Stealers' Sky

hand.

The light was gone from his altar. The very air felt cold. And the stones of that altar suddenly tumbled apart, scattering across the cobbles of the alley.

Taz the thief stood on the corner of the river-road in the dawn, sullen and out of sorts and watching the house the way he had been watching when Ischade had come out of it and when she had come back and when other men had come to it-well-dressed men, mostly, and one woman and one limping beggar. Taz failed to understand, but curiosity gathered his courage toward the dawn, never having seen her return-he came up to the iron fence himself, and laid a hand on that gate in the hedge. He yelped in pain, recoiled with a shivering cold up that arm. But the gate, glowing blue as Shalpa's ghostfire, unlatched itself and swung inward on its own. Taz stood there somewhere between shock and a terrible compulsion to walk that path and, thieflike, prudently, something whispered to him, persuasive as temptation to sin, to reco

Come ahead, something said. come ahead, come ahead-

He took the first step, he took the second, not really wanting it, but he felt his hand brush the gate, felt it leave his hand-

He walked the path and ducked aside into the weeds and into the hedges, where a crack in the shutters gave forth a seam of light into the brush; he worked his way most carefully into this hedge against the house and rose up beneath the window, carefully, carefully to peer into the crack-

Into a room where the witch sat in the glare of countless candles-on the floor, on a bright array of discarded silks. Her face was white, her eyes were shut, her strange guests stood as shadows in the background of this cluttered room.

It was witchcraft he spied on, Taz was sure of it, it was most real and dangerous witchcraft, of a sort he had seen in the skies and in the streets of Sanctuary in recent years, when the dead had walked and lightnings and whirlwind had warred over the harbor... .

A thief knew when he was out of his league. Taz was easing backward in the brush when there was a sudden clap of wings, air against his neck, a raven's harsh cry-

And the shutters banged open in his face, inside and out at once, setting him face-to-face with a startled man: he swore, Taz yelped, and Taz was off through the bushes and for the only way out he knew, the front gate-

But it clanged shut and glowed blue and perilous in front of him, and he whirled around at the creak of the front door behind him.

He walked toward that door-not that he wanted to, but his body moved, and the distance between him and the porch steps grew less and less.

A man stood in that doorway, a one-eyed man who met him as he came up onto the porch, who set his hand on his shoulder and said, half sadly, "You should have run when you had the chance, boy."

But he went inside. He had to. He took his place with the others, a bearded, foreign man, a beggar with the remnants of handsomeness-a Rankene lady, the pale, one-eyed man who had snared him on the porch... .

She had never moved. She sat in the midst of this goings-on with her hands open on the knees of her black gown, her eyes shut, her lips moving in a constant murmur.

"Randal-" Strat felt uneasy on the steps of the Stepson-mage's apartment, uneasy in being in the mage-quarter in the first place, in an area where Rankan perso

He felt uneasy in the second place because one had no knowledge what sort of wards an anxious mage might set; and Randal, with his enemies, had every right to be anxious.

And he felt that unease in the third place because he had had enough of dealing with wards and with witchery in all its manifestations, and he was disgusted to find his knees all but shaking as he stood on Randal's second-story landing, under a night sky and in a rising wind, and hammering away with more noise than a body ought to have to use to raise a mage out of sleep.

"Randal, dammit, wake up!"

A dog barked. Strat looked over the rail and down, and saw a black cur in the shadow down there, next the bay horse-

Someone sneezed, and instantly where the dog had been was Randal, in a night-robe and bare feet, wiping his nose.

"Damned allergies," Randal said. "I thought-"

"Thought what?" Strat came hastily down the steps, no little a

"Thought-I smelled an associate of yours about you."

That was not what Strat wanted to hear. No. He grabbed Randal by the arm, hauled Randal into the privacy against the bay horse's side, and said, "I want you to come with me. I want you to talk to her... ."

Randal sneezed again, wiped his nose with the back of his hand. "For what? What good can I do? The woman's doing nothing against the Guild, and alone-"

"Talk to her," Strat said, holding his arm so tight Randal flinched and physically began to pry loose his fingers. He realized that and let go, took a grip on Randal's shoulder and kept that lighter, with a mortal effort. "I can't sleep, I don't rest-"

"I don't think it's sorcery," Randal said.

"What do you mean, 'don't think it's sorcery'!" Another effort to keep his voice down and the grip gentle. "Man, I'm forgetting things, I don't know where I am half the time, I think about her like I was some damn fool kid with his first lay-"

"It's not witchery."

"Damn if it isn't!"

"Has it dawned on you. Ace, that all of that equally well describes a man-in love?"

Strat stood there with his hand on Randal's shoulder and stared at him before he gave him a shove against the horse. "I came to you for help, Stepson!"

"That's what I'm telling you. I know spells. I know bewitchment. You've had it, but you haven't got it-that horse has, but you haven't." Another sneeze. "She cut you loose. The ties that've been on you-aren't. But you keep thinking about her. You can't sleep. You can't eat. You wake at night thinking about her, wondering who she's with-"

"Damn you!"

"So what else is it-but love?"

"You're useless!" Strat said, and picked up the bay horse's reins. "I'm going to have it out with her!"

"Don't!" Randal said, catching at the reins as Strat threw himself into the saddle. "Strat!"

But Strat pulled up on him, reined aside, and the bay took out at a run -with a black dog loping along: Strat saw it when they turned the corner and the dog got into the lead, ru

The bay horse shied up then, screamed and shied as the dog jumped at its throat, and Strat felt-

-nothing under him. Simply nothing stopping him from flying through the air and landing dazed on the cobbles.

He scrabbled for his knees, bad shoulder stu

And Crit's voice saying; "You damn fool!"

As someone gathered him off the pavement and cradled his head in his lap-someone familiar, over a lot of years, someone who kept saying, "Ace, gods, I'm sorry."

The horse was gone-turned to air beneath him. It was the last gift she had given him. And it was gone. His friends took it from him. Or she did. There was only the taste of blood in his mouth.

She did not know why she did what she did-it was only the night, and the feeling of change in the wind, and the feeling of things slipping away from her. She murmured, though perhaps none of her folk could hear her, "Protection for my own is all I can do now. But that I do, as best I can."