Blood Ties

It was ironic, in a way, that after a year or more of wizard-witched weather, the Street talk was about the failure of magic. Most of the brothels-the big houses like the Aphrodisia, anyway-usually bought cool night breezes from the journeymen up at the Mageguild, but this summer (a summer that was really no worse than any other) the big magic-banded doors stayed shut and the Hazard mages, when they were seen at all, were sweating through their robes like any common laborer.

Rumor said the worst was over and the magic was coming back, though only to the strongest, or the cursed, and as yet too unpredictable to sell at any price. Rumor said a lot of things, but Walegrin, who did Molin Torchholder's direct bidding, got the truth of them sometimes. Stormbringer's pillar, which had purged Sanctuary of its dead and deadly, had sucked away the ether that made magic work. It would be a dog's year before Sanctuary's Mageguild sold anything but charlatan spells or prestidigitation regardless of the hazardous ranking of its residents.

The black harbor water diffracted into diamonds of starlight; a breeze moved whisper-weak across the wharf. The ragged-eared cats with slitted sickly green eyes were stretched out along the damp planks. A mouse, or young rat, skittered up a mooring rope past a cat that didn't care enough to twitch its tail. If a man held still, like the cats-breathing slow, keeping his mind as calm as the water-he could forget the .heat and slip into a timeless daze that was almost pleasant.

Walegrin sought that oblivion and it eluded him. He was a Rankan soldier, the garrison commander, self-charged with patrolling the city. Such pride as he had stemmed from his ability to fulfill his duties. So his mind churned forward, pursuing the thoughts he'd lost before sunset. He had an appointment to keep: the true reason why tonight, more than any other, he rather than one of his men was making the rounds of Sanctuary's alleys.

The summer had seen a change in the city's social fabric that was as profound as it had been unexpected: Official protection had been extended to, and accepted by, the besieged remnants of the PFLS after their leader was betrayed and nearly killed within the palace walls. Gutter-fighters like Zip, whose lives had been measured in hours and minutes at the season's begi

And the cause of this change? None other than Prince Kadakithis's once-favorite cousin and Molin's never-favored niece: Chenaya Vigeles, a young woman of considerable talent and little sense. A young woman who had propositioned him with treason and upon whom, with the knowledge and permission of his superiors, Walegrin now spied.

Once, not so long ago, he had discounted the influence of women both in his own life and in the greater realities of the universe; then he had returned to Sanctuary. In this gods- and magic-cursed place, the worst always came from a woman's hand. He'd learned to hold his tongue and his liquor with women whose naked breasts stared back at him; women whose eyes glowed red with immortal anger and women whose love-play left a man dead in the dawn light-and all of them were saner than Chenaya.

Rumor said, and the Torch confirmed, that she was favored of Savankala himself. Rumor said she couldn't lose, whatever that meant, because she and the few frightened remnants of an unlamented Imperial dynasty had fled the Rankan capital after Theron's takeover and wound up here in Sanctuary which had never been known to attract anything or anyone but losers. But it meant something Walegrin knew that personally. And out at the Land's End estate, where she lived with her father, a small horde of gladiators, and the disaffected members of what had been the city's Rankan upper crust, there was a god-bugged priest who was determined to make a mortal goddess of her.

He'd seen the shrine Rashan was building, with stones pilfered not only from the ramparts but from long-neglected, best-forgotten altars. He'd passed the word along to Molin and watched his mentor seethe with rage, but he hadn't managed to pass along the danger-the awesomeness-he felt when Rashan made his Daughter-of the-Sun speeches or when Chenaya took him into her confidence and arms.

The water diffracted again, broken as a school of mi

If there was an afterlife, if Sanctuary wasn't hell itself, then maybe he'd spend eternity as a nya-fish chasing mi

The narrow, convoluted streets of the Maze held the heat. Turning down Odd Bin's Dodge, Walegrin passed through invisible walls of hot, stagnant air. He sniffed the air, thought about plague, and knew he'd have to send men in here to check the alleys for bodies come morning. From up on the rooftops, he heard the sounds that said love, or lust, had gained a momentary victory over the weather, but otherwise the Maze was uncommonly quiet for this hour.

Hand on his sword, he backed into a portico and put his shoulder against the half-hinged door. Picking his way across the rubble-strewn floor of what had been, until recently, one of the PFLS safe-houses, he approached the window casement, leaning away from the gray starlight, and tried to guess what route Kama would use to reach their rendezvous.

Kama.

Buoyed by the heat, Walegrin's mind drifted back in time and a few hundred yards deeper into the Maze; back to Tick's Cross and another night almost as hot as this one when he'd taken the midnight patrol. The night he'd agreed to let Zip live-at least until Tempus had ridden beyond Sanctuary's new gates.

He'd heard the horse first, moving too fast through the rutted muck that passed for paving stones hereabout, and made his way to the cross in time to see its rider go ass over elbow to the ground. The horse was well-trained and came to a shame-faced stop not five paces from its motionless rider. Walegrin grabbed the loose reins and led it back to the moonlit intersection.

Kama lay on her back, knees splayed and angled up-a posture more becoming a whore than a 3rd Commando assassin. Walegrin had looked only long enough to be sure it was her before turning discreetly, uncomfortably, away.

"It would be you. That's twice-damnit all," the husky voice had said, reminding him of the time his men had hauled her out of a malodorous cistern. "I've killed better men for less."

He had stared at her, knowing the absolute certainty of her claim and yet, for one wild, reckless moment able to see the absolute absurdity of her position. "Better for less?" he'd repeated in a bantering tone he used infrequently, even with his own men. "Better for less? Kama, either I'm the best or you'll have to kill me right now"-and immediately wished that someone had taken the trouble to cut his tongue out long ago.

But Kama, absorbing the picture she presented, had thrown her head back and laughed heartily at some private joke. She'd extended her filthy hand toward him and, using him as a brace, jumped to her feet.

"Buy me a drink, Walegrin; buy me a tun of the sourest wine in the Maze and you can be the best."