The room was fine wood and river stone with brocade hangings, and opened onto anentry hall with a winding stair. Fire danced in the marble fireplace and at thetips of a score of white wax candles, and off the gold cups and fine pewterplatters and plates; while Moria, at dinner in her hall, gave it all mistrustingglances, not unlike the look she paid her brother at his end of their longtable-for none of Moria's life stayed stable. The gold was a dream in which shemoved and lived, irony for a thief: she felt constantly she should snatch theplates and run, but there was nowhere to run to and the gold was hers, the housewas hers, far too great a possession: she could no longer run at all, and thiscondition filled her heart with panic. Her brother's face was a dream of adifferent kind across the candle glow-at one moment familiar; at another, whenhe shifted slightly or the light fell unkindly on the scars-she felt anotherwrench of panic, perceiving another thing which she had loved and which hadtangled her up like nightmare and held her bound.

One part of her would have run screaming and naked from this place.

"Mistress." A servant poured straw-colored wine into her cup and grinned a gaptoothed grin that shattered other illusions, for the dress was brocade andfinest linen, if rumpled from neglect, the hair bartered and immaculate; but themissing teeth, the broken nose, the voice with its Downwind twang-beggars andthieves waited on them. They were clean and flealess and without lice-she wasadamant on that, but on no other thing had she authority with them, except theydid their job and did not pilfer.

The Owner saw to that.

There was a shout, a shriek of gutter language from the stairs: Mor-am leaped upand shouted back into the hall in terms the Downwind understood, and her soulshrank at this small sign of fracture. "Out," she said to the servant. And whenthe servant lingered in his dull-witted way: "Out, fool!"

The servant put it together and scuttled out as Mor-am resumed his chair andpicked up his wine-cup. His hand shook. The tic was back at the comer of hisbum-scarred mouth, and the cup trembled on its way and spilled straw-coloredwine. He glowered after he had drunk, and the tic diminished to a small shudder."Won't learn," he said, plaintive as a child.

A beggar watched the house, outside. Was always there, a huddle of rags; andMor-am had bad dreams, waked shrieking night after night.

"Won't leam," he muttered, and poured himself more wine with a knife-scarredhand that rattled the wine bottle against the cup rim.

"Don't."

"Don't what?" He set the bottle down and picked up the cup, leaving beads ofwine on the table surface, spilling more on the way to his mouth.

"I went out today." She made a desperate attempt to fill the silence, thesilence of long hours imprisoned in this house. "I bought a ham, some datesShiey says she knows this way to cook it with honey-"

"Got no lousy cook, big house, we got a one-handed thief for cook-"

"Shiey was a cook."

"-if she'd done either decent she'd go right-handed. Where'd She find that sow?"

"Quiet!" Moria flinched and cast a glance toward the stairs. They listened, sheknew they listened, every servant in the house, the beggar by the gates. "ForIls's sake, quiet-"

"Swear by Ils now, do we? Do us any good, you think?"

"Shut up!"

"Run, why don't you? Why don't you get out of here? You-"

A door came open in the hall, just-opened, with a gust of outside wind thatstirred the candles.

"0 gods," Moria said, and swung her chair about with a scrape of wood on stone,another from Mor-am, a ringing impact of an overset cup that rolled across thefloor.

But it was Haught stood in the hallway door, not Her, but only Haught, standingthere with that doe-soft look in his eyes, that set to his well-formed mouththat betokened some vague satisfaction. A malicious child's satisfaction instartling them; a malicious child's innocence: she hoped it was nothing darker.The door closed. No servant was in evidence.

"New t-trick," Mor-am said. The tic had come back. The cup lay on the floorbetween them, with its scatter of straw-hued wine.

"I have a few," Haught said, walking to the side of the door where the cupsresided on a table. He was well-dressed, was Haught, like themselves; wore arusset tunic and black cloak, fine boots, and a sword like a gentleman. Hebrought a cup to the table and wine poured with a whisper into the gold cup. Helifted it and drank.

"Well?" said Mor-am. "Well, do you just walk in and serve yourself?"

"No." There was always quiet in Haught. Always the downward glance, the bowedhead: ex-slave. Moria remembered scars on his back and elsewhere, rememberedother things, nights huddled beside a rough brick fireplace; bundled togetherbeneath rough blankets; convulsed together in the only love there had beenonce. This too had changed. "She wants you to do that thing," Haught said,speaking to Mor-am. "Tonight." Sleight of hand produced a tiny packet andflung it to the table by the wine bottle.

"Tonight... .For Shalpa's sweet sake-"

"You'll find a way." Haught's eyes darted a quick, shy glance Mor-am's way,Moria's next, and flickered away again, somehow floorward: in such small ways heremained uncatchable. "It's very good, the wine."

"Damn you," Mor-am said with a tremor of his mouth. "Damn-"

"Hush," Moria said, "hush, Mor-am, don't." And to Haught: "There's food left-"It was reflex; there were times they had been hungry, she and Haught. They werenot now, and she put on weight. She had drunk herself stupid then; and he hadloved her when she had not loved herself. Now she was wise and sober andgetting fat; and scared. "Won't you stay awhile?"

-Thinking of herself alone once Mor-am went out; and terrified; and wanting himthis night (the servants she did not touch-her authority was scant enough; andthey were crude). But Haught gave her that shy, cold smile that allied him withHer and ran his finger round the rim of the cup, never quite looking up.

"No," he said. He turned and walked away, into the dark hall. The door openedfor him, swirling the dark cloak and whipping the candles into shadow.

"G-got to go," Mor-am said distractedly, "got to find my cloak, got to get Eroto go with me-gods, gods-"

The door closed, and sent the candles into fits.

"Ero!" Mor-am yelled.

Moria stood with her arms wrapped about herself, staring at nothing inparticular.

It was another thing transmuted, like some malicious alchemy that left herstrangling in wealth and utterly bereft. They lived uptown now, in Her house.And Haught was Hers too, like that dead man-Stilcho was his name-who shared Herbed-she was sure it was so. Perhaps Haught did, somehow and sorcerously immuneto the curse attributed to Her. Mradhon Vis she had not seen since the morninghe walked away. Perhaps Vis was dead. Perhaps the thing he feared most in allthe world had happened and he had met Her in one of Her less generous moments.

"Ero!" Mor-am yelled, summoning his bodyguard, a thief of higher class.

The fire seemed inadequate, like the gold and the illusions that had becomeinsane reality.

There was little traffic on the uptown street-the watcher at the gate, no morethan that; and Haught walked the shadows, not alone from the habit of goingunnoticed, but because in Sanctuary by night not to be noticed was always best;and in Sanctuary of late it was decidedly best. The houses here had barredwindows, protecting Rankan nobles against unRankan pilferage, burglary, rapine,occasional murder at the hand of some startled thief; but nowadays there wereother, political, visitors, stealthy in approach, leaving bloody results aspublic as might be.