He shivered and looked up where a rare straightness of a Sanctuary street afforded a sliver of sunlight, the gleam of uptown walls.
There was a rattle at the window, a spatter of gravel against the second-story bedroom shutters, and Moria started, her hand to her heart. For a moment she had thought of some great bird, of claws against her shutters; she expected some such visitation, even in the daylight. But she came up off her bed where she had flung herself, dressed as she was in the stifling, tight-laced satins that were what a lady in Sanctuary had to wear, 0 Shalpa and Shipri, so that her head reeled and her senses wanted to leave her every time she climbed stairs or thought too much on her situation.
Now she knew that rattle of gravel for what it was: someone down in the side lane that led back toward the rear of the house and the stable. Someone who knew where her bedroom was, maybe that importunate lord who had beseiged her step; maybe- Shalpa! maybe it was Mor-am come back. Maybe he was in some dire trouble, maybe he needed her, maybe he would try that window, the only one off the street except the servants' and the kitchen at the back.
She went and flung the inside shutters open, looked out and saw a lately familiar, handsome face staring up at her with adoring eyes. At one breath it drove her to rage that he was back, rage and fear and grief at once, for what he was, and what a fool he was, and how handsome and how helpless in Her spells which had somehow gone all amiss.
"Oh, damn!" She flung open the casement and leaned out, her corset-hard middle leant across the sill and the compression of her ribs all but choking the wind out of her as she set her palms on the rough stone. Cold wind stung her face and her exposed front and blew her hair. Loose ribbons hit her in the face. "Go away!" she cried. "Hasn't my doorkeeper told you? Go away!"
The lord Tasfalen looked up with a flourish of his elegant hands, a glance of his eyes that would melt a harder heart than an ex-thief's. "My lady, forgive me-no! Listen to me. I know a secret-"
She had started to pull back. Now she leaned there all dizzy in the wind, with the air chilling her upper breasts and her bare arms, and her heart beating so that the whole scene took on an air of unreality, as if something thrummed unnaturally in her veins, as if the feeling that had come on her when Haught touched her and turned her like this went on happening and happening and growing in her, so that she was a danger and a Power herself, poor Moria of the gutters, a candle to singe this poor lord's wings, when a conflagration waited for him, a burning that was Power of a scope to drink them both down....
"0 fool," she moaned, seeing that face, hearing that word secret and that urgency in his voice. It had as well be both of them in the fire. "Come round back," she hissed, and closed the casement and the shutters without thinking until then that she had just asked a lord of Sanctuary to come in by the scullery, and that at her merest word he was going to do it.
She stepped into her slippers, unable to bend in the corset, and worked one and the other on with a perilous hop and a catch-step as she headed out to the stairs, saving herself on the railings as she flew down in a flurry of too many damned Beysib petticoats that kept her from seeing her feet or the steps. She fetched up at the bottom out of breath, with a catch at the newel-post and an anguished glance at a thief-maid who gawped at her.
"There's a man out back," Moria said, and pointed. "Go let him in."
"Aye, mum," the gaptoothed girl said, and tucked up her curls under her scarf and went clattering off in unaccustomed, too-large shoes to see to that. The maid was one of those who had come for the Dinner; and stayed, Moria not knowing anything else to do with her. Like the new chef. As if She had forgotten about everything, and left her with this huge staff and all these people to take care of, and, gods, she had given Mor-am part of the house accounts, had given him too much. Ischade would find it out. She would find this out....
Moria heard the maid clattering and clumping along the back hall, heard the door open, and went into the drawing room where there was a mirror. She stood there hunting her hair for pins to put the curls back in place.
0 gods, is that me? Am I like this, this ain't me, outside, this is Haught's doing and She's got Haught by now. She has. Maybe She's outright killed him, taken him into Her bed and thrown him in the river an' all-like She'll throw me, all these damn' beggars to come on me in the night and cut my throat- 0 gods, look at my face. I'm prettier'n Her, She must've seen that-
A step sounded in the hall. A face appeared in the mirror beside her own. She turned, dropping her hands as a curl tumbled loose, her breast heaved-she suddenly knew what effect she projected, natural as breathing and dangerous as a spider.
She saw adoration glowing in Tasfalen's face, and the terrified pounding of her heart and the constriction of the laces brought on that raininess again.
"What secret?" she asked. And Tasfalen came and seized up her hand in his, in one move closer to her than she had planned to let him get. He smelled of spices and roses.
Like a flower seller. Or a funeral.
"That I want you," Tasfalen said, "and that you're in deadly danger."
"What-danger?"
He let go her hand and took her by both shoulders, staring closely into her eyes. "Gossip. Rumors. You've become known in town and someone has slandered you-incredible slander. I won't repeat all of it. Say that you've been accused of- trafficking with terrorists. Of being catspaw for-Is that part true? That woman, that dark woman-I know her name, dear lady. My sources are highly placed. And they mention your name-" His eyes rolled toward the uptown height, toward the palace, the while he slid his hands to hers and drew them against him. "I want to take you into my house. You understand, you'll be safe there. In all uncertainties. I have connections, and resources. I place them all at your disposal."
"I can't, I daren't, I daren't leave-"
"Moria." He gathered her against him, hugged her so tightly that the sense half left her, tilted her face up and brought his mouth down on hers, which was perhaps all he could do, being a fool; and perhaps there was something wrong with her too, because his touching her did something to her that only Haught had done before, of many, many men, some for money and some for need and most of them come to grief and no good in the scattering of the hawkmasks. That was a world that had nothing to do with the silk and the perfume and the smell and the craziness of the uptown lord who smothered the breath that was left in her and ran his hands over her with an abandon that would have gotten him a knife in the gut back in her old wild days, but which now, through the lacings and the silk and the lace, made her think nothing in the world so desirable as shed ding all that binding and breathing and doing what she had wanted to do with this man since first she had laid eyes on him there on her doorstep. He would not be like Haught, not reserved, not holding so much of himself back: this man was fever mad, and it was all going to happen right here in the drawing-room for the servants and all to gawk at if she did not prevent him....