'All right,' he said, because Yorl had a long reach and because ignorance scared him. 'You show me.'
The blind man took his hand, and they went, down the alley and out again. It was so unfaltering a progress, so lacking a blind man's moves, that Hanse inevitably suspected some sham, such as beggars used - an actor and a good one, he thought, appreciating art.
Mradhon Vis fretted, paced below the balcony at the wooden stairs he had found last night. It was a place as sordid as any in the Maze, unpainted boards and age-slimed stone, a place atilt towards the alley and propped on boards and braces. It breathed decrepitude.
And more and more as he waited in this unlikely place, he gnawed on the thought of his hoped-for patron ... dead, it might be, victim along with Sjekso, lying unfound as yet in some other alleyway. He had been mad to have gone off and left a woman in the backways of the Maze; a cat among hounds, that piece... and gone, snatched up, swallowed up - with friends, gods, more than likely money like that had friends and enemies. His mind built more and grimmer fancies ... of princes and politics and clandestine meetings, this Sjekso perhaps more than he had seemed, this woman casting about money to be rid of a witness too much for the man she was with, an expedience -
He built such fancies, paced, stalked finally halfway up the creaking length of the stairs and came back down in indecision - then up again, gathering his courage and his resolve. He reached the swaying balcony, tried the door.
It swung inward, never locked or barred. That startled him. He slipped the knife from his belt and pushed the door all the way open - smelled incense and spices, perfumes. He walked in, pushed the door very gently shut again. A dim light came from a milky parchmented casement, cast colour slantwise on a couch spread with russet silk, on dusty draperies and stacks of cloth and oddments.
Wings snapped and rustled. He spun about into a crouch, found only a large black bird chained to a perch against the wall in which the door was set. His heart settled again. He straightened. He should have smelled the creature: no large bird lived in a place without some fetor ... but the perfume and the incense were that strong, that he had not. He ignored the creature, poked about amid the debris on a table, feminine clutter of small boxes and brocade.
And the steps creaked, outside. He cast about him in a sudden fright, knife at the ready, slid in among the abundant shadows of the room. The steps reached the top, and the bird stirred and beat his wings in gusts as the door opened.
Black robes cast a silhouette against the daylight; the lady turned unerringly in his direction, took no fright at him or the knife, merely closed the door and reached up and dropped her hood from a tumble of midnight hair about a sombre face. 'Mradhon Vis,' she said quietly. She belonged in the dark of this place, amid the clutter of worn and beautiful things. It was incredible that she could ever have walked through sunlight.
'Here,' he said, 'lady.'
'Ischade,' she named herself. 'Do you make free of my lodgings?'
'The man you were with last night. He's dead.'
'I've heard, yes.' The voice was unreadable and cool. 'We parted company. Sad. A handsome boy.' She walked to the slight illumination of the parchment panes, drew an incense wand from others in a dragon vase and added it to the one which was dying, a curl of pale smoke in the light. She looked back then. 'So. I have employment for you. I trust you're not fastidious.'
'Not often.'
'You'll find rewards. Gold. And it might be - further employment.'
'I don't shy off at much.'
'I'll trust not.' She walked near him, and he recalled the knife and nipped it into its sheath. Her eyes followed the move and looked up at him ... grave, so very grave. Women of quality he had seen tended to nutter the eyes; this one stared eye to eye, and he found himself inclined to break the contact, to look down or elsewhere. She extended her hand, close to touching him, a move he thought might be an invitation to take liberties of his own.
And then she drew the hand back and the moment passed. She walked over and offered the bird a morsel from the cup at the side of the stand. The creature took it with a great flapping of wings.
'What do you have in mind?' he asked, vexed at this mincing about, with so much at stake. 'It's not legal, I'll guess.'
'It might involve powerful enemies. I can guarantee - equally powerful protections. And the reward. Of course that.'
'Who's to die? Someone else ... like that boy last night?'
She looked about, lifted a brow, then turned her attentions back to the bird, stroked black feathers with a forefinger. 'Priests, perhaps. Does that bother you?'
'Not unduly. A man wonders -'
'The risk is mine. So are the consequences. Only I need someone to take care of physical difficulties. I assure you I know what I'm about.'
There was more than the scent of incense about the place. Of a sudden there was quite another thing... the smell of wizardry. He gathered that, as he had been picking up the pieces all along. It was not a thing a man expected to find everywhere. But it was here. And there were crimes done in the Maze, by that means and others. Spells, he had dealt with, at least at distance... had a hint then of more rewards than gold. 'You have protections, do you?'
A second time that cool look. 'I assure you it's well thought out.'
'Protections for me as well.'
'They'd be far less interested in you.' She walked back to the table, to the light, a shadow against it. 'This evening,' she said, 'you'll earn the gold I gave you. But perhaps, just perhaps, you ought to go out again. And come back again when I tell you. To prove you know that my door isn't yours.'
Heat surged to his face, words into his mouth. He thought of the money and it stifled the rest.
'Now,' she said. 'About the other thing you have in mind ... well, that might come later, mightn't it? But you choose, Mradhon Vis. There's gold ... or other rewards. And you can tell me which you'd like. Ah. Both, perhaps. Ambition. But know me better, Mradhon Vis, before you propose anything aloud. You might not like my terms. Take the gold. The likes of Sjekso Kinzan is commoner than you. And far less to regret.'
So she had killed the boy. Markless, and cold and stiff within sight of the doorway which might have saved him. He thought about it... and the ambition persisted. It was power. And that was more than the money, much more.
'You'll go now,' she said very, very softly. 'I wouldn't tempt you. Consider we have a bargain. Now get out.'
No one talked to him after that fashion ... at least not twice. But he found himself silenced and his steps tending to the door. He stopped there and looked back to prove he could.
'I've needed a man of your sort,' she said, 'in certain ways.'
He walked out, into the sun.
4
It was one of those neighbourhoods less frequented by the inhabitants of the Maze, and Hanse had a dislocated, uncomfortable feeling in this guide and this place, creeping as they did through the cleaner, wider backways of Sanctuary at large. It was not his territory or close to any of his known boltholes.
And in the shadows of an alley far along the track, his guide paused and shed an inner and ragged cloak from beneath the outer one, proffering it. 'Put it on. You'll not want to be noticed hereabouts for yourself.'
Hanse took it, not without distaste: it was grey and a mass of patches. He swung it about his shoulders and it was long enough to hide him down to midcalf.
His guide held out a dingy bandage as well. 'For your eyes. For your own safety. The house has ... protections. If I told you only to shut your eyes, you'd forget at the worst moment. And my master wants you whole.'