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There was enterprise among the sprawl of huts and shanties that was the Downwindof Sanctuary. Occasionally someone even found the means of exacting a livelihoodout of the place. The aim of most such was to get out of Downwind as quickly aspossible, on the first small hoard of coin, which usually saw the entrepreneursback again in a fortnight, broke and slinking about the backways, sleeping asthe destitute immemorially slept, under rags and scraps and up against thegarbage they used for forage (thin pickings in the Downwind) for the warmth ofthe decaying stuff. So they began again or sank in the lack of further ideas anddied that way, stark and stiff in the mud of the alleys of Downwind.

Mama Becho was one who prospered. There was an air to Mama Becho, but so therewas to everyone in Downwind. The stink clung to skin and hair and walls and mudand the inside of the nostrils, and wafted on the winds, from the offal ofSanctuary's slaughterhouses and tanneries and fullers and (on days of morefavorable wind) from the swamp to the south; but on the rare days the wind blewout of the north and came clean, the reek of Downwind itself overcame it so thatno one noticed, least of all Mama Becho, who ran the only tavern in theDownwind. What she sold was mostly her own brew, and what went into it (or fellinto it) in the backside of her shanty-tavern, not even Downwinders had courageto ask, but paid for it, bartered for it and (sometimes in the dark maze ofDownwind streets) knifed for it or died of it. What she sold was oblivion andthat was a power in Downwind like the real sorcery that won itself a place andpalaces across the river that divided Sanctuary's purgatory from thisneighboring hell.

So her shanty's front room and the alley beside was packed with bodies and areekwith fumes of brew and the unwashed patrons who sprawled on the remnants ofmakeshift furniture, itself spread with rags that had layered deep over unlaundered years, the latest thrown to cover holes in the earlier. By day thelight came from the window and the door; by night a solitary lamp provided asmuch smoke as light over the indistinct shapes of lounging bodies andfurnishings and refuse. The back room emitted smoke of a different flavor andadded a nose-stinging reek to the miasma of the front room. And that space andthat eventually fatal vice was another of Mama Becho's businesses.

She moved like a broad old trader through the reefs of couches and drinkers, theflotsam of debris on the floor. She carried clusters of battered cups of herinfamous brew in stout red fists, a mountainous woman in a tattered smock whichhad stopped having any color, with a crazy twist of grizzled hair that escapedits wooden skewers and flew in wisps and clung to her cheeks in sweaty strings.Those arms could heave a full ale keg or evict a drunk. That scowl, of deepseteyes like stones, of jaws clamped tight and mouth lost in jowls, was perpetualand legendary in the Downwind. Two boys assisted her, shadow-eyed and harriedand the subject of rumors only whispered outside Mama Becho's. Mama Becho hadalways taken in strays, and no few of them were grown, like Tygoth, who might beher own or one of the foundlings, and lounged now with half-crazed eyesfollowing the boys. Tygoth was Mama Becho's size, reputed half her wit, andloyal as a well-fed hound. There was besides, Haggit, who was one of Mama'seldest, a lean and twisted man with lank greasy hair, a beggar, generally: butsome mornings he came home, limping not so badly as he did in Sanctuary'sstreets, to spend his take at Mama Becho's.

So enterprise brought some coin to the Downwind in these days of unrest, withJubal fallen and the Stepsons riding in pairs down the street, striking terrorwhere they could; and coin inevitably brought the bearer to Mama Becho's, andbought a corner of a board that served as a bench, or a pile of rags to sit on,or for the fastidious, the table, the sole real table with benches, and a draftof one of Mama Becho's special kegs or even (ceremoniously wiped with a grimyrag) a cup and a flask of wine.

Mradhon Vis occupied the table this night as he had many nights, alone. Mad Elidhad tried him again with her best simper and he had scowled her off, so she hadslunk out the door to try her luck and her thieving fingers on some drunkerprey. Thoughts seethed in him tonight that would have chilled Elid's blood,vague and half-formed needs. He wanted a woman, but not Elid. He wanted to kill,someone, several some-ones in particular, and he was no small part drunk,imagining Elid's screams-even Elid might scream, which he would like to hear,which might ease his rage at least so long as he was mildly drunk and seething.He had no real grudge against Elid but her persistence and her smell, which wasnothing which deserved such hate. It was perhaps because, looking at her, withher foolish grin that tried to seduce and disgusted him instead, he sawsomething else, and darker, and more terrible; and smelled behind her reek adelicate musk, and saw hell behind her eyes.

Or he saw himself, who also had traded too much of himself and sold what hewould have kept if he had had the luxury.

But generally the whores and the bullies let Mradhon Vis alone. That was tributeof a kind in Mama Becho's, to an outsider, and not a large man. He was foreign.It was in his dark face and in his accent. And if he was watched, still no onehad seriously tried him, excepting Elid.

He paid for the special wine. He maintained his solitude through a slice ofgritty stoneground bread and some of Mama Becho's passable bean soup, and kepthis surreptitious watch over the door.

Night after night he spent here, and many of his days. He lodged across thealley, in space Mama Becho rented for more than it was worth-excepting herassurance that it would stay inviolate, that the meager furnishings would alwaysbe there, that there would never be some sly opening of the door when he was outor while he was asleep. Tygoth made his rounds of Mama's properties all nightwith stick in hand, and if anything was not what it ought to be, then corpsesfloated down the White Foal in the morning.

That was good so long as his small hoard of coin lasted, and it was running low.Then the reckoning came.

The woman-mountain rolled his way and loomed beside him, setting down a secondcup of wine and repossessing the empty. "Fine stuff," she said, "this."

He laid down the coin she wanted. Fingers the match of Tygoth's picked it offthe scarred table with incongruously long curved nails, ridged like horn. "Thank'ee," she said sweetly. Her face in its halo of grizzled hair, its mound ofcheeks-grinned to match the voice, but the eyes in their suety pits were blackand almond and glittered like eyes he had seen the other side of swords-point.She fed him on the best, gave him sleeping space like a farmwife some fattedhog; he knew. She would be sure she had all the money first and then go on toother things- Mama Becho dealt in souls, both men and women, and she namedthe services, when the coin was gone. She had him in her eye-a man who couldbe useful, but having weaknesses-a man who had tastes that cost too much.She scented helplessness, he reckoned; she smelled blood and made sure that hebled all he had- and oh, she would be there when he had run out of money,grinning that snake's grin at him and offering him his choices, knowing hewould die without, because a man like him did die in the Downwind when themoney ran out along with any hope of getting more. He would not beg, or sellwhat sold in the Downwind; he would kill to get out; or kill himself withbinges of Downwind brew, and Mama knew what a delicate bird she had in her nets-delicate though he had survived half a dozen battlefields: he could notsurvive in the Downwind, not as Downwinders did. So it was possession thatgleamed in Mama's deepset eyes, the way she regarded one of her treasuredpewter cups or looked at one of her boys, assessing its best use and on whom itwas best bestowed.