"So, what do you see. Did the Stormgod hear me? Does Vashanka favor me? Can Ibind Him to me? Sell me a potion to bind the Stormgod!"

She meant to send him away. The S'danzo had no use for gods and were happiestwhen the gods had nothing to do with the S'danzo. It didn't matter that shecould answer his questions. He had focused her Sight on the god and she wantedhim, and all that was in his memories, gone before ('(noticed her. Yet she couldstill hear the laughter and didn't that mean, answer him or not, that the damagewas already done?

The youth mistook her hesitation for imminent betrayal. "Don't give me suveshtalk." He reached across the table to grip her wrist.

"See the priests if you want to talk to the Stormgod," she replied icily,extracting herself with a swift, small movement he had never seen, or felt,before. But for the blacksmith, whose hammer rang in the sunlight beyond hershop, she'd have been a sewer-snipe herself. She knew his type of brazen prideand knew, as he did himself, that any whim of fate could squash him, withoutwarning. He had stumbled into something vaster and more dangerous than he hadever imagined. As much as he lusted after the excitement and glory, he fearedit.

"What do the priests know?" he said, as if any priest would have spoken to him."Nosing up to the snakes. They don't know anything about Vashanka."

"If you know so much more than the priests, you certainly know more than aS'danzo fortune-teller." She pushed the gold coin back to him.

"A half-S'danzo fortune-teller who knew when that damned fleet would arrivecould talk to Vashanka if she dared." He ignored the coin and met her stare.

Anything that survived in the gutter of Sanctuary was dangerous. Zip had alreadyviolated her home with his visions; would he be any more dangerous with thetruth about his prayers, sacrifices, and altar-or any the less?

"Keep your gold and everything else. Vashanka is no more."

He sat back as if she'd struck him. Surely he'd heard the rumors, lived throughthe storm that saw Vashanka's name struck from the pantheon archstones? Perhapshe hadn't quite believed that the Rankan Stormgod had been vanquished in theskies over Sanctuary, but he should have learned to contain his horror if heexpected to survive.

"I give Him blood at my altar... and He takes it!"

"Fool! Leave the gods to the priests. You find a pile of rotting stones in themud by the White Foal and you think you can lure Vashanka to your cause.Vashanka! The Storm-god of Ranke-and with the blood of a pig!"

"He hears me! I feel Him but I can't hear Him! He's telling me something and Ican't hear him!"

"You don't want to know what hears you. Could Ranke have built a temple toVashanka, lost it to the White Foal, and all Sanctuary forgotten it was thereexcept for you?" She was standing, leaning over her table, screaming in his faceand unmindful of everything except the laughter he'd left in her mind. Shecouldn't See what he had raised yet, but it was getting clearer the longer hesat there with his sacrifices and memories battering against her.

"Get out of here! Vashanka does not hear you. No god yet born hears you! Nothinghears you! May the dung rise up and swallow you before anything listens to youagain!"

She did not believe the S'danzo had the power to curse, but the sewer-snipe did.Zip backed up until the sunlight from the doorway fell around his feet, then heturned and ran, not noticing, or perhaps not caring, that he had left his goldcoin behind.

" 'Lyra! What happened?" Dubro called to her from the doorway. He took a step tofollow the youth, then turned back and rushed to catch Illyra before shecollapsed over her table. He carried her in his arms like a sick child, beratinghimself for not sensing the danger in the young man, while she whispered brokenphrases in the ancient S'danzo language.

The rat-faced sewer-snipe had forced her to See what should not be Seen and whatshe should not dare to remember. Each breath and heartbeat solidified the imagesand knowledge. Illyra worked frantically to blind herself to what had happened,before it spread like poison through wine and condemned her as surely as it hadcondemned the young man. She bound the knowledge in the form of one of the greatblack carrion-birds that flocked above the Char-nel House and, with a wrenchingsob, set it free.

"'Lyra, what's wrong?" her husband asked, stroking her hair and swabbing hertears with the comer of his sweaty tunic.

"I don't know," she answered honestly. A shimmering blackness of her owndevising hung in her memories. The fear remained, and a sense of doom, but thevision itself had been seared away; the sound of a child crying was all thatremained. "The children," she whispered.

Dubro left his forge in the care of his new, anxious apprentice and followedIllyra through the Bazaar to the Street of Red Lanterns. Children were aninevitable byproduct of life on the Street, and even if most of them wound up inthe gutters, a few of them enjoyed a healthy, sheltered childhood within theHouses themselves. Myrtis, madam of the fortresslike Aphrodisia House, kept theboys as well as the girls, and had apprenticed one youth to Dubro in exchangefor sheltering the couple's twin son and daughter.

The Street was quiet and drab in the afternoon sunlight. Illyra let go ofDubro's hand and told herself that there was no danger, that the blackness inher mind was a nightmare she could release and forget. She thought nothing ofthe young woman running toward them until she fell to her knees before them.'

"Shipri be praised, you're right here! He was sleeping with the rest-"

The woman's hysteria rekindled Illyra's anxiety and her Sight. She Saw the roomwhere Myrtis, frowning, leaned over a cradle; where chubby blonde Lillis coweredin a shadowed comer; and where her year-and-a-half-old son had stopped crying.Following the certainty of her vision she raced ahead down stairways andcorridors.

"You've come so quickly," the ageless madam said, looking up from the cradle, amomentary wrinkle of confusion on her brow. "Ah, but yes, you do have the Sight,don't you?" The confusion vanished. "You know as much as I, then." She made roomfor the child's mother at the cradle.

The little boy lay rigid in some sudden, paralyzing fever. His breath came insporadic gasps, each holding the possibility that there would be no others. Histears were drying on his dirty cheeks. Illyra brushed her fingers across onerivulet and shivered when she saw that the darkness was in the tears themselves.

"It is like no disease I know of," Myrtis disclaimed. "I would send word toLythande, but the Blue Star is beyond my call now. We can summon Stulwig or someother-"

"There's no need," Illyra said wearily.

She was seeing everything twice: once with her own eyes and mind, then a secondtime with the Sight. The strange-ness should have been overwhelming, but becausethe Sight itself was involved, there could be no surprises. Dubro pushed asidethe curtain and joined them. She glanced at him and Saw the completeness of hisbeing: his boyhood, his manhood, his death-and quickly lowered her eyes. Againshe made a raven of Vision and set the knowledge free, but the new darkness itleft within her was insignificant compared to the old.

Because she would only look at her shallow-breathing son whose shape and fatewas the same in both visions, Illyra was left alone with him. She sat on therocking stool and felt the square of window-light move across her shoulders,then the first chill of twilight. They brought her a thin broth, which sheignored, and wrapped a heavier shawl around herself as the night air thickened.She moved as little as Alton did in her arms.