That skill turned inward, explored blanks, explored tracks he had no wish for it to follow.
She, she, she, it kept saying, and when it did it traveled round the edges of a darkness more than dark to the eyes; womb-dark, unknowable-dark, warm dark and comfortable and full of too many gaps. Far too many gaps. He had found a certain peace. Courted it. Congratulated himself that he escaped. That perpetual escape had become meat and drink to him; the stuff of his self-esteem.
Think, Stepson. Why can't you think about it?
-Horse wandering in the morning, pilfering apples, rider infant-helpless by dawn- (He winced at the image. Is this a sane man?)
-Kadakithis dying, conveniently dead on the marble floor, the tread of military boots brisk in the halls of the palace-
Good, Tempus would say, finding one of his men had anticipated him; the shadow play came into sunlight, himself a hero, not the creature of the little room upstairs, but a man who did the wide thing, the right thing, took the chance-
He shivered, there in the dark. There was the taste of blood in his mouth. He leaned there against the wall, jolted as the bay took another kick to let him know its opinion of this dark stable.
He suspected. He suspected himself-is this a sane man?
He had to go-there. To the river. To find out. Not by dark, not during her hour but by his; by the daylight, when he might have his wits about him.
The river house huddled small and unlikely-looking in the tangle of brush that ran the White Foal's edge on town-side. If you asked a dozen people were there trees in Sanctuary's lower end they would say no, forgetting these. If you asked were there houses hereabouts, they would say no, forgetting such small places as this one with its iron fence and its obscuring hedge. This one was, well, abandoned. There were often lights. Once or twice there had been fire conspicuous disturbance. But the prudent did not notice such things. The prudent kept to their own districts, and Strat, having ridden past the several checkpoints down mostly deserted streets, rode not oblivious to signs now; thinking, and taking mental notes as he tethered the bay horse out in front of this house that few saw.
He shoved the rusty gate aside and walked up the overgrown flags to the little porch. The door opened before he knocked (and before anyone on the other side could have reached it), which failed to surprise him. Musky perfume wafted out. He walked in, in the dim light that shone through a milky window-Ischade was not tidy except in her person.
"Ischade?" he called out.
That she would not be at home-that had occurred to him; but he had, in his haste and his urgency, shoved that possibility aside. There was not that much of day left. The sun was headed down over the White Foal, over the sprawl of Downwind buildings.
"Ischade?"
There were unpleasant things to meet hereabouts. She had enemies. She had allies who were not his friends.
A curtain whispered. He blinked at the black-clad figure who walked forward to meet him. She was always so much smaller than he remembered. She towered in his memory. But the eyes, always the eyes-
He evaded them, walked deliberately aside and poured him and her a drink from the pitcher that sat on the low table. Candles brightened. He was accustomed to this. Accustomed too, to the light step that stole up behind him-no one walked up behind him; it was a tic he had. But Ischade did it and he let her; and she knew. Knew that no one touched him from behind, that it was one of their little games, that he let her do that. It made a little frisson of horror. Like other games they played. Soft hands came up his back, rested on his shoulders.
He turned round with both wine cups and she took hers and a kiss, lingering slow.
They did not always go straight to bed. Tonight he took the chair in front of the fire; she settled half beside him and half into his lap, a comfortable armful, all whisper of cloth and yielding curves and smell of rich musk and good wine. She sipped her wine and set it down on the sidetable. Sometimes at such moments she smiled. This time she gazed at him in a way he knew was dangerous. He had not come tonight to look into those dark eyes and forget his own name. He felt a cold the wine could not reach, and felt for the first time that life or death might be equally balanced in her desires.
Ischade treading the aisles of the barracks, surveying murder-satisfied. Sated. It was not death that appealed to her. It was these deaths.
"You all right?" he asked of the woman staring so close into his eyes. "Ischade, are you all right tonight?"
Blink. He heard his pulse. Hers. The world hung suspended and day or night made no difference. He cleared his throat or tried to.
"You think I better get out of here?"
She shifted her position and rested her arms on his shoulders, joined her hands behind his head. Still silent.
"I want to ask you," he said, trying, in the near gaze of her eyes, the soft weight of her against his side. "-want to ask you-" That wasn't working. He blinked, breaking the spell, and took his life in his hands, grinned in the face of her darkness and sobered up and kissed her. His best style. He could get things out of a body one way; he had, now and again, used pleasanter persuasions. He was not particularly proud of it, no more than the other. It was all part of his skill-knowing a lie from a scrap of truth, and following a lead. He had one. Truth was in her silence tonight.
"You want something," he said, "you've always wanted something-"
She laughed, and he caught her hands down. Hard.
"What can I do," he asked, "what is it you want me to do?" No one held onto Ischade. He sensed that in the darkening of her eyes, in the sudden dimming of the room. He let go. "Ischade. Ischade." Trying to keep his focus. And hers. Right now he ought to get up and head for the door and he knew it; but it was infinitely easier to sit where he was; and very hard to think of what he had been trying to think of, like the memory gaps, like the things they did/he thought they did in that bed sprawled with silks. "You've got Stilcho, got Janni, got me-is it coincidence, Ischade? Maybe I could help you more if I was awake when you talked to me-" Or is it information you go for? "Maybe-our aims and yours aren't that far apart. Self-interest. Weren't you talking about self interest? What's yours, really? And I'll tell you mine."
Arms tightened behind his head. She shifted forward and now there was nothing in all the room but her eyes, nothing in all the world but the pulse in his veins. "You think hard," she said. "You go on thinking, thinking's a counterspell, you've come here all armed with thinking, and yet it's such a heavy load-aren't you tired, Strat, don't you get tired, bearing all the weight for fools, being always in the shadow, isn't it worth it, once, to be what you are? Let's go to bed."
"What's going on in town?" He got the question out. It wandered out, slurred and half-crazed and half-independent of his wits. "What have you got your hand into, Ischade? What game are you using us for-"
"Bed," she whispered. "You afraid, Strat? You never run from what scares you. You don't know how."
4
"I don't know," Stilcho said, limping along through the streets in Haught's company. Haught took long strides and the dead Stepson made what speed he could, panting. A waterskin sloshed in time to his steps. "I don't know how to make contact with him-he's here, that's all-"
"If he's dead," Haught said, "I'd think you had an edge. I don't think you're trying."