Tempus would want him at that gathering at Peres. Tempus would want to talk tohim, want sense out of him, would look at him with that piercing stare of hisand spit him with it till he had spilled everything. That was what Ischade knew.

That was why Ischade wanted him out of there.

But then what, when he had fought with Crit and defied his commander and dealtwith Jubal and through Jubal, with the gangs. There were ways and ways to die.He had invented one or two himself. Lying to Tempus offered worse. Desertion,dereliction. Treason.

He felt a stab of ecstasy, and one of utmost terror; and knew he ought to takethat ring and fling it in the mud and go confess everything to Tempus, but thatwas against his very nature- he had never run for help, had never thrown himselfat anyone's feet, never in his life. Fixing things took nerve. It took the rawguts to hang on to a situation long after it stopped being safe.

He was no boy, no twenty-five-year-old in shining armor, head full of glorystories. He had worked the Stepsons' shadowy jobs for a decade. He had justnever had to think that Tempus himself might be involved in a mistake. The manthe gods chose-But gods had self-interest right along with the rest of creation;gods might trick a man-might trick an empire, play games with souls, with a manwho served their cause.

Tempus could be wrong. Gods know he could be wrong. He doesn't care for thistown. I do. I can give it to him. Is that treason?

An empire runs on what works, doesn't it?

I've just got to live to get it working. Prove it to Crit. Prove it to Tempus.If it takes staying out of their way till I can get this thing organized-I knowholes Crit doesn't.

Damn, no. They'll go for her.

He gripped the ring in his pocket, suffered a twinge that dimmed his vision andreminded him it was no small power the Stepsons might take on in Ischade. Therewould be fatalities. Calamity on both sides.

He made up his mind, then, what he had to do.

The sun was a glimmer of red-through-murk above Sanctuary's east when Ischadecame to the simple little shop in the Bazaar; she came after a trek throughSanctuary's streets and in a sordid little room in the Maze left a dead man theworld would little miss. That man left her disgusted, pricklish, soiled; andsuch was the charge of energies in the air of Sanctuary that she hardly feltthat ebb of power his death made, felt not even a moment's relief from what ranalong her veins and suffused her eyes and made that victim, in the last momentof his life, wish he had never existed at all.

It left not the least satisfaction; more, it left a gnawing terror that nothingwould ever be enough, that there was no man in all the world sufficient to easethat power which threatened to break loose in the muttering storm and in hervitals. She blinded herself: she saw too much of hell and not enough of whereshe was going, and if a gang of Sanctuary's predatory worst had confronted herand seen her eyes this moment, at dawn's breaking, they would have stopped coldand slunk away in terror. She had become-known. Victims were harder to come by.Only fools approached her. And they were without sport and without surprise.

Tasfalen. Tasfalen. She clung to that name and that promise as to sanity itselfa prey that offered wit, and hazard, and difficulty.

Tasfalen could be savored, over days. Put off and extended for a week-

She might, she reasoned with herself, make Strat understand.

She might-yet-get through that shell of unbelief Strat made around himself,teach him the things he had to know. He was ready for that. His infatuation wassufficient. That her hunger threatened him, this, everything-was unbearable.

It was weakness. And she had not yet accounted for Roxane. No scouring of thetown had discovered her. That the dimwitted fiend had not found her tracks, butthat she had discovered nothing to indicate that Roxane had not perished-did notmake her secure in her present weakness. It was exactly the moment and the modein which the Nisi would seek her out....

... Strike through Strat, through this stranger Tasfalen, through anything atall she least expected; most of all through a weakness....

And she was blind.

Knowing that, she came here, after a fruitless murder and a night's searchingall of Sanctuary for Roxane's traces....

... To find the traces Roxane left on the future.

A light burned inside the little shop. So someone was astir this dawn. Sherapped at a door she might have opened, waited like any suppliant at the fane.

Heavy steps came to it; someone opened the peephole and looked out and shut itrapidly.

She knocked a second time. And heard a higher voice than belonged with thattread, before the bar thumped back and the door opened inward.

The S'danzo Illyra stood to meet her, and that shadow to the side was Dubro, wasa very distraught Dubro; and Illyra's face was tearstreaked. The S'danzo wrappedher fringed shawl about her as at-some ill wind sweeping through her door.

"So the news has come here," Ischade said in a low voice; and was pricklinglyconscious of Dubro to the side. She forced herself to calm, concentrating onthe woman only, on a mother's aching grief. "A mage is with your son sincelast night, S'danzo; I would be, but my talents are-awry tonight. Perhaps later.If they need me."

"Sit down." Illyra made a feverish movement of her hands, and Dubro cleared abench. "I was making tea...." Perhaps the S'danzo conceived this as a visit ofcondolence, some sign of hope; she wiped at her eyes with brisk moves of a thinhand and turned to her stove, where a pot boiled. It was placatory hospitality.It was something else, perhaps.

"You see hope for your son in me?"

"I don't See Arton. I don't try." The S'danzo poured boiled tea through astrainer, one, two, three cups. Brought one to her and ignored the other two. /don't try. But a mother might, whose son lay sick in the palace, in company witha dying god. Priests or some messenger from Molin had been here already. Someonehad told the S'danzo; or she had Seen it for herself, scryed it in thefracturing heavens, or tea leaves, gods knew.

And consolation might make a clearer mind in her service.

"Do you think they'll slight your son," Ischade asked, and sipped the tea, "forthe other boy? Not if they value this city. I assure you. Randal's very skilled.You certainly needn't doubt which side the gods are on in your son's case. Doyou?"

"I don't know ... I can't see."

"Ah. My own complaint. You want to know the present. I can tell you that." Sheshut her eyes and indeed it was little work to do, to sense Randal at work. "Ican tell you the children are asleep, that there is little pain now, that thestrength of the god holds your son in life. That a-" Pain assaulted her, anacute pain behind the eyes. Mage-fire. "Randal." She opened her eyes on thesmall, cluttered room again, on the S'danzo's drawn face. "I may be called tohelp there. I don't know. I have the power. But I'm hampered in using it. I needan answer. Where is Roxane?"

The S'danzo shook her head desperately. Gold rings swung and clashed. "I can'tSee that way-it's a present thing; I can't-"

"Find her tracks in the future. Find mine. Find your son's if you can. That'swhere she'll go. A man named Niko. She'll surely try for him. Tempus. Critias.Straton. Those are her major foci."

The S'danzo went hurriedly aside, snatched at a small box on the shelf. "Dubroplease," she said when the big man moved to interfere; and he let her alone asshe sank down on her knees in the middle of the floor and laid out her cards.