And, o Shipri and Lord Shalpa, patron of a one-time thief and Hawkmask, even the dead were not safe from Ischade, who might well raise her up to let her go on like poor Stilcho, like the Stepson-slave Ischade took to her bed and performed gods-knew-what with because he was dead and could not succumb to Ischade's curse-could not die as every man died who had sex with Ischade-or Stilcho died nightly and Ischade raised him up from hell (though how her living and latest lover, the Stepson Straton, had survived beyond one night she could not guess; or did guess, in lurid imaginings of exotic practices and things that she dared not ask Haught-does he, does Haught, with Her? Would he, could he, has he ever-? with direst jealousy and helpless rage; for Haught was hers). It was all too confusing for Moria, once-thief turned lady.
And now the Emperor was dead in Ranke, the world was in upheaval, and back from the Wizard Wars the Stepsons came scouring through the streets, all grim in their armor and on their tall horses; back in Sanctuary again and determined to set things into their own concept of order.
Make the house presentable, Ischade had sent word through Haught; and told her the house had to host the chiefest of these devils, including Tempus, who was an Ilsigi's direst enemy: an Ilsigi hostess had to entertain these awful men, with what end to the business Moria could not foresee.
A door had opened downstairs. It closed again. She lay between terror and another thought-for Haught came to her now and again. Haught came wherever he liked and sometimes that was to her bed. It was Haught who had made her beautiful, it was Haught who cared for her and made her imprisoned life worth living.
It was Haught who had prised a knife from her fingers and prevented her from suicide a half a year ago, then kissed those fingers and made gentle love to her. It was Haught who stole a little of the Mistress's magic for her and cast a glamor on her that had never yet gone away. Perhaps the Mistress tacitly approved. But the Mistress had never laid eyes on her new self; and that might happen tomorrow night-
That would happen. Oh, if there were a way to make herself invisible she would do it. If that were Haught-it must be Haught, coming up the stairs so quietly.
A shiver came over her. She remembered the thing which had been in bed with her. She remembered the cold in the air and the steps which used to come and go in the basement, which might pass a door in the middle of the night and come padding up the stairs-
The latch of her room gave gently. The hinge creaked softly. She lay with her back to these sounds in that paralysis that a bad dream brings, in which a thing will not be real until one looks and sees it standing by one's bed-
The step came close and lingered there. There was a water-smell, a river-smell, a beer-smell unlike Haught's perfumed, wine-favoring self. It was wrong, wrong-
She spun over the edge of the bed and came up with the knife she kept there on the floor, as someone dived across the bed at her. She leaped back with that knife held with no uptown delicacy: she was a knife-fighter, and she crouched in her be-ribboned lace and satin whipping the tail of her gown up and aside to clear her legs. A ragged shape hulked on its knees amid her bed, silhouette in light from the hall. It held up its hands, choked for air.
"M-mo-ri-a," it said, wept, bubbled. "Mo-ri-a-"
"0 gods!"
She knew the voice, knew the smell of Downwind, knew the shape and the hands suddenly, and fled for the door and the lamp to borrow light in the hall, her hands atremble and the straw missing the wick a half a dozen times before she lit the lamp and brought it back again in both hands, the knife tucked beneath her arm.
Mor-am her brother huddled like a lump of brown rag amid her satin sheets. Mor am stinking of the gutters, Mor-am twisted and scarred by fire and the beggar king's torture, as he was when She withdrew her favor.
"M-moria-M-m-moria?"
He had never seen her like this, never seen the glamor on her. She was an uptown lady. And he-
"0 gods, Mor-am."
He rubbed his eyes with a grimy fist. She-found the lamp burning her hands and set it on a bureau, taking the knife from beneath her arm. "Gods, what happened? Where have you been?" But she needn't ask: there was the reek of Downwind and liquor and the bitter smell of krrf.
"I-been-lost," he said. "I w-went-H-Her business." He waved a hand vaguely away, riverward, toward Downwind or nowhere at all, and squinted at her. The tic that twisted his face did so with a vengeance. "I c-c-come back. What h-ha-hap-pened t' you, M-m-mo-ria? Y-y-you don't look-"
"Makeup," she said, "it's makeup, uptown ladies have tricks-" She stood and stared in horror at the kind of dirt and the kind of sight she had grown up with, at the way Downwind twisted a man and bowed the shoulders and put hopelessness in the eyes. "Lost. Where, lost? You could've sent word- you could have sent something-" She watched the tic by Mor-am's mouth grow violent: it was never that way when Ischade prevented it. Ischade was not preventing it. For some reason Ischade had stopped preventing it. "You're in trouble with Her, aren't you?"
"I-t-tr-tried. I tried to do what she w-wanted. Then I-1-lost the m-m-money."
"You mean you drank it! You gambled it, you spent it on drugs, you fool! Oh, damn you, damn you!"
He cringed. Her tall, her once-handsome brother-he cringed down and his shoulderblades were sharp against the rags, his dirty hands were like claws clutching his knees as he crouched rocking in the cream-and-lace of her bed. "I got to have m-m-money, Mo-ri-a. I got to go to Her, I got to make it g-g-good-"
"Damn, all I've got is Her money, you fool! You're going to take Her money and pay Her back with it?"
"You g-g-got to, you g-g-got to, the p-pain, Moria, the pain-"
"Stay here!"
She set the knife down and fled, a flurry of satin and ribbons and bare feet down the polished, carpeted stairs, down into the hall and back where even in this night Cook's minions labored over the dinner-the infamous Shiey had acquired a partner with a monumental girth and a real skill, who co-ruled the kitchen: one-handed Shiey managed the beggar-servants and Kotilis stirred and mixed and sliced with a deft fury that put an awe into the slovens and dullards that were the rule in this house. They thought She had witched this cook, and that the hands that made a knife fly over a radish and carve it into a flower could do equally well with ears and noses: that was what Shiey told them. And work went on this night. Work went on in mad terror; and if anyone thought it was strange that one more beggar went padding in the front door at night (with a key) and Little Mistress came flying downstairs in her night-gown to rummage the
desk in the hall for the money not one thief in the house dared steal-
No one said a thing. Shiey only stood in the door in her floured apron, and Kotilis went on butchering his radishes, while Moria ignored them both, flying up the stairs again with the copper taste of a bitten lip and stark fear in her mouth.
She loved her brother, gods help a fool. She was bound to him in ways that she could not untangle; and she stole from Her to pay Her, which was the only thing she could do. It was damnation she courted. It was the most terrible ruin in the world.