Uneasy Alliances

"Oh, all right, nuisance," he gently chided the cat nibbing against his leg and purring. "You know, most cats have to find their own food."

He fed the puss some chopped meat and fixed himself a thick slice of hard sausage and a wedge of cheese between two pieces of black bread. He washed it down with watered wine. Crumpet finished eating before he did and began preening herself, ignoring him with that aloofness only felines are capable of.

It was a miserable morning. Usually Cholly took his time to walk to the shop, but not in this downpour. The cobblestones were slippery and unpaved streets were slimy bogs. Twice he had to backtrack and take a different street. At least his greased boots and oilcloth cloak kept him relatively dry.

He opened the big brass lock and replaced the key in his pouch. The front portion of the shop consisted of row upon row of shelves full of clay jars, each jar marked with a symbol that told him what compound the pot contained. At the rear, in front of a curtained doorway, stood a large wooden counter.

He slapped his hand onto the counter and was answered by a yelp. "Aram, get up. It's time to get started. Go wake up Sambar."

A tall, lanky youth of perhaps sixteen years crawled sleepily out from beneath the counter, yawning widely. He stood and stretched, scratched, and ran one hand through a shaggy mop of blond curls.

"Morning, master," he yawned.

Aram went through the curtained doorway and crossed the brick floor of the rendering room with its four huge iron pots, firewood and dry bones in the rack, and shelves and bins of ingredients. On one side was a butcher's beam and a water pump. A second curtained door, wider than the first, opened onto the stable.

Enkidu and Eshi, two grays with hooves the size of di

"Get up, Lazybones. Old Baldpate's here. Rise and shine," Aram a

"Already?" Sambar stood and shook the straw from his blanket, folded it, and hung it across the stall divider. Satisfied, he brushed the straw from his tunic and began picking pieces from his blue-black straight hair.

By the time the boys had had a bite of bread and cheese and gotten the horses harnessed, the rising sun had barely lightened the tenebrous clouds to putrescent gray. Thunder rumbled like an empty barrel rolling down a cobbled street. Instead of forked streaks, lightning flashed in weak patches scattered randomly on the face of the thunderhead. The White Foal would overflow again and uncover the trench graves of the u

Rain cascaded off their oilskins in icy torrents. Enkidu was prancing, ignoring the weather and enjoying his work. Eshi sulked, wanting to return to her nice warm dry stable. Aram was walking ahead because visibility was so poor. They had just turned onto Odd Birt's Dodge.

"I see one, back of Sly's."

Gray water splashed at every step of Aram's greased buskins.

"Father Us' beard! He's still bleeding!"

"Can we help him? Is he still alive?"

"No, Cholly. His head's nearly cut off."

"Do you see anybody? The killer may still be around close."

Aram drew his dagger. Cholly climbed down from the driver's seat and unsheathed the Ilbarsi long knife. There was no one to be found. The door to Sly's Place was securely barred and a search of the area revealed no one hiding. No one had gone past them-

"I don't understand. It would take a magician to get out of here without us seeing him," Aram said.

"Anything is possible," Cholly replied.

Aram jumped down and ran to open the stable doors, jumping over the bigger puddles. The double doors swung open easily. Cholly backed the wagon inside. Aram unhitched the team, wiped them down, covered them with dry blankets, and gave them food and water. Only then did he stop to remove his rain gear. He replaced his wet leather gloves and apron with dry ones.

Cholly was smoking a pipe while he inspected the pots Sambar had been left to clean and fill. It was a minor vice, but one to which his wife objected, "... because it stinks up the entire house. Even my hair smells like smoke,"

There was nothing in Sanctuary that he feared, that he was not married to. Neither wizard nor demon, man nor god, living or dead. When the night was filled with the undead of Ischade and Roxane, he had dispatched several of the poor wights, beheading them so they might return to the hell they had been called back from.

Not all of them were eager to go. One, a former Stepson, had argued for over an hour that it was not dead. It even had the gall to draw a shortsword and threaten the gluemaker. Fortunately the expression "the quick and the dead" was inappropriate. Cholly hacked the zombie to pieces with his axe to prove his point. Sure enough, the Stepson was dead.

Over a dozen bodies were stacked in the wagon. Five had come from Red Lanterns or nearby, indicating it had been a busy night. Three bodies were female. One had even been pretty, in a cheap way.

"You see," Sambar chided while he and Aram began unloading the wagon, "this is what happens to people who spend all their money at the Slippery Lily."

"I hope they had at least finished their business and were leaving. It would be a shame to die without gettin' what they came there for," Aram chuckled.

"One of these Moonday mornings you may come in with the load as a client, not a passenger."

"I can take care of myself."

"The least you'll get is Eshi's measles."

"I haven't had a dose yet. Besides, it isn't fattening like your candy. In another year your taste will run to sweets of another sort. Mark my words."

"Idiot!" Markmor shrieked- "Fool of a fool!"

The young man with flowing silver hair trembled at the tirade, staring at the floor lest the most powerful mage in Sanctuary look him in the eye. Until a few years ago the apprentice wizard's father, Mizraith, had been the chief of those mages not bound by the Rankan Mageguild's hazardous rites. Markmor had been a brash upstart, scarcely more than a child by sorcerous or any other standards. Yet he had slain Mizraith fairly in a wizard's duel and thereby proved himself supreme among those who held to the magical traditions of Ilsig. He'd had to lie low a while-feigning death, abandoning his skein of spells lest he be drawn into the magekilling and god-killing that had beset Sanctuary these last few years. But he'd survived, and returned, and meant to recapture everything he'd lost, with interest.

"Th-there wasn't time, Master," Marype stammered. "I was just slitting the messenger's throat when I heard horses. I vanished for just a moment, hoping whoever it was would pass by. When I returned the body was gone."

"All you had to do was take the amulet and run. You didn't even have to kill him. A blow on the head would have done the job-' How could it be so difficult?"

Markmor's robes of shiny vermilion silk brushed the polished marble floor as he paced angrily. His short hair and pointed beard were as black as his soul. Beneath a single shaggy brow his amethyst eyes were blazing with rage.

Several moments of threatening silence passed before he continued, "Do you have any idea how valuable that bauble is? Not only to me, but to all of us who stand outside the Guild? Much less what could happen if it ever reaches the first Hazard as it was supposed to? Do you see the danger your bungling has placed us in? Do you? Do you?"

"I think so, Master." Marype cringed.

"No, that's your trouble, Marype. You don't think. If you had you wouldn't have left the amulet behind. There are times when I wonder why I took you into my service. I really do.

"Now tell me again-from the begi