Crit said, "I wouldn't-couldn't. I busted my butt getting here, Strat," but it came out hoarse and low and he said it to the straw scattered on the loft's floor at his feet.
The woman was trying to help Straton, who didn't realize he couldn't get on that horse by himself.
Crit sheathed his sword and put his hands in the air, then walked over to the place where the ghost-horse nuzzled its master encouragingly.
Strat, half-prone, was staring at him. The big fighter's hand was clutched to his chest or belly-Crit couldn't tell from all the blood in the way.
"Strat... Ace, for pity's sake, let me help you," Crit said, bending down on one knee, empty hands outstretched.
The ghost-horse neighed impatiently and butted Straton's shoulder. Behind the pair, the woman stood-the woman named Moria from the Peres estate, but dressed in street rags so that he hardly recognized her.
Stilcho said, "Strat, maybe you'd better... it's not going to be safe here much longer. They can take care of you better than we-"
"Stilcho," Moria hissed, "come away. It's for them to talk out."
"Talk?" Strat laughed and the laugh choked him, so that he gurgled and wiped his mouth with a hand that came away bloody. "We just did."
The wounded fighter reached with his bloody hand to take one of Crit's. "Well, Crit, you going to watch, or you going to give me some help?"
"Strat..." Crit embraced his partner, oblivious of might-be enemies about him, searching for harm, testing strength, mouthing harsh words that covered too much emotion; "You stupid bastard, when I get you fixed up I'm going to beat some sense into you."
And Strat said, "You do that," just about the time the bay horse trumpeted joyously as he felt Strat's weight on his back and Crit began the arduous process of leading the mounted, wounded man out of the stable's attic to safety at least of the sort a Sacred Band partner could provide.
Fire raged inside Ischade, now that she had quenched it in her clothing and her hair. It might have been her wrath that caused the houses across the alleys on either side of her to flame up as she passed-uptown alleys she'd traveled before and now again on her way to Tasfalen's velvet stronghold.
An ache and a fury was in Ischade and perhaps it spread around her. But perhaps it was just the pillar of flame and the young fires it set, so that better uptown streets (where Sanctuary's troubles never spread and rebels never sped) were a smoking labyrinth like some upscale version of the Maze.
Rebels skulked here now, and peasants, looting: Wrigglies, arms laden with pilfered, sooty treasure, jostled her, saw whom they bumped, and slunk away.
She saw rape and nearly stopped to feed-these mortal murderers wasted the best part of their victims, let the manna go, let the essence, precious soul and energy, escape. Ischade was weakened by the struggle in Peres's, somewhat. Somewhat. But not too much.
She moved on, through a day mercifully veiled in clouds and soot and a storm now rising off the sea. She wondered, as the sky blackened with thunderheads boiling up, if the storm was natural or summoned-then thought it didn't matter: it was convenient, either way.
She saw an enclosed Beysib wagon, overturned by brigands. Bald heads of Beysib males littered the environs like playballs from some devil's game, their accustomed torsos near but not attached. She saw what fate was dealt a pair of Beysib women. and wondered what the rebels thought to gain. If they kept their war to downtown, they might win it. Up here, they asked for retribution that would last for generations.
Amid pathetic cries, she stopped awhile, and closed her eyes-trusting to a cloaking spell to hide her. When she moved on, she was emboldened, strengthened, but sick at heart: for her to be reduced to scavenging was demeaning. But war did what it willed.
Thunder wracked the streets and she looked upward, grateful for the lowering, stormy dark but wary: she'd finish what she started, unless the stormgods intervened. She owed Tempus something. And she owed Haught a different thing.
She had her word to make good. She had her interests to secure. She had work to do before retiring to the White Foal's edge.
It was not painless for Ischade, this sneaking to Tasfalen's in the daylight. Janni, one others, was still trapped in the cone of flame, where Stormbringer and demons argued, where Rox-ane had been and now was not.
What would Tempus, who wanted the souls of his soldiers freed of strings and tortures, make of Janni's plight? Hardly an honorable rest, in his terms. But a piece of bravery, in hers, the like of which she'd never seen.
All for Niko, or for something more abstract? she wondered as she found Tasfalen's gate and then his steps and her thoughts turned to Haught and Roxane and what lay ahead, as she dealt with locks of natural and other kinds, and doors likewise doubled, and, as the last portal opened to her will, a raindrop struck her cheek, and then another, and thunder rolled.
The storm would ground the dust and douse the fires and she knew it was too great a luck for Sanctuary, the most luckless town she'd ever seen. She knew also that, inside the flaming pillar back at the Peres's, evil was held at bay by one whose name could not be spoken but could be approximated: Stonn-bringer, the Weather-Gods' father-Stormbringer, whose daughter Jihan was close at hand.
And then there was no time to put it all together: there was a ring on the finger of Haught which she could see with her inner eye.
This she stroked and called home to her. Its spell, still strong, would bring the scheming apprentice-if he was not already here.
In the ground hall full of shadows she paused. The door behind her closed at a gust's whim. The slam it made was daunting.
Her hackles rose-she hadn't thought of the ring Haught had until she'd entered. Was it her will, or only her perception, that saw him here?
Why had she come here? Suddenly, she wasn't sure. She shook her head, on the ground floor landing, and touched her brow with her palm. She owed Tempus none of this-not so much. Tasfalen was dead, a minion to be summoned to the river house. Why, then, had she risked the streets and come up here?
Why? She couldn't fathom it.
And then she did, when Haught's silken voice oozed down the stairs from a shadow at their head.
"Ah, Mistress, how kind of you to visit sickbeds with so much at stake."
She reached out for the ring he wore, but the apprentice was reaching on his own: grown desperate, he was full of pain, and wanted to make her a gift of it.
Suddenly (more because she underestimated what lay behind him and what hid within him than because of Haught himself) she was dizzy, spinning in another place, a place of blood and murky water-of ice and great gates whose bars were rent as if a giant shape had bent them out of its way.
Niko's rest-place! How had she come here?... not by Haught's strength.
And a laugh tinkled-a laugh with razor edges that cut her souclass="underline" Roxane.
Yes, Roxane-but something less and something more hobbled through that gate, misshapen and huge, and shrunk until Tasfalen's beauty masked it.
And then the thing... for it was part highborn, mortal lord, part witch, and part Haught... held out its hand to take her arm as if to escort her to some formal fete.
She met its eyes and gripped her own ribs with both her hands: to touch it might imprison her here. This was where Janni had lost the last shreds of self-concern that made him act predictably in the interest of what life he still led.
The eyes that bored into hers were gold and slitted; deep behind them glowed a purple fire she knew wasn't right.