It was curious business, and more than mildly unpleasant. Cappen was notsanguine. Hanse stalking Vis - it was quite unlikely. Hanse was all temper andbluster. If anyone was doing the stalking it was likeliest to be Vis, and Hansewas ill-advised to have prodded that surly-countenanced bastard ... far moretrouble than Hanse really wanted, that was sure. Likely it was Hanse in hiding,if Vis had not yet got him. Cappen picked up his cup again, and of a sudden hiseyes hooded and while his hand carrying his cup to his lips never faltered, thesip he took was slow and studied: he watched a second man make attempt on thelady's table.

And that was Mradhon Vis himself... who went up quietly, and met no rebuff atall. The lady lifted her face and her eyes to him - a face certainly worth asong, although a dark and sombre one. And when her eyes lit on Mradhon Vis, veryquietly the lady got to her feet and in Vis's still silent company... walkedtowards the back door of the tavern. Only a few heads turned, of those at theother tables, and those only casually. There was at the same time the faintestofpricklings at Cappen's nape, a feeling he knew: he touched the amulet athis throat, a silver coiled serpent... a gift, a protection against spells,more efficacious than most priest-blessed gimcrack tokens .... under its ownterms. He saw, with a touch of unease the greater because no one else in theroom seemed to see ... how Mradhon Vis and his dark companion moved, withcommon purpose and peculiar menace.

Strangeness enough progressed in Sanctuary ... deaths which made a man naturallythink on protections of the sorcerous kind, and to be glad of them if he hadthem, because where the powerful died, wizardry was about, selective of itsvictims thus far, but not - perhaps - exclusive of them. There was SjeksoKinzan, who had been no one. Cappen wondered did such protection as he possessed... protect or mark him; and as the lady and Mradhon Vis came past his table bythe door -

A moment Cappen was looking up and the lady looked down at him, more familiar inthat stare than he would have liked. The prickling about the amulet becamestrong indeed while he stared, lost in those dark eyes with a sense of deadlyperil, of his whole life resting loose and endangered, as if some small nudge onanyone's pan might tumble it. 'You're beautiful,' he murmured, because threetruths was the rule of the amulet if it was to work at all - 'You're dangerousand foreign here.'

She lingered, and reaching down picked up his cup where it sat; lilted it,sipped and set it down again, all with an eerie hint of humour or menaceflaunted at him, at him who alone in the room but Mradhon Vis - or was heexempt? - Alone of all the others,

Cappen stared back at her with his mind clear and with knowledge, with somethinggut-wrenching telling him that everything about this woman was askew.

She smiled at him, a parting of the lips on white teeth, a flash of dark eyes,an impression that she admired what she saw... and all the fineness he kept sostudiously, his elegance, different from others about him, his talents, his - ifstreetwom - finery ... was suddenly perilous to him, marking him out among allthe rest. And most of all... she knew he resisted her.

She left then, swept out of the door which Mradhon Vis held open, a gust of windand a sudden thud of the door closing. Cappen wanted wine... but his handstopped short of the cup she had just set down again, the metal she had had herlips to and the wine her mouth had tasted. He pushed back from the table and thebench scraped loudly over the noise of the other patrons. He hesitated, lookingat the door which led out to the backways, not wanting to go out there, in thegathering dark.

But Mradhon Vis, linked with that, and Sjekso cold dead with no mark on him; andHanse outright disappeared, hunting Mradhon Vis, as all the Maze surmised ...

Hanse had involved himself in something which was likely to be the death of him,and what concern that was to Cappen Varra was unclear to Cappen himself, onlythat he had drunk with Hanse of late, with a short and lately successful thiefand ruffian who had wanted - almost pathetically - to acquire style, who spentmost that came into his hands on the finer things, a cloak -oh gods! that cloak!- Cappen's aristocratic soul shuddered. But of the unassuming ruffians in thelot, of what quality there was to be had in the Maze, in Hanse there existed atleast the hankering after something else.

The business had marked Hanse down - and now stopped and stared at himself. Itwas always safer, he reckoned, to walk at a thing than to have it walking up athis back - later and unforeseen. Cappen opened the door carefully, went out intothe backways, his hand on his rapier hilt, recalling that Sjekso had used thesame door last night. But there was only the dark outside, amid the litter ofold barrels and used bottles. The woman in black had vanished, and Vis with her,vanished, and in what direction Cappen was in no wise certain.

Patience was rewarded. Vis, by the gods, and this Ischade ... in company; andHanse crouched lower in the shadows of the alley, a chill up his back, hisfingers rubbing at the well-polished hilt of his left boot knife. That promiseda revenge within his own grasp: so Yorl wanted the woman, and if Yorl settledwith her, then Vis went in the same bargain. Hanse evened his breathing, calmedhimself with wild hopes, first of getting out of this Yorl business and then ofhaving Yorl to settle Vis - the means by which the street might be safe againfor Hanse Shadowspawn. Report, Yorl had said, and by the gods, he was anxious tohave it done, if only they went to earth for the night...

They turned, not the way he had anticipated, towards the lodgings he had beenwatching, but the other way, towards the Serpentine. Hanse swore and slipped outfrom his concealment, shadowed them most carefully in their course through thedebris of the alley and out on to the street. The moon was not yet up; the onlylight came from the city itself, a vague glimmering on a bank of fog towards theharbour which diffused across the sky and promised one of those nights in whichlight spread through milky mist, from whatever sources - a thieves' night, and aworse to come.

The pair tended on up the Serpentine, bold as dockside whores ... but odd sightswere common enough in the Maze by night, masks, cloaks, bright colours flauntedby night when the kindly dark masked the signs of wear and their threadbarecondition. Man and woman, they were only conspicuous by their plainness, thewoman shrouded by the robe and hood so that she might be instead some nightprowling priest with an unlikely and rough guard.

Hanse followed, in and out among the occasional walkers on the street, a kind ofstalking at which he had some skill.

*

... So, well, it answered, at least, what Hanse had been up to, and upset allCappen Varra's calculations about Hanse as bluster and no threat. Cappen stoppedat the corner with the trio in view, glanced over his own shoulder with a touchof mad humour and the desperate thought that the whole was getting to be aprocession in the dark streets... the woman and Vis, and Hanse, and now himselfbut at least there was no fifth person that he could see, following him.

Hanse moved off, slipping casually down the street amid the ordinary trafficwith a skill Cappen found amazing ... he had never seen Hanse work, not afterthis fashion; had never particularly wanted to think at depth on the essence ofthe smallish thief, that there was in fact something more than the temper andthe knives and the vanity which made this man dangerous. Having seen it, hereckoned to himself that the only sensible course for him now was to go backinto the Unicorn, work his way into whatever game might start - his current hopeof prosperity - and forget Hanse entirely, never minding a moment when Hanseturned up as stiff and cold as Sjekso had, which was assuredly where he washeaded at the moment. But perhaps it was the poetry of the matter, the suspicionthat there might be something worth the witnessing ... perhaps it was theassurance that Hanse was into far more than he knew, and that somewhere upthere, without untidy recourse to the rapier that swung at his side ... he mightovertake the revenge-bound lunatic and talk him out of it. Hanse-was the onlylikely ally in a situation of his own; the woman had looked at him back there,and there was nagging at him an unwelcome vision, Hanse lying at the doorstep inthe morning and himself there the day after - macabre fancy it might be, but thewind still blew up his back. There was only the matter of catching Hanse to stophim, and that was like putting one's hands on a shadow. Cappen was notaccustomed to feel awkward in his moves, looked down on the louts and ne'er-dowells who walked the Maze; possessed a grace surpassing most - in any situation.