"Something started him," Mradhon said. The slave babbled a language not Rankan, not Ilsigi, nothing she knew, sobbing for air. "Shut up," Mradhon said, shaking him and letting hishand from the man's throat. Mradhon said something then, the same way, and the slave stopped struggling and edged up against the wall. He talked, an urgent hiss in the gloom, and Mradhon kept the knife at his throat.
"What's that?" Moria asked, clenching her own hilt in a sweating fist. "What's that babble?"
"Keep still," Mradhon said, reached with his fist and the hilt of his knife and touched the slave gently on the side of the cheek. "Come show us, seh? Come show us the place. Fast."
"What place?" Moria demanded, shoving Mradhon's arm.
Mradhon ignored her, hauling the slave to his feet. She got up too, knife aimed, but not meaning to use it. The slave had straightened up like a human being, if a frightened one, and moved free of Mradhon's grip, travelling with lithe speed. Mradhon followed and she did, as far as the opening of the alley.
"River," the slave said, delaying there. "By the bridge."
"Move," Mradhon said.
The slave rolled his head aside, staring back at them, muttered something.
"Seh," Mradhon repeated. "Move it, man." Mradhon set an empty hand on his shoulder. The slave gave a gasp for air like a diver going under and headed down the next alley, stopping again when they reached a turning.
"Lost," the slave said, seeming to panic. "I can't remember; and there were men men with swords-and the screams-It was the house by the bridge, that one-"
"Get moving," Moria hissed frantically and jabbed him with the blade. The slave flinched, but Mradhon stayed her hand with a grip that almost broke her wrist.
"He's likely still alive," Mradhon said. "You want my help, woman, you keep that knife out of my way; and his."
She nodded, wild with rage and the delay. "Then quit stopping."
"Haught," Mradhon said. "Stay with us."
They went, running now, with no pauses, down the twisting ways even she did not know; but it was Mradhon's territory: they passed through a shanty alleyway so close they had to turn their shoulders and came out upon sight of the bridge.
It was quiet, excepting the wind, the dry, muttering thunder. A lightning flash threw the pilings of the bridge and the house by the pier into an unnatural blink of day, exposed a bridge vacant of traffic.
"There," said the slave, "there, that was the place-"
"Better stay back here," Mradhon said.
"It's quiet," Moria said. Her voice shook despite herself. "Man, hurry up." She pushed at him and got shoved in turn. He caught a fistful of her shirt and jerked at her.
"Don't shove. Get your mind working, woman, cool down, or I'm off this."
"I'll get round by the windows," she said, shivering. "I'll find out. But if you run out on me-"
"I'll be working up the other side. Haught and I. If it's even odds we take them. If it isn't we pull off, hear, and refigure."
She nodded and caught her breath, trotted off with a looseness of her knees she had not felt since her first job; felt as vulnerable as then, everything gone wrong. She sorted her mind into order, pretending it was not Mor-am in there, in that long quiet, where screams had been before.
She took a back alley, disturbing only an urchin-girl from her rest, going round the long way, where boards might gape and afford sight or sound, but none did. She kept going, focussed now, lost in the moment-by-moment calculations, and found the windows she hoped for, shuttered, but there was a crack.
She listened, and something went twisted inside. It was a quiet voice, that described streets with deadly accuracy, a strained voice that told no lies.
... Mor-am's. Giving away all they had.
And more than three of them in there.
"There's another house," her brother volunteered all too eagerly, "by the west side. There's a way from there out into a burned house....We used that in the old days...."
Shut up, she wished him, having difficulty holding her breath.
Something moved behind her. She whirled, knife thrusting, and got the man in the belly, leapt, and saw others.
"Ai!" she yelled, slashing wild, a howl that was the last shred of honor: It's all up, it's done- She tried to run.
There were still more, arrived from out of nowhere, a sweep of men and knives in the dark, rushing the house and alley from the riverside. She stabbed and killed; the urchin-girl shrieked and ran into shadows as beggars scattered and guardsmen shouted orders.
Fire streaked Moria's side. She slashed and stumbled back; and back as wood cracked and the house erupted with shouting and with knives, and the back way opened, pouring out bodies.
She fell. Someone stepped on her back as she lay there, and she braced and rolled against the shanty wall as the battle tended the other way. She crawled for the alley, scrambling to her feet as she reached the comer of the shanty.
Someone grabbed her from the back and dragged her aside; the slave Haught pinned her knifehand under his arm and a hand muffled her as they hit the dark leanto together, a knot of three.
"Keep low," Mradhon hissed in her ear as tumult passed their hiding-hole. A man died not far from them in the first pattering of rain. She lay still, feeling the pain in her side when she breathed, feeling for the rest as if she had been clubbed.
Mor-am?
Fire glared, a quick flaring up of orange light in the direction of the shanty.
She struggled then. The two of them held her.
"You can't help him," Mradhon said, his arms locked round her.
"She's hurt," said Haught. "She's bleeding."
They tended her, the two of them. She hardly cared.
"It's him," the Stepson said, looking disdainfully at the human wreck they deposited on the road across the bridge. Rain washed the wounds, dark threads of blood trailing in a wash of water over the skin. The guard toed the informer in the side, elicited a little independent movement of the arm, lit in lightning flashes. "Oh, treat him tenderly," the Stepson said. "Very tenderly. He's valuable. Get a blanket round him."
"We lost the rest," his companion said tautly. There was rage beneath his tone.
The Stepson looked up. A shadow stood there in the lightnings, in the rain, an unlikely cloaked shape, a darkness by the bridge.
When the lightning next flashed it was gone. Fire danced on the water, full of tricks and shadows on this side of the bank. The blaze might have taken all of Downwind, but for the rain. It was dying even now.
Six horsemen thundered across the bridge from Sanctuary to Downwind, securing the road.
"You'd better send more," the garrison officer said. "They're like rats over there, small but a lot of them. You- saw that."
The Stepson fixed the man with a chill, calm eye. "I saw catastrophe. Two of us could have turned the town upside down if that were the object. Perhaps you misunderstood. But I rather doubt it. Six could raze the town. But that wasn't what we wanted, was it?" He looked down at the moaning informer, then collected his companion and walked away.
"Drink," Mradhon said. Moria drank, holding the cup herself this time, and stared blearily at the two men, Mradhon leaning over her, Haught over against the wall. It was decent food they gave her. She wondered where they got the money, dimly, in that vague way she wondered about anything. She was curious why these two kept treating her as they did, when it cost them, or why two men she had never met had proved dependable when those she had known best had not. It confounded her. They never used that language they both spoke, not since that night. Haught had put on freeman's clothing, if only that of Downwind. He had scars. She had seen them, when he dressed. So did Mradhon Vis, but different ones, made with knives.