Wings of Omen

"You go on making your reports. If anything comes down and we don't find out understand? Understand, Vis?"

Vis backed away.

"Let him go," Strat said. "Pay him. Well. Let him figure how to get himself clear. Tomorrow. Whenever. When I'm clear. When this is proved one way or the other."

"You want a partner?" Demas asked.

Strat shook his head and gathered himself to his feet. "We've got difficulties. Stay here. Vis, mind you remember who pays you most. You want more-you tell us... right?"

Vis gave him a sullen look-not greedy, no. It was an invitation to a final meeting-more demands. And Vis knew it.

"I'll see to it," Strat said to Demas. "I don't think anything will happen here. Just keep him off the streets." He took a cloak from the peg by the door, nondescript as other clothes they kept here. The horse he rode was the bay, not nondescript, but it would serve.

"You're going to Her."

He heard the upper-case. Turned and looked at Vis, who stood there staring at him.

"You met the one she's got?" Vis asked. "She's finally got a lover she can't kill. Fish-cold, likely. But she's not that particular."

Strat's face was very calm. He kept it that way. He thought of killing Vis. Or passing an order. But there was a craziness in the Nisi traitor. He had seen a man look like that who shortly after set himself on fire. "Be patient with him," he said. "Don't kill him." Because it was the worst thing he could think of for a man with such a look.

He left then, opened the door onto the dark stinking stairs and shut it behind.

The footsteps thumped away below, multiplied; and Mradhon Vis stood there in a gray nowhere. Tired. Cold, when the room was far too close for cold.

"Sit down," one said.

He started to take the chair. A foot preempted it. The other Stepson leaned on the table. It left him the floor.

He went over to the comer, liking that at his back more than empty air, braced his shoulders, and slid down against the wall. So they all sat and waited. He did not stare at them, not caring to provoke them, recalling that he had tried that with their chief and recalling why he tried-a dim rage of sympathy for a fellow fool.

She. Ischade. It took no guesswork where the Stepsons would look for help when Roxane was on the move. Where that one would look for help, where his thoughts bent. He had kept a watch on Straton-for the pay he got from other sources; and he knew. That was a man infatuated with death, with beating it day by day. He recalled it in himself; until the day he had learned death's infatuation with him-and that put a whole different complexion on matters.

Fool, 0 Whoreson. Fool.

Sanctuary's enemies ringed it round and, with the border northward cracking, Ranke went suicidal as the rest. The very air stank-autumn fogs and smokes; the fevered river-wind found its way through streets and windows, sweet with corruption; and there was no sleep these nights. There was nowhere to go. Part of Nisibis had slipped through the wizards' hands; but Nisi gold. Nisi training still funded death squads throughout Ranke-not least among their targets were Nisi rebels like himself. It was desert folk moving in Carro

He knew too much; and dreamed of nights, same as the Stepson dreamed: the Stepson's cause was tottering and his own was dead. And the river-wind got everywhere in Sanctuary, sickly with corruption, sweet with seduction; and promised - promised -

He had tried, at least. That was the most unselfish thing he had done in half a year. But no one could save a fool.

There were houses in the uptown more ornate than their own. This was one, with white marble floors and Carro

"I've got guests"-the noble wheezed (Siphinos was his name)-"guests, you understand...."

Mor-aro sucked air and stood taller, with a drawing of one eye, while in the comer of the good one he spied Ero spying out the other hall beyond the archway. "I tell Her that?"

"Out." Siphinos waved at the servants, fluttering Mor-am toward a door, the accounts room: they had been there the last time. Siphinos closed the door himself. Ero stayed outside.

"You were to come after midnight-only after midnight-"

Mor-am held up the packet; and the pig's face and the pig's eyes suddenly had sobriety and a furious red-cheeked dignity, amid all his jowls. Mor-am gave him back his own one-eyed stare and handed it over, watched him examine the seal.

"It'll be coming here," Mor-am said. "That's the word comes with this. They got their eye on you. Death squads move uptown tonight. You hear me, man?"

"Whose? When?" The flush went hectic. A sweat glistened on jowls and brow. "Give me names. Isn't that what we pay you-"

"Word for Torchholder this time. Get the word upstairs. Tell him-look out his window tonight. Tell him-" he tried to recall precisely the words he had been primed with, that Haught had told him a dozen days ago-"tell him he'll understand then what the help we give is worth."

No shrieking, no cursing, not the least cracking of the fat man's fury. Ilsigi dog, the look said, wishing him to heel. And fearing the bite he had.

"He knows," Mor-am said, neat and measured, and gods, gods, let the tic stay still. "He can tell the prince-g-govemor-" Damn the twisting of his face, the drawing of his mouth. "He'll know where his safety is. He'll pay the cost, whatever we ask. We got our means. Tell Kittycat look out his window too."

Alarms were on their way, plainclothes and moving with deliberation, not panic, word back to the command post, to various places and offices. And Straton rode alone now- imprudence, perhaps; but a full troop of Stepsons clattering up the riverside slow or fast, plainclothes or not-drew too much attention. He slouched like a drunk, kept the bay to an amble, and sweated the entire last block. He had sent his three companions off the other way. Foalside was a mixed kind of street, wide near the bridge and well-used; but higher up the Foal, buildings crowded close and the street became a rough track with only the remnant of ancient stones for pavings. Trees grew untended on the Foalside in a widening lower terrace by the road. Weeds crowded close on that margin. And crouched like some lurking aged beast- a cottage occupied the upper terrace, the northern house on that black river, a tiny place like the southern one-both of which had been singed, both of which had been swept over with fire enough to blacken the brush and kill the trees that grew hereabouts. But nowadays neither showed traces of burning; and both stood just as before, surrounded with brush, and smelling that wet, old smell of places long untended in the dark, in the starlight, with old trees lifting autumn (unscarred) branches at the sky.

Ischade maintained a fence and hedge: her house clung to its strip of river terrace and faced beyond its yard and gates a row of warehouses, at a little respectful distance from the ordinary world, distance which the wise respected one of those places in every town, Strat thought, which had that dilapidated look of trouble and contagious bad luck.

Ischade's territory. He had been in it for the length of the solitary ride. And no squad he knew of dared that little strip of street or the warehouses near it.