From ahead came the sound of drunken song and a burst of laughter. Torchlight danced around the corner followed by the singers, a group of mercenaries emboldened by numbers to make the pilgrimage to the ale casks of the Vulgar Unicorn.
As the light reached them, the shapes that had followed Lalo slipped back into alleys and doorways, and Lalo himself edged beneath the overhang of a tenement until the soldiers had gone by. He had almost reached Slippery Street now, and the cul-de-sac which for twenty years had been his home.
Now, at last, Lalo allowed himself to hasten, for in all the ups and downs of his fortunes there had been one constant, and that was the knowledge that he had a home, and that Gilla waited for him there.
The third step of the staircase squeaked, as did the seventh and the eighth. When Lalo had become fashionable and had, for the first time in his life, had money, he and Gilla had bought the building in which they lived and repaired, among other things, the staircase. But the stairs still squeaked, and Lalo, hearing the lullaby Gilla was singing to their youngest child halt a moment, knew that she had heard him coming home.
Breathing a little faster than he would have liked after the climb, he opened the door.
"You're home early!" The floor quivered beneath her steps as Gilla came through the door of what had once been the adjoining apartment. Lalo saw beyond her the curly head of their youngest, whom they still called the baby even though he was now nearly two years old, and the outstretched arm of an older child.
"Is everything all right?" Lalo unfastened his cloak and hung it on the peg.
"It was only a nightmare-" softly she closed the door. "And what about you? I was sure you would be at the Palace all night, imbibing the wine of paradise with all the great ones and their gilded ladies." The carved chair groaned faintly as she sat down and lifted her massive arms to pat the elaborate curls and coils of her hair.
"There weren't any ladies-" tactfully he passed over the dancing girls, "just an unlikely mixture of military and priests and government men, like a stew from the Bazaar!"
She set her elbow on the table and rested her head on her hand. "If it was such a bore why did you stay so long? Don't tell me they wouldn't let you go?" Her eyes narrowed and he flushed a little beneath the acuity of her gaze. Deliberately he began to unhook his vest, waiting for her to speak again.
"Something happened-" she said then. "Something's troubling you."
He draped his vest across another chair and sat down in it with a sigh.
"Gilla, what would you say to the idea of leaving Sanctuary?" Beyond her he could see his first study for the picture of Sabellia which graced the great Temple now. Gilla had been his model, and for a moment he saw a double image of woman and Goddess, and her bulk took on a monumental dignity.
She put down her arm and sat up straight. "Now, when we are secure at last?"
"How secure can anyone be, here?" He hunched forward, running stubby craftsman's fingers through his thinning hair. Then he told her how they had praised his picture, and what the future Lord Raximander had offered him.
"Ranke!" she exclaimed when he had finished. "Clean streets and quiet nights! But what would I do there? All the fine ladies would laugh at me...." For a moment she looked curiously vulnerable, despite her size. Then her eyes met his. "But you said he wanted a portrait-Lalo, you can't do that-you'll end up in the Imperial dungeons, not the court!"
"Even there? Surely there must be some honest men and virtuous women at the heart of the Empire!" Lalo said wistfully.
"Will you never grow up? We are doing very well as we are-you have a position, people like what you do, and the children will be well-apprenticed and married when the time comes. And now you want to go chase some other dream? Why can't you make up your mind?"
He put his hands over his aching eyes and shook his head. If only he knew-there was something missing in him, something that he sought in each new thing he tried to do ... What use has it been to have my heart's desire? he thought, if I myself am still the same?
After a little he heard the chair scrape and felt her coming to him, and sighed again, more deeply, as the strength and softness of her arms enclosed him. She had scented her skin with oil of sandalwood, and he could feel the opulence of her body through the thin silk of the night-robe she wore.
It changed nothing, but in her arms he could forget his perplexities for at least a little while. Gilla kissed him on his bald spot and drew away, and with a sense of having made a truce with fate he followed her into the other room.
"Thieves!"
Lalo jerked upright, shocked from sleep by Gilla's scream and the crash that had shaken the room. Was it morning? But everything was still dark! He rubbed his eyes, still half-drugged by dreams of marble terraces and applause.
Shadows moved and feet that no longer troubled to be stealthy thudded on the floor... hard hands grasped Lalo's shoulders and he cried out. Then something hit the side of his head and he sagged against the hard hands that prisoned him.
"Murderers! Assassins!"
His head still ringing, Lalo recognized Gilla in the voice, and in the dark bulk that heaved upward from the bed to fling another assailant against the wall. Water spattered his cheek and he smelt roses as the vase that had stood on the bedside table flew past him and shattered against someone's skull. Men caromed into each other swearing as Gilla groped forward. There was no sound from their neighbors-he had not really expected it-they would ask their questions when morning came.
"In Vashanka's name, somebody silence the sow!" In the half-light a drawn sword gleamed dimly.
"No!" he croaked, gasped in air and cried out, "Gilla, stop fighting-there are too many-Gilla, please!"
There was a final convulsion, then silence. Flint rasped steel and a little light sparked into life. Gilla lay sprawled like a fallen monument. For a moment Lalo felt as if a great hand had closed on his chest. Then there was movement in the tangle of limbs. Gilla rolled over and levered herself to her feet without spending a glance on the man who had cushioned her fall.
"Savankala save me, she's squashed me flat . . . Sir, help me-don't leave me here...."
Sir? But the man on the floor was a Hell-Hound-Lalo recognized him now.
"I don't understand..."he said aloud, and as he turned the light was quenched and he blinked at darkness again.
"Carry him," said a deep voice. "And you, woman, be still if you want to see him whole again."
Sick from the blow and aching from rough handling, Lalo did not resist as they shoved his sandals onto his feet and thrust an old smock over his head and marched him along the empty streets back to the Palace. But instead of rounding the outer wall to the dungeons, as Lalo had dismally expected, they hustled him through the Palace Gate and along the side of the building and down a little staircase to the basement.
Then, still without a word of explanation, he was thrust into a dank hole smelling of dry rot and full of things to stumble over to shiver, and wonder why they had brought him here, and gnaw his paint-stained fingers while he waited for dawn ...
"Wake up, you Wrigglie scum? The Lord wants to talk to you-"
Lalo surfaced, groaning, from a dream in which he had been taken prisoner and dragged through the night until... Something hit him hard in the ribs and he opened his eyes.
It was morning, and it had not been a dream. He saw flaking white-washed walls, and splintered crates and furniture heaped on the bare earth of the floor. It was not a prison then. A little pallid light filtered down to him through one barred window set high in the wall.