The Face of Chaos

So, despite sane cautions, they unlatched the gate, their horses drop-tied behind them, cut the hawkmask's ankle bonds and walked him to the door. His eyes went wide above his gag, pupils gigantic in the torchlight on her threshold, then squeezed shut as Ischade herself came to greet them when, after knocking thrice and waiting long, they were about to turn away, convinced she wasn't home after all.

She looked them up and down, her eyes half-lidded. Straton, for once, was grateful for the shimmer in his vision, the blur he couldn't blink away. The hawkmask shivered and lurched backwards in their grasp as Crit spoke first: 'Good evening, madam. We thought the time had come to meet, face to face. We've brought you this gift, a token of our good will.' He spoke blandly, matter-of factly, letting her know they knew all about her and didn't really care what she did to the unwary or the unfortunate. Straton's mouth dried and his tongue stuck to the roof of it. None was colder than Crit, or more tenacious when work was under way.

The woman, Ischade, dusky-ski

'No, no. We'll leave him - an article of faith. We'd like to know what you hear of Jubal, or his band - whereabouts, that sort of thing. If you come to think of any such information, you can find me at the mercenaries' hostel.'

'Or in your hidey-hole in Shambles Cross?'

'Sometimes.' Crit stood firm. Straton, his relief a flood, now that he knew they weren't going in there, gave the hawkmask a shove. 'Go on, boy, go to your mistress.'

'A slave, then, is this one?' she asked Strat and that glance chilled his soul when it fixed on him. He'd seen butchers look at sheep like that. He half expected her to reach out and tweak his biceps.

He said: 'What you wish, he is.'

She said: 'And you?'

Crit said: 'Forbearance has its limits.'

She replied: 'Yours, perhaps, not mine. Take him with you; I want him not. What you Stepsons think of me, I shall not even ask. But cheap I shall never come.'

Crit loosed his hold on the youth, who wriggled then, but Straton held him, thinking that Ischade was without doubt the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, and the hawkmask was luckier than most. If death was the gateway to heaven, she was the sort of gatekeep he'd like to admit him, when his time came.

She remarked, though he had not spoken aloud, that such could easily be arranged.

Crit, at that, looked between them, then shook his head. 'Go wait with the horses, Straton. I thought I heard them, just now.'

So Straton never did find out exactly what was - or was not - arranged between his task force leader and the vampire woman, but when he reached the horses, he had his hands full calming them, as if his own had scented Niko's black, whom his grey detested above all other studs. When they'd both been stabled in the same barn, the din had been terrible, and stallboards shattered as regularly as stalls were mucked, from those two trying to get at each other. Horses, like men, love .and hate, and those two stallions wanted a piece of each other the way Strat wanted a chance at the garrison commander or Vashanka at the Wrigglies' Ils.

Soon after, Crit came sauntering down the walk, unscathed, alone, and silent.

Straton wanted to ask, but did not, what had been arranged: his leader's sour expression warned him off. And an hour later, at the Shambles Cross safe haven, when one of the street men came ru

What they could do about waterspouts and whirlpools in the harbour was unclear.

When Straton and Crit had ridden away, Niko eased his black out from hiding. The spirit-track he'd followed had led them here; Tamzen and the others were inside. The spoor met up with the pale blue traces of the house's owner near the Sow's Ear and did not separate thereafter. Blue was no human's colour, unless that human was an enchanter, a witch, accursed or charmed. Both Niko and Ja

'We can't rush the place. Stealth. You know what she is.'

'I know.'

'Why didn't you let me hail them? Four would be better than two, for this problem's solving.'

'Whatever they're doing here, I don't want to know about. And we've broken cover as it is tonight.' Niko crooked a leg over his horse's neck, cavalry style. Ja

'Too much traffic,' Ja

The men went in and when they came out they had three smallish people with them swathed in robes and hooded. These were put into the carriage and it then drove away, turning on to the cart-track leading south from the bridge - there was nothing down there but swamp, and wasteland, and at the end of it. Fisherman's Row and the sea ... nothing, that is, but the witch Roxane's fortified estate.

'Do you think - Stealth, was that them?'

'Quiet, curse you; I'm trying to tell.' It might have been; his heart was far from quiet, and the passengers he sensed were drugged and

nearly somnambulant.

But from the house, he could no longer sense the girlish trails which had been there, among the blue/archmagical/anguished ones of its owner and those of men. Boys' auras still remained there, he thought, but quiet, weaker, perhaps dying, maybe dead. It could be the fellow Crit had left there, and not the young scions of east-side homes.

The moon, above Niko's head, was near at zenith. Seeing him look up, Ja

attend to.'

'Aye.' Niko reined his horse around and set it at a lope after the wagon, not fast enough to catch it too soon, but fast enough to keep it in earshot. When Ja

Ja

A dozen riders materialized out of the wasteland near the swamp and surrounded the two Stepsons; none had faces; all had glowing pure-white eyes. They fought as best they could with mortal weapons, but ropes of spitting power came round them and blue sparks bit them and their flesh sizzled through their linen chitons and, unhorsed, they were dragged along behind the riders until they no longer knew where they were or what was happening to them or even felt the pain. The last thing Niko remembered, before he awoke bound to a tree in some featureless grove, was the wagon ahead stopping, and his horse, on its own trying to win the day. The big black had climbed the mount of the rider who dragged Niko on a tether, and he'd seen the valiant beast's thick jowls pierced through by arrows glowing blue with magic, seen his horse falter, jaws gaping, then fall as he was dragged away.