"Your shield!" Hanse called.

Niko glanced at it, leaning against a mud-brick wall with Hanse's buckler besideit. They had slipped them off and set them there a pint of sweat ago, topractice with blades alone. Now Hanse turned and drew and threw all in onemotion fluid as a cat's pounce, arm going out long and down in fellow-through,andthunk one of his damned knives appeared in Niko's shield. It stood there,quivering like a breeze-blown cat-tail.

Hanse pounced after it, all wiry and cat-lithe and dark.

He retrieved the knife, giving his wrist the little twist that plucked forth aninch of flat blade from bossed wood capable of withstanding a good ax-blow.Almost distractedly he slipped it back into its sheath up his right arm.

Hanse half-turned to flash teeth at his teacher-at-arms but not at knifethrowing, and he saluted. Then he turned and faded around the building and wasgone, although the sun was still orangey-yellow and the late-day shadows onlythinking about gathering to provide him his natural habitat.

"Shadowspawn," Niko muttered, and went to retrieve his shield and seek outTempus. Deliver me from this insolent Ilsigi in his painful youth, Tempus? Takeaway this bitter cup you have had me lift, and lift to my lips, and Irft?

Hanse moved away, wearing a tight little smile that really did not enhance hislooks.

He was proud. Pleased with himself. Too, he liked Niko. There was no way hecould not, and not respect him too, just as there was (almost, at least) no wayhe could admit or show it.

He had let Tempus know he liked him while claiming to care about no one, and hadgone and got him out of the dripping hands of that swine, Kurd. Kurd thevivisectionist. One who sectioned, who sliced, the vibrantly living. Tempus, forinstance. Among others.

After the horror of the house of Kurd, Hanse was an uncharacteristically pensivefellow; a different Hanse. The eeriness of a regenerated Tempus was almost morethan he could bear. Immortal! 0 gods of us all-immortal, a human newt whosurvived all and healed all and regrew even vivisectioned parts-scarless!

Nor had that enigmatic and ever-scornful immortal said aught concerning Hanse'sexpenses in freeing him, or his promise to retrieve a certain set of ladenmoneybags from a certain well up on Ea-a certain place.

Oh, it had cost.

For weeks Hanse had been idle. He did nothing. No; he did do something; hedrank. His income stopped. He even sold some of his belongings to buy theunwatered wine he had always avoided.

Even so he did not sell the gift of a dead Stepson; an entirely mortal one. Ithung now on the wall of Hanse's lodgings: a fine, fine sword in a silveredsheath. He would not wear it. He would not touch it. Only he was sure that itwas not the gift of that dead man but of a god. Tempus's god, Who had spoken toHanse and rewarded him for his rescue of His servant Tempus-as that god,Vashanka, had promised.[i]

That sword hung, minus its silver sheath, on Hanse's wall. The scabbard traileddown his right leg. It was wrapped all in dull black leather, knotted and peggedand knotted again. Nor was he one with the mercenaries cluttering the city,bullying the city, and he had no wish to be.

Hanse had another need for becoming proficient with arms, and better thanproficient. It was Hanse's secret, and it was bigger than Sanctuary itself.

He collected from Tempus, though not in coin. That immortal had offered to makehim a bladesman. (As for the horse . . . well, it was something of value andprestige, at least. Horses and Hanse were not friends and he hoped never neverto fight from the back of one. But for a horse, he'd be rich!)[ii]

Tempus did not know why Hanse had changed his mind and sent word that he wasminded to learn swordsmanship. He was pleased, Hanse was sure of that. Just ashe and his ego were sure that he must be the best student Niko had ever had.Already, he was sure, he was incredibly good. Hanse never needed the sameinstruction twice. He never repeated an error. He was good. Niko said so, andNiko spoke for Tem-pus.

Leaving Niko now, the thief called Shadowspawn wore a tight little smile. It wasthe pleased smile of one on whom a god has smiled; a pleased but enigmaticsmile. He says that I am good.

I hope so, Vashanka's minion, he mused. Oh, I hope so. And I hope Vashanka findsme better than good!

Hanse wended home, compact and lithe and darkly menacing, weighted with bladesat leg and hips and arms. There were those who were in the act of departing thisplace or that but waited within doorways until he had passed; there were thosewho stepped aside for him though he made no hostile move. They did not like it,or like themselves for doing it, but they would do it again, for thismenacing street-tough.

Hanse went home. I'm ready, he thought, and tight-smiled.

After that business with Kurd and with Tempus and the absolute ghastliness ofTempus's mutilations-and the ghastlier reality of his complete recovery evenunto regrowing several parts-Hanse had taken to drink.

He was not a drinker. Never had been. That was no deterrent to millions ofothers and it was not to Shadowspawn. So he drank. He drank to find an alternatestate, an alternate reality, and he succeeded admirably in achieving the unadmirable.

The problem was that he did not like that. Getting away from everything wasgetting away from Hanse, and Hanse was the poor wight he was trying to find.

0 Cudget, if only they had not slain you-you'd have shown me and told me asalways, wouldn't you?

(Put another way, he had been shaken badly and dived for solace into a lake ofalcohol. He stayed there, and he was drunk quite a lot of the time. He didn'tlike that either; he didn't even like the taste of the stuff. Most especially hedidn't like the way he felt when sleep stopped his body and let it awake with amouth like vinegar and the desert all at once, a mouth with the feel of a publicrestroom for horses and a tongue in need of a curry-comb and a stomach he'dwillingly have traded for a plate of pigs' trotters and a head he'd have tradedfor nearly anything at all. Something had come loose in there and was rollingaround, and it banged against the inside of his head when he moved it. Alcoholhelped. More scales off the snake that had bit him. That merely started thewhole process again. Besides, he preferred control, control or some feeling ofit. Strong drink washed that away on a river of vomit and sank it with explosivebelches and retching.

(He had the need for control, back there in the barely lighted shadows of hismind. All dark, back in there, in the mind of the bastard son from the wrongside of everything. He had never been in control, and so sought it, or itssemblance. He had no need for any drug, and now he knew he had no desire for iteither. Not to mention head or stomach.

(That was that. Hanse was off the sauce.)

He returned to being what most others were, certainly most who were his age: acreature of his own subconscious, a stranger dwelling within him, and he livedas its captive.

One day someone mentioned his "obvious sense of honor"-and it was obvious-as heput it. Learned, that fellow said, from Hanse's respected mentor CudgetSwearoath, master thief. And Shadowspawn sneered and looked menacing. That theinnocent spewer of insults offered to buy him a drink did not advance his causeor Hanse's mental state in the least measure. The poor fellow soon remembered animportant appointment elsewhere, well apart from Hanse, and he repaired there atspeed. Hanse predictably spent the rest of that day behaving as if he had nonotion what honor might be.