Storm Season

And Becho's-any place was dangerous if they frequented it, if they set up a pattern, and her brother had a pattern. His habits led him here and led him there. There was the smell of death about him, that terrified her. All the enemies the slaver Jubal had ever accumulated (and they were many) had come to pick bones now that his power was broken; from the days that hawk-masks used to swagger in gaudy dress through the streets, now they wore ragged cloaks and slunk into any hole that would keep them. And that was, for all of them, a bitter change.

Mor-am could not bear it. She gave him money, doled it out, hers and his; but he had lied to her-she knew he had; and gotten that little more that it needed for Becho's. Or he had cut a purse or a throat, defying Eichan's plain orders. He was committing slow suicide. She knew. They had come up together out of this reek, this filth, to Jubal's service, and learned to live like lords; and now that it was back to the gutter again, Mor-am refused to live on those terms. She held onto him with all her wit and talents, covered for him, lied for him. Eichan might kill him himself if he had seen him go; or beat him senseless: she wished she had the strength to pound the idiocy out of him, flatten him against a wall and talk sense to him. But there was no one to do that for him. Not for years.

Mor-am flung off down the street, striding along with purpose none of the sleepers in doorways challenged, getting off the main road as quickly as he might.

But something stirred another way. A beggar dislodged himself from his doorway near an alley and shuffled along until he reached shadows, then moved quite differently, hunker-ing down when he thought it might serve and ru

Then other beggars began to move, some truly lame, but not all.

And one of them had already gone, scuttling along alleys as far as a shack near Mama Becho's, at the back of which the White Foal river flowed its sluggish, black-glistening way beneath the bridge.

Guards dozed there, about the walls, unlikely as guards as he was unlikely as a messenger, in rags, one a little urchin-girl sleeping in the alley, who looked up and went back to her interrupted nap, a huddle of bony limbs; and one a one legged man who did the same; but that hulk nearest the door got up and faced the messenger.

"Got something," the messenger said, "himself'd want to hear."

The guard rapped at the door. In a little time it opened on the dark inside, and a shutter opened, affording light enough to someone who had been inside all along.

The messenger went in and squatted down in a crouch natural to his bones and delivered what he had heard.

So Moruth listened, sitting on his bed, and when the messenger was done, said: "Put Squith on it, and Ister."

Luthim left, bowing in haste.

Mama's latest boarder. Moruth pondered the idea, hands clasped on his knees, smiling and frowning at oruce because any link between his home territory and the hawkmasks he hunted made him uneasy. There was, in the dark, on the back side of the door, a mask pi

So Tygoth would know.

"Good night," Moruth told his lieutenant, and the man closed the shutters and the door, leaving him his darkness and his sleep.

But he kept rocking and thinking, pondering this and that, shifting pieces on his mental map of Downwind alleys, remembering this and that favor owed, and how to collect.

Hawkmasks died, and either they were loyal (which seemed unlikely) or ignorant where Jubal lay, even in extremity. He had had three so far. The one nailed to the door had told him most, where these two lodged; but so far he had not pounced. He knew the homes and haunts of others.

And suddenly the trail doubled back again, to Mama's, to his own territory. He was not amused.

And just the other side of the bridge, in a curious gardened house with well lighted windows casting a glow on the same black water. ...

Ischade received quite another messenger, a slave and young, and handsome after a foreign fashion, who appeared at her gate disturbing certain wards, who came up the path only after hesitating some long time, and stood inside her dwelling as if he were dazed.

He was a gift, constantly held out to her. He had come and gone frequently, sent by those who had offered her employ, and stood there now staring at the floor, at anything but herself. Perhaps he had known in the begi

But they dared not come themselves. They were that cautious, these adherents of Vashanka, not putting themselves within this room.

She was untidy, was Ischade; her small nest of a house was strewn not with rags but with silks and cloaks and such things as amused her. Her taste was garish, with unsubtle fire-colored curtains, a velvet throw like a puddle of emerald, and it all undusted, unkept, a ruby necklace like a scatter of blood lying atop the litter on a gilded table-a bed never made, but tossed with moire silks and hung with dusty drapes. She loved color, did Ischade, and avoided it for her dress. Her hair was a fall of ink about her face; her habiliments were blacker than night; her eyes- But the slave would not look at them.

"Look up," she said, when she had read the message, and after a moment he must. He stared at her. The fear grew quiet, because she had that skill. She held him with her eyes. "I did a service for one your masters knew-lately. They seem to think this obligates me. Nothing does. Do they realize this?"

He said nothing, shaped a no with his lips. He had no wish to be party to any confidences, that was clear. Yes, or no, or whatever she wanted to hear; the mind, she thought, was unfocussed like the eyes.

"So. Do you know what this says?"

No, the lips shaped again.

"They want the slaver. Jubal. Does that amuse you?"

No answer at all. There was fear. It bubbled against her nerves like strong wine, harder and harder to resist, but she played with it, stronger than they judged she was, despising them-and perhaps a little mad. At times she thought she was, or might become so, and at others most coldly sane. Humor occurred to her, a private laughter, with this gift so obviously proffered, this-bribe. Animal she was not. She knew always what she did. She moved closer and her fingers touched his arm while she wove a circle round him like some magic rite. She came full circle and looked up at him, for he was tall. "Who were you?" she asked.

"Haught is my name," he said, all but a whisper, she was that close, and he managed then to look past her.

"And were you born a slave?"

"I was a dancer in Garo