"What-matter?"

She smiled and came and touched the rose he wore. "Take care of Roxane. Keep her out of my way."

Haught's eyes went white, all round.

"Oh, you'll have Stilcho's help," Ischade said. "And Roxane's hardly what she was. Niko's seen to that. She might well make a try for him, but then, you have Janni. And Stilcho. Don't you? I'm sure I can trust you with it."

Another bird fluttered into the open window, and took its perch on a chair back. This one came from uptown. It had a spelled ring about its inky leg, and it whetted a chisel-keen beak against steelshod claws. Regarded them both with a mad gold eye.

"Oh, indeed," she said. And to Haught: "Be useful. Feed it. Mind your fingers."

"That's the high priest," Haught said, meaning where it had come from. Its message, shrilled in a high thin voice, was not within his understanding.

Query, query, query. "Molin wants answers," Ischade said, and smiled, because those answers were forthcoming, but not in the way the high priest wanted. "Tell Janni he's welcome to take Niko if he can. When you see him."

"Where have you been?" Black Lysias of the 3rd Commando asked questions when Strat came up into the stables, back inside the Black line. "We've been scouring-"

"Say I had an urgent meeting." Strat caught the man by the sleeve. Fastidious Lysias looked like a ratsnest; smelled like fish. That was the way the 3rd traveled these days. Strat propelled him through into the slant-walled tackroom, where a little daylight got through the cracks of the leaky roof. The bay snorted and stamped and kicked a board nearby, having had enough of this den. Second kick, like half the building was falling. "Damn. Cut it, horse."

Sulky silence then. A snort and switch of tail.

"We've got something moving," Straton said. "You hear it?" And in the absence of confirmations: "What have you heard?"

"We got a line on Niko. Got rumors where he is. Uptown. Priests. We got areas we can't get into. Randal sent-says Roxane's stirring about last night; she's looking too. Fast. We still haven't got where. Kama's got her piff connection sniffing round; haven't found her yet. Melant's down harborside; Kali's trying that Setmur contact; we've got-"

A shiver went up his back. He gripped Lysias's shoulder, hard. "Listen. I'm going out again. Get the word out, get the Third to positions, full alert."

"You going-"

"Get out of here. Get it moving."

"Right," Lysias said, and dived round the comer: no further questions.

But Strat lingered there in the dim light, with the sinking feeling that panic had impelled that. He wanted the daylight; wanted-

-easy answers.

Kadakithis will lose the Empire-

Niko in trouble. Plots went through Sanctuary like worms through old meat. Tempus delaying and Randal discomfited. Straton considered himself no fool, not ordinarily; upstairs in that nasty little room, men and women had tried to make him one and he had unerringly stripped souls down to little secrets, most of which he was not interested in, a few of which he was, and they spilled them all before they went their way either loose (for effect) or into the Foal (for neatness). He was not particularly proud of this skill, only of a keen wit that did not take lies for an answer. That was what made him the Stepsons' interrogator; a certain dogged patience and a sure instinct for unraveling the mazy works of human minds.

That skill turned inward, explored blanks, explored tracks he had no wish for it to follow.

She, she, she, it kept saying, and when it did it traveled round the edges of a darkness more than dark to the eyes; womb-dark, unknowable-dark, warm dark and comfortable and full of too many gaps. Far too many gaps. He had found a certain peace. Courted it. Congratulated himself that he escaped. That perpetual escape had become meat and drink to him; the stuff of his self-esteem.

Think, Stepson. Why can't you think about it?

-Horse wandering in the morning, pilfering apples, rider infant-helpless by dawn- (He winced at the image. Is this a sane man?)

-Kadakithis dying, conveniently dead on the marble floor, the tread of military boots brisk in the halls of the palace-

Good, Tempus would say, finding one of his men had anticipated him; the shadow play came into sunlight, himself a hero, not the creature of the little room upstairs, but a man who did the wide thing, the right thing, took the chance-

He shivered, there in the dark. There was the taste of blood in his mouth. He leaned there against the wall, jolted as the bay took another kick to let him know its opinion of this dark stable.

He suspected. He suspected himself-is this a sane man?

He had to go-there. To the river. To find out. Not by dark, not during her hour but by his; by the daylight, when he might have his wits about him.

The river house huddled small and unlikely-looking in the tangle of brush that ran the White Foal's edge on town-side. If you asked a dozen people were there trees in Sanctuary's lower end they would say no, forgetting these. If you asked were there houses hereabouts, they would say no, forgetting such small places as this one with its iron fence and its obscuring hedge. This one was, well, abandoned. There were often lights. Once or twice there had been fire conspicuous disturbance. But the prudent did not notice such things. The prudent kept to their own districts, and Strat, having ridden past the several checkpoints down mostly deserted streets, rode not oblivious to signs now; thinking, and taking mental notes as he tethered the bay horse out in front of this house that few saw.

He shoved the rusty gate aside and walked up the overgrown flags to the little porch. The door opened before he knocked (and before anyone on the other side could have reached it), which failed to surprise him. Musky perfume wafted out. He walked in, in the dim light that shone through a milky window-Ischade was not tidy except in her person.

"Ischade?" he called out.

That she would not be at home-that had occurred to him; but he had, in his haste and his urgency, shoved that possibility aside. There was not that much of day left. The sun was headed down over the White Foal, over the sprawl of Downwind buildings.

"Ischade?"

There were unpleasant things to meet hereabouts. She had enemies. She had allies who were not his friends.

A curtain whispered. He blinked at the black-clad figure who walked forward to meet him. She was always so much smaller than he remembered. She towered in his memory. But the eyes, always the eyes-

He evaded them, walked deliberately aside and poured him and her a drink from the pitcher that sat on the low table. Candles brightened. He was accustomed to this. Accustomed too, to the light step that stole up behind him-no one walked up behind him; it was a tic he had. But Ischade did it and he let her; and she knew. Knew that no one touched him from behind, that it was one of their little games, that he let her do that. It made a little frisson of horror. Like other games they played. Soft hands came up his back, rested on his shoulders.

He turned round with both wine cups and she took hers and a kiss, lingering slow.

They did not always go straight to bed. Tonight he took the chair in front of the fire; she settled half beside him and half into his lap, a comfortable armful, all whisper of cloth and yielding curves and smell of rich musk and good wine. She sipped her wine and set it down on the sidetable. Sometimes at such moments she smiled. This time she gazed at him in a way he knew was dangerous. He had not come tonight to look into those dark eyes and forget his own name. He felt a cold the wine could not reach, and felt for the first time that life or death might be equally balanced in her desires.