He blinked again, looked uptown through the haze of morning-smokes from Sanctuary's thousand fires, up the winding of one of the long streets.

And it seemed there was a line drawn in the world, with fools on one side and the other of it, and himself one of the few who could see himself as a fool. The high shining fine houses where Ranke frittered away its last hours barriered themselves in vain against the tide that was about to come uptown. Walegrin could not hold forever. Neither could they, below.

Sanctuary, with its backside to the sea.

With its mongrel gods and its mongrel merchants and the last lost rim of secure land in the Empire. Nisibis would sweep down to the shores; and the Beysib up from the south like a rolling wave; and for an intelligent man who had soldiered all his life away for the fools who wore the gold and the purple-there was in the end, riot and murder and death by stoning in city streets.

Fool, he thought, hating Kadakithis for what he was not. And had a vision of dark eyes and felt the feathery touch of soft lips and the dizzying descent into dark.

He took up on the reins. Looked uphill with thoughts moiling in him: And snapped the reins and sent the bay clattering along the Maze, through increasingly tangled streets. Red PFLS graffiti sprawled across a wall, once, twice, obscuring the usual obscenity, Jubal's blue hawk splashed over that. The bay spumed broken pottery, sent a girl shrieking for the curb. A rock pelted back and rebounded off the cobbles. The young were always the rebels.

The uptown house echoed to soft steps and the closing of doors and Moria came downstairs, wrapped in her robe. She cursed the servants, let out a gutter oath, and stopped dead on the steps, staring wide-eyed at what had gotten in. She clutched the robe about her, wiped at a frowsy tangle of hair and blinked in the dim light. Ex-thief, ex-hawkmask, she knew the elegant shape standing in the polished foyer by the Caronnese vase: the elegant, cloaked man who looked up at her and smiled.

Her heart thudded. "Haught." She came pelting down off the steps and remembered all at the same time that she was no longer the street-wiry sylph, no longer the tough woman who knew the ways Haught did not; he was all elegance and she was she was still Moria of the streets, gone a little fat and altogether terrified.

"Moria." Haught's voice was cool, but a sexual roughness ran through it, and shivered on her nerves. She stopped in her dismay and he took her by the shoulders, in this fine house that was Ischade's, as they all were Ischade's. No one had let him in. He passed whatever doors he liked.

"My brother's missing," she said. "He's-gone."

"No," Haught said. "She knows where he is. Vis and I found him. He's doing a little job. Now you have to."

Her mouth began to tremble. First it was outright terror for Mor-am, for her brother, who was half-crazy and bound to Ischade as she was; and second it was for herself, because she knew that she was in a trap and there was no way out. Ischade gave them this fine house and came and collected little pieces of their souls whenever she wanted favors done.

"What?" she asked; and Haught put his hands up to her face and brushed the tangled hair back, gently, like a lover. "What?" Her lips trembled.

He bent and kissed them, softly, and the touch was both gentle and chilling. He gazed closely into her eyes.

Was it possible-Moria stood quite transfixed-possible that Haught still loved her? It was a fool's thought. She only had to remember what she was and look at what he had become and know the answer to that. She recovered her wits and stepped back with a small push of her hands. The robe gaped and she cared nothing for that, small and dumpy and wine-sotted woman who had given away all advantage.

"Where is he? Where's my brother?"

"Oh, about the streets. Going those places he can go." He reached into his shirt and drew out a thing that never could have come from the lower town. "Here." The red rose showed a little rumpling. It glistened and glowed then, dewed with the illusion of freshness. "I gathered it for you."

"From Her garden?"

"The bushes can bloom-even in winter. With a little urging. She doesn't care. She cares for very little. You might bloom too, Moria. You only want a little tending."

"Gods-" Her teeth chattered. She shook sense back into her head and looked up at him. At the man she had once known and no longer did, with his fine (foreign) speech. She held the rose in her hand and a thorn brought blood. "Get me out of here. Haught, get me out."

"No. That's not the game, Moria." His hands held her face, straightened her hair, smoothed her cheeks. "There, now, you can be beautiful." And there was a softer feel to her face and to his hands, cool, like the winter rose. "You can. You can be anything you want to be. Your brother has his uses. But he's weak. You never were. He's a fool. You were never that either."

"If I'm so smart why am I here? Why am I locked in this place with gold I can't even steal? Why do I take orders from a-"

His finger touched her lips but the silence was hers, sudden and prudent. She caught the shadow in his eyes, that perpetually evaded, darted, shifted in a slave's nowhere privacy-he had turned that apparent shyness to furtive purpose. Or had always had it.

"She's calling in the debt," she said, "isn't She?"

"Trust me," Haught said. His finger wandered down her cheek to her throat. "There are few women who attract me. Certainly I don't share her bed. Calling in the debt, yes. And when the world changes, you'll wear satins and eat on gold-"

"Gods, Shalpa and Ils de-"

Her voice changed in her throat, lost its harshness and became Rankene-smooth, betraying her. She stopped and spat. "My gods!" (But it came out pure and clear.)

"My rose has hurt your hand." Haught gathered her fingers to his lips and kissed the thorn-sting, and Moria, who had faced street gangs dagger in hand and sliced respect into more than one Downwind bully, stood and trembled at that touch.

Trembled more when he turned her toward the mirror and she saw the touseled, dark-haired woman who blinked back at her in shock. Rage flooded through her. He made her this. Witchery like the rose. She turned on him with fury in her eyes. "I'm not your toy, dam-

mit!"

(But the voice would not roughen and the accent was not Ilsigi.)

"You're the way I always saw you."

"Damn you!"

"And the way She wants you. Leave Mor-am to the streets. He has his uses. Yours are uptown. Haven't you understood what you're for?"

"I'm not your damn whore!"

He flinched. "Have I ever asked that? No. I'll tell you what you're to do. But I wouldn't use that word. I truly wouldn't, Moria, in Her hearing."

More messengers sped during the day. One great one lifted on black wings and scattered a flock of lesser on his way from the river-house roof. The little ones went a dozen ways.

And Ischade (she did sleep, now and again, but rarely of late) wrapped herself in a dusky blue cloak unlike her nighttime black and gathered up certain other things she wanted.

"Stilcho," she said; and having no answer, thrust aside the curtains that hid the Stepson's small room.

There was no one there. "Stilcho!" She sent her mind out in a light scouring of the immediate vicinity; and raised a thin, wan response.

She opened the door and took a look out back: and found him there, a shivering knot of cloak by the rose-bush.

"Stilcho!"

There was refuge of a sort in the house, one of half a dozen hidey-holes they maintained within the black zone for operations this far from base. And Strat paid listless attention to the bay and saw it strawed and fed and watered in the shanty-stable; and climbed the dirty stairs of the deserted place and pulled the vent-chain that let a little light through the shutters.