"Until now," Mriga said. "Madam, you had some small part in what happened. May I remind you? A night not too long ago, about midnight, you came across a man digging mandrake-"

"Harran the barber. Indeed."

"I got caught in the spelling. It bound all three of us together in divinity for a while. But one of the three is missing. Harran is dead."

Those dark eyes looked over the edge of the cup again. "I had thought he escaped the ... unpleasantness ... at the barracks. At least there was no sign of him among the slain."

"Last night," Siveni said, and the look she turned on Ischade was cruel. "Your lover did it."

Tyr growled.

"My apologies," said Ischade. "But how cross fate is ... that your business, whatever it is, brings you to deal with me ... and precludes your vengeance against anyone under my roof." She sipped her wine for a moment. "Frustration is such a mortal sort of problem, though. I must say you're handling it well."

Mriga frowned. The woman was unbearable ... but had to be borne, and knew it. There was no way to force her to help them. "I have some experience with mortality," Mriga said. "Let's to business, madam. I want to see what kind of payment you would require for a certain service."

One of those dark brows lifted in gentle scorn. "The highest possible, always. But the service has to be one I wish to render ... and the coin of payment must be such as will please me. I have my own priorities, you see. But you haven't told me clearly what the service is."

"We want to go to hell," Siveni said.

Ischade smiled, tastefully restraining herself from the several obvious replies. "It's easily enough done," she said. "Those gates stand open night and day, to one who knows their secrets. But retracing your steps, finding your way to the light again ... there's work, there's a job indeed. And more of a job than usual for you two." She looked over at Siveni. "You've never been mortal at all; you can't die. And though you've had experience at being mortal, you apparently haven't died yet. And only the dead walk in hell."

Mriga's omniscience spoke in her mind's ear. "Gods have gone there before," she said. "It's not as if it's never been done."

"Some gods," Siveni said, "have gone and not come back." She looked at Mriga in warning, silently reminding her of the daughter of Dene Blackrobe, merry Sostreia: once maiden goddess of the spring, and now the queen and bride of hell, awful and nameless.

"Yes," Ischade said, "there is always some uncertainty about the travels of gods in those regions." Yet her eyes were inward-turned, musing; and a tick of time later, when they focused on Mriga again, the goddess knew she had won. There was interest there, and the hope that something would happen to relieve the terrible tedium that assails the powerful. The interest hid behind Ischade's languid pose the way Stilcho's old handsomeness haunted his scars.

"A pretty problem," she said, musing out loud now. "Mortal souls I could simply send there-a knife would be sorcery enough for that-and then recall. Though the bodies would still be dead. But that won't work for you two; your structure's the problem. Gods' souls enclose and include the body, instead of the other way around. Killing the bodies won't work. Killing a soul ... is a contradiction in terms: impossible." She sighed a little. "A pity, sometimes; this place has been getting crowded of late."

Then firelight stirred and glittered in Ischade's eyes as for a moment they became wider. "Yet I might reduce that crowding, at least temporarily ..."

Siveni's eyes glittered too. "You're going to use the ghosts," she said. "You're going to borrow their mortality."

"Why, you're a quick pupil indeed," Ischade said, all velvet mockery. "Not their mortality exactly. But their fatality ... their deadness. One need not die to go to hell. One need only have died. I can think of ways to borrow that. And then hell will have two more inmates for the night."

"Three," said Mriga.

"Four," said Siveni.

They looked at each other, then at Ischade.

Ischade raised her eyebrows. "What, the dog too?"

Tyr yipped.

"And who else, then?"

"Madam," Siveni said, "the best way to be sure we come back from this venture is to have with us the guide who opens the way. Especially if the way back is as difficult as you claim."

Ischade held quite still for a moment, then began to laugh, and laughed long and loud. A terrible sound it was. "These are hard times," she said, "when even gods are so suspicious."

"Treachery is everywhere," said Mriga, wondering swiftly how the thought had escaped her before.

"Oh indeed," Ischade said, and laughed again, softly, until she lost her breath. "Very well. But what coin do you plan to use to pay the ones below? Even I only borrow souls, then send them back; and believe me, there's a price. To get your barber back in the flesh and living, the payment to those below will have to be considerable. And there's the problem of where you'll put him-"

"That will be handled," Mriga said, "by the time the deed's done. Meanwhile we shouldn't waste time, madam. Even in hell time flows, and souls forget how to stay in bodies."

Ischade looked lazily at Mriga, and once again there was interest behind the look, and calculation. "You haven't yet told me what you'll do with your barber once you've got him," she said. "Besides the predictable divine swiving."

"You haven't yet told us what payment you'll require," said Mriga. "But I'll say this. Last time you met my lord, you told him that if he brought Siveni back among the living, you'd find the proceedings merry to watch. And did you not?"

Ischade smiled, small and secret. "I watched them take away the temple doors that she smashed down into the street," she said softly, "and I saw the look on Molin Torchholder's face while they carted them off. He was most distressed at the sudden activity of Ilsig gods. So he began to pull what strings he could to deal with that problem ... and one of the strings he pulled was attached to Tempus and his Stepsons, and the Third Commando."

"And to you," Mriga said. "So that the barracks burned, and then the city burned, and Harran and a thousand others died. All so that the town will keep on being too divided against itself to care that you go about in it, manipulating the living and doing your pleasure on the dead ... to alleviate your boredom."

"The gods are wise," Ischade said, quietly.

"Sometimes not very. But I don't care. My business is to see what I love brought somewhere safe. After that- this town needs its own gods. Not Rankan, or Beysib, or even Ilsigi. I'm one of the new ones. There are others, as you know. Once the 'divine swiving' is out of the way. I intend to see those new young gods settled, for this place's good, and its people's good. That may take mortal years, but while it's going on, there'll be 'merry times' enough for even you without you having to engineer them. There'll be war in heaven ... which is always mirrored on earth."

"Or the other way around," Ischade said.

"Either way, you'll find it very interesting. Which is what you desire. Isn't it?"

Ischade looked at Mriga. "Very well. This business is apparently in my interests. We'll discuss payment after-ward; it will be high. And I shall go with you ... to watch the 'merry times' begin." She smiled. Mriga smiled too. Ischade's velvet, matter-of-fact malice was wide awake, hoping disaster would strike and make things even more 'interesting,' perhaps even considering how to help it strike. The woman was shameless, insufferable-and so much herself that Mriga suddenly found herself liking Ischade intensely.