Not yet for this fine nobleman. Sweets were for prolonging. She lay there withthe fires sinking in the hearth and on the candles round the room; and in herblood. She stretched out the merest tendril of will and wrapped it about thehouse, ran it like lightning along the old iron fence and up to the rooftree,where a small flock of black birds took flight.

She sent it pelting gustlike down the chimney and scouring out across the floorwith the roll of a bit of ember.

"Haught!" ,

Haught was there, quickly, catfooted and sullen-faced as ever, standing in thedoorway of the room he shared with Stilcho. Ex-slave and ex-dancer. She gazed athim through slitted eyes, simply stared, testing her resolve; and beckoned himcloser. He came a foot or two. That was all. Cautious Haught. Wary Haught.

"Where's Stilcho?"

Haught nodded back toward the room. The fires were silent. Every word seemeddrawn in ice, written on the still air inside and the stormwind without.

"This is not a good night, Haught. Take him and go somewhere. No. Not justsomewhere." She pulled a ring from her finger. "I want you to deliver this."

"Where, Mistress?" Haught came and took it, ever so carefully, as if it werewhite-hot; as if he would not hold it longer than he had to. "Where take it?"

"There's a house fourth up and across the way from Moria. Deliver it there. Saythat a lady sends to Lord Tasfalen. Say that this lady invites him to formaldinner, tomorrow at eight. At the uptown house. And tell Moria there'll beanother place for dinner." She smiled, and Haught found sudden reason to clenchhis hands on the ring and back away. "You're quite right," she said, faintestwhisper. "Get out of here."

She lay back a moment, eyes shut in her dreams (and Tasfalen's) as she heard thedoor open and shut. She felt the tremor in the wards which ringed the placeabout and sealed its gates.

Come with me, Randal had said, knowing what he faced in god-healing. Ischade, Ineed you-

And Strat: Ischade-for the gods' sake-

For no gods' sake. No god's.

She had fled Straton's presence as she would have fled the environs of hell...fled running, when she had left that place and left him and the ruin of Roxane'shouse, in utmost confusion and dread, her heart pounding in terror of what wasloose, not in the night, but in her own inner darkness-a thing which made hershun mirrors and the sight of her eyes. So she sat before her hearth and hurledmagic into the fires and into the wind and into the gates of hell until she hadexhausted the power to control that power and direct it; then the fire went intoher bones and inmost parts and smouldered there.

Thunder rumbled again, instability in the world, fire in the heavens.

She drew a shuddering breath, tormented the dreams of the fairhaired Rankan andthrust herself to her feet, took up her cloak and put it on with careful selfdiscipline.

The door opened with a crash, fluttering the candle flames, which blazed whitefor a moment and subsided.

So hard it was to manage the little things. The merest shrug was lethal. Thegaze of her eyes might do more than mesmerize. It might strip a soul. She flungup the hood and walked out into the wind and the night.

The door crashed shut behind her and the iron gate squealed' violently as itbanged open. The wind took her cloak and played games with it, with a power thatmight have leveled Sanctuary.

"Damn it, no. Let me be." And Straton left the mage-quarter room and headed downthe outside stairs.

Left Crit, with argument echoing in the room and the dark.

Crit came to the door, came out onto the landing. "Strat," Crit said; and gotonly Strat's back. "Strat."

Straton stopped then and looked up at his left-side leader, at the man he owedhis life to a dozen times and who owed him. "Why didn't you shoot? Why didn'tyou damn well pull the trigger when you came into the yard if you're so damnconvinced? Ask me why things in Sanctuary have gone to hell-come in damn welllate and find fault with me when I've kept this town alive and kept the bloodfrom running down the damn gutters-"

Crit came down the steps and leaned on either wooden railing. "That's not whatI'm talking about. It's your choice of allies. Strat, dammit, wake up."

"We're public. We'll talk about it later. Later isn't tonight."

Crit came a step further, checked him on the step. "Listen to me. We've got thewitch-bitch out. The other one's got you. Command of this city, hell, you lostit. Ace, you lost it a long time ago. I don't know how the hell you're stillalive but if the Riddler gets his hands on you now you're done-dammit, Strat,where's your sense? You know what she is, you know what she does-"

"She killed me weeks ago. I'm a walking corpse. Sure, Crit. I'm best at full ofmoon. Dammit, that woman's why we're clear of the Nisi witch, she's why you hada city left down here, and why the empire has a backside left at all. I'll tellyou what it is with you, Crit; it's knowing your partner was damn well right andyou were wrong; it's having your mind made up before you got here and riding inthere to haul me out for a traitor-that's what you came to do, isn't it? Toshoot me down without a chance if I went for your throat? It's not catching,Crit. It's not even true. They blame her for every body that turns up in thealleys; in the Maze, for the gods' sake- as if corpses never happened before shecame to town. Well, I've been with her when those stories spread; I know damnwell where she was at night; and they still blame her-"

"-like they blame lambs on wolves; sure, Strat; but a wolf's still a wolf. Andyou're damn lucky this far. I'm telling you. The Riddler will order you. Staythe hell out of there."

"Stay the hell out of my business!" Strat slammed an offered hand aside and ranthe steps down to the bottom.

"Strat!"

He looked up in mid-turn. By the tone there might have been a weapon. There wasnot. He hardly broke stride as he went for the stable, flung the door open, andfumbled after the lantern that hung there. A soft whicker sounded. Another,rowdier, sounded off loud and two steelshod hooves hit the stall: Crit's sorrel,ill-tempered and fighting the rein every step of the way into the stable,bucking and banging boards and making itself heard upstairs.

"Shut up!" It was the same as yelling at Crit. About as useful. The hooves hitthe boards again.

And Crit arrived in the stable doorway, stood there dark against the starlighton the cobbles outside. Straton ignored him and made another attempt at thelight. It took. He adjusted the wick and hung the lamp on its peg, and did whathe knew might be fatal. He turned his back on Crit and walked away down theaisle.

Not a quarrel between friends. It was nothing private. Tempus's orders wereinvolved. Tempus disavowed him, disavowed everything he had done, everything hehad set up, every alliance he had made; and told him (through Crit) to break offwith his woman and own up to failure. Sent his own leftside leader to kill him.

He gave Crit the chance. He walked the stable aisle and got his tack off therail, flung it up onto the rim of the bay's box stall. He kept listening throughthe sorrel's ruckus, for the soft stir of straw that would be Crit walking upbehind him.

Try it. From disspirited suicide, to a gathering determination to fight back, tothe imagination that he could beat Crit, beat him to the ground, sit on him andmake him listen. Not kill him when he could. Then Crit would come to sanity.Then Crit would be sorry. Then Crit would go and tell Tempus it was all amistake, and his partner had done the best that any man could do, tried his damnheart out and done what no one else had been able to do, gods, had held the Nisiwitch at bay, had worked out at least a fragile truce with the key factions, hadpatched the whole hellhole of Sanctuary together and held onto it.