And with scalding curses at them both, Moria began getting dressed, calling on them to wait, swearing impotence on them both in Downwind patois, in terms even the garrison had lacked.
'Stay here,' he said, 'little fool; you want to save your neck? Stay out of this.'
He said it because somewhere deep inside he understood a difference between this woman and the other, which he had never fully seen, that Moria with her thin sharp knife was on his side and Haught's because they were fools themselves, and three fools seemed better odds.
'Rot you,' Moria said, and when he took his muddy cloak and headed for the door, when Haught overtook him in the alley, Mradhon heard her panting after, still cursing.
He gave her no help, no sign that he heard. The rain had abated, sunk to a steady drizzle, a dripping off the eaves, a river down the cobbled alley, which sluiced filth along towards the sewers and so towards the bay where the foreign ships rode, insanity to heap upon the other insanities that life was here, where the likes of Ischade prowled.
If he could have loved, he thought, if he could have loved anything, Moria, Haught, known a friend outside himself, he might have made that a charm against what drew him now. But that had gone from him. There was only Ischade's cold face, cold purposes, cold needs: he could not even regret that Moria and Haught were with him: he felt safe now only because she had summoned them together, and not called him alone, not alone into that house. And he was ashamed.
Moria came up on his left hand, Haught on his right, and so they took that street under the eaves of the Unicorn and passed on by its light, by its shuttered, furtive safety that did not ask what prowled the streets outside.
'Where?' Dolon asked, at his desk, the sodden watcher standing dripping on the floor before him. 'Where has he gotten to?'
'I don't know,' the would-be Stepson said: Erato, his partner, was still out. He stood with his hands behind him, head bowed. 'He -Just said he had a message to take, to carry for her. He said her answer was maybe. I take it she wasn't sure she could do anything.'
'You take it. You take it. And where did they go, then? Where's your left-hand man? Where's Stilcho? Where's our informer?'
'I -' The Stepson stared off somewhere vague, his face contracted as if at something that just escaped his wits.
'Why didn't you do something?'
'I don't know,' the Stepson said in the faintest, most puzzled of voices. 'I don't know.'
Dolon stared at the man and felt the flesh crawling on his nape. 'We're being used,' he said. 'Something's out of joint. Wake up, man. Hear me? Get yourself a dozen men and get out there on the streets. Now. I want a watch on that bridge not a guard, a watch. I want that woman found. I want Mor-am watched. Finesse, hear me? It's not a random thing we're dealing with. / want Stilcho back. I don't care what it takes'
The Stepson left in all due haste. Dolon leaned head on hands, staring at the map that showed the Maze, the streets leading to the bridge. It was not the only thing on his desk. Death squads. A murder uptown. Factions were armed. The beggars were on the streets. And somehow every contact had dried up, frozen solid.
He saw things slipping. He called in others, gave them orders, sent them to apply force where it might loosen tongues.
'Make examples,' he said.
The streets gave way to one naked rim along the White Foal shore, an openness that faced the rare lights of Downwind, across the White Foal's rain-swollen flood. The black water had risen far up on the pilings of the bridge and gnawed away at the rock-faced banks, trying at this winding to break its confinement and take the buildings down, this ordinarily sluggish stream. Tonight it was another, noisier river, a shape-changer, full of violence; and Mradhon Vis moved carefully along its edge, in this soundless darkness of deafening sound, in the lead because of the three of them, he was most reckless and perhaps the most afraid.
So they came up in the place he had aimed for, in the underpinnings of the bridge on the Mazeward side; in this deepest dark. But a star glimmered here like swampfire, and above it was a pale, hooded face.
He felt one of his two companions set a warning hand on his arm. He kept walking all the same, watching his footing on this treacherous ground. He could look away from that face, or look back again, and a strange peace came on him, facing this creature who was the centre of all his fears. No more running. No more evasion. There was a certain security in loss. He stopped, took an easy stance, there above the flood.
'What's the job?' he asked, as if there had never been an interlude. The light brightened fitfully, in the witch's outheld hand.
'Mor-am,' she said. A shadow moved from among the pilings to stand by her. Light fell on a ruined, still-familiar face.
'0 gods,' Mradhon heard beside him, Moria lunged and he caught her arm. Hers was hard and tense; she twisted like a cat, but he held on.
'Moria,' her twin said, no longer twin, 'for Ils' sake listen -'
She stopped fighting then. Perhaps it was the face, which was vastly, horribly changed. Perhaps it was Haught, who moved in the way of her knifehand, making himself the barrier, too careless of his life. Haught was a madman. And he could win what no one else could. Moria stood still, still heaving for breath, while Mor-am stood still at Ischade's side.
'See what love is worth,' Ischade said, smiling without love at all. 'And loyalty, of course.' She walked a pace nearer, on the slanted stones. 'Mor-am's loyalty, now - it's to himself, his own interests; he knows.'
'Don't,' Mor-am said, with more earnestness than ever Mradhon had heard from the hardnosed, streetwise seller of his friends; for a moment the face seemed twisted, the body diminished, then straightened again - a trick of the light, perhaps, but in the same moment Moria's arm went limp and listless in his hand.
'You'd live well,' Ischade said in her quiet voice, an intimate tone which yet rose above the river-sound. 'I reward - loyalty.'
'With whatT Mradhon asked.
She favoured Mradhon with a long, slow stare, ophidian and, at this moment, amused.
'Gold. Fine wines. Your life and comfort. Follow me - across the bridge. I need four brave souls.'
'What for? To do what for you?'
'Why, to save a life,' she said, 'maybe. The bumed house. I'm sure you know it. Meet me there.'
The light went, the shadow rippled, and in the half-dark between the pilings and the flagstone bank, one shadow deserted them. The second started then to follow. 'TTie patrols -' he said to the dark, but she was gone then. Mor-am stopped, abandoned, his voice swallowed by the river-sound. He turned hastily, facing them.
'Moria -1 had a reason.'
'Where have you been?' The knife was still in Moria's hand. Mradhon remembered and took her by the sleeve.
'Don't,' Mradhon said, not for love of Mor-am, the gods knew; rather, a deep unease, in which he wished to disturb nothing, do nothing.
'What's this about?' Moria asked. 'Answer me, Mor-am.'
'Stepsons - They - they hired her. They sent - Moria, for Ils' sake, they had me locked up, they used me to bargain with - with her.'
'What are you worth?' Moria asked.
'She works for Jubal.'
That hung there on the air, dying of unbelief.
'She does,' Mor-am said.
'And you work for her.'
'I have to.' Mor-am turned, amorphous in his cloak, began to vanish among the pilings.
'Mor-am -' Moria started forward, brought up short in Mrad-hon'sgrip.
'Let him go,' Mradhon said, and in his mind was a faint far dream of doing something rash, breaking with sanity and heading for somewhere safe. To the Stepsons, might be. But that was, lately, no way to a long life.