Storm Season

She kept a private den backstairs, that rag-piled, perfume-stinking boudoir with the separate back door, out of which her Boys and Girls came and went on her errands, out of which wafted the fumes of wine and expensive krrf-he lived opposite that door like the maw of hell, had been inside once, when he let his room. She had insisted on giving him a cup of wine and taking him to Her Room when explaining the rules and the advantages her Boys' protection afforded. She had offered him krrf-a small sample, and given him to know what else she could supply. And that den continued its furtive visitors, and Tygoth to walk his patrol, rapping on the walls with his stick, even in the rain, tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap in the night, keeping that alley safe and everything Mama owned in its place.

"Come backstairs," Mama would say when the money ran out. "Let's talk about it." Gri

He knew the look. Like Elid's. Like-He drank to take a taste from his mouth, made the drink small, because his life was measured in such sips of his resources. He hated, gods, he hated. Hated women, hated the bloodsucking lot of them, in whose eyes there was darkness that drank and drank forever.

There had been a woman, his last employer. Her name was Ischade. She had a house on the river. And there was more than that to it. There were dreams. There was that well of dark in every woman's eyes, and that dark laughter in every woman's face, so that in any woman's arms that moment came that turned him cold and useless, that left him with nothing but his hate and the paralysis in which he never yet had killed one-whether because there was a remnant of selfwill in him or that it was terror of her that kept him from killing. He was never sure. He slept alone now. He stayed to the Downwind, knowing she was fastidious, and hoping she was too fastidious to come here; but he had seen her first walking the alleys of the Maze, a bit of night in black robes, a bit of darkness no moon could cure, a dusky face within black hair, and eyes no sane man should ever see. She hunted the alleys of Sanctuary. She still was there . . . or on the river, or closer still. She took her lovers of a night, the unmissable, the negligible, and left them cold by dawn.

She had sent him from her service unscathed-excepting the dreams, and his manhood. She called him in his nightmares, promising him an end-as he had seen her whisper to her victims and hold them with her eyes. And at times he wanted that end. That was what frightened him most, that the darkness beckoned like the only harbor in the world, for a man without hire and patronage, for a Nisibisi wanted by law at home and stranded on the wrong side of a war.

He dared not become too drunk. The night Mama Becho ever thought he had all his money on him, which he had-Then they would go for him. Now it was a game. They tested him, learned him and his resources, whether he was a thief or no, what skills he had. So he still baffled them.

And watched the door. Desperately casual, pretending not to watch.

All of a sudden his heart lurched an extra beat and began to hammer in his chest, for the man he had been waiting for had just come through the door; and Mradhon Vis sipped his wine and gave the most blunt disinterested stare that he gave to all comers, not letting his eyes linger in the least on this young ruffian, darkhaired, darkski

So Mradhon took his place, his shoulders to the wall in the shadows, and stood and stood until his knees were numb, while the traffic came and went in and out Mama Becho's door, until soon Tygoth would take up his vigil in the alleyway.

Then the man came out again, reeling a little in satiation-but not that much, and not lingering among the loiterers by the door.

ii

The quarry passed to the right and Mradhon Vis leaned away from his wall, stepped over the sprawled legs of a fellow hanger-on and went after the young man, along the muddy streets and alleyways. The wine had lost its effect on him in his waiting, but he pretended its influence in his step-he had learned such strategems in his residency in the Downwind. He knew the • ways thereabouts, every door, every turning that could take a body out of sight in a moment. He had studied them with all the care with which in other days he had studied broader terrain, and now he stalked this shanty maze, knowing just when his step might sound on harder ground, when his quarry, turning a corner, might chance to see him, and where he might safely lag back or take a shorter way. He had not known which way this man might go; but he had him now, and knew every way that he might take, no matter which way he might turn. It had been a long wait already-for this man, this current hope of his, who visited Becho's with money, who also liked his wine, and bought krrf in the back room.

He knew this man-who did not know him. Knew him from a place across the river, in the Maze, in a place where he had courted Jubal's employ, once in better days. And if there was a chance left to him, it was this. He had tracked this man on another night and lost him; but this night he knew the ground, had set the odds in his own favor in this hunt.

And the man-youth-was at least some part drunk.

The way crossed the main road, past a worse and worse tangle of hovels, past the flimsy shelters of the hopeless, the old, the desolate, and now and again a doorway where someone had taken shelter against the wind, eyes that saw everything and nothing in the dark, witnesses whose own misery enveloped them and left only apathy behind.

Down a side track and into an alley this time, and it was a dead end: the quarry entered it and Mradhon knew-knew the door there, as he knew every turn and twist of this street. He thrust himself around the corner, having heard the steps go on.

"You," Mradhon said. "Man."

The youth whirled, hand to belt, with the quick flash of steel in the blackness.

"Friend," Mradhon said. He had his own knife, in case.

If the young man's mind had been fumed, it was shocked clear now. He had set himself in a knifeman's crouch and Mradhon measured it as too far for any simple move.

"Jubal," Mradhon said ever so softly. "That name make a difference to you?"

Still silence.

"I've got business to talk with you," Mradhon said. "Suppose we do that."

"Maybe." The voice came tightly. The crouch never varied. "Come a little closer."

"Why don't you open that door and let's talk about it."

Another silence.

"Man, are we going to stand here for the world to watch? I know you, I'm telling you. I'm by myself. The risk is on my side."

"You stand there. I'll open the door. You go in first."

"Maybe you've got friends in there."

"You're asking the favors, aren't you? Where did I get you on my heel? Or were you waiting on the street?"

Mradhon shrugged. "Ask me inside."

"Maybe I'll talk to you." The voice grew reasoned and calm. "Maybe you just put away that knife and keep your hands where I can see them." The youth inserted his knife in the seam of the door and flipped up the latch inside, pushed it open. The inside was dark. "Go first, about six steps across the room."

"Let's have a light first, shall we?"

"Can't do that, man. No one in there to light it Just go on."