Blood Ties

Certainly the smell of blood was strong enough in the airless room they were crowded into. A lump-tallow candle provided sputtering, smoky light. Walegrin took the sconce from the wall and studied the place. He shoved a smaller man aside and headed for the comer where the whimpering was coming from, then brought himself up short.

"It's a woman!"

"It usually is," Zip replied. "She's been like this for three days. Around sunset we thought she was going to have it, finally. But it's only gotten worse. You go

Walegrin knelt down and had his worst suspicions confirmed. This was no hell-cat PFLS fighter; this wasn't even the result of a private quarrel; no, this was a girl, a child really, lying on the filthy wood, her clothes long since torn and discarded, laboring to get a child out of her belly.

"Sweet Sabellia's tits," he swore softly.

The girl opened her eyes. She tried to say something to him but the sounds that came from her were too ragged for him to understand.

"I could stitch up a cut, maybe. Maybe get Thrush.... Shit on a stick. Zip-I can't do anything for her. I'm not a goddamned midwife." He stood up and took a step away.

"She needs a midwife," another voice told him, the man he'd pushed aside who was no more a man than the girl in the comer was a woman.

"She needs more than a midwife. She needs a bloody miracle!"

"We'll settle for a midwife," Zip countered.

"You're crazy. Zip. Three days she's been here? Three days? Maybe two days ago; maybe even at sunset she needed a midwife. You can't possibly move her; she's half-dead already."

"She's not!" the youth shouted, his outrage turning to tears. "She needs a midwife-that's all." He turned to Zip, not Walegrin. "You said-you said you'd find someone."

The PFLS leader's facade of uncaring arrogance cracked a bit-enough so the garrison commander could recognize a familiar despair. You made your men trust you so you could ask them to do the impossible and get results, but then they turned around and asked you to do the impossible as well. Walegrin didn't need to like, or even respect. Zip to sympathize with him.

"What about it? You know anyone?" Zip asked.

"Who'd come here? At this hour?"

Walegrin twisted his bronze circlet free, pushed the loose hair off his forehead, and blew a lungful of air through his teeth. The unborn baby chose that moment to send its mother into a back-wrenching arc of pain and terror. As she thrashed about Walegrin saw more than he wanted to see: a tiny leg dangling below the girl's crotch. Even he knew babes were supposed to enter the world the other way around.

He locked stares with Zip and racked his memory for a competent, but foolhardy, midwife.

Molin Torchholder had told him, back when he'd begun taking orders from the priest, that in the Rankan Empire a place's population was usually about fifteen times its tax roll. Until the coming of the Beysib, the Prince had collected taxes, or tried to collect taxes, from some four hundred citizens: Say 6,000 people in the city, not counting Beysibs and newcomers, and Walegrin knew, or could recognize, most of them.

He had a memory for faces and names; had made a hobby of it since his childhood right here in Sanctuary: Moreover his mind was sufficiently flexible to recognize people years after he'd last seen them. He'd recognized Zip, remembering him as a street tough about his own age-always surrounded by followers, always fighting, never wi

"Maybe," he told them and headed for the door.

"I'll be going with you," Zip countered and preceded him down the stairs.

They left a different way than they'd come, squat-walking through a gap Walegrin would not have noticed without Zip to lead him. The safe-house shared a wall with a dilapidated warehouse. A warehouse which should have been empty, judging by the way Zip recoiled when they confronted the burning lamps and the little man coming toward them.

"Muznut!" Zip shouted and the bald little man came to a shame-faced stop.

Dressed in drab Sanctuary rags, it took Walegrin a moment to realize he was actually looking at a Beysib who was well-known to, if not exactly friendly with, the PFLS leader. He didn't recognize the foreigner, but he'd know him the next time they crossed paths.

"We share with them, for a price," Zip tried to explain. "Some fish want to get out of the water." He turned to the Beysib and snarled: "Get back to your tub boat, old man. You've got no business here after sundown!"

The man's eyes went wide and glassy, like he'd seen a ghost, then he turned and ran. Zip stood staring after him.

"Umm," Walegrin said, pretending disinterest. "I thought we were in a hurry. If this is your shortcut to Weaver's Way, I don't think much of it." He sniffed disdainfully, as the locals expected the Rankans to do, and took note of the smells in the air. Only one was worth remembering: distilled light oil such as he had smelled when Chenaya ambushed the PFLS and they'd retaliated with their fire-bottles.

"Can't trust those fish," Zip said as they approached the door the Beysib had left open in his haste to leave the warehouse.

"Ain't that the truth," Walegrin agreed, and wondered if Zip were truly preoccupied enough to believe that a Rankan soldier hadn't figured out where the oil and glass for his fire-bottles was coming from.

The PFLS leader set a good pace along the Wideway. Sweat came up and clung to the both of them. Once they crossed the Processional, though, and entered Sanctuary's better neighborhoods, Walegrin took command with Zip walking nervously beside him.

"You sure about this place?" the dark-haired man demanded.

"Yeah. I'm no fool. You'll owe me one."

Zip stopped, touching Walegrin's arm as he did, so the two men stood facing each other.

"Pork all, Walegrin. It's for the girl back there, not me."

"That's part of the job. You owe me for keeping quiet about your warehouse back there and your fish glassblower."

"They're shit-dumb, man. He thinks we own the place, so we charge him rent."

"It's not going to wash. Zip." Walegrin watched as the other man went white and furious in the moonlight. "Now look: You're dealing with the guy who brought Enlibar steel to this hole. You got yourself a nice advantage there, but right now you don't need it, correct? Everybody's at peace; you're one of us. And, now that I've got the pieces in my head- well, I can get to better Beysib than your Maznut.

"But let's say I don't want to. Let's say I don't trust some of my allies any more than you do, but the time comes, maybe, that I need a fire-breathing hero, then you come ru

Zip weighed his options in silence.

"Maybe you can find another warehouse," Walegrin bantered easily. "Maybe something will happen to me before it happens to you. I remember you from the Pits, long before Ratfall, and I'm betting you want to be a hero just once in your life. But you don't swear right now, and you'll tear Weaver's Way apart looking for her... and you won't find her." He smiled his best triumphant smile.

"What do you get out of it?"

"Maybe I'm going to need a home-grown, fire-breathing hero," Walegrin replied, thinking of Rashan and the altar out at Land's End and hoping that Kama would approve.

Zip gave his word and they continued in silence, alone on the streets, until they reached Weaver's Way.

"Keep out of sight," Walegrin told his companion before he climbed the steps to rap loudly on the door.