"Where's Stilcho?"
Haught nodded back toward the room. The fires were silent. Every word seemed drawn in ice, written on the still air inside and the stormwind without.
"This is not a good night, Haught. Take him and go somewhere. No. Not just somewhere." She pulled a ring from her finger. "I want you to deliver this."
"Where, Mistress?" Haught came and took it, ever so carefully, as if it were white-hot; as if he would not hold it longer than he had to. "Where take it?"
"There's a house fourth up and across the way from Moria. Deliver it there. Say that a lady sends to Lord Tasfalen. Say that this lady invites him to formal dinner, tomorrow at eight. At the uptown house. And tell Moria there'll be another place for dinner." She smiled, and Haught found sudden reason to clench his hands on the ring and back away. "You're quite right," she said, faintest whisper. "Get out of here."
She lay back a moment, eyes shut in her dreams (and Tasfalen's) as she heard the door open and shut. She felt the tremor in the wards which ringed the place about and sealed its gates.
Come with me, Randal had said, knowing what he faced in god-healing. Ischade, I need you-
And Strat: Ischade-for the gods' sake-
For no gods' sake. No god's.
She had fled Straton's presence as she would have fled the environs of hell... fled running, when she had left that place and left him and the ruin of Roxane's house, in utmost confusion and dread, her heart pounding in terror of what was loose, not in the night, but in her own inner darkness-a thing which made her shun mirrors and the sight of her eyes. So she sat before her hearth and hurled magic into the fires and into the wind and into the gates of hell until she had exhausted the power to control that power and direct it; then the fire went into her bones and inmost parts and smouldered there.
Thunder rumbled again, instability in the world, fire in the heavens.
She drew a shuddering breath, tormented the dreams of the fairhaired Rankan and thrust herself to her feet, took up her cloak and put it on with careful self discipline.
The door opened with a crash, fluttering the candle flames, which blazed white for a moment and subsided.
So hard it was to manage the little things. The merest shrug was lethal. The gaze of her eyes might do more than mesmerize. It might strip a soul. She flung up the hood and walked out into the wind and the night.
The door crashed shut behind her and the iron gate squealed' violently as it banged open. The wind took her cloak and played games with it, with a power that might have leveled Sanctuary.
"Damn it, no. Let me be." And Straton left the mage-quarter room and headed down the outside stairs.
Left Crit, with argument echoing in the room and the dark.
Crit came to the door, came out onto the landing. "Strat," Crit said; and got only Strat's back. "Strat."
Straton stopped then and looked up at his left-side leader, at the man he owed his life to a dozen times and who owed him. "Why didn't you shoot? Why didn't you damn well pull the trigger when you came into the yard if you're so damn convinced? Ask me why things in Sanctuary have gone to hell-come in damn well late and find fault with me when I've kept this town alive and kept the blood from running down the damn gutters-"
Crit came down the steps and leaned on either wooden railing. "That's not what I'm talking about. It's your choice of allies. Strat, dammit, wake up."
"We're public. We'll talk about it later. Later isn't tonight."
Crit came a step further, checked him on the step. "Listen to me. We've got the witch-bitch out. The other one's got you. Command of this city, hell, you lost it. Ace, you lost it a long time ago. I don't know how the hell you're still alive but if the Riddler gets his hands on you now you're done-dammit, Strat, where's your sense? You know what she is, you know what she does-"
"She killed me weeks ago. I'm a walking corpse. Sure, Crit. I'm best at full of moon. Dammit, that woman's why we're clear of the Nisi witch, she's why you had a city left down here, and why the empire has a backside left at all. I'll tell you what it is with you, Crit; it's knowing your partner was damn well right and you were wrong; it's having your mind made up before you got here and riding in there to haul me out for a traitor-that's what you came to do, isn't it? To shoot me down without a chance if I went for your throat? It's not catching, Crit. It's not even true. They blame her for every body that turns up in the alleys; in the Maze, for the gods' sake- as if corpses never happened before she came to town. Well, I've been with her when those stories spread; I know damn well where she was at night; and they still blame her-"
"-like they blame lambs on wolves; sure, Strat; but a wolf's still a wolf. And you're damn lucky this far. I'm telling you. The Riddler will order you. Stay the hell out of there."
"Stay the hell out of my business!" Strat slammed an offered hand aside and ran the steps down to the bottom.
"Strat!"
He looked up in mid-turn. By the tone there might have been a weapon. There was not. He hardly broke stride as he went for the stable, flung the door open, and fumbled after the lantern that hung there. A soft whicker sounded. Another, rowdier, sounded off loud and two steelshod hooves hit the stalclass="underline" Crit's sorrel, ill-tempered and fighting the rein every step of the way into the stable, bucking and banging boards and making itself heard upstairs.
"Shut up!" It was the same as yelling at Crit. About as useful. The hooves hit the boards again.
And Crit arrived in the stable doorway, stood there dark against the starlight on the cobbles outside. Straton ignored him and made another attempt at the light. It took. He adjusted the wick and hung the lamp on its peg, and did what he knew might be fatal. He turned his back on Crit and walked away down the aisle.
Not a quarrel between friends. It was nothing private. Tempus's orders were involved. Tempus disavowed him, disavowed everything he had done, everything he had set up, every alliance he had made; and told him (through Crit) to break off with his woman and own up to failure. Sent his own leftside leader to kill him.
He gave Crit the chance. He walked the stable aisle and got his tack off the rail, flung it up onto the rim of the bay's box stall. He kept listening through the sorrel's ruckus, for the soft stir of straw that would be Crit walking up behind him.
Try it. From disspirited suicide, to a gathering determination to fight back, to the imagination that he could beat Crit, beat him to the ground, sit on him and make him listen. Not kill him when he could. Then Crit would come to sanity. Then Crit would be sorry. Then Crit would go and tell Tempus it was all a mistake, and his partner had done the best that any man could do, tried his damn heart out and done what no one else had been able to do, gods, had held the Nisi witch at bay, had worked out at least a fragile truce with the key factions, had patched the whole hellhole of Sanctuary together and held onto it.
He deserved thanks, by the gods. He deserved something besides a partner trying to murder him.
Come on, Crit, dammit. Not a sound in the straw, not a move.
He turned around and looked. Crit was not there at all; had gone-somewhere. Upstairs again, maybe. Maybe to pass an order.
Straton turned and flung the blanket on the bay, stroked its shoulder. The horse bent its head back and delicately nipped at his sleeve, nosed his ribs. He flung his arms about its neck, which indignity the bay protested by backing and fidgeting; gave the warm neck a hug and a slap and tried to stop the stinging of his eyes and the pain in his heart by holding onto something that simply loved him.