'Anyt-thing you a-asked m-me.'
'Mor-am.' She stopped before him, held him with her eyes. Her hand that had rested on his shoulder touched the side of his jaw, Stilled the tic, the jerking of muscles, his rapid breathing. Slowly the contorted body straightened to stand tall; the drawn muscles of his face relaxed. She began to move again, and he followed her, turning as she wove spells of compulsion, until she stood before the great bronze mirror in its shroud of carelessly thrown silks. At times in this mirror she cast spells. Now she cast another, and showed him himself, smiled at him the while. 'So you will tell me,' she said, 'anything.'
'What did you do?' he asked. Even the voice was changed. Tears leapt to eyes, to voice. 'What did you do?'
'I took the pain. A small spell. Not difficult for me.' She moved again, so that he must turn to follow her, with dreamlike slowness. 'Tell me - what you know. Tell me who you are. Everything. Jubal will want to know.'
'They caught me, the Stepsons caught me, they made me -'
She felt the lie and sent the pain back, watched the body twist back to its former shape.
'I - t-turned - traitor,' the traitor said, wept, sobbed. 'I s-s-sold them, sold other hawkmasks - to the Stepsons. My sister and I -we had to live, after Jubal lost it all. I mean, how were we going to live? - We didn't know. We had to. I had to. My sister - didn't know.' She had let go the pain and the words kept coming, with the tears. His eyes strayed from her to the mirror. '0 gods -'
'Go on,' she said, ever so softly, for this was truth, she knew. 'What do the Stepsons want? What do you want? What are you prepared to pay?'
'Ge( Moruth. That's what they want. The beggar-lord. And this man - this man of theirs, they think the beggars have got, get him back - safe.'
'These are not trifles.'
'They'll pay - I'm sure - they'll pay.'
She unfolded the note, perused it carefully, holding it before the light. It said much of that. It offered gold. It promised - immunities - at which she smiled, not humorously. 'Why, it mentions you,' she said. 'It says I might lend you back to Jubal. Do you think he would
be amused?'
'No,' he said. There was fear, multiplying fear: she could smell it. It prickled at her nerves.
'But when you carry messages for rogues,' she said, 'you should expect such small jokes.' She folded the note carefully, folded it several times until it was quite small, until she opened her hand, being whimsical, and the paper note was gone.
He watched this, this magician's trick, this cheap comedy of bazaars. It amused her to confound him, to suddenly brighten all the fires 'til the candles gleamed like suns, 'til he flinched and looked as if he would go fleeing for the door.
It would not have yielded. And he did not. He stood still, with his little shred of dignity, his body clenched, the tic working at his face as she let the spell fade.
So this was a man. At least the remnant of one. The remnant of what had almost been one. He was still young. She began to pace round him, back of him, to the scarred left side. He turned the other way to look at her. The tic grew more and more pronounced.
'And what if I could not do what they wish? I have turned their betters down before. You come carrying their messages. Is there nothing - more personal you would want?'
'The p-pain.'
'Oh. That. Yes, I can ease it for a time. If you come back to me. If you keep your bargains.' She stepped closer still, took the marred face between her hands. 'Jubal, on the other hand, would like you the way the beggars left you. He would flay you inch by inch. Your sister -' She brushed her lips across his own, gazed close into his eyes. 'She has been under a certain shadow for your sake. For what you did.'
'Where is she? Ils blast you, whereT
'A place I know. Look at me, go on looking, that's right. That's very good. No pain, none at all. Do you understand - Mor-am, what you have to do?'
'The Stepsons -'
'I know. There's someone watching the house.' She kissed him long and lingeringly, her arms twined behind his neck, smiled into his eyes. 'My friend, a hawkmask's a candle in the wind these days; a hawkmask other hawkmasks hunt - hasn't a chance in the world. The contagion's even gotten to your sister. Her life, you understand. It's very fragile. The Stepsons might take her. Hawkmasks use her only to talk to Stepsons. Right now they're not talking at all. Not to these. Not to stupid men who've thrown away every alliance better men had made. Moruth, too - Moruth the beggar knows your name. And hers. He remembers the fire, and you, and her, and it's a guess where he casts the blame - as if he needed an excuse at any time. What will you pay for my help? What coin do you have, Mor-am?'
'What do you want?'
'Whatever. Whenever. That does change. As you can. Never forget that, hear? They name me vampire. Not quite the case - but very close. And they will tell you so. Does that put you off, Mor-am? Or is there worse?'
He grew brave then and kissed her on the lips.
'0 be very careful,' she said. ' Very careful. There will be times - when I tell you go, you do not question me. Not for your life, Mor-am, not for your soul, such as it is.' Another kiss, lighter than all the rest. 'We shall go do the Stepsons a favour, you and I. We shall go walking - oh, here and there tonight. I need amusement.'
'They'll kill me on the street.'
She smiled, letting him go. 'Not with me, my friend. Not while you're with me.' She turned away, gathering up her cloak, looked back again. 'It's widely said I'm mad. A beast, they call me. Lacking self-control. This is not so. Do you believe me?'
And she laughed when he said nothing. 'That man of theirs -go outside. Tell Dolon's spy to keep to his own affairs tonight. Tell him - tell him maybe.' She dimmed the lights, unwarded the door, a howl of wind and rain. Mor-am's face contorted in fright. He ran out to do as he was told, limping still, but not so much as before. She took back the spelclass="underline" he would be limping in truth when he reached the watcher, would be the old Mor-am, in pain, to convince the Stepsons. And that also amused her.
She shut the door, walked through the small strange house, which at one time seemed to have one room and disclosed others behind clutter - oddments, books, hangings, cloaks, discarded garments, bits of silk or brocade which had taken her fancy and lost it again, for she never wore ornament, only kept it for the pleasure of having it; and the cloaks, the men's cloaks - that was another sort of amusement. Her bare feet trod costly silk strewn on time-smoothed boards, and thick carpet of minuscule silk threads, hand knotted, dyed in rarest opalescent dyes - collected for a fee, provenance forgotten. Had someone plundered the hoard, she might not have cared or missed the theft - or might have cared greatly, depending on her mood. Material comfort meant little to her. Only satiation - when the need was on her. And lately - lately that need had quickened in a different way. One had affronted her. She had, in the beginning, dismissed the matter, clinging to her indolence, but it gnawed at her. She had thought upon this thing, as one will think on an affront long after the moment, turning it from one side to the other to discover the motive of it, and she had discovered not malice, not anger, but insouciance, even humour on the part of the perpetrator, this witch, this northron demigoddess, be she what she was. The affront lay there a good long while, gnawing at the laissez-faire on which her peace was founded - for, without that habit of laziness, she hungered more often; and that hunger led to tragedies.
Such a thing had happened because she was lazy, because there were costs of power she had never wished to pay. This witch slaughtered children, plucking them from her hands; and dropped the matter at her door. This witch went her way, indifferent, having fouled her nest, her eyes set on further ambitions, in professional disregard. This was worth, after thought, a certain anger; and anger eroded itself a place and grew. She ought, Ischade thought, to thank the Nisi witch for this discovery, that there were other appetites, and one great one which could assuage that moon-driven hunger that had held her, so, so long.