She pulled her legs in and started to rise.
"If he doesn't listen, we'll have to do something... ourselves."
Kama stopped in mid-ascent, her weight perfectly balanced on one bent leg, then sank gently back to the floor. "Like what?"
Walegrin swallowed hard, the tension in his throat bringing pain to his ears. "Like... take him out."
"Shit."
She stared past him. He hoped he had judged her right and she'd come to the same conclusion he'd already reached; hoped her affection for and loyalty to Molin Torchholder was strong enough. She laced her fingers through her hair and, unconsciously, brought it around as a curtain to hide her face as she thought.
"Yeah, if it comes to that. If."
Her hair fell back from her face which reflected that faint starlight. She was sweating now and needed to tug her tunic away from sticky skin like any other mortal.
"How's your sister, Walegrin?" she asked, sitting beside him in the casement now, seemingly eager to place some other thoughts in the front of her mind.
"The same, I guess."
Illyra had recovered from her wounds better than they had dreamed possible. A quick glance at her sitting under the shade of the forge awning and no one would suspect that she had lain near death for over a week with a suppurating gouge in her belly where the PFLS ax which had slain her daughter had come to rest. But her spirit-that was another matter.
"She never smiles, Kama. There's only two memories in her mind: the day Lillis died and the day the ship sailed for Bandara with Arton on it. It's gone beyond mourning."
"I tried to tell you both that in the spring."
The tension went out of Walegrin's neck; his chin slanted toward his breastbone. It was a delicate subject among them. Molin had used his own fortune to provide for Illyra's healing and when the seeress's mind proved more injured than her body he'd prevailed upon Kama's near-legendary talent for dissimulation to provoke the S'danzo's recovery. No one wanted to discuss it but it seemed likely that Illyra's damaged mind had both started and then mercifully aborted the spring plague outbreak.
"And we didn't listen." His voice was as despairing as his half-sister's ever was.
Kama twisted her hair through her fist. "Look, I wasn't sure, either. It bothered me that one woman, who wouldn't ever hurt anybody, was suffering more than anyone else in this whole filthy, stinking town. Gods below, man, the last thing I ever want to know is my destiny-but I'd belt myself into one of Rosanda's old gowns again and stand outside that forge in the midday heat if I thought it'd make a difference-"
"But it won't. She's healed wrong-like Strat."
"Maybe another child," she mused, ignoring Walegrin's remark about the stiff shouldered Stepson. "It wouldn't make her forget-but she'd have one to care for, to keep her going from one day to the next until she didn't feel the pain so sharply."
The ebony-haired fighter stared out the window as she spoke. Walegrin knew what had passed between herself and Critias. Knew about the unborn child she'd lost up along Wiz-ardwall and her secret fear that now there could never be another one.
"Gods below, her husband's a big man. He's thought about it but she's too soon recovered," Walegrin said, trying to force humor into his voice.
It worked better than he'd expected. Kama's lips twisted into a lewd, lopsided smile. "There're other ways than that, my man."
Walegrin was grateful that such light as reached down into the room fell on her rather than him. His face burned and his groin tensed. He hadn't always known, hadn't really suspected much one way or another until recently. Chenaya took far greater pleasure from her ability to astound and stupefy him than she did from any of his own exertions.
Sensing either his embarrassment or his detachment, Kama made ready to leave the room. "I'll talk to him, Walegrin, but you're still his only eyes and ears out at that place and he won't want to lose you. Maybe we'll take the priest; I've got the stomach for that, but we can't touch her. Even if she didn't have some sort of divine protection, she's still Kada-kithis's cousin and he'll crucify anyone who rids him of her."
"I know that. I tell it to myself over and over whenever I'm with her. She's using me all the while she pretends to listen or care. When we're alone there's hate and disgust. It's unnatural."
Kama paused at the foot of the stairs. "The only thing unnatural about it is that she's a woman and you're a man- otherwise many men think it's a most natural, and satisfactory, arrangement."
Bitterness and anger had pushed the taste of bile into his mouth. He almost asked about the men of the 3rd, or the Stepsons, or her father who could not lie with a woman, only rape one. In the end, though, he swallowed and stared out the casement, away from her.
"It helps, sometimes, to bathe, to scrub yourself with a coarse cloth until you've shed your own skin," she added in a gentler voice as she disappeared up the stairs.
He waited until he was certain she was gone before making his own way back through the twisted streets. There was an old Ilsigi bathhouse between the garrison barracks and their stables. Cythen made use of it frequently, regardless of the season, often getting his lieutenant, Thrusher, to help her build the fires and haul the water. He had generally ignored them; indulged them, if the truth be known, because they were shy about the time they spent together. Perhaps he would join them... no, not that, but leam how the fires were built and follow Kama's usually wise advice.
The narrow streets of the Maze gave way to the Street of Smells, which more than merited its name these days. He crossed it and made his way into the Shambles where the chamel houses, infirmaries, and butchers plied their trades. A year ago this had been where the dead dwelt: an area of Sanctuary given over to magic and other worlds. For a while, after the spring plague, the Shambles had been almost completely abandoned, but they were occupied again.
Theron had proclaimed his command to rebuild Sanctuary's walls throughout the Empire. Singly, in pairs and in small groups, men had begun to come to the Imperial anus to make their fortunes. Roustabouts, seventh sons, and exiles from the ongoing Wizardwall skirmishes took over the empty buildings of the Shambles and took their places on the work gangs. They drank, whored, and otherwise indulged themselves in ways that made longtime residents smile uncomfortably, for these men had great expectations that, so far, Sanctuary had not beaten out of them.
They had their own taverns as well-the Broken Mallet, Tunker's Hole, and Belching Bili's-laid out in a row, spilling sound and light onto Offal Court despite the night's heat. Walegrin watched as a man staggered out one bright doorway and relieved himself in the street before choosing another route. The newcomers didn't get into much trouble-yet.
The chamel houses were busy. Sacks of lime were stacked hight against the buildings. Moonlight turned the dust a glowing, yellow-green. It reflected off the carapaces of the night-flies, the jewel-colored insects which had recently appeared here and which were too beautiful to be vermin. He'd heard the Beysib glassmakers were having some success instilling the colors in their work and that traders were taking egg cases to aristocratic gardens all over the Empire.
Walegrin watched their swirling dance. Its ethereal beauty took the stench and the heat from his mind, but spared him enough awareness to know he was, suddenly, not alone. Tensing imperceptibly, he located the sound and let his fingers hook casually over his belt-and his sword hilt. He spun around into an armed crouch as the intruder hailed him. "Whoa! Commander?"