He stared at them, as dumbfounded by the outrageous question as by the simple sight of them-the armed and radiant woman, fierce-eyed and divinely talclass="underline" the ragged skinny beggar girl who somehow shone through her grime: and the delicate, deer-slim, bitter-eyed brown dog wearing a look such as he had seen on Stepsons about to avenge a lost partner. "Haught," he said, "go inquire."
"No need," said a fourth voice behind him in the doorway's darkness: a voice soft and sleepy and dangerous. "Haught, Stilcho, where are your manners? Let the ladies in. Then be off for a while. Straton, perhaps you'll excuse us. They're only goddesses, I can handle them."
The men cleared out of the doorway one by one as the three climbed the stair. First came the dog with her lip curled, showing a fang or two; then the gray eyed spear-bearer, looking around her with the cool unnoticing scorn of a great lady preparing to do some weighty business in a sty. Last came the beggar, at whom Straton looked with relaxed contempt. "Curb that," he said, glancing at Tyr, then back at Mriga, in calmest threat.
Mriga eyed him. "The bay misses you," she said, low-voiced, and went on past, into the dark.
She ignored the hating look he threw into her back like a knife as he turned away. If her plan worked, vengeance would not be necessary. And she was generally not going to be a vengeful goddess. But in Straton's case, just this once, she would make an exception.
Ischade's downstairs living room was much bigger than it should have been, considering the outside dimensions of the house. It was a mad scattering of rich stuffs in a hundred colors, silks and furs thrown carelessly over furniture, piled in corners. Here were man's clothes, a worn campaigning cloak, muddy boots, sitting on ivory silk to keep them off the hardwood floor; over there was a sumptuous cloak of night-red velvet scorching gently where it lay half in the hearth, half out of it, wholly unnoticed by the hostess.
Ischade was courteous. She poured wine for her guests, and set down a bowl of water and another of neatly chopped meat for Tyr. Once they were settled, she looked at them out of those dark eyes of hers and waited. To mortal eyes she would have seemed deadly enough, even without the flush of interrupted lovemaking in her face. But Mriga looked at her and simply said, "We need your help."
"Destroying my property, and my wards, and upsetting my servants," said Ischade, "strikes me as a poor way to go about getting it."
Siveni laid her spear aside. "Your wards and your gate are back," she said, "and as for your servants ... they're a bit slow. One would think that a person of your ... talents ... might be better served."
Ischade smiled, that look that Mriga knew was dreaded upwind and down, in high houses and alleys and gutters. "Flattery?" she said. "Do goddesses stoop to such? Then you need me indeed. Well enough." She sipped from her own goblet, regarding them over the edge; a long look of dark eyes with a glint of firelight in them, and a glint of something else: mockery, interest, calculation. Siveni scowled and began to reach for her spear again. Mriga stopped her with a glance.
"Now is it goddesses, truly?" Ischade said, lowering the cup. "Or 'goddess' in the singular? Gray-Eyes, if I remember rightly, was never a twofold deity."
"Until now," Mriga said. "Madam, you had some small part in what happened. May I remind you? A night not too long ago, about midnight, you came across a man digging mandrake-"
"Harran the barber. Indeed."
"I got caught in the spelling. It bound all three of us together in divinity for a while. But one of the three is missing. Harran is dead."
Those dark eyes looked over the edge of the cup again. "I had thought he escaped the ... unpleasantness ... at the barracks. At least there was no sign of him among the slain."
"Last night," Siveni said, and the look she turned on Ischade was cruel. "Your lover did it."
Tyr growled.
"My apologies," said Ischade. "But how cross fate is ... that your business, whatever it is, brings you to deal with me ... and precludes your vengeance against anyone under my roof." She sipped her wine for a moment. "Frustration is such a mortal sort of problem, though. I must say you're handling it well."
Mriga frowned. The woman was unbearable ... but had to be borne, and knew it. There was no way to force her to help them. "I have some experience with mortality," Mriga said. "Let's to business, madam. I want to see what kind of payment you would require for a certain service."
One of those dark brows lifted in gentle scorn. "The highest possible, always. But the service has to be one I wish to render ... and the coin of payment must be such as will please me. I have my own priorities, you see. But you haven't told me clearly what the service is."
"We want to go to hell," Siveni said.
Ischade smiled, tastefully restraining herself from the several obvious replies. "It's easily enough done," she said. "Those gates stand open night and day, to one who knows their secrets. But retracing your steps, finding your way to the light again ... there's work, there's a job indeed. And more of a job than usual for you two." She looked over at Siveni. "You've never been mortal at all; you can't die. And though you've had experience at being mortal, you apparently haven't died yet. And only the dead walk in hell."
Mriga's omniscience spoke in her mind's ear. "Gods have gone there before," she said. "It's not as if it's never been done."
"Some gods," Siveni said, "have gone and not come back." She looked at Mriga in warning, silently reminding her of the daughter of Dene Blackrobe, merry Sostreia: once maiden goddess of the spring, and now the queen and bride of hell, awful and nameless.
"Yes," Ischade said, "there is always some uncertainty about the travels of gods in those regions." Yet her eyes were inward-turned, musing; and a tick of time later, when they focused on Mriga again, the goddess knew she had won. There was interest there, and the hope that something would happen to relieve the terrible tedium that assails the powerful. The interest hid behind Ischade's languid pose the way Stilcho's old handsomeness haunted his scars.
"A pretty problem," she said, musing out loud now. "Mortal souls I could simply send there-a knife would be sorcery enough for that-and then recall. Though the bodies would still be dead. But that won't work for you two; your structure's the problem. Gods' souls enclose and include the body, instead of the other way around. Killing the bodies won't work. Killing a soul ... is a contradiction in terms: impossible." She sighed a little. "A pity, sometimes; this place has been getting crowded of late."
Then firelight stirred and glittered in Ischade's eyes as for a moment they became wider. "Yet I might reduce that crowding, at least temporarily ..."
Siveni's eyes glittered too. "You're going to use the ghosts," she said. "You're going to borrow their mortality."
"Why, you're a quick pupil indeed," Ischade said, all velvet mockery. "Not their mortality exactly. But their fatality ... their deadness. One need not die to go to hell. One need only have died. I can think of ways to borrow that. And then hell will have two more inmates for the night."