Janni stopped at least. Stood there on the path, silent, solid- and live looking, give or take the blood that smeared his face. Janni wanted badly to be back among the living, for reasons not all of which were savory. Love was one. And it was never a savory kind of love, the dead for the living. Janni had not learned that.
Stilcho had. In that improbably small house he knew himself supplanted by the living-perhaps fatally.
"You're Rankene," Janni said. "You somehow forget that, boy?"
"I don't forget a thing. Look at me and tell me what I can forget. Look what happened to us for your sake, while you were off a-heroing and left us this sinkhole. And you come home with thanks, do you? Straton slaughters my barracksmates for failing your precious purity and your Niko, that paragon of virtue, falls straight into bed with the Nisi witch-"
"Lie."
"The witch who killed you, man. Where's his virtue? Sent to hell with the likes of me and you? I don't bloody care!"
Ischade half-heard the whisperings of her ghosts outside the house, the true and the half-dead; and ignored them for the living inside-for the warm and living and far more attractive person of the third Stepson, whose name was Straton. He gazed at her, his head on her silken pillow, in her silk-strewn bed-chief interrogator, chief torturer, when the Stepsons had to apply that art-soldier by preference. He was a big man, a moodish man of wry humors and the most delicate skills with a body (one could guess where acquired), and he would survive this night too-she was determined he should, and she gazed back at him in the dim light of golden candles, in the eclectic clutter of her private alcove-strewn spiderlike with bright silks, with the spoils of other men, other victims of her peculiar curse.
"Why," he asked (Straton was always full of questions), "why can't you get rid of this-curse of yours?"
"Because-" She laid a cautioning finger on his chin, and planted a kiss after it, "because. If I told you that you'd not rest; you'd be a great fool all for my sake. And that would be the end of you."
"Ranke's ending. What have I got? Maybe I'd rather be a fool. Maybe I can't help but be one." A tiny frown-line knit his brow. He stared into her eyes. "How many men are this lucky this long?"
"None," she whispered, low as the rustle of wind in the brush, as the ghost voices outside. "None for long. So far. Hush. Would you love me if there were no danger? If I were safe you'd leave me. The same way you left Ranke. The same way you've stayed in Sanctuary. The same way you ride the streets on that great bay horse of yours that too many know-it's death you court, Strat. Indeed it is. I'm only a symptom."
"You mean to add me to your collection, dammit; like Stilcho, like Janni-"
"I mean to keep you alive, dammit, for my reasons." The dammit was mockery. Her curses were real, and deadly. She touched his temple, where a small scar was, where the hair was growing thin. "You're no boy, no fool, I won't have you become one at this stage of your life. Listen to me and I'll tell you things-"
Stilcho shivered there in the dark against the gate, his back to the river-he still could shiver, though his flesh was less warm than formerly. And having been rash with Janni he passed further bounds of good sense. He stared at the ghost and saw that Janni was not his usual furious self. There was something diminished about the ghost. And desperate. As if his arguments had told. "So you want my help," he said to Janni, "to get Niko back. You and he can go to hell together for what I care. Ask Her, why don't you?"
"I'm asking you." The ghost wavered and resumed solid shape. "You were one of the best of the ones we recruited. You were one-who'd have been one of us, after. After the war. Where were those precious lads when you wanted help out on that bridge, in that sty Downwind while the Ilsigi took you apart? Who helped you? The Ilsigi-loving dogs Strat cleaned out? You're Rankan."
"Half. Half, you bloody prig, and not good enough for you till you were short of help. No, there's a damn lot I don't forget. You left us as bloody meat-Ran out on us, left us to hold this hell-hole, dammit, you knew the Nisi would hit at your underbelly, come in here where Ranke's hold's weakest. Not with swords, no; with witchery and money, the sort of thing the Nisibisi are long on and this gods-forsaken pit of a town is apt for-"
"And corruption inside, inside the corps. Dammit, how quick did you forget? You love the Wrigglie bastards that did that to you? You defend your Wrigglie-loving barracksmates? Stilcho," Janni's face wavered in and out of solidity. "Stilcho your barracksmates damn well left you on that bridge. They left you to die slow. / know about dying slow, Stilcho; believe me that I know. And you're right about the Nisibisi outflanking us-everlasting right. But what else could we do? Lose it up north? The Band did what they could. Men coming back from that-maybe maybe they had to save what of their honor they could here in Sanctuary. And you know what your barracks-mates were into, you know what the Band found when they walked in-It was only the dregs survived. Some on the take from the Wrigglies; some, dammit, from the Nisibisi themselves; the rest who dodged every duty they could-you know 'em, doing their patrols in the wineshops and the whorehouses while you stood out on that bridge while the damn rabble cut you to-"
"Let it go," Stilcho hissed; and in the little house beyond Janni's insubstantial body-gods, the lights dimmed, Stilcho imagined the harsh breathing, bodies twined, knew another of them was in the toils and irretrievable; and was in a hell of jealousy. "We left all of that. You've left it further than I have. You ought to learn that-"
"-it's in my interest," Ischade whispered against Straton's ear. "Whatever else you trust in this world, believe in self-interest; and my self-interest is this city; and against my self-interest is Roxane of Nisibis. Hostilities were her choice-far from mine. I never like noise. I never like attention-"
"Don't you."
She laughed without mirth, ignored his moving hands, took his face between hers and stared until his eyes grew quiet and deep and hazy. "Listen to me, Strat."
"Spells, you damned witch."
"Not while you can still curse me. I'm telling you a truth."
"Half our nights are dreams." He blinked, shook his head, blinked again. "Dammit-"
"There's no street in Sanctuary I don't walk, there's no door and no gate I can't pass, no secret I can't hear. I gather things. I bundle them together and put them in your hands. I have no luck of my own. I give it away. I've left nobleborn dead in the gutter-oh, yes, and gathered up a slave and made him a lord-" She bent and kissed, lightly, gently, teased the thinning hair at his temple. "You feel a rumbling of change in the world and you rush to court your death. But change isn't death. Change is chance. In chance a man can rise as well as fall. Name me your enemies. Name me your dreams, Straton-Stepson, and I'll show you the way to them."
He said nothing, but stared at her in that dim lost way.
"No ambition?" Ischade asked. "I think you have- more ambition than I. You belong in the sun; and I can't bear that kind of light-Oh, not factually-" She laid a finger on his lips. He was always quick with his questions on that score, always mistook her. "It's questions I can't bear. It's notice. I find my associates in the dark places: the unmissable; the directly violent. I scour the streets. But you belong in the sunlight. You were made for leading men. Listen to me and think of this-are you a greater fool than Kadakithis?"