Haught had said She had cut him loose-had proved it- but now Haught had nothingexcept what Roxane had allowed and Death's Queen would surely have claimedhim... if he'd been dead.

"I'm alive?"

He paused for a heartbeat's time and went immediately back to moving theStepson, as they had ordered. What man could bear to lose such a precious gift?But he tugged more gently now; Strat, whatever he had meant with his gesture,had given him life. He pushed the kitchen door shut with his foot and wiped thespittle from the fallen man's chin.

"Kill me," Strat begged when Stilcho bent over him.

Their eyes locked. Stilcho felt himself assaulted and dragged to a level ofconsciousness he had never, living or dead, imagined.

Strat was going to be tortured; was going to be systematically stripped of everyimage his memory held. Death would spare him nothing but the pain and, forStrat, the pain would not be the true torture. Stilcho remembered his owntorture at Moruth's hands. He shrank with the knowledge that no little heroics,like a slash to the carotid, would spare this man. He had never, at his best,risen above little heroics but he would now, for Straton. The determination cameinstantaneously and suffused the resurrected man with a glow that would havechilled the Nisi witches beyond the door-had they seen it.

"It won't work. Ace," he informed the Stepson as he contrived to make him a bitmore comfortable on the floor. "Think of something else. Think of lies until youbelieve them. Haught can't see the truth; he can only see what you believe isthe truth." He ripped a comer from Strat's blood-soaked tunic and tucked it uphis sleeve. "Don't fight them; just lie."

Strat blinked and groaned. Stilcho hoped he'd understood. There wasn't time formore. The door was opening. He prayed he wouldn't have to watch.

"I said the table," Haught said in his soft, malice-laden voice.

Stilcho shrugged and thought, carefully, about being dead. But Haught had noenergy for the likes of him, not with Roxane-Stilcho's empty eye saw Roxane, notTasfalen-hovering behind him and Strat helpless at his feet.

"Find me Tempus's secrets," a man's voice with strange, menacing inflectionscommanded. "If they hide the son from me, I'll have the father."

The witch produced the globe from wherever she had hidden it. Stilcho clutchedhis sleeve where the bloody cloth was hidden and backed toward the door. Theydidn't notice him leaving-or perhaps they did. They were laughing, a laughterthat rose in pitch until it blended with the maniacal whine of the globe itself.But they didn't call him back as he edged around the newel-post and slunkupstairs.

It was not difficult to find Moria. She had only gotten to her bedroom doorwaybefore succumbing to the horror around her. Stilcho found her with her armswrapped around her ankles and her Rankan-gold hair spilling past her knees ontothe floor.

"Moria!"

She lifted her head to look at him-blankly at first, then wide-eyed. Her breathsucked in and held, ready to scream if he came any closer.

"Moria, snap out of it," he demanded in an urgent whisper.

Her scream was nothing more than a series of mewling squeaks as she scuttledaway from him. She froze, except for her eyes, when her spine butted into thewainscoting. Stilcho, no stranger to utter terror himself, felt pity for her buthad no time to give in to it. Grabbing her wrist he hauled her, one-handed, toher feet and slapped her hard when the mewling threatened to become somethinglouder.

"For godssakes get control of yourself-if you want to live through this at all."He shook her hard and she went silent, but alert, in his arms. "Where's a windowthat overlooks the street?" He had never willingly come to the uptown house,never wanted to remember the times that he had.

Moria pulled back from him. Her bodice, much torn and retied, fell down from hershoulders. She did not seem to notice but Stilcho, with death still in hisnostrils and hell itself downstairs in the kitchen, knew beyond all doubt thathe was as alive as he had ever been.

"Moria, help me." He took her arm again. Haught hadn't slighted her with hismagic: tear-streaked and disheveled she retained her beauty. 0 gods, he wantedto go on living.

"You're ... you're-" She put a hand out to touch the good side of his face.

"A window," he repeated even after she fell against him, burying her face in ashirt that had seen better days. "Moria, a window-if we're going to help him andsave ourselves."

She pointed at the window beyond her bed and sank back to the floor when he lefther to fight, oh so silently, with its casement.

Stilcho panicked for a second when the salt-rusted window swung wide open. Notfrom the noise, because Strat screamed then, but from the wards he could seeshimmering like whorehouse silks flush against the outer walls. He forgot tobreathe until his heart pounded and his vision blurred, but it seemed the wardswere for larger forces and were not affected by the iron-and-glass casement.

The horse was still out there: Strat's bay horse that Ischade had painstakinglyrestored to life. It danced away from the fires burning beyond the wards and theoccasional bravo racing down the street but it had no intention of abandoningits vigil-not even when Stilcho reached out to it as he had learned to reach forall of Ischade's creations. Eyes that were red, vengeful, and not at all equineregarded him for a moment, then turned away.

Stilcho stepped back from the window, smiling. He retained the ability to seethe workings of magic but magic no longer took notice of him. It was a verysmall price to pay for the ordinary sensations returning to him. Moreover, itwas one he had anticipated. He grabbed a handful of rumpled linen from the bedand had begun tearing it into strips before he noticed Moria huddled on thefloor.

"Get dressed."

She stood up, examining the tangled ribbons of her bodice. Heaving anexasperated sigh, Stilcho dropped the sheets and gripped her wrists. The softflesh of her breasts rested against his hands.

"Gods, Moria-your clothes, Maria's clothes! You can't get out of here dressedlike that."

Moria's face lost its complete vacantness as the idea penetrated through herterror that Stilcho-living, breathing Stilcho-would somehow get her out of here.She yanked the ribbons free, tearing the dress and its memories from her, divinginto the ornate chests where, beneath the courtesan's trappings which Ischadehad endowed her with, her stained and tattered street clothes remained.

She made a fair amount of noise in her industry, hurling unwanted lace and satinto the floor behind her, but between the globe's whine and Strat's screams itwas doubtful that anyone in the kitchen heard or cared about the commotionupstairs. Stilcho finished ripping the linen.

Blood would draw the bay horse. Stilcho pulled the bloody rag from his sleeveand tied it to the linen. He'd used blood to bring the dead across water intothe upper town. Strat's blood would bring the horse into conflict with thewards, chipping away at the flaws in them.

"What are you doing?" Moria demanded, forcing the last of the rounded, Rankancontours into a now snug Ilsigi tunic.

"Making a blood lure," he replied, lowering the makeshift rope and swinging thedull red knot at its end toward the horse.

She bounded across the room. "No. No!" she protested, struggling to take thecloth from him. "They'll see; they'll know. We can get out across the roof."

Stilcho held her off with one arm and went back to swinging the lure. "Wards,"he muttered. He had the bay's attention now. Its eyes, in his other vision, werebrighter; its coat rippled with crimson anger.