She lingered, looking at them both. 'You come,' she said, in a quiet, fearful voice, 'too.'
Mradhon said nothing, but stared into the fire. Go, Haught shaped with his lips, nodded towards the bed, and so Moria went, paused by the table, and finished off the wine all at a draught. -
'Sot,' Mradhon said under his breath.
'She just gets started at it sometimes,' Haught said. 'Alone - the storm...'
The rain spatted against the door. The wind knocked something over that went skittering along the alley outside. The door rattled. Twice. And ceased.
Mradhon Vis looked that way, long and keenly. Sweat ran on his brow.
'It's just the wind,' Haught said.
Thunder cracked, distantly, outside, and the shingles of the small riverhouse fluttered like living things. The gate creaked, not the wind, and disturbed a warding-spell that quivered like a strand of spider web, while the spider within that lair stirred in a silken bed, opened eyes, stretched languorous limbs.
The visitor took time getting to the door: she read his hesitancy, his fear, in the sound of uneven steps her hearing registered. No natural hearing could have pierced the rain sound. She slipped on a robe, an inkiness in the dark. She wished for light, and there was, in the fireplace, atop the logs that were nothing but focus and never were consumed; atop candles that smelled musty and strange and perfumed with something sweet and dreadful.
Her pulse quickened as the visitor tried the latch. She relaxed the ward that sealed the door, and it swung inward, a gust that guttered the candles, amid that gust a cloaked, hunched man who smelled of fear. She tightened the ward again and the door closed, against the wind, with a thump that made the visitor turn, startled, in his
tracks.
He did not try it. He looked back again, cast the hood back from a face fire had touched. His eyes were dilated, wild.
'Why do you come?' she asked, intrigued, despite a life that had long since lacked variety. In the casual matter of the door she had dropped pretences that she wore like robes; he knew, must know, that he was in deadly jeopardy. 'Who sent you?' He seemed the sort not to plan, but to do what others planned.
'I'm one of the h-hawkm-masks. M-mor-am.' The face jerked, twisting the mouth; the whole head nodded with the effort of speech. 'M-message.' He fumbled out a paper and offered it to her in a shaking hand.
'So.' He was not so unhandsome, viewed from the right side. She walked around him, to that view, but he followed her with his eyes, and that was error, to meet her stare for stare. She smiled at him, being in that mood. Mor-am. The name nudged memory, and wakened interest. Mor-am. The underground pricked up its ears in interest at that name - could this man be running Jubal's errands again? Likely as summer frost. She tilted her head and considered him, this wreckage.' Whose message?' she asked.
'T-take it.' The paper fluttered in his hand.
She took it, felt of it. 'What does it say?' she asked, never taking her eyes from his.
'The Stepsons - t-there's another d-dead. They s-sent me.'
'Did they?'
'C-common problem. M-Moruth. The beggars. They're k-killing us both.'
'Stepsons,' she said. 'Do you know my name, Mor-am? It's Ischade.' She kept walking, saw the panic grow. 'Have you heard that name before?'
A violent shake of the head, a clamping of the jaw.
'But you are more notorious than I-in certain quarters. Jubal misses you. And you carry Stepson messages - what do they say to tell me?'
'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?'