But not in walking the Maze by dark and unseen. Hanse was in his element, andCappen followed him artlessly, down the length of the Serpentine, andinto territory of the city at large - where the law came, and where a wantedthief was less than safe. The houses and shops here were more sturdy, andfinally magnificent, and those latter existed behind walls, and most with barson the windows. Walkers grew scarce for a time, and Cappen hung furtherback, afraid that he himself might attract the notice of the pair Hansefollowed ... which he earnestly did not want.

One street and another, and sometimes a passage through narrower ways whereCappen found Hanse going more carefully, where they four were virtually aloneand where a false move could alert the pair ahead. Cappen stayed far back then,and once he thought he had lost them all... but a quick move around a comer putthem all in view again. Hanse looked back in that instant, while Cappen tried tostay inconspicuously part of a stack of barrels, recalling Hanse's knives, andthe murk of the night. The fog was coming on and the light played tricks; alight mist slicked the stones ... and still the pair kept moving, out of themerchant quarter and into the quarter of the gods, past the square of thePromise of Heaven, where prostitutes, bedraggled in the mist, sat theiraccustomed benches like rain-soaked birds. - They swung past this place and intothe Avenue of Temples itself; and Cappen shrugged his cloak about him with agenuinely wretched chill and marvelled at the trio ahead, who moved, pursued andpursuer, with such a tireless purpose.

And then another alley, a sudden move aside, which almost caught Hanse himselfby surprise, near the magnificence of the dome of the temple of Ils and Shipri.

There Hanse tucked himself away into shadow and Cappen quite lost sight of him,among the buttresses and the statuary of the out-thrust wing of the temple ...vanished.

Then the woman in black went out into the street, ascended the plain centre ofthe steps of Ils and Shipri, towards the temple guards who warded the constantlyopen doors in these uneasy times ... four men and well armed, setting hands onhilts at once as they were approached. The woman cast back her hood: swordsstayed undrawn, hands unmoving, numb as the patrons of the Unicorn.

Then another shadow began to move, from the unwatched side of the steps, a manfrom out of the shadows, knife in hand, a swift stalking... which affordedCappen even less of comfort and made him think that a wayward minstrel perhapsshould have spent a safer, drier night in the Unicorn.

Follow, the wizard had said, and Hanse pressed himself close against the wall,in the scant shadow afforded by a bit of brickwork, pressed himself there andwatched in chill discomfort -blinked in horror while it happened, and four mendied with swords still in sheath - only the last attempted a defence, andMradhon Vis cut his throat in one quick and unmistakable move. Hanse blinkedagain and discovered to his consternation that the dark one, the woman, wasgone, Mradhon Vis crouching now in sole possession of that bloody threshold.Hanse fingered his belt knife like a warding talisman; and wanted only to stayput, but all the while the icy cold at the pit of his neck, more biting than thecold of the mist, reminded him what he was there to do - what other power therewas to offend. And he waited, reckoning every small move Mradhon Vis made,crouched over the bodies of the guards - every small shifting of a man busy atcorpse-looting, every glance about as some hardy passerby noised along the mainavenue - but none saw, none came near.

The woman delayed about her business inside: it might have been a moment, or farlonger - time did tricks in his mind. Hanse shifted uneasily, finally gatheredhis nerve, slipped out of that safe concealment and, in the turning of Vis'shead towards a distraction on the street... he eased past a gap in cover andinto the alley Vis and the woman had left, along the temple itself.

He reached the first of three barred windows, and with utmost silence took thechance and seized the bars, hoisted himself up to see. The breath passedsilently over his teeth and his gut knotted up - a robber of wizards, Enas Yorlhad said: and now a thief who preyed on gods.

That struck hard ... not that he darkened the doorway of his city gods with hispresence or practised alms; but there were territories, there were limits to athief's audacity ... or it went hard for all. It was his craft, by the gods, hisart the woman involved; and they were old, those gods, and belonged inSanctuary, as the Rankan emperor's new lot never would. And the woman, theforeigner, the witch-thief, climbed up to the lap of bearded Ils himself andlifted the fabled necklace of Harmony from about the marble neck.

'Shalpa,' Hanse swore silently, and with chilling appropriate-ness - let himselfever so carefully down from his vantage with one chill throbbing about his neckand another one travelling his backbone. So Enas Yorl wanted a report. And thegods of old Ilsig were plundered by a foreign witch while the Rankans moved inwith their new lot of deities down the block, with scaffolds and plans and theevident intent of overshadowing the gods of Ilsig. Prince Kithakadis and theRankan gods; and: 'recommended', Enas Yorl had said, sending a thief out to keepwatch on this god-thievery.

Hanse flattened himself back into his concealment with a sense of a world amiss,of matters under way no mere thief wanted part of. He had mixed in Kitty-Rat'sconnivances once to his discomfort ... but now, now it was possible Enas Yorlhad a side of his own.

And hired help.

A footstep towards the temple front warned him: he crouched low and held hisbreath - Ischade, rejoining Mradhon Vis. 'Done,' he heard her say; and 'here'san end. Let's be gone, and quickly.'

Of course an outsider like Mradhon Vis - of course a man not Ilsig, who wouldhave no scruples in killing Ilsig priests or robbing Ilsig gods.

In the Emperor's hire? Hanse wondered, which was far too much and too clearwondering for a thief; the sweat was coursing down his ribs despite the mistychill of the air. He was not sure at all now what side Yorl was ... and itoccurred to him to tear the amulet from his neck, drop it in the alley and run.

But how far? And how long? He thought a second and chilling time of the wizardand his connections; recalled Sjekso; and Kithakadis himself ... a prince ofsome small gratitude for services a thief had rendered; but more than dangerousif certain rumours started, that Yorl could spread ... effortlessly.

The pair headed back the way they had come, and he set out after them, seeing noother course.

More and more bizarre, this midnight wandering. Cappen went rigid in his hidingplace first as the quarry passed, and then as he caught sight of Hanse again,padding after them as before.

So there was no encounter. They went out and they did murder and came back,while Hanse followed after having seen what Hanse had seen ... very unlikeHanse. Cappen suspected motives ill-defined, gave shape to nothing, only sure itwas something more than Hanse's private impulses that moved him now. He recalledthe way in which the woman had passed a roomful of patrons at the Unicorn, inwhich she and her companion went where they liked on the street, in which guardsdied like slaughtered cattle...

The relief Cappen felt at seeing Hanse mobile and not lying stiff in the alleyfurther on, gave way to a horror at the silence of all that was done, theneatness of it; and a subtle dread of this pacing about the streets. Theprocession which had started to be humorous and might have become yet more so onthe return ... now assumed a thoroughly macabre character, such that he forboreto contact Hanse when he had, for one instant, the chance. Hanse's face too, inthe small glimpse he had had of it as he passed, had the wan, set look ofterror.