Wings of Omen

"Ja

The murdered Stepson wavered, assumed a more human aspect-Ja

"She's yours, Ja

His war-name. He had never told her that.

"Get her," Ischade whispered. "I'll hold-hold here. Get her. Bring it in on her...."

Ja

But nothing could catch that rippling thing. It paid no heed to winds or brush. Strat thrust out his arm and forced his way through brush, passed Stilcho's efforts-crashed against a projecting branch and broke it on his leather jerkin, a crack swallowed in the wind.

Thorns raked him; the wall of the house loomed in front of him, and Ja

"Ja

Muscle rolled over him, live and round and moving. He yelled and thrust it off and lurched for his knees-snake, the motion told him; he yelled and hacked at it, and it looped and thrashed-not the only one. He rolled to his knees and chopped at the looping coils for all the strength that was in him. Stilcho got the head off it: it had begun to scream.

Coils passed through Ja

Strat tried; he flung himself forward.

"Get back!" It was Stilcho grabbed him, on some brink he could not see, beyond which was a fall that took them both, down, down, into dark-

But Ja

Darkness then. The stink of burning.

"Ja

The wind fell. Fell so suddenly it was like death; with one great crack of thunder that must have hit something near.

The ships started pitching on a sea gone chaotic, no longer heeled by the wind, no longer straining at the cables. "Gods!" Kama breathed.

"-hit somewhere riverside," the servant said, superfluous as ever. Molin Torchholder clenched the sill and felt his heart start labored beats again.

"I'd say it did."

But where, he could not tell. There was a blossoming of flame in that far dark, not the only one. There were burnings here and there.

None large yet.

And nothing had gotten through.

It was nothing he wanted to remember. It was most of the walk back before he could hear; and most of the long walk he staggered off on his own, reeling this way and that like a drunken man. But sometimes Stilcho had his arm about him, sometimes She had his hand...

... There was fire, another sort of fire, safely in a hearth. The smell of herbs. Of musk.

Ischade's dusky face. She knelt beside his chair, by her fireside, by the tame light. Her hood was back. The light shone on her hair.

"Ja

"Stilcho brought you," Ischade said. She leaned aside. Wine spilled with a liquid, busy sound, the pungency of grapes. She offered him the cup. And he sat still.

The mind took a long time collecting images like that. He sat staring at the fire and feeling the ache in all his bones.

"-Ja

"Resting."

"Dead. He's dead, leave him dead, dammit-" thinking of Niko, of Niko's grief, half-of-whole. It would break Niko's heart. "Isn't a man safe dead?"

"I'd have used others. Other souls were-inaccessible. His wasn't. To reach him took very little, in that cause. Stilcho's gotten adept at that two-way trip." A step drew near. Haught's face loomed. "You can go," she said, looking up at Haught. "See to the uptown house. They'll want reassuring."

Haught padded away, took his cloak. There was brief chill as the door opened and closed again. The fire fluttered.

"Roxane," Strat said.

She put the cup into his hand. Closed his fingers on it. "Power has its other side. It's not well to be interrupted- in so great a spell."

"Is she dead?"

"If not, she's uncomfortable."

He drank, one quick swallow after the other. It took the taste of burning from his mouth. She took the cup, set it aside. Leaned her arm and head on his knee like any woman gazing into the fire. And turned her head and looked up at him. A pulse began, the chill about him thawed, but the world seemed very far away.

"Come to bed," she said. "I'll keep you warm."

"How long?"

She shut her eyes. For a moment he was cold. Opened them again and the room grew warm and the pulse grew in all his veins.

"You've always mistaken me," she said. "Vampire I am not. You think it's what I choose. I don't. But some things I can choose."

Her hand closed on his. He leaned down and touched her lips, not caring, not caring to recall or think ahead. It was the way he had gone into that house. Because Ranke might well be through. And he was, soon; and time was, he had learned in his own craft, no one's friend.

"Damnedest thing," Zaibar said, wiping at his soot-streaked face, and a moment's consternation took him. His eyes refocused. "Begging pardon, reverence-"

"Report."

"Got a dozen dead out there we've counted so far, just up and down the streets. Dead men-throats cut, some; stabbed-"

"The ships, Zaibar."

"A few timbers stove, but the Bey's folk, they got to them-the bodies, reverence-a dozen of them."

"In Sanctuary," Molin said with a pitying look at the Hell-Hound, "we notice a dozen bodies come dawn?"

"Two at Siphinos's door; one at Elinos's. Three at Agal-in's.... They're Nisi. Every one."

"Hey," someone yelled. "Hey-"

He was in the street; his horse under him. He blinked at the sun and the ordinary sights of Sanctuary and caught himself against the saddlebow, staring down at the man who had stopped his horse, a common tradesman. There was a buzz of consternation about. Dimly Strat understood the horse had gotten to some mischief with a produce cart. He stared helplessly at the old man who stared at him in a troubled way; Ilsigi-dark, and recognizing a Rankan lost and prey to anything that might happen to a man by day in Sanctuary streets.

Shingles lay scattered on the cobbles; a tavern sign hung by one ring; debris was everywhere. But trade went on. The bay horse was after apples.

He felt after his purse. It was gone; and he could not remember how. He would have flung the man a coin and paid the damage and forgotten the Wriggly entire; but they were all round him, men, women, silent in mutual embarrassment, mutual hate, and mutual helplessness.