Stealers' Sky

He looked out from those windows and saw, with a most curious frisson of fear, the black-cloaked shadow standing in the street-

Saw that hooded figure facing him and looking-he felt that stare go straight to his gut-with full cognizance that he was watching Her at that moment.

"Mistress," he whispered, longing for the safety She might offerarrogant Haught, who had been Her apprentice. Her most disobedient apprentice. He found himself shivering-but it might be the cold-and with a certain weakness in his joints-it might be hunger; it was only sorcery had sustained him in this boarded-up mansion, past the stores buried in the cellar, which were long since depleted.

It seemed to him-he hugged himself, shivering more and more in the predawn chill-that he heard her voice speaking to him very clearly, telling him if he would serve her again-he might be free.

And magician and sorcerer that he had been, he was only a prisoner now, of something much worse. It was not nails and boards on the windows that kept him in-it was powerful wards; and it was not Tasfalen he lodged with, but an undead housing something that had been Roxane the witch-a presence which made terrible demands of him and which bided asleep, but not asleep, not ever quite asleep; it drank down vials of dust he found for it, of its shattered Power-globe-and it only grew more malevolent and more bitter and more dangerous and demanding.

He longed for Ischade's house. With all his heart.

I'm here, he prayed, looking out that shutter, hoping that She would hear that thought as She heard so much that passed in Sanctuary, I'm more than willing, mistress, if only you'll forgive me, mistress, I'll not make those mistakes again ...

He caught his breath, the impression was so strong-of anger, of summons-he trembled, he began, against his own better knowledge to consider which of the doors and windows he might pry open to admit Her-

To admit Death Herself-or willingly to go to Her... -

Zip poured blood over the stones of the little altar he had made-blood he had let from his own veins, there being no better to hand. He had served the Revolution, he had let blood enough of Rankan overlords, he had done all ma

Perhaps that was the reason his god failed to answer him. He had found the old stones of this altar on the river-shore, and set it up there during the witch wars and fed it during the Revolution; and he had moved it to this sacred street-stone by stone, until he began to build again in the Street of Temples, well, if not on the street, at least in an alley next the great shrines of Empire and of the quisling Ilsigi gods-

And he had failed at first to find the shape of the ancient altar-he had piled up stones only to see them tumble, or to have pieces left over.

But a stranger had come along at the depth of his frustration and told him-told him without hesitation!-what stone to place on what stone, and lo! the altar had taken shape, firmer than before-

Zip knew that this stranger, with the clay-colored horse, the woven reins, this strange, old-time warrior-had to be special-was perhaps numinous, because the hair still rose on his neck when he thought about it. He made his offerings, he hoped for another such manifestation-

But the stranger appeared elsewhere in the streets of Sanctuary, these days. Zip had seen him by plain daylight, the stranger had turned up riding in the lower town, by noontime; or around the Garrison by moonlight; sometimes one saw him riding by the river-shore, in the night-as if he were searching for something lost in the marsh-

The stranger's name was Shepherd, so the rumor was in the streets, and once Zip had seen him stop at that house in the Shambles where the Stepsons lodged, and ride through that low gate that let him into a certain yard-

Where the Stepsons kept their horses in a ramshackle stable.

That association was what gnawed at Zip.

He poured blood from his own veins over these ancient stones, hoping for an Ilsigi god. Even an Ilsigi devil would do-something of Sanctuary's own people and not the occupation forces.

And something, finally, finally glowed within the crevices of the stones -glowed and winked out again.

"What do you want?" he cried, kneeling on the dirty cobbles, pounding his fists on his knees. "What do you want me to do?"

There was silence, and in that silence he heard the slow, hollow ring of a horse's hooves out on the Street of Temples-in this hour just before the dawn. For some reason that leisurely advance seemed ominous to him, the most dangerous, the most fatal thing in the world, and he knew that rider would stop and that shadow would loom in the alley-opening, saying to him, in a deep voice.

"Boy, what are you praying to?"

"I don't know," he confessed, on his knees before that mounted shadow, and felt cold, cold as the dead in the White Foal.

"Boy, what are you praying for?"

"For-" But revenge was not it, not exactly; and it was dangerous, to say something too quickly or to say it wrong. Zip sensed that, he sensed he was in the greatest danger he had ever been in, that-

God, he slept with a Rankan woman, he had started out wanting revenge on Rankene pride, started out sleeping with her to screw some enemy woman and ended up sleeping with her because it was someone to sleep with, and somehow he got to looking for things from her, like-the way she wasn't at all like the rest other kind, she was good, she could be rough as a dockside whore and gentler than his dreams^ she became-an addiction with him, an unpredictability, he never knew what she was going to be, or why he felt the way he did-but it excited him, she did, and he had to have her-

He was filth before his god. That was all he was, and the questions shot straight to his heart.

But a second time: "What are you praying for?" the stranger asked-it was Shepherd himself. There was a watt of chill swamp air about him.

"I don't know," Zip confessed, and knotted his fingers in his hair, head bowed. "I just don't know anymore ..."

"Never go to a god," Shepherd said, "with preconceptions."

"Pre-what?" He squinted up at the mounted shadow, saw the red gleam of the eyes of the panther-head on the horse's chest.

"I'll make it easy for you," Shepherd said. "Wrongs set right. Problems solved. Lives set in order. Is that what you want? Go to the market: fortune-tellers charge a copper for promises like that. Much cheaper than blood."

The stranger was making fun of him. Zip stood up with his hand on his knife, with all the old, foolish anger rising up in him. A man could take so much, but not laughter at his expense.

"Wrongs set right," the stranger said in a deep voice. "But what if you're one of those wrongs-what if that anger of yours and that hate of yours had no Rankans to turn to? Can you imagine your life then?"

He could not. He did not know where he would be or what his life would be for, if not Ranke; and Ranke was falling on its own, without any need of him ...

"You sleep with Ranke," Shepherd said. "You need Ranke, boy, you need it to live, because when it's gone, there'll be nothing left of you. You've had your answer. Quit praying."

Zip's hand fell. He stood there in that cold that came of hearing the truth and knowing everything Shepherd said was true. He was still standing there when the rider shouldered past him, slow clatter of hooves down the alley and into the dark of the shrines on either