Blood Ties

"Be gone wi' you!" a voice called from inside.

"It's the Prince's business! Open up or we'll break through the door."

There was a long silence, the sounds of two heavy bolts being drawn back, then the door cracked open. Walegrin smacked the heel of this hand against the upper part of the door and threw the weight of his hip against the lower. It gave another few inches but not enough for Walegrin to enter. He looked down at the house guard.

"I want to talk to the Mistress zil-Ineel. Call her." He emphasized his request with another shove, but the house guard was braced as securely as he was and the door didn't budge.

"Come back in the morning."

'Wow, fat man."

"Let him in, Enoir," a woman called from the top of the stairs. "What's Eevroen done now?" she asked wearily as she descended.

Walegrin gave the hapless Enoir a leering smile and pushed his way into the open room. "Nothing unusual," he told the woman. "I'm here to see you."

"I haven't done anything to warrant a midnight visit from the garrison," she retorted with enough fire to convince Walegrin that he had indeed come to the right house.

He softened his stance and his voice. "I need your help. Or, rather, a young girl in the Shambles needs your help."

"I... I don't know what you're talking about."

"You're Masha zil-Ineel; you were Masha

"I came by my good fortune the hard way: honestly. I've paid my taxes."

"When you lived in the Maze, Masha, you worked as a midwife-with a doctor present east of the Processional, without one the rest of the time. The girl in the Shambles- she's been in labor for three days, in this heat. Once upon a time visiting the Shambles was moving up for you; I'm hoping you won't be afraid to go there tonight."

Mash sighed and let her lamp rest on the handrail. "Three days? There won't be much I can do."

But she would come-the answer showed on her face before she said anything. Enoir protested and insisted he accompany her but she ordered him to remain at the house and retreated upstairs to dress. Walegrin waited, politely ignoring Enoir's barbed glances.

"You have an escort in the street?" Masha asked when she returned, one hand pulling a prim, but almost transparent, shawl around her shoulders and the other carrying a battered leather chest.

"Of course," Walegrin replied without hesitation as he, rather than Enoir, held the door open.

He called for Zip as soon as the door had shut behind them. "That is your escort?" Masha sneered, the edge in her voice trying to cover her discomfort and fear.

"No, that's our guide; I'm the escort. Let's get moving." Whatever Masha zil Ineel was doing now that she had money, she hadn't let it soften her. She let the shawl drape loosely from her shoulders and kept pace with them along the Path of Money. The heavy chest seemed not to slow her at all and she refused to let either man carry it. The moon set; Walegrin bought a brace of torches from the Processional night-crier and they continued along their way, avoiding the Maze though all of them knew the secrets of its dark passages. They came into the Shambles and halted.

A knot of torch fires was headed toward them, bobbing, even falling, as their bearers shouted into the still, hot air. It reminded the three native Sanctuarites of the riotous plague marches that told the city's better-off citizens when death had erupted in the slums. Silently Zip melted back into the shadows, pushing Masha and her white shawl behind him. Walegrin slipped the straps off his green-steel sword and shoved the stump of his own torch into a gap in the nearest wall.

A gang of newcomer workmen emerged from the darkness. They staggered and stumbled into each other and their shouting proved to be the once-tender chorus of a love ballad. Walegrin shrugged a good deal of the tension from his shoulders but held his ground as they took note of him and lurched to a halt.

"A whorehouse, off-sher, where the wimmen're pretty?" their ersatz leader requested, drawing the outline of what he considered an extremely attractive woman in the air between them. His cohorts broke off their singing to whistle and laugh their agreement.

Walegrin rubbed the loose hair from his forehead and tucked it under his bronze circlet. If he waited a few more moments at least two of the newcomers were going to pass out in the dust and their whole expedition would come to naught. But the men who worked on the walls were being paid daily in good Rankan coinage and the Street of Red Lanterns was suffering from the weather. He did his civic duty and pointed them out of the Shambles toward the Gate of Triumph where, if they did not fall afoul of Ischade, they would eventually find the great houses.

Zip was at his side before he had the torch pulled from the wall.

"Forking, loud fools," he snarled.

"Maybe we should give up our respective trades and build walls or unload barges for a living," Walegrin mused.

"Listen to them. They must be halfway into the square and you can still hear them! They'll get eaten alive."

The garrison commander raised one eyebrow. "Not while they're traveling in packs like that," he challenged. "You backed off quick enough."

And Zip stood silent. There were big men in Sanctuary. Tempus was about the biggest; Walegrin and his brother-in-law, Dubro, weren't exactly small-boned either. But, save for the Stepsons, the newcomers were the biggest, best-fed men Sanctuary had seen in a generation or more. Even if they were only common laborers, another man-a native man like Zip -would have to think seriously before bothering them.

"They're ruining the town," the PFLS leader said finally.

"Because they work for their bread? Because they pay fairly for what they need and save to bring their families here to live with them?" Masha interjected. "I thought you were bringing me down here to see a woman."

With a half-glance back toward the square, where the newcomers were still singing. Zip grabbed the torch from Wale-grin's hands and plunged into the Shambles backways.

The safe-house was ominously quiet as Zip doused the torch and led the way to the deeply shadowed stairway. He stopped short in the doorway to the upper room; Walegrin bumped into him. The girl was still lying in the comer silent and motionless. Her young lover squatted beside her, his face shiny with unmanly tears. The garrison commander scarcely noticed as Masha shoved him aside. Her movements did not interrupt the invective he privately directed to such gods and goddesses as should have taken a care in these matters. Like many fighting men, Walegrin could understand the sudden death that came on the edge of a weapon but he had no tolerance for the simpler sorts of dying that claimed ordinary mortals.

He watched, and was faintly curious, as Masha took a glass hom from her kit and, with the solid stem of it to her ear and its open bell against the girl's skin, performed a swift, but precise, examination.

"Get the torch over here!" she commanded. "She's still breathing; there's hope, at least, for the babe."

None of the men responded. She stood up and grabbed the nearest, the young man who had been crying.

"There's hope for your child, you fool!" She shook his tunic as she spoke and a glimmer of life returned to his eyes. "Find a basin. Make a fire and boil me some water."

"I... we have nothing but this." The young man gestured at the crudely furnished room.