the other patched.
"Damn," Tempus snarled at the priest, "does it need the smoke?" He took Niko by the arm and led him out into clean air, closed the door. "I'm not asking this time; get to bed."
"Can't sleep," Niko said. The ashbrown hair fell loose across his brow, trailed into Jinan's unspeakable unguents. "No use-"
"You're raving." He took Niko's arm willy-nilly, led him
on.
"I saw Janni," Niko said, mumbled, in a sick man's disjointed way. "I saw him here-"
"You don't see a damn thing, you're not going to see a damned thing if you don't get out of that foolery and leave those brats to the priests."
"Randal-"
"-can take care of it." He reached Niko's appointed bedchamber, opened the door and led him as far as the rumpled bed. "Now stay there, or do I have to set a guard?"
"Eyes aren't that bad," Niko murmured. But he felt of the bedside and sat down like a man with too many bruises.
Tempus had none. They healed. Everything slid off him and vanished. Only Niko had the bandages, Niko had the scars, Niko was fragile as all he loved. "Stay there," he said, too sharply. "I've too much else. I don't need this."
Niko subsided quietly. Lay back with his eyes shut. It was not what he had meant to say or do. He walked over and pressed Niko's hand, walked out then.
Call off the damn dinner, he thought. What's to be gained? How did I agree to that?
It was before hell broke loose; it was to calm a nervous town. It was to get the measure of a witch and her intentions. And to discover the threads that Strat had run here and here and here through the town. In that regard it made more sense than not. The affair was a stone in motion, downhill, and it would say something now to the town to break off this engagement. "... Souls of yours and mine..." Straton was one of those souls at imminent risk. And if there was a thing which might pull Straton into reach it was this, his own witch-lover's arranging.
Why meet with them? Why this courting of Stepsons?
That was the insane question. He thought ofKorphos again; and the arrows. And poisoned wine. And the Emperor.
He was not accustomed to direct challenge, but it was still possible.
The door stayed open to a steady stream of martial guests, arrivals afoot and ahorse out front, with the clank of swords in the foyer, the inpouring of wolfish men who towered and clattered with weapons they did not give up at the door. Hand after huge hand took Moria's as she stood sentry at the door of her borrowed house, a powdered, perfumed mannequin that said over and over How kind, thank you, welcome, sir and smiled till her teeth ached. Hands which could have crushed her lingers lifted them to lips smooth, bearded, mustached, olive skinned and white-skinned and unmarked and scarred; and each time she recovered her hand and stared a moment too long into the eyes of this or that man she felt the blue satin dress too low and the perfume too much and her whole self estimated for value right along with the vases and the house silver. And she was the thief!
Man after man and not a woman in the lot until a tall woman with one long pigtail came strolling in and crushed her hand in a grasp rougher than the men's. "Kama," that one said. Her hand was callused as the men's. Her eyes were smouldering and dreadful. "Pleased," Moria breathed, "thank you. Do come in. Dining hall to your right under the stairs." She worked her fingers and thrust out her hand valiantly to the next arrivals, seeing more on the street. More and more of them. There could not be enough wine. A stray lock of her coiffure slipped and strayed down her neck, bouncing there. She borrowed both hands up to stab it back into place with a hairpin, realized the tall soldier in front of her was staring down her decolletage and desperately thrust out her hand. "Sir. Welcome."
"Dolon," that one said, and headed in the wake of the woman with the pigtail while others came up the steps.
0 Shalpa and Shipri, where's the Mistress, what am I doing with these Rankans? They know I'm Ilsigi, they're laughing at me, they're all laughing....
A man arrived who was not a soldier, who came with servants: she mistook him for a passerby until he abandoned the servants and came up the steps, seized her hand and kissed it with a flourish of his cap.
He looked up. His hair was fair brown, his eyes were blue; he was Rankan of the Rankans and noble and he stared into her eyes as if he had discovered some strange new ocean.
"Tasfalen Lancothis," he murmured, and never let go of her hand. "You are the lady-"
"Sir," she said, quite paralyzed by a nobleman who stared into her eyes in that way. And she was further baffled when he plucked a black feather from his cap and offered it to her. "How kind," she murmured, blinking at him and wondering whether she had gone totally mad or was another Rankan here to make sport of her. She put it in her decolletage, having no better place, and saw his eyes follow that move and lift to hers again with profoundest concentration. "My lady," he said, and kissed her hand a second time, which meant men standing in line behind him. Her heart raced in a sense of impending disaster, the Mistress's dire displeasure. Heat and cold chased one another from her breast to her face. "Sir-"
"Tasfalen."
"Tasfalen. Thank you. Please. Later. The others..."
He let go her hand. She turned desperately to the men next, passed them through with a hand to each and caught her breath as she stared at the tall pair next, the taller one with the face that she had seen only at distance, riding through the streets on a fine horse. His clothing was plain. His face was smooth and cold and he was younger than she had thought until he took her hand and she looked up into his eyes by accident.
She stood there in mortal terror, mumbled something and surrendered a limp hand to the man next-"Critias," he named himself. "Moria," she said, never taking her eyes from the man who walked through the hall, an apparition as dreadful as anything the house had yet hosted. 0 gods, where is She? Is She going to come at all? They'll steal the silver, they'll drink down the wine and wreck the house and come at me next, they'll kill me, they will, to spite Her....
Thunder rumbled above the house, the light outside was stormlight, and never a drop of rain spotted the cobbles. She looked outside in mortal terror, expecting more apparitions. Wind skirled, committed indiscretion with her skirts. She held her threatened hair and watched wide-eyed as a last man came from around the comer where the horsemen had turned in, where the beggar-stableboys Ischade had provided did service with the horses, in the little stable-nook to the rear of the house. The man wore cloak and hood. For a moment she thought it was Stilcho and held onto her coiffure and dreaded his approach. But it was not, it was a different man, who came up the step with a matter-of-fact tread and looked up at her with an expression different than the rest-with an expression as if she were a wall in his way and he had suddenly realized something was in front of him. For a moment as he threw his hood back he looked confused, which in these grim men was different in itself.