"Dammit, wake up! What does it take? Tempus is going to have your guts forstring if you don't solve it, hear me? He's given you more room than you've gota right to, he's left you your rank, he's left you in titular command, forgodssake, how long is he going to be patient, waiting for you? You know howpatient he's being? You know what he'd have done with another man?"

"He left me in command. I still am. Till he takes it." The last came out hard,and left a dull shock behind. Tempus could ask. And get nothing from him. Heknew that, the way he knew rain fell down and sun came up. He was hollow inside.Crit could have shot him. That would have been all right. That would have solvedthings. As it was, he failed to care. He walked over to the table and the cheapbottles of wine they had here because it kept and the water here tasted like lyeand copper. He pulled a loose cork and poured a little glass, knowing it was adeadly man at his back and matters were no more resolved now than they had been.He turned and held it out to Crit. "Want one?"

"No." Crit still stood there with the bow aimed at the floor. "Where's thehorse? You leave that damned horse down there in the yard in full view?" .

"I don't plan to stay." Strat drank a mouthful of the sour wine and made a face.His gut was empty. Even a little wine hit it hard. "I've patched up a peace inthis town. I figured it could make me some enemies. And Kama has contacts in theFront, doesn't she? I figure-I figure maybe she's got her answers, and they'renot mine."

"She tried to shoot you in the back. I stopped it. You come in here madder thanhell at me; and her, you just-No. You're not bloody mad, are you? You came inhere-what for? Why did you walk in here, if that was what you expected?"

"I told you. I thought if you'd meant to hit me you would have. Didn't get achance to talk to you last night. That's all." He downed the rest of the wine inthe cup and set it down before he looked around again at Crit, at the bow andthe open door. "I'd better go. My horse is in the yard."

"That damn horse-that damn spook. Ace, the damn thing doesn't sweat, it doesn'thalf work, like the zombies, f'godssake, Ace, stay here."

"Are you going to stop me?"

"Where are you going?"

He had not truly considered that. He had not known whether there was truly anytime beyond this room. Nothing he did presently made sense: there was no need tohave come, no need to have patched things up with Crit, only it was something hehad not been able to avoid thinking on since yesterday and last night, and nowthere was no more need to think about that. His partner was not trying to killhim. Tempus was not. Unless Tempus had sent Kama, but somehow other things rangmore true. Like the PFLS. The Front. Like the agencies that wanted chaos inSanctuary. He felt himself carrying the whole town on his back, felt his life ascharmed as if the gods that watched over this town watched over him, who wastrying to save it. And they both were corrupt, and they both were wreckage, heand the town. He perceived compromises that he had made, by degrees. He knewwhere he was now, and it was on the other side of a wall from Crit and all hisold ties.

He had not seen Ischade since that day outside Moria's. Since he had blinked andlost her round a comer. Or somewhere. Somewhere. The wards drove him from theriver house. He hunted Haught and failed to find him. He was altogether alone,and altogether losing everything he had thought he had his hands on.

"I don't know," he said to Crit. "I don't know where I'm going. To find a fewcontacts. See what I can turn up. If you haven't figured it out, it's my peacethat's holding so far. The bodies that've turned up-aren't significant. Or theyare. It means that certain people are keeping their word. Keeping the peace intheir districts. You could walk the Maze blind drunk right now and come outunrobbed. That's progress. Isn't it?"

"That's something," Crit admitted. And stopped him with a hand on his arm whenhe tried to walk past him. Not a hard hand. Just a pressure. "Ace. I'm listeningto you. You want my help, I'll give it to you."

"What kind of trap is it?" It was an ingenuous question. He meant it to be. Thewhole affair, Kama, the shot from the roof, had ceased to trouble him acutely,had become part of the ennui that surrounded him, everywhere, in everyinconsequential move he made, every damned, foredoomed, futile move he madesince She had turned her back on him and decided to play bitter games with him.Haught had given him the ring; Haught had made a move which might be Her move,gods knew, gods knew what she was up to. The whole world seemed dark andconfused. And this man, this distant, small voice, wanted to hold onto his armand argue with him, which was all right as far as it went: he had a littlepatience left, while it asked nothing more complicated than it did. "Whoseorders, Crit?"

"I'm on my own. I'll go with you. Easier than following you. I'll do that, youknow. I've been doing it."

"You've been pretty good."

"You want the company?"

"No," he said, and shrugged the hand off. "I've got places to go, rounds tomake. Stay off my track. I'd hate for somebody to put a knife into you. And itcould happen."

"But not to you."

"Not so likely."

"You hunting that Nisi bastard?"

It was more complicated than that. Ischade was involved. It was all toocomplicated to answer. "Among others," he said. "Just stay off my track. Hear?"

He walked on out the door.

The bow thunked at his back, the air whispered by him and the quarrel stoodburied in a single crash in the stout railing just ahead of him. He stopped deadstill, then turned around to Crit and the empty bow. His knees had gone weak fora moment. Now the anger came.

"I just wondered if you'd wake up," Crit said.

"I am awake. I assure you." He turned on his heel and headed down the stairswith his knees gone undependable again, so that he used the lefthand rail,shaking and shaken, and hoping with the only acute feeling he had left, thatbetween the wine and the shock he would not stumble on the way. That it was Critup there watching him, Crit who knew how to read that white-knuckled grip on therail, made his shame complete.

Damn Crit to hell.

Damn Tempus and all such righteous godsridden prigs. Tern-pus had dealt withIschade. Tempus had said something to her at that table, in that room, and shehad said something to him at great length, concluded her business like somevisiting queen, before she went running off, leaving him for a fool in front ofthe whole damned company. He had not gone back after his cloak. Had not beenable to face that room.

But suddenly it occurred to him that Crit might know what Tempus and Ischade hadsaid together. He stopped at the bottom, by the bay horse, his hand on its neck,and looked up the stairs where Crit stood with the unarmed bow dangling by hisside.

"What's the Riddler's dealing with her?" Strat asked.

"Who? Kama?"

Strat frowned, wondering whether it was deliberate obtuse-ness. "Her, dammit, atthe Peres. What was she after?"

"Maybe you ought to ask him. You want to shout his business up and down thestairs? Where's your sense, for gods-sake?"

"That's all right." He turned and gathered up the bay's dangling reins. "I'llmanage. Maybe I will ask him." He flung himself up to the bay's back, felt thelife in it like a waking out of sleep, a huge and moving strength under him."It's all right." He turned the bay and rode out of the courtyard, down thenarrow alley.

Then the malaise came back again, so that the street began to go away from hisvision, like an attack of fever. He touched his waist, where he carried thelittle ring, the ring that would fit only his smallest finger.