Lalo heard a dog barking furiously in the street and two women squabbling in the courtyard below and, more faintly, the perpetual hubbub of the Bazaar; but here it was very still. A stretched canvas sat ready on his easel - he had been planning to spend this morning blocking out a scene of the marriage of Ils and Shipri. But there was no one else in the house now - no one to peer through his doorway and ask what he thought he was doing - no one to see.
Like a sleepwalker, Lalo lifted the easel to one side of the mirror, positioned himself so that the light from the window fell full on his face, and picked up the paintbrush.
Then, like a lover losing himself for the first time in the body of his beloved, or an outmatched swordsman opening his guard to his enemy's final blow, Lalo began to paint what he saw.
Gilla heaved the basket of groceries on to the table, rescued the sack of flour from the child's exploring fingers, and poured it into the bin, then found a wooden spoon for Alfi and set him down, where he began to bang it merrily against the floor. She stood for a moment, still a little out of breath from the stairs, then began to put her other purchases away.
It did not take long. The influx of Beysib had strained Sanctuary's food supply, and their wealth had sent prices climbing, and though Gilla had hoarded a fair amount of silver, there was no telling how long it would be until Lalo was working regularly again. So it was back to rice and beans for the family, with an occasional fish in the stew. Now that so many new ships had been added to the local fleet, fish were the one item in ample supply.
Gilla sighed. She had enjoyed their affluence - enjoyed putting meat on the table and experimenting with the spices imported from the north. But they had subsisted on coppers for more years than she liked to remember, and few enough of those. She was an expert on feeding a family on peas and promises. They would survive the Beysib as they had survived everything else.
Alfi's short legs were carrying him determinedly towards the door to Lalo's studio. Gilla scooped him up and held him against her, still squirming, and kissed his plump cheek.
'No, love, not in there - Papa's working and we must leave him alone!'
But it was odd that Lalo had not at least called a welcome when he heard her come in. When he was painting a sitter, Vashanka could have blasted the house without his noticing, but there had been no commissions for some time, and when Lalo painted for pleasure he was usually glad for an excuse to break off for a cup of tea. She called to Latilla to take her little brother into the children's room to play, then coaxed a fire to life in the stove and put the kettle on.
Lalo still had not stirred.
'Lalo, love - I've got water heating; d'you want a cup of tea?' She stood for a moment, hands on hips, frowning at the shut, unresponsive door; then she marched across the floor and opened it.
'You could at least answer me!' Gilla stopped. Lalo was not at his easel. For a moment she thought he must have decided to go out, yet the door had not been locked. But there was something different about the room. Lalo was standing by the far wall, for all the world like a piece of furniture. It took another moment for her to realize that he had not moved when she came in. He had not even looked at her.
Swiftly she went to him. He stood as if he had backed across the room step by careful step until he ran into the wall. The paintbrush was still clenched in one hand; she tugged it free and set it down. And still he did not move. His eyes were fixed, unseeing, on the easel across the room. She glanced at it - a man's face, and at this distance she saw nothing remarkable - then turned to him again.
'Lalo, are you all right? Did you hear me? Shipri All-Mother have mercy - Lalo, what's wrong?' She shook his arm and still he did not respond to her, and a sick fear uncoiled itself beneath her heart and began to grow.
Gilla gathered him into her ample embrace and for a moment held him unresisting. His body was warm, and she could feel his heart beating very slowly against her own. but she knew with dreadful certainty that he was no longer there. Biting her lip, she guided him to the pallet and arranged him on it as one of the children might arrange a doll.
Fear's chill tentacles extended all the way to her fingertips now. and she remained kneeling before Lalo, chafing his hands less for his sake than for her own. His eyes were unfocused, the pupils darkly dilated. He was not looking at her. He had not been looking at the painting either, although his face had been turned towards it when she came in. These eyes were focused on something beyond Sanctuary - some inner darkness into which a man might fall forever and find no rest.
Shivering, Gilla tried to close his eyelids, but they slid open again upon that awful, sightless stare. She could feel a scream crouched in her breast, waiting for her to give way to horror and set it free. but she set her teeth painfully and heaved herself to her feet.
Hysterics would do neither of them any good now. Time enough to release the grief that was building in her when - if - there was no hope for him. Perhaps it was some strange seizure that would soon pass, or a new sickness that time and her strict nursing would cure. Or perhaps (her mind probed delicately at a darker thought and flinched away), perhaps it was sorcery.
'Lalo -' she said softly, as if her voice could still reach him somehow, 'Lalo my darling, it's all right. I'll get you a doctor; I'll make you get well!' Already her mind was considering. If he did not wake of himself by tomorrow she would have to find a physician - perhaps Alien Stulwig - she had heard that his potions saved more lives than they took.
The teakettle began to wail, and as she hurried across the room. her hip set the easel teetering. Without stopping, she picked it up and set it in the corner with the picture facing the wall.
Lalo peered uneasily through murky clouds that roiled about him like the mage wind that had devastated Sanctuary the year before. But his life was still in him, though the stink was enough to drive the breath from a man's lungs. For a moment he thought himself back in the sewers of the Maze, but there was too much light. So where in the name of Shalpa Shadow-lord had he gotten to?
He took a step forward, then another, his feet finding their own way over the uneven ground. The colours that streaked the clouds nauseated him - sulphur yellow that shaded into a livid pink like an unhealed scar, and then to something else - an unnameable colour that made his eyes hurt so that he had to look away.
Perhaps I am dead, he thought then. Poor Cilia will grieve for me, hut she has her hoard, and the older children are earning money of their own. She will do better without me than I would if she had left me alone ... The thought was bitter, and he found himself weeping as he stumbled along. But the tears had no substance and after a little they disappeared. He returned to his probing, as a man will tongue the sore space where a tooth has gone.
All of the priests were wrong, both the ones who said that the gods take departed souls to paradise and those who are convinced one is condemned to Hell. Or perhaps I have such a spineless soul that I have deserved neither, and so they have sentenced me to wander here!