet to go.

After that it was horse litters to get them as far as the guard-barracks infirmary, Crit more exhausted and bruised and with cracked ribs that bandages could help, Strat the worse off of the two of them.

Strat, who had come through for him and done what he had done, before the d.a.m.ned IIsigi lunatic had had time to carve him up Strat, who had distracted the killer and taken the bolt, knowing he was going to take it, because that was the only way to get across that distance and knife the b.a.s.t.a.r.d that was going to cut Crit's throat.

Strat had had enough strength left m him to cut Crit loose And then fainted Crit ought to have been in his own bed He was not He sat by Strat's, just holding onto his arm, thinking, d.a.m.n, he would go to the witch by riverside, he would go down there and he would beg if that was what it took The sight of Strat deliberately distracting that b.a.s.t.a.r.d, deliberately taking the shot and still having it in him to aim true and hard-would haunt him, like the thing Strat had said when he managed, m his pain, to cut him loose- "-d.a.m.n mess, Crit, d.a.m.n awful mess How'd you get into this^" It was Strat the way he had been Strat before the witch had got him. Strat his partner And Strat did much the same thing when finally he came to and found him sitting there, with the candle all but a stub on the bedside table "What the h.e.l.l," he said "I must've made it all night, didn't we?"