"What?" she asked; and Haught put his hands up to her face and brushed the tangled hair back, gently, like a lover. "What?" Her lips trembled.
He bent and kissed them, softly, and the touch was both gentle and chilling. He gazed closely into her eyes.
Was it possible-Moria stood quite transfixed-possible that Haught still loved her? It was a fool's thought. She only had to remember what she was and look at what he had become and know the answer to that. She recovered her wits and stepped back with a small push of her hands. The robe gaped and she cared nothing for that, small and dumpy and wine-sotted woman who had given away all advantage.
"Where is he? Where's my brother?"
"Oh, about the streets. Going those places he can go." He reached into his shirt and drew out a thing that never could have come from the lower town. "Here." The red rose showed a little rumpling. It glistened and glowed then, dewed with the illusion of freshness. "I gathered it for you."
"From Her garden?"
"The bushes can bloom-even in winter. With a little urging. She doesn't care. She cares for very little. You might bloom too, Moria. You only want a little tending."
"Gods-" Her teeth chattered. She shook sense back into her head and looked up at him. At the man she had once known and no longer did, with his fine (foreign) speech. She held the rose in her hand and a thorn brought blood. "Get me out of here. Haught, get me out."
"No. That's not the game, Moria." His hands held her face, straightened her hair, smoothed her cheeks. "There, now, you can be beautiful." And there was a softer feel to her face and to his hands, cool, like the winter rose. "You can. You can be anything you want to be. Your brother has his uses. But he's weak. You never were. He's a fool. You were never that either."
"If I'm so smart why am I here? Why am I locked in this place with gold I can't even steal? Why do I take orders from a-"
His finger touched her lips but the silence was hers, sudden and prudent. She caught the shadow in his eyes, that perpetually evaded, darted, shifted in a slave's nowhere privacy-he had turned that apparent shyness to furtive purpose. Or had always had it.
"She's calling in the debt," she said, "isn't She?"
"Trust me," Haught said. His finger wandered down her cheek to her throat. "There are few women who attract me. Certainly I don't share her bed. Calling in the debt, yes. And when the world changes, you'll wear satins and eat on gold-"
"Gods, Shalpa and Ils de-"
Her voice changed in her throat, lost its harshness and became Rankene-smooth, betraying her. She stopped and spat. "My gods!" (But it came out pure and clear.)
"My rose has hurt your hand." Haught gathered her fingers to his lips and kissed the thorn-sting, and Moria, who had faced street gangs dagger in hand and sliced respect into more than one Downwind bully, stood and trembled at that touch.
Trembled more when he turned her toward the mirror and she saw the touseled, dark-haired woman who blinked back at her in shock. Rage flooded through her. He made her this. Witchery like the rose. She turned on him with fury in her eyes. "I'm not your toy, dam-
mit!"
(But the voice would not roughen and the accent was not Ilsigi.)
"You're the way I always saw you."
"Damn you!"
"And the way She wants you. Leave Mor-am to the streets. He has his uses. Yours are uptown. Haven't you understood what you're for?"
"I'm not your damn whore!"
He flinched. "Have I ever asked that? No. I'll tell you what you're to do. But I wouldn't use that word. I truly wouldn't, Moria, in Her hearing."
More messengers sped during the day. One great one lifted on black wings and scattered a flock of lesser on his way from the river-house roof. The little ones went a dozen ways.
And Ischade (she did sleep, now and again, but rarely of late) wrapped herself in a dusky blue cloak unlike her nighttime black and gathered up certain other things she wanted.
"Stilcho," she said; and having no answer, thrust aside the curtains that hid the Stepson's small room.
There was no one there. "Stilcho!" She sent her mind out in a light scouring of the immediate vicinity; and raised a thin, wan response.
She opened the door and took a look out back: and found him there, a shivering knot of cloak by the rose-bush.
"Stilcho!"
There was refuge of a sort in the house, one of half a dozen hidey-holes they maintained within the black zone for operations this far from base. And Strat paid listless attention to the bay and saw it strawed and fed and watered in the shanty-stable; and climbed the dirty stairs of the deserted place and pulled the vent-chain that let a little light through the shutters.
There was a little food here. A little wine. A waterpot and a few other odds and ends. He stumped about in the dusty silence and knew that he was safe from hearing: below was only the stable, and to either side were warehouses and the owners of them well-heeled and Rankene, uptown.
He had his breakfast. He washed. He found himself trapped in one of those days that had gotten common enough lately, with horror on either end and sheer boredom in the middle. Nowhere presently to go. Nothing presently to do, because it was all waiting, waiting, waiting. Something would break and the Srd's scattered vigilance would turn up something, but in the meanwhile commerce went on and down by the harbor hammering went on, sound echoing off distant walls.
Building going on while the world ended.
He sat there and chewed a tasteless bit of yesterday's bread and drank a cup of wine and most of what his mind wanted to go to was Her, and the river and the dark. Maybe he could have found something to do with himself, found some use for himself or some plan to pursue-but he had a deep and abiding conviction that there was nothing, presently, worth the doing. And that soon all hell would break.
He grew prophetic since he had shared the witch's bed. Niko had gone down in such a trap and even that failed to alarm him, because he knew why, and accepted. He sat listlessly and heard his heart beat, thump, thump, like the hammer-blows and the thud of cartwheels on cobbles and the whole pulse of the city.
My city. Walls behind which the Empire could last if there were adjustments here.
More than one emperor of Ranke had risen (aye, and come to grief) at the will of the soldiery.
He could snatch up the sword Kadakithis left untouched. Be ready when Tempus returned.
Shock Crit to hell, he would. Hello, Crit. Meet the new emperor. Me.
He shivered. It was crazy. He tried to think back to the night and it was full of dark gaps. Memory of things he had done with Ischade that had all the improbability of efreets and krrf-dreams.
They came and went. Her face did. Her mouth hovered close and spoke words and he could read lips, but he could not read that, as if she spoke some language he knew and did not know when he was awake, or his brain would not let him put the sounds together.
And no man had nights like that, no one could, and have another and another and pay no penalties.
There were sore places; there were marks-(witch-marks?) bites and scratches that confirmed part of what he remembered; could a man's soul leak out through such little wounds?
A spider had spun an elaborate web over by the light-vent, across the slats. He found it uncomfortably ominous. He went and flung it down and crushed the spider under his heel; and felt a chill greater than the killing in the barracks had given him.
"Stilcho." It took an expenditure of energy to bring him back. Ischade put her hands on the Stepson and searched deep down the long threads that led where he had gone; and pulled, and rewove, and brought him up again, there on the cold ground beneath the scraggly roses and the brush. "Stilcho. Fool. Come up and let go."