The necromant stared across the room, hell-dark eyes flashing rejection ofBeysib hospitality.

"You ought not squander yourself by leaving the same way you arrived," the Beysasaid gently, a faint smile on her lips; her eyes still defended against thepower of that stare.

Ischade lowered her eyes and picked her way carefully across the shatteredglass. The great black raven, which had arrived moments after the first Globe ofPower had been shattered and had held itself aloof from all the commotion since,spread its wings and flapped out the window its mistress had broken by herentrance.

"How did Roxane get in there?" Tempus asked once Ischade was gone. "How? Noteven the gods can violate moat's sanctuary."

"Randal?" Molin asked.

The mage pushed himself away from Jihan's healing hands. He started to speak butthe words were too great an effort. Quivering, he sank back to his knees; tearsate their way down his cheeks. "They had him for a year, Riddler," he pleadedfor understanding. "He hates her. He remembers and he hates her but when shecomes for him.... A year, Riddler. 0 gods, after a year he remembers; he hatesbut he can't-won't-refuse."

Critias pounded the windowframe. "Seh!" he said, watching the smoke rising fromthe city's rooftops. The Nisi obscenity was somehow appropriate. If the gods,what remained of them, had intended to cripple what remained of order andcompetence in Sanctuary they could not have done a better job. He had evenallowed the fatal thought-that the situation could not possibly get worse-topercolate through his consciousness.

"Commander," he said with a heavy sigh. "You'd better take a look at this."

Tempus followed the lines of his lieutenant's outstretched arm. He said nothing,so the others-Molin, Jihan, Shupansea, and finally Randal-crowded around thebroken window.

"It's all up now." Torchholder turned away and slouched against the wall.

Jihan closed her eyes, reaching deep into her primal knowledge of all water andsalt water in particular. "We've got a bit of time. With the tides they won't beable to enter the harbor until after sundown."

"I don't expect you'd be able to send them back the way they came?" Molin asked.

Shupansea tried looking, staring, and leaning perilously far out the window andsaw nothing but the myopic fuzziness of the wharves and the ocean beyond it."Send what back?" she inquired with evident irritation.

"The Rankan Empire, my lady," Tempus explained. "Come to find out what's goingon in this forsaken backwater."

"How many ships?"

"Lots," the big man said with a feral grin.

The Beysa stepped back from the window, suddenly remembering that she haddismissed her guard and that none of those between herself and the door could beconsidered willing allies to her cause. "We must make preparations," she said,edging backward toward escape.

"You put the fear of Ranke's strong right arm into her," Crit snorted, once thenervous woman had disappeared down the narrow steps. The lone ship fighting itsway through the tidal currents carried no more than two hundred men, includingoarsmen, and was equipped for tribute, not combat.

"I should have killed her," Jihan muttered.

"You would never have left this room alive," Tempus informed her.

"I? I would never have left this room? I could have frozen that little bitchbefore she knew what happened to her."

"And what would your father have said to that?" Tempos retorted.

The Froth Daughter went red-eyed and icy for a moment. She raised a fist towardthe Stepson's commander and shook it at him. Her scale armor creaked as shestomped back to the table where Niko was moaning softly. Molin peered intentlyout the window lest she see his smile; Crit was fighting laughter himself andnearly lost the battle when he glimpsed the priest biting his lower lip.

"I'm taking Stealth back downstairs," Stormbringer's daughter announced,effortlessly holding the grown man in her arms. "Is anyone coming with me?"

She had strength and power it was dangerous to mock, however immature itsmanifestation. Not even Randal, who of the men was the most clearly respectfulof gods and magic, dared to answer her.

"What now?" Randal asked, easing himself onto the stool Ischade had used.Jihan's touch had cleansed and sealed the surfaces of his wounds; he had his ownhealing resources to call on but his continuing tremors indicated that thelittle mage had not yet paid the full price for the day's exertions.

With the last of the women departed, Tempus felt his confidence returning: "Foryou-rest. If we need you again we'll need you healthy. Go stay with Jihan andNiko if you can't finish the job yourself over at the Mageguild. Crit, you getsomeone in that damn house others. And get Kama-however you have to do it. Therest of us will see about restoring the appearance of order in this damn placebefore that ship docks."

He looked out the window again as trumpets blared from the gateways; Shupanseahad evidently reached her advisors. Squads of Burek fighters, deadly swordsmenand archers despite their baggy silk pantaloons and polished scalps, weredouble-timing across the courtyards. Either all Beysib were nearsighted liketheir empress and believed the entire Rankan fleet loomed beyond the horizon, orthey were taking no chances.

When the triple portrait had burned, the fire had touched Tempus-not as it hadtouched Randal, but purging him of the dark associations between Death's Queen,Niko, and himself. The shock, and the pain, were still strong-he'd kill thewitch when he could for the crippling scars she'd left in Niko- but thecompulsion he'd felt since the black storms in the capital was fading.

"Damn plague town," he said to himself. "Infecting everything it touches withits disease. Let the fish people have it."

Torchholder looked over at him. "You just. might have something there, Riddler."He liked the idea coalescing in his thoughts; unconsciously he tugged at hissleeves as a sense of competence returned to him. "Now, then-whatever we mightfeel about the long-term implications of Theron's delegation I think we allagree that this is not the time to have any outsider wandering around. Right?"

The other men nodded reluctant agreement.

"We also know them well enough to know that once they suspect we're hidinganything they'll make imperial nuisances out of themselves. And they'resuspicious right now just from the smoke." He didn't wait for them to nod thistime. "They'll want to be out there unless we give them a bloody good reason forstaying exactly where we put them: plague-quarantined for their own protection."

Critias arched an eyebrow. "Priest, I could find myself liking you."

Ischade made her way to the White Foal alone. She'd separated from her Beysibescort near the Peres house when the anarchists and so-called revolutionarieshad challenged them. With their twirling swords they'd seemed more than a matchfor the poorly-armed quartet that had come charging out of the alley and she hadbeen grateful for the opportunity to slide into the shadows unnoticed.

The house had called out to her: her possessions, her lover, her magic, the tinyring now on Haught's slender finger. Not long before-before her explosivejourney to the palace-the call would have been irresistible. She would have hadthe power to sunder any wards Roxane had concocted. And she would have done justthat: gone blundering into another abortive confrontation with the Nisi witch.

If the battle within Niko's rest-place had done nothing else it had vented theexcess of power which had blighted her vision since Tempus had returned toSanctuary and ordered the destruction of the Globes of Power. Purged andrefreshed, she perceived the wards not simply as Haught's betrayal or Rox-ane'sarrogance but as the finely strung trap that they were.