Wings of Omen

It had begun with the hawkmasks and the Stepsons; with beggars and hawkmasks; priests and priests; and gods; and wizards; and nowadays murder crept uptown in small bands, to prove the cleverness of some small faction in reaching the unreachable; and striking the unstrikable; thus fomenting terror in the streets and convincing the terrorized that to join in bands was best, so that nowadays one went in Sanctuary with a mental map not alone of streets but of zones of allegiance and control, and pla

Haught ignored most lines-by night. There were some foolhardy enough to touch him. Not many. He was accustomed to fear, and, truth, he felt less fear nowadays than previously. He was accustomed to horrors and that stood him in good stead.

He had been prenticed once, up by Wizardwall; and his last master had been gentle, for one of Wizardwall.

"Why do you stay?" his present teacher asked.

"Teach me," he had said that morning, with a yearning in him only the dance had halfway filled: he showed her the little magic that he had remembered. And she had smiled, had Ischade of no country at all: smiled in a very awful way. "Magus," she had said, "would you be?"

He had loved Moria at that time. Moria had been gentle with him when few had been. And he had thought (he tormented himself with the dread that it was not his thought at all, such were Ischade's powers) that it was well to please the witch, for Moria's sake. So he would protect Moria and himself: to be allied with power was safety. Experience had taught him that.

But deep in his heart he had seen that Ischade was nec-romant, not hieromant; that the lighting of candles and the stirring of winds were only tricks to her.

And he had breathed the wind and sensed the power, and he was snared for reasons that had nothing at all to do with love or gratitude, for he was Nisi and witchery was in his blood.

Tonight he walked the streets and crossed lines and no one dared touch him. And something cramped in him for years spread wings (but they were dark).

He might have lived in the uptown house.

But he took the other way.

The sound of the river was very close here, where the old stones thrust up through newly trampled brush. Squith shivered, blinked, caught something darker than the night itself in this place unequally posed between two houses on the river.

"Squith," a woman said.

He turned, his back to an upthrust stone.

"No respect?" she asked.

He took his hand from the stone as if he had remembered a serpent coiled thereby. Vashanka's. All these stones were; and he would not be here by any choice of his.

"Moruth-Moruth couldn't come. 'S got a c-cold."

"Has he?" The woman moved forward out of the dark, dark-robed, her face dusky and all but invisible in the overhang of sickly trees. "I might cure him."

Squith tumbled to his knees and shook his head; his bowels had gone to water. "S-sent me, he did. Respectful, he is. Squith, he says, Squith, you goes and tells the lady-"

"--What?"

"Me lord does what you wants."

"He may survive his cold. It's tonight, beggar."

"I go tell him, go tell him." Squith made it a litany, bobbed and held his gut and sucked wind past his snaggled row of teeth. He had a view of a cloak-hem, of brush; he kept it that way.

"Go."

He scrambled up, scrabbling past thorns. One tore his cheek, raked his sightless eye. He fled.

Ischade watched him, and forbore spells that would have urged him on his way. Roxane was at home tonight, not so far away. Thorns regrew. Snakes infested the place. Burned patches repaired themselves with preternatural speed.

A beggar sped toward the beggar-king Moruth. A black bird had landed in Downwind, on a certain sill. And Squith came. Moruth had a cold, and languished in mortal cowardice.

But Moruth had met something one night in a Downwind alleyway that mightily convinced him where his interests lay.

"Go to Roxane," she had whispered in Moruth's unwashed ear. "Go to Yorl, to whatever wizard you choose. I'll know. Or you can promise beggars they'll be safe on the streets again. At least from me. From other things, perhaps. Or at worst they'll be avenged. When a bird lights on your sill-come to Vashanka's altar on the Foal. You know the place."

A nod of a shaggy head. The beggar-king knew, and babbled oaths of compliancy.

Wings fluttered nearby. She glanced up where the dead branches overhead gave rest to other shadows, inky as her robes. A messenger returned.

It was a familiar room, one they had used before and had rather not use again; but it was Vis they had, and Straton operated under certain economies these days-not to let Vis see too much; and not to let Vis be seen.

Vis glared at him, between two Stepsons-real ones- who had brought him to this attic unbruised. So one reckoned. Vis had a ruffled look-smallish and wide shouldered and dark, and with a look in those dark eyes under that shag of hair that said he had as lief kill as talk to them.

That was well enough. Straton had killed a few of Vis's sort, in this room, after they had been useful. Vis surely had the measure of him and of this place. There was outrage in that stare and precious little hope.

"You had news," Strat said. "I trust you-that it's worth both our time."

"Damn you. I came to you. I sent for you-I thought I could trust you-if they told you any different-"

"News," Strat said. Outside, on the stairs, a board creaked. But that was the watch he had passed. He sat down in the single chair at the single table which, like the ropes on the wooden wall, had their uses. Mradhon Vis stood there between two guards, all disarranged-they would have found a knife on him, at least; maybe a cord; seldom a pe

"Get them out of here," Vis said.

"You want to talk this over, or just talk. Vis? You got me here. I've got all night. So have they."

Vis thought that over. So he had run his bluff and made his point. But he was not stupid; and knew where his remaining chances lay. "I get paid for this."

"One way or the other."

"There's rumor out.. .got something coming down."

"What?"

"Not sure." Vis came closer and began to lean on the table. Demas moved to stop him. Strat held up his hand and Vis stayed unmolested. "Something-I don't know what. Nisi squads-they've got a big one brewing. Heard talk about something down at the harbor. Uptown at the same time."

"What's your source?"

"I don't tell that."

"Huh." Strat rocked the chair back, foot braced "That so?"

"Word's out they've got help. Understand?"

"The Nisi witch?"

There was long silence. Vis stayed where he was. Sweat was on his brow.

"Something got your tongue?"

"I'm Nisi, dammit. She can smell-"

"Roxane might help you. Might not. I don't think I'd shelter with that one. Vis."

"Word's out she's looking for revenge. The harbor- some move there. That's what I heard. Heard someone's going to move there, hit the Beysibs; maybe warehouses. Death squads. I don't know whose. But I know who pays them."

Strat let the chair thump down. "Don't leave town, Vis."

"Dammit, you're going to get me killed-you know what they'll do, with you bringing me in here?"