"No." Crit still stood there with the bow aimed at the floor. "Where's the horse? You leave that damned horse down there in the yard in full view?" .
"I don't plan to stay." Strat drank a mouthful of the sour wine and made a face. His gut was empty. Even a little wine hit it hard. "I've patched up a peace in this town. I figured it could make me some enemies. And Kama has contacts in the Front, doesn't she? I figure-I figure maybe she's got her answers, and they're not mine."
"She tried to shoot you in the back. I stopped it. You come in here madder than hell at me; and her, you just-No. You're not bloody mad, are you? You came in here-what for? Why did you walk in here, if that was what you expected?"
"I told you. I thought if you'd meant to hit me you would have. Didn't get a chance to talk to you last night. That's all." He downed the rest of the wine in the cup and set it down before he looked around again at Crit, at the bow and the open door. "I'd better go. My horse is in the yard."
"That damn horse-that damn spook. Ace, the damn thing doesn't sweat, it doesn't half work, like the zombies, f'godssake, Ace, stay here."
"Are you going to stop me?"
"Where are you going?"
He had not truly considered that. He had not known whether there was truly any time beyond this room. Nothing he did presently made sense: there was no need to have come, no need to have patched things up with Crit, only it was something he had not been able to avoid thinking on since yesterday and last night, and now there was no more need to think about that. His partner was not trying to kill him. Tempus was not. Unless Tempus had sent Kama, but somehow other things rang more true. Like the PFLS. The Front. Like the agencies that wanted chaos in Sanctuary. He felt himself carrying the whole town on his back, felt his life as charmed as if the gods that watched over this town watched over him, who was trying to save it. And they both were corrupt, and they both were wreckage, he and the town. He perceived compromises that he had made, by degrees. He knew where he was now, and it was on the other side of a wall from Crit and all his old ties.
He had not seen Ischade since that day outside Moria's. Since he had blinked and lost her round a comer. Or somewhere. Somewhere. The wards drove him from the river house. He hunted Haught and failed to find him. He was altogether alone, and altogether losing everything he had thought he had his hands on.
"I don't know," he said to Crit. "I don't know where I'm going. To find a few contacts. See what I can turn up. If you haven't figured it out, it's my peace that's holding so far. The bodies that've turned up-aren't significant. Or they are. It means that certain people are keeping their word. Keeping the peace in their districts. You could walk the Maze blind drunk right now and come out unrobbed. That's progress. Isn't it?"
"That's something," Crit admitted. And stopped him with a hand on his arm when he tried to walk past him. Not a hard hand. Just a pressure. "Ace. I'm listening to you. You want my help, I'll give it to you."
"What kind of trap is it?" It was an ingenuous question. He meant it to be. The whole affair, Kama, the shot from the roof, had ceased to trouble him acutely, had become part of the ennui that surrounded him, everywhere, in every inconsequential move he made, every damned, foredoomed, futile move he made since She had turned her back on him and decided to play bitter games with him. Haught had given him the ring; Haught had made a move which might be Her move, gods knew, gods knew what she was up to. The whole world seemed dark and confused. And this man, this distant, small voice, wanted to hold onto his arm and argue with him, which was all right as far as it went: he had a little patience left, while it asked nothing more complicated than it did. "Whose orders, Crit?"
"I'm on my own. I'll go with you. Easier than following you. I'll do that, you know. I've been doing it."
"You've been pretty good."
"You want the company?"
"No," he said, and shrugged the hand off. "I've got places to go, rounds to make. Stay off my track. I'd hate for somebody to put a knife into you. And it could happen."
"But not to you."
"Not so likely."
"You hunting that Nisi bastard?"
It was more complicated than that. Ischade was involved. It was all too complicated to answer. "Among others," he said. "Just stay off my track. Hear?"
He walked on out the door.
The bow thunked at his back, the air whispered by him and the quarrel stood buried in a single crash in the stout railing just ahead of him. He stopped dead still, then turned around to Crit and the empty bow. His knees had gone weak for a moment. Now the anger came.
"I just wondered if you'd wake up," Crit said.
"I am awake. I assure you." He turned on his heel and headed down the stairs with his knees gone undependable again, so that he used the lefthand rail, shaking and shaken, and hoping with the only acute feeling he had left, that between the wine and the shock he would not stumble on the way. That it was Crit up there watching him, Crit who knew how to read that white-knuckled grip on the rail, made his shame complete.
Damn Crit to hell.
Damn Tempus and all such righteous godsridden prigs. Tern-pus had dealt with Ischade. Tempus had said something to her at that table, in that room, and she had said something to him at great length, concluded her business like some visiting queen, before she went running off, leaving him for a fool in front of the whole damned company. He had not gone back after his cloak. Had not been able to face that room.
But suddenly it occurred to him that Crit might know what Tempus and Ischade had said together. He stopped at the bottom, by the bay horse, his hand on its neck, and looked up the stairs where Crit stood with the unarmed bow dangling by his side.
"What's the Riddler's dealing with her?" Strat asked.
"Who? Kama?"
Strat frowned, wondering whether it was deliberate obtuse-ness. "Her, dammit, at the Peres. What was she after?"
"Maybe you ought to ask him. You want to shout his business up and down the stairs? Where's your sense, for gods-sake?"
"That's all right." He turned and gathered up the bay's dangling reins. "I'll manage. Maybe I will ask him." He flung himself up to the bay's back, felt the life in it like a waking out of sleep, a huge and moving strength under him. "It's all right." He turned the bay and rode out of the courtyard, down the narrow alley.
Then the malaise came back again, so that the street began to go away from his vision, like an attack of fever. He touched his waist, where he carried the little ring, the ring that would fit only his smallest finger.
She had sent it by Haught.
Haught attacked the column and tried for-whatever Tempus was on the other side of. Tempus and the priest. And the gods.
Damn, it shaped itself into pattern, it shaped all too welclass="underline" Ischade owned no gods. Haught and the dead man, who made a try that might, succeeding at whatever they were after-have shaken the town.
Ischade had sent him back to Crit that night Crit came to the riverhouse and nothing had been the same.
He slipped the ring into the light and slipped it onto his finger, the breath going short in his throat and the touch of it all but unbearable; it was like a drug. He had not dared wear it into Crit's sight, a token like that. But he wore it when he thought there was no one to see, no one but the Ilsigi passersby who might see him only as the faceless rider all Stepsons were to the town: he was a type, that was all, he was a power, he was a man with a sword and everyone in town wanted to pretend they had no special reason to look anxiously at a Rankan rider too tall and too hard to be other than what he was. So if that man's eyes were out of focus and all but senseless, no one noticed. It was only for a moment. It was always, in the last two days, only for a moment, because when he held that metal in his hand he had a sense of contact with her and his soul was in one piece again.