"Excellent," Mriga said. "What needs to be done?"

"If you haven't buried him already," Ischade said, "do so. Otherwise we would find him on the wrong side of the frontier ... and matters would become even more complicated than they are at the moment."

"Very well. When will we be leaving?"

"Midnight, of course: from a place where three roads meet. Ideally, there should be dogs howling-"

Tyr gave Ischade an ironic look, tilted up her head and let out a single long note, wavering down through halftones into silence.

"So that's handled," Siveni said, reaching for her spear. "And as for three roads meeting, what about the north side of that park by the Governor's Walk and the Avenue of Temples? The 'Promise of Heaven,' I think it's called."

Ischade chuckled, and they all rose. "How apt. Till midnight, then. I will provide the equipment."

"That's gracious of you, madam. Till midnight, or a touch before."

"That will do very well. Mind the second step. And the hedge: it has thorns."

Mriga walked through the open gate with satisfaction, patted the bay's neck, and stepped sidewise toward midnight. Siveni came after her, her spear shouldered and sizzling merrily, and went the same way. Only Tyr delayed for a moment, staring at the bay-then nipped it neatly in the left rear fetlock, scrambled sideways to avoid the kick, and dove past Mriga into night.

Ischade also looked at the bay; then, more wryly, at her yard's trees and bushes, still full of green fire that burned but did not consume. She waved the godfire out of existence and shut the door, thinking of old stories about hell.

"Haught," she called toward one of the back rooms. "Stilcho."

They were there in a hurry: It never did to keep Ischade waiting. "Jobs for you both," she said, shutting the door. "Stilcho, I need a message taken to the uptown house. And on your way back, pick me up a corpse."

Dead as he was, Stilcho blanched. Haught watched him out of the corner of his eye, looking slightly amused.

"And for you," she said to Haught, watching amused in turn as he stiffened slightly, "something to exercise those talents you've been so busy improving to please me. Fetch me a spare ghost. A soldier, I think, and one without any alliances. Be off, now."

She watched them go, both of them hurrying, both of them trying to look as if they weren't. Ischade smiled and went off to look for Straton.

All it took was the sight of a slender woman-shape, cloaked in black and strolling sedately down the Avenue of Temples, to clear the midnight street to a windscoured pavement desert. Behind her followed a bizarre little parade. First came a dead man, hauling a bleating black ram and black ewe along behind him on ropes: then a live man, small and scared-looking, leading a cowed donkey with a long awkward bundle strapped across its back. He stank of wine, Mor-am did: anyone but the donkey would have been revolted. Behind him and the beast came a slight-built man whose Nisi heritage showed in his face, a man bearing a small narrow silk-wrapped package and another bulkier one, and looking as if he would rather have been elsewhere. Last of all, more or less transparent from moment to moment, came a ghost dressed in Hell-Hounds' harness. It was Razkuli, dead a long time, stealing wistful glances at the old, living Hell-Hound haunts.

The Promise of Heaven was even falser to its name than usual tonight. Word of the procession had run up the street half an hour before, and the panic-stricken ladies of the night had abandoned their usual territory in favor of one more deserving of the title. Ischade strolled in past the stone pillar-gates of the park, looking with cool amusement at the convenient bowers and bushes scattered about for those who wished to begin their huggermuggering as soon as their agreements with the park ladies were struck. The cover, copses of cypress and downhanging willow, suited Ischade well. So did the little empty altar to Eshi in the middle of the park. Once there had been a statue of her there, but naturally the statue and its pediment had been stolen, leaving only a long boxlike slab of marble much carved with PFLS graffiti and inscriptions such as Petronius Loves Sulla.

She paused by the stone and ran gentle fingers along it. A dog's howl went wavering up into the cloudy night. Ischade looked up and smiled.

"You're prompt," she said. "It's well. Haught, bring me what you carry. Stilcho, fasten them here."

Standing by the altar, Mriga and Siveni looked around them-Mriga with interest, Siveni with wry distaste, for she was after all a maiden goddess. Ischade put her hood back and gazed at the goddesses with her beautiful oblique eyes full of silent laughter as the frightened Stilcho tethered the ram and ewe by the altar. Haught held out one of his silken bundles. Ischade put the wrappings aside and drew forth a long curved knife of bronze, half sword and half sickle, with an edge that even in the little, dim light from the torches of the Governor's Palace still glittered wickedly keen. The flat of the blade was stained dark.

"Blood sacrifice, then," Siveni said.

"There's always sacrifice where the ones below are concerned." Ischade reached absently down to caress the ram's head. It held still in terror. "But first other business. Stilcho, I will need your service tonight, and Razku-li's. I go on a journey."

"Mistress-"

"To hell. You are going to lend me your death, and Razkuli will lend his to this warrior-lady, and this poor creature-" she reached out to touch the wrapped bundle on the shying donkey "-as soon as I fetch him back, will lend his to the lady who limps. But you understand that while we're using those parts of your life-or death, rather-you will have to be elsewhere."

Mriga bit her lip and turned away from the sight of a dead man going pale. "Souls need containers ... so I'll provide some till dawn; we'll be back then, and you'll find yourselves back to normal. Haught and Mor-am will stand guard till then." She stepped away from the altar, gliding past Haught and throwing him a cool look.

"Mistress-"

"Guard them well, Haught," Ischade said, not looking back at him. "I will take a dim view of any 'accidents.' I'm not done with them yet." She paced away, turning after a few seconds and beginning to walk a circle, setting wards. There was no outward sign, no fire, no sound. But Mriga felt the air grow tight, and when Ischade came about at last and gestured the circle closed, the mortals in it looked at each other in still terror, like beasts in a new-snapped trap.

"No god or man will cross that line," she said. "Goddesses, your last word. Will you do this?"

"Get on with it," Siveni said. Her spear sizzled.

Mriga nodded and looked down at Tyr. The dog put her head up and howled again, softly, an eager sound.

"Very well," Ischade said, and paused by the altar, and looked over her shoulder at the donkey. There was a wheeze, the terrible sound a corpse makes when it's rolled over and the last breath leaves its lungs-only this breath went in. The tethered donkey plunged and screamed as its burden abruptly began to move, a slow underwater struggling. Ischade reached out leisurely and stripped the covering from around the body. It crumpled toward the ground, collapsing to its knees, then slowly, slowly stood. It was a young woman, terribly wounded about the breast and neck; her tunic and flounced skirts were blood-blackened and her head had a tendency to slew to one side, trying to come undone from the half severed neck.

"Well, well," Ischade said, calm-voiced, "not 'he,' but 'she.' Some poor nightwalker caught in the Stepsons' barracks, where she shouldn't have been. Pity. Haught, uncover the lantern."