Uneasy Alliances

Who will you sleep with. then?

And how will the Riddler deal with you?

Every morning, every evening. One of the crowd.

Part of the crowd when Critias rode in, grim and hard-hard and soldierly, where Straton had grown fey, and strange.

Where Straton served Her who was whispered about only rarely and in the lowest of tones among the few Ilsigis who knew they had a Patron, of sorts-

It confused even Nas-yeni.

But the torment, the absolute hell in Straton's look nowadays-that satisfied him. So did the rumors of estrangement.

And to help it along, he took to the skills of his youth-set up an archery butt in the warehouse now largely depleted of goods, but enough for a man to live on, who did not plan to live forever.

He had been a damned fine shot, in his youth, in the time that he had spent in the city guard. The hand and the eye remembered. Hate might make the one tremble. Grief might blur the eye. But purpose-that was clear and cold. Critias was back. Straton was in ruin already: one of the Pair was broken, and too difficult to predict.

Eliminate him.

From a rooftop.

In a way that an assassin could escape, and lay guilt upon the other Partner, and fear on all their company. It was what Beruth would have done, it was his kind of vengeance; it had sharp, keen savor, the drawing of that arrow-blue-fletched, Jubal's colors, not because Nas-yeni had any particular grudge against the ex-slaver, but because it might make the maximum of trouble-

And the wind being what it was, and Straton's damned horse in the way-

But it had hit, all the same, and created havoc beyond Nas-yeni's own imagining-delivered Straton wounded, into the hands of enemies who had not handled him gently, by all accounts; and crippled him; while Tempus, displeased with a city block in ruins and with the rise ofwitchly influences in his ranks, one supposed, demoted him.

And departed, leaving, the gods be thanked, Critias in command of a city Straton had lusted after, Straton crippled and drinking himself stuporous night after night in the Vulgar Unicorn, Straton with so much witch-sign about him that he was notorious, and even footpads refrained from cutting his throat on his drunken wanderings to and from the barracks or the bars. They refrained because the word was out in the underworld of Sanctuary that this man was protected, and that throats would be cut if this man's was.

Things were altogether as Nas-yeni would have them: one enemy in a living hell, banished even from the witch's bed, living because no one was friend enough to kill him; and the other-the other-

There was no more to be done to Straton.

There was Critias ... safe as yet, newly set into an office that Tempus had given him, perhaps with a sense that here was the only place that Straton might stay alive and Critias the only man who might have a chance to heal him: that much understanding Nas-yeni had of his enemies as he had had of his rivals in trade, ca

By such things a man could unravel another.

A hunter had to be his own prey. They were locked together in this hunt, which had achieved a certain intimacy. Nas-yeni who had no family, had two men whose every thought he surmised, whose every move he could now predict; they kept him from loneliness, they kept his heart beating and the blood moving in his veins; they gave him something to think about and to look forward to, something which made him very glad his shots had gone amiss.

First Straton. Now Critias. Critias-who already suffered. He might simply live and watch Critias, watch the slow embitterment of a man left to a town which hated him. But he knew this man like a son. He knew that such embitterment would leach the feeling out of a man like Critias;

knew that some morning Straton would simply turn up dead of drink or some mischance no bribe could save him from, and Critias would be sorry and relieved, and the boil would be lanced, that was all, the pain stopped.

That would never do.

A change in fortunes for Critias, the man facing all directions; and absolute hell for Straton, the man who had lost his way. The very plan was an indulgence approaching the sensual for a man who had restrained himself so long, so very long, and nightly prayed for his enemies, that they go on living.

And it was so easy, for a man so like every other man in Sanctuary, to the eyes of the invaders.

Wind and rain spatter at the eaves, rattle the shutters and bring cold into the room where Moria dresses, hastily, in the stink and the squalor of the tenement she shares with Stilcho, late oflschade's service. A gray, dim light reaches the bed where Stilcho rests, drugged with what krrfshe can buy him-sleep, peace which she can buy him, who has so little peace nowadays.

He is so handsome, so very beautiful to her whose beauty a mage gave her, whose beauty, Rankene-fair, Haught bespelled with stolen magic;

Stilcho's, she had never seen-had been terrified of him, whom Ischade had raised from the dead; she had dreaded the sight of him, shrunk from the chance touch of his hand, which in those days had been chill, had seen only his scars, which the beggar-king had given him, a Stepson, in the long, long night that he had been the beggar-king's prisoner, and they had taken out his right eye, and were about to take the other when Ischade had intervened.

Ischade had claimed him then, since the Stepsons would not have him, a walking dead; and Ischade, whose curse took the life of her lovers, (except Strat, gods only knew why but Moria made guesses) had taken Stilcho in Straton's stead on those terrible nights when the black mood was on her, and she evaded Straton and drove all her servants from her presence-except Stilcho, on whom the curse fell with all its force, who could die, and die, and die, because she had strings on his soul, and could pull it up again from hell-

Moria had seen him on such mornings, had seen his face and shuddered at that look, that bleak terror, that awful intensity with which he would sit and feel of things, the table, the texture of the cloth, the flesh of his arm-as if it were precious and all too fragile.

She had heard him scream-had heard him, as no woman should hear a man, break down in tears and plead with Ischade, not again, not again, no more-

She had shuddered at the mere sight of him in those days.

But those arms, however chill, had been there to hold her when her own world came tumbling down. And his goodness, his loyalty, had touched even Ischade's sense of justice: she had brought him all the way back. She had set him free-free as a man could be, who had suffered what he had, and who still waked screaming of nights, seeing hell, and demons.

Krrf gave him peace. Krrf let him lie safe from his devils-so, so good to see, his quiet sleep, his face that was always so pale, at rest, the patched eye and the fall of dark hair, all that was dark about him: the rest was light, white-washed in the light that, like the chill wind, came through the shutter slats.

She tied a ragged brown scarf about her blonde hair. And from its place in the corner, disguised with clay, she took a lump that was heavier than any rock ought to be, a lump that weighed like sin-or pure gold.

She put it in the ratty basket she had, along with some rags of laundry, She was very careful going out the door, and left the latchstring inside, so only he could open it.

He would know, she feared, when he woke. The first thing he would check would be that comer where they hid the lump she had salvaged from the Peres house. Last night she had begged him to let her take it to old Gorthis, who would give her, she argued, fair price for it. He had fenced for the gangs, back before the war. She knew Gorthis, that he was an honest fence, at least, he gave the fairest rates in Sanctuary. He need not suspect that it was Ischade's gold.