Nonsense, Ischade thought; but something stirred, something twitched at the napeof her neck, and she thought of the magic-fall that still swept the winds,recalling that prescience was not her talent, and she had not a way in theworlds and several hells to judge what the S'danzo did, how much was flummeryand how much self-hypnosis and how much was a very different kind of witch.

The cards flew in strong, slim fingers, assumed patterns. Re-formed and showedtheir faces.

Illyra drew her hand back from the last, as if she had found the serpent on thatcard a living one.

"I see wounds," Illyra said. "I see love reversed. I see a witch, a power, adeath, a castle; I see a staff broken; I see temptation-" Another card wentdown. Orb.

"Interpret."

"I don't know how!" Illyra's fingers hovered trembling over the cards. "There'sflux. There's change." She pointed to a robed and hooded figure. "There's yourcard: eight of air. Lady of Storms-hieromant."

"Hieromant! Not I!"

"I see harm to you. I see great harm. I see power reversed. The cards areterrible-Death and Change. Everywhere, death and change." The S'danzo looked up,tears flowing down her cheeks. "I see damage to you in what you attempt."

"So." Ischade drew a deep breath, teacup still in hand. "But for my question,fortune-teller: Find me Roxane!"

"She is Death. Death in the meadow. Death on the path of waters-"

"There are no meadows in Sanctuary, woman! Concentrate!"

"In the quiet place. Death in the place of power." The S'danzo's eyes were shut.Tears leaked from beneath her lashes. "Damage and reversal. It's all I can see.Witch, don't touch my son."

Ischade set the cup aside. Rose and gathered her cloak over her shoulder as theS'danzo gazed up at her. She found nothing to say of comfort. "Randal's withthem," was the best that occurred to her.

She turned and went out the door. The power was still a tide in her blood, stillunabated. She inhaled it in the wind, felt it in the dust under her feet. Shecould have blasted the house in her frustration, raised the fire in the hearthand consumed the S'danzo and her man to ash.

It seemed poor payment for an innocent woman's cup of tea. She banked the innerfire and drank the wind into her nostrils and considered the daybreak.

"I can't, I can't, I can't!" Moria cried, and went down the hall in a cloud ofskins and satin-till Haught caught her up, and took her by the arms and made herlook at him. Tears streaked Moria's makeup. A curl tumbled from her coiffure.She stared at Haught with blind, teared eyes and hiccuped.

"You'll manage. You don't have to say where I am or where I went."

"Then take him with you!" She pointed aside to the study, where a dead man satdrinking wine in front of her fire and getting progressively more inebriate."Get him out of here, I can't do anything with the staff, they know what he isfor the gods' sakes get him out!"

"You'll manage," Haught said. He carefully put the curl where it belonged andadjusted a pin for her while she snuffled. He wiped her cheeks with his thumbs,careful of her kohl-paint, and of her rouge, and tipped up her face and kissedher gently on salty lips. "Now. There. My brave Moria. All you have to do is notmention me. Say I delivered my messages. Say Stilcho's with me and we're goingto go down to a shop and see about that lock you want for your bedroom-now won'tthat fix it? I promise you-"

"You could witch it."

"Dear woman, I might, but you don't do a thing with an axe when a penknife willdo. You don't want your maid blasted, do you? I doubt you want that. I'll find alock / can't pick and see if you can. If it suits, I'll have it installed onyour door within the week. I promise. Now go upstairs, fix your make-up-"

"I want you here! I want you to tell Her what you did to me, I want you to tellHer you made me beautiful!"

"Now, haven't we been over that? She won't care. I assure you she has quite amany things on her mind, and you are the very least, Moria. The very least. Doyour job, be gracious, be everything I've helped you be, and the Mistress willbe very happy with you. Don't ruin your makeup. Smile. Smile at everyone. Don'tsmile too much. These men have been a long time out of a house like this. Don'tattract them. Behave yourself. There's a love." He kissed her on the brow andfollowed the sudden panicked dart of her eyes, the appearance of a shadow in thestudy doorway.

Stilcho leaned there reeking of wine, his thin, white face uncommonly grim withits eye-patch and comma of dark hair. "My lady," Stilcho said wryly. "Very sorryto distress you."

Moria just stared, stricken.

"Come on," Haught said, and caught Stilcho by the arm, heading him for the door.

"I can't find him," Crit said, reporting in to the palace where Tempus hadappropriated an office, down the hall and up a stair from the uneasy businessCrit had no wish to know about.

Tempus made a mark on a map. The place was a litter of scrolls and books and theplunder of the map room. They lay on the floor as well as the desktop andafternoon light shone wanly through the window, a murky afternoon, beclouded andrumbling with rain that never fell. He rose, walked to the window, hands lockedbehind him-stared out into the roiling cloud beyond the portico. Lightningflashed. Thunder followed.

"He'll show," Tempus said finally. "You've tried the witch's place again."

"Twice. I..." There was a moment of silence that brought Tempus around to facethe man. "... went as far as the door," Crit said, much as if he had said gateof hell. Stolidly. Eyes carefully blank. Tempus frowned.

"King of Korphos," Crit said then.

"I remember." A king invited his enemies to reconcile. Archers turned up roundthe balcony at dinner and killed them all. Witchfire might serve. And: Nothingnew under the sun, an inner voice said; while another voice recalled deadcomrades: tortured souls of yours and mine which must be released. ... At timesthe world went giddy, skidded between past and present. Korphos and a Sanctuarymansion. A missing Stepson, and a sorely wounded one, both prey to witches. Athing that had happened, would happen, inevitably happened? Sometimes he had runrisks from mere expediency. Or perversity. He did not take his men into it to nopurpose.

Crit stood there, statue-quiet. Too damn willing. A snake had gotten in amongthem, and Stepson hunted Stepson and stood there with that look that saidAnything you order.

"I've no doubt the witch can find him," Tempus said. "If he doesn't show up.Don't worry about it." He gestured toward the door. Crit took the hint, andTempus walked as far as the hall beside him. "Just see you're on time."

"Is Niko-"

"Better."

Maybe the tone invited nothing further. Crit went. Tempus stood there with hishands slipped into the back of his belt until Crit had dwindled into a shape oflight and shadow on the white marble stairs that led to outer doors.

Niko was where Niko had no business being, that was where Niko was.

He struck his hand against his leg and headed down another stairs, past priestswho plastered themselves and their armfuls of linen and simples to the narrowwalls.

Through doors and doors and doors, till the thunder overhead diminished and thelast door gave way to a sanctum sanctorum deep in the palace bowels. He steppedinside, saw the cluster around the bed, a half dozen priests, the mage, withenough incense palling the room to choke a man. A child whimpered, a thin, faintsound. And Tempus's eye picked out his partner standing in that group. "GetNiko," he said as a priest passed him, and the priest scuttled into the cloyingroom where he had no personal wish to go. The stuff offended his nose, gave himthe closest thing to a headache he was wont to have. He stood there with thepressure throbbing in his temples which might be rage at Niko or the wholedamned business of priests and mummery and a mage's ill-smelling concoctions, orjust the world gone awry. He stood there while the priest snagged Niko and ledhim into reach, Niko walking as if he would break, one eye running and filmedwith gelatinous stuff,