Wings of Omen

Strat slid down, looped the reins over the fence, and opened the ridiculous low gate. There were weeds, gods, everywhere. In so short a time. She grew nightshade like flowers.

His pulse quickened and his mouth went dry as he came up to the paint-peeled door and reached out to knock, half-expecting it to do the thing it had done before and swing open.

It opened, without his knock, without a sound on the other side. And he was facing not Ischade but the freedman Haught, Nisi-complexioned and dressed far too well and standing there as if he owned the room.

"Where is she?" Strat asked, vexed.

"I don't give out her business."

Something warned him-about that line that was the threshold. On the brink of hasty invasion, of drawing his sword and prying it out of pretty-lad, alarms went off. He stood slouched, hands on hips. "Stilcho here?"-as if that were what he had come for. He let his eyes focus however briefly on the dim room beyond. He remembered that place, that it always had more size than seemed right. And there was no sign of the man.

"No," Haught said.

The pulse was up again. Strat looked the ex-slave in the eyes-remarkable: Haught never flinched, and had before. Rage ticked away, a twitching of his mouth; gods, that he was reduced to this schoolboy standoff, eye to eye with a jealous slave who was-dangerous. No wilt, no bluster. Just a cold steady stare, Nisi and Rankan. And he thought of Wizardwall, and things that he had seen.

"Try the river," Haught said. "It's a short walk. You won't need the horse. You're late."

The door shut, with no hand on it.

He caught his breath, swore, looked back where his horse stood and snorted in the dark.

It was not a place for horses, down on Foalside, beyond the house, where the brush grew thick along the shore.

Fool, something said to him. But he cursed the voice and went.

"Siphinos's son." Molin Torchholder cast a misgiving look at the door and shrugged on his robe with the sense of something gone badly amiss. He waved a hand at the servant who fussed up with slippers while another stirred up the fire. "Move. Move. Let the lad in."

"Reverence, the guards-"

"Hang the guards-"

"-want to search the boy, but being nobility-"

"Send him in. Alone."

"Reverence-"

"Less reverence and more obedience. Would you?" Molin drew his lips to a fine humored line that betokened storms. The servant gulped and fled doorward, returned, and dropped the slippers face-about for him.

"Alone!"

"Reverence," the flunky breathed, and sped.

Molin worked one slipper on and the other, fought off the interventions of the other servant who drew near to fuss with his robe. Looked up suddenly as the fellow desisted. "Liso."

"Reverence." Siphinos's lanky blond son made a bow, all breathless, all courtesies. "Apologies-"

"It should be good, lad. I trust it is."

"It isn't. I mean, not-good." The boy's teeth began to chatter. "I ran-" He raked at his strawthatch hair. "Had my father's guard with me-"

"Can you get to it, lad?"

The boy caught his breath and, it seemed, his wits. "The witch-ours; she says-"

Straton shoved the brush aside, more and more regretting this imprudence. He was not ordinarily a fool. Such was his foolishness at the moment, he reckoned, that he was not even capable of knowing for sure he was a fool; and that alarmed him. But the Nisi witch on the prod-that sent alarms of its own crawling up his back.

You're late, the slave had said-as if Ischade had put it all together long before; as she would if that kind of alarm was ringing, audible to mages, wizards, and those wizardry had set its mark on-gods, that he tangled himself in the like, that he picked Roxane for an enemy or the vampire for an ally. He could not even remember clearly which way around it had been; except Ischade had agreed in Sync's case when there had been no other way, and in doing that, marked every Stepson her ally and Roxane's enemy.

Fool. He heard Crit's voice echoing in his mind.

Vis knew. The jolt of that caught up with his befogged wits and he hesitated on the narrow path, hanging by one hand to a shallow-rooted bit of brush, with one foot over black water and empty space. Vis knew where he was going.

Damn.

Down the river, beyond the lights of the bridge, a flash of lightnings showed, and, gods knew, with Roxane stirred up, that lightning-flash set a panic in him. He hauled himself back to balance on the narrow path and kept moving.

Faster and faster. No way to go now but straight on. His messengers were dispersed, alerting what wizard-help they had; one had headed the Prince Governor's direction, if he got that far. There was no calling back anyone for rethinking.

Another lightning-flash. A sudden wind swept down the black, light-rimmed chasm of the river, stirring the trees on the terraced shore. Brush cracked beneath his step on the eroded brink, beneath the sickly trees-she would know his presence, Ischade would; she had her ways. Had said once that she would know when she was needed, which intimation he had seized on with the misery and hope of all fools: so he was here, trusting a witch no sensible man would have sought in the first place-ignoring common sense and rules-gods, Crit-Crit would swear him to hell and back-What was wrong with him?

He feared he knew.

He came on an ancient stone, thrust away from it to fight the incline of the path. Hard-breathing, he climbed the treacherous slope and crested the top of it.

And if she had been an enemy, a simple shove could have pitched him backward into the Foal. He caught his balance and she gave him room there among the autumn-dead trees, on the river-verge with its strange stones. The night went away for him. There was her face, what she wanted, what she might say, nothing else.

"All sorts of birds," she said, "before this storm."

It made no sense to him; and did. "Roxane-" he said. "Word's out she's on the move-"

"Yes," she said. Her face met the starlight within the confines of her hood. There was quiet in her, perilous quiet, and every hair on him stirred with the static in the air. "Come." She took his hand and drew him upslope, following the path. "The wind's getting up-"

"Not your doing-"

"No. Not mine."

"Vis-" He caught his balance against a waist-high stone, recognized where he was, and jerked his hand off it. "Gods-"

"Careful of invocations." She caught his arm to pull him further and he stopped, involuntarily face-to-face with her in the starlight: he saw no detail beneath the shadow of her hood, but only a slantwise hint of mouth and chin; but he felt the stare, felt the smooth cool touch of her fingers slide to his hand. "That's been days gathering. Are you deaf to it?"

"Deaf to what?"

"The storm. The storm that's coming... .The harbor, man. What if some great storm should break the seawall, drive those hulking Beysib ships one against the others, stave their timbers, sink them down-Sanctuary'd have no harbor. Nothing but a sandbar founded on rotting hulks. And where'd Sanctuary be then?-Death squads, riots, none of these things would matter then. The war's no longer at Wizardwall-no longer leagues away. There are ways to use the power for more than closing doors."

He was walking. She had him by the arm and the voice compelled, wove spells, though brush raked his face and he forgot to fend it off.

"I've interests here in Sanctuary," said Ischade. "It's been long since I had interests. I like it as it is."

Fool, said Crit's voice at the dim, dim, back of his mind, past hers and the rising sough of wind.