"Take him to the palace," Walegrin commanded, taking a cloth from a sack at his feet and carefully cleaning his hands.
"S-s-she'll know. When I d-d-don't come back. She'll look for me." The ex hawkmask's voice was shrill with desperation as he was hoisted to his feet. "You said gold-you said: 'gold for information'."
"It doesn't pay to sell out your family-pud, I thought you'd've learned that by now," Walegrin replied coldly. "Take him to the palace." He nodded and another soldier stepped forward to see that the command was carried out quietly.
Walegrin threw Mor-am's mug into the garbage that lay everywhere in the burned out, sky-roofed warehouse. It had come this low: Rankan soldiers holding forth in ruins; listening to the ramblings of the city's scum; talking to the dead and the undead. A delegation was coming from the capital. His orders were to keep Sanctuary quiet, to keep it free of surprises and, above all, to keep an ear out for rumors about the Nisi witch. He rested his hand on his sword hilt and waited for the next one.
"He might be right, you know," a voice called from the darkness.
A man separated from the shadows-mounted and armed. He came through a gap in the walls-the man's head wreathed in shifting moisture, the horse as cool and shiny as a marble statue. Walegrin stood up, his hand remaining on the sword.
"Slow up there," the stranger ordered, swinging his leg over the saddle. "Word's out you're talking to anybody-even other Rankan soldiers." His words emerged in a plume but the bay horse, though it snorted and shied from the lingering scent of the fire, made no mark on the night air.
"Strat?" Walegrin inquired and received a confirming nod. "Didn't think you came uptown much these days."
The hawk cried again. Both men glanced up past the charred, skeletal roof-beams, but the sky was empty.
"I was up here the other night at Moria's dinner party." Straton kicked the broken barrel Mor-am had used for a seat aside and selected another one from the rubble. "This place secure?" He glanced around at the gaping walls.
"It's mine."
"He might be worth listening to," Strat said, shrugging a shoulder toward Mor am's path.
Walegrin shook his head. "He's drunk, scared, and ready to sell the only ones who've stood by him. I'm not looking to buy what he's selling."
"Especially scared-especially scared. I'd say he knows something no cheap wine can hide. I've seen the new face Moria's wearing these days; Ischade didn't put it there. I'd talk to him about that-get his confidence. Ease the burden on his mind."
Strat was known to live within the necromancer's curse- and without it, if current rumor were true. He knew Ischade's household as no other living man knew it. Likewise, he was the Stepson's interrogator-a superb judge of a man's willingness to talk and the worth of what he said.
"I'll talk to him, then," Walegrin agreed, wishing he had a larger fraction of Molin's canniness. The Stepson had gotten the upper hand in their conversation. He was sitting, silent and smiling, while Walegrin was sweating. The younger man pondered possibilities and motivations, listened to the lonely hawk, and abandoned all attempts at subtlety. "Strat, you didn't come here to help me do my job with that wrecked hawkmask and it's not safe for a Stepson to be east of the processional-so why're you here?"
"Oh, it's about a hawkmask: Jubal." Strat paused, bit an offending fingernail, and spat into the darkness for effect. "He made an agreement with me and I want you and yours to honor it."
Walegrin snorted. "Commander-this had better be good. Jubal made an agreement with the Stepsons?"
"With me," the Stepson said through taut lips. "For peace and quiet. For no confrontations while Sanctuary has imperial visitors. For business as usual as it used to be. He's pulling back; I'm pulling back. The PFLS will be exposed and we'll take care of them-permanently. Consider yourself honored that I think we need your voluntary cooperation."
"What cooperation?" Walegrin snapped. "Are we the ones rampaging through the streets? Are we running rackets? Strong-arming merchants? Did we turn the town on its ear, then run off to war leaving the locals masquerading in our places? You want to take care of the PFLS-there wouldn't be any PFLS without the high and-bloody-mighty Third Commando and there wouldn't be any Commando without you and yours. Dammit, Commander, I haven't got a headache you didn't cause one way or another."
Straton sat in stony silence. There'd never been any love lost between the regular army soldiers, enlisted to the service of the Empire, and the elite bands like the Stepsons or the Hell-Hounds, bound only to the interest of the gold that paid them. For Straton and Walegrin, whose orders-keep the peace in Sanctuary-were identical and whose positions-military commander-were untenably identical, the antagonism was especially acute.
Walegrin, having spent the better part of his life in blind admiration of the likes of Straton, Critias, or even Tempus, expected the Stepson to blast them out of their conversational impasse. He felt no relief when, after long moments of staring, enlightenment overcame him: Strat was out of his depth and sinking faster than he, himself, was.
"All right," Walegrin began, leaning across the makeshift table, forcing the anger from his voice the way Molin did. "You've got the garrison's voluntary cooperation. What else?"
"We're changing the rules-some of the players won't like it. The PFLS is going to push-"
Walegrin raised a finger for silence; the hawk's cry rose and fell in a new pattern. "Keep talking," he told the Stepson. "Don't look around-we're being watched. Thrush?" he asked the darkness.
"There was one following him-" a voice explained from the shadows behind Walegrin's back. "He's up on the roof over your right shoulder-with a bow that'll put an arrow through you both. There was another-no weapons that we could see- came up a bit later. Now the second's seen the first an' he's circling around."
"Friends of yours?"
"No, I came alone," Strat replied without confidence as a hiss that might have been an arrow crossed the open sky above them.
"Let's go," Walegrin ordered, pushing away from the barrel head.
The gods alone might know who had followed Straton, Walegrin thought as he crouched and ducked into the shadows where Thrusher was waiting for him. Every Stepson had enemies in this part of town and Strat had more than most. He might even have enemies who'd kill each other for the privilege of killing him.
Walegrin couldn't indulge in expectant curiosities, though- not with Thrusher picking a cat's path through the garbage ahead of them. His squads had patroled these warrens and knew where safe footing lay. He could only follow and hope Strat had the good sense to do the same. Thrush led them onto the nearby rooftops in time to see their bow-carying quarry land on the muddy cobblestones below.
"Recognize him?" Walegrin demanded, pointing at the receding silhouette.
"Crit."
Stepsons hunting Stepsons, was it? "After the other one," Walegrin barked at whichever of his men could hear. There were better ways to get information from Critias than risking a rooftop confrontation. He turned to follow Thrusher and realized that Strat hadn't moved since identifying his erstwhile partner.
"It's no time to be asking yourself questions, Straton."
"He came to kill me," Strat whispered, then stumbled on a loose roof tile and lurched toward the eaves.
Walegrin caught a fistful of shoulder. "He hasn't-yet. Now move it before we lose the other one, too."
Strat glowered and thrust Walegrin's arm aside.
The second interloper knew the backways of Sanctuary and was hugging darkness back toward the Maze and safety. Moonlight caught a youthful outline arching from one rooftop to the next and Thrusher's crablike scuttle as he followed.