"What are you doing with that?" she demanded.
He looked less and less certain-even what he was doing here. He tucked that hand behind him, said diffidently, "In case he was comin' in here, m'lady."
"What, to defend me?"
He shrugged, twitched the knife-arm shoulder, looked abashedly at the floor and up again.
Gods.
She held the cloak about her, she beckoned him closer, she looked at a face that looked so very much different than her unkempt thief.
A pretty boy, Crit had said. When she wanted Strat, who was not a boy, who was most certainly not a boy-
She touched his face, worked a small sorcery, brushed the hair from his brow. He tried to put his arms around her, jerked her close-
She pushed him away, both attracted and repelled-for all the wrong reasons. She said coldly, "There's clothes, there's money, take what you want and get out of here. I'll call you on another night. For your own sake-listen to me now."
His jaw set. He prepared some foolish argument, some protestation of his manhood, his impatience.
She waved an arm and the door banged open, disturbing all the candles and the lamps. She let go her spell ...
He stayed for nothing. He ran. She heard the gate, let him past her wards, and banged that shut and the door, clang! boom! after him.
She was shaking after that. She dropped her head against her hand and tried to forget the lust that was her curse, that at times and by the pull of the moon was stronger than reason, stronger than love-
The desire that killed-killed everyone but Strat. Strat had found a way to survive, until things changed, until Strat turned moody and sullen and the anger grew in him-the anger to invoke the curse and kill him.
So she had driven him away, given him back to Crit, given him his freedom from her ensorcelments-
Crit, tonight, came here to offer stupid bargains, with no knowledge whether she would even keep her word-Crit was not lying, he could not be lying, under those terms, there was still some attraction; and that fool boy, the thief-with a knife, ready to use it if Crit had burst through the door-
For what, she asked herself, for what, except male stupidity?
For what reason in hell, except a man would not hear No... .
For what reason, gods, except Strat was a fool and Strat did not understand her.
Like the boy who thought he was going to be a hero. Like Strat-who did not know how to lose and did not know how to retreat from what he thought was his right and her obligation to him.
Who-gods!-had been with her too long, had been too close to her not to know what she was and who should have, for once in his stubborn, prideful life, run the way the boy had.
But Strat did not understand that.
She looked up at the ceiling, at the blaze of lights that glittered in her eyes.
And stopped what she was feeling, shut it off cold, because love was the killing-urge, it was all mixed up with tenderness, it wound all through it, because when a man intimate with her started making up his own mind what he wanted, and once frustration became force, that someone died; and it was pleasure and it was anger at a fool and it was pain and revenge all wrapped together.
"Damn!" she cried, to any god who might be listening, and to the thrice-damned and very dead mage who had set the curse on her. Lights blazed about her, candles unconsumed.
Like her endless, deathless life-no less now than it had been a hundred years ago ...
And so many, many dead to her account - . .
Crit came quietly into the stableyard of the safe-house, threw the reins over his horse's head, and led the horse through the gate, quietly still, figuring Gayle must be upstairs-not that the commander needed an excuse for late-night exits and entrances-whether from some night business at headquarters or a late night on the Street of Red Lanterns; they had all been working odd shifts, they were still cleaning up paperwork and dealing with files, and whatever sleep Gayle or Kama was getting was hard-won.
He walked the horse quietly to the stable door, and turned suddenly, with a reach at his sword, because of a step alongside the stable in the dark, a large shadow.
Shepherd.
The big man said, "Strat hasn't gone uptown, he's gone to see Randal."
"For what?" Crit demanded in his frustration. He had no difficulty believing Strat had gone off somewhere-Randal was hardly where he would have guessed, but he had no reason to doubt this uninvited visitor. Shepherd-came and went like a ghost, him and his outmoded leather armor and that big clay-colored horse of his, with the panther-skin shabraque; reins of woven grass, the scent of the marsh about him-a spook for sure if Crit had ever seen one-came in when the Riddler had left with most of the forces, and talked about Debt and the Honor of the Corps, and things that the last guard was too out of sorts to hear these depressing, final days... .
Shepherd shrugged, casting a large shadow in the stableyard lamplight as he stood aside. "Your partner's in trouble. But you understand that. Make no bargains with the witch."
"What do you want?" It bothered Crit; it had been bothering Crit ever since this man had showed up, the way this man moved in claiming to be a mere, assumed so much, came and went as if the rules meant nothing to him; and why in hell Crit let him get away with it Crit himself had no idea-
Except there was a great deal in this man that reminded him of the Riddler.
"Go to Randal," Shepherd said, and when Crit started back to the stable, caught his arm. "Be surprised at nothing. Your time here is coming to an end."
"Hell!" Crit stalked off a few paces toward the stables and stopped abruptly to ask, "Whose time? Who told you?-What's Strat up to, dammit?"
But Shepherd was gone.
Ischade had left the river-house, walked the pre-dawn streets of Sanctuary with no destination in mind-thinking about Crit, thinking about what existed between those two, and what a fool Strat was-
She would have made him commander over Sanctuary-she might have, if Tempus had not stepped in to redeem his man, and put Crit in command in Strat's place.
She would have made him more than that, if that had not happened;
she would have made him more than a lord of the Rankan Empire-if Tempus had not stepped in, if there had not been the war, and if there had been some hope of Strat continuing to be for her what he had been-
But all those things had turned dangerous, and impossible; and she found herself tonight, having rejected Crit's desperate move, having thrown her young thief out of the house, walking the warehouse district near the river and toward that street uptown that led to the hill-
And thinking of things that might have been-in these strange days of peace in the ravaged streets of Sanctuary; in these strange days of war in the very heart of Empire.
She found herself on the high street, in the midst of which a house stood with boarded windows and bars on the doors-
And downhill-and over a street or two, in an area not so rich and not so poor-there was a house she also knew ...
"What is it?" Moria asked, when Stilcho waked sweating in their bed, in this fine house they afforded these days. "What is it?"-holding to him; but he would have none of it-some times he would not, some nights he could not.
This time he sat, naked and shivering on the side of their bed-and stared into the dark. "Light the lamp," he asked Moria. "Light the lamp!"
And Moria, born Ilsigi, born a thief and a daughter of thieves in this city, scrambled for straw and lamp and the coals in the hearth, to produce that little flame that shed light on the modest rooms and drove away the visions of Hell-
Because her husband (so she called him) had died once in the hands of the beggars of Downwind-and all of him the witch had gotten back but his eye, wherefore the scars on his body and the scars on his face.