The rapist liked that fine. He liked it so well he grabbed the woman up by the hair and kicked her, which it took, besides the krrf these days, to get him excited-
But in the interval of a kick and the body hitting the pavement, the rapist heard another step on the dusty cobbles, a soft, stealthy step behind him.
He let his victim lie, facing-it was incredible to him-a cloaked, aristocratic woman, here, in these streets, in this alleyway.
He heard his earlier victim crawl aside, scrabble in the trash trying to escape, but this hooded, this incredibly elegant slut-amazed him-
Amazed him so much he was not expecting the sudden crack of a brick across the back of his skull ...
Ischade faced the bloody, panting barmaid across the body-in a desire both dark and frustrated by the assistance. "Thank you," Ischade said with irony, wrapping her cloak about her for the sensuality of it; and shuddered at what it stirred. "Do you live in this alley? No? I'd seek lodgings on the Unicorn's street-if I were in your place. Too far to walk -at this hour."
"Who are you?" the barmaid asked; it not being incredible to her, perhaps, that a woman in silk and velvet knew her nightly route. Perhaps it frightened her. Perhaps it told her she might have escaped the rat to run straight-on into the cobra's sliding coils-
But: "Go home," Ischade said. "Don't linger here. What's one more body-in Sanctuary?"
The barmaid caught a breath, looked at Ischade a moment longer, as if the spell touched even her-
It might. The curse was never specific. Only Ischade's personal taste was-and Ischade felt nothing but frustration and a rising anger at the girl's very existence, and at her courage-in a world where help was scarce, and no one cared. Perhaps she saw Ischade for what she was. But few did. Few-hearing of her-understood. People looked for vampires.
"Go," Ischade whispered, and the barmaid turned and ran, limping, for the end of the alley.
Ischade followed her-hoping-in case of some other trouble that might be drawn like predators to a crippled fish. She saw the young woman haul herself up a rickety steps in the alley next, saw the door shut; and eventually saw dim light from the shutter seams, the woman having, after some effort, Ischade supposed, gotten a lamp lit.
One remembered such necessities. Dimly. Long ago.
She had her own necessities-deadly, urgent necessities, since Strat had left-since she had broken the ties that held him. She had lives to hunt, to sustain her own; and she had her preferences in victims.
She walked on her way, walked the roughest areas of Sanctuary, that region south and harborward of the Unicorn. It was a thief who accosted her finally-
"I've nothing for you," she told him, having some conscience, at least, or having acquired one from her associations. He was very young, he had offered her no violence-and perhaps there was something in her manner that warned him, made him the least bit anxious: he looked behind him and to either side, as if suspecting some sort of ambush in which a woman obviously out of place in these alleys-might be the bait.
He seemed to decide otherwise then. He whipped out a knife, advanced a step or two as if she might leap at him-or someone might pounce from the shadows. He demanded money.
It was the knife that decided the question. She put back her hood, she caught his eyes and said, in a low voice, "Are you sure you want what I do have?"
The robber hesitated-the knife gleaming uncertainly in the dark. "A whore," he said, "a damned whore-"
"I know a place," she said, because now she had a look at him he was handsome, if he were washed, and he had a wit that might save his lifea few days, at least; and longer, if he would listen.
He came with her to the house on the riverside, that house which passers-by somehow failed to see, or, seeing, failed to notice-a house lost in hedges, behind a low iron gate, behind overgrown grounds and half-dead trees-
She wanted light-and light blazed from candles and from lamps, bright, so bright her young thief flung up his knife-hand to shield his eyes -he had never put the weapon away-and swore.
Taz swore again once his eyes had cleared and he had gotten a look at his surroundings, an untidy tumble of silks and satins, garish fabrics, costly furnishings-in a house which had ways of looking much smaller outside than in.
A nook and a silk-strewn bed-she never made it, only tidied it occasionally. She dropped the cloak like a spill of ink on the bright rugs, the busy fabrics. She was all in black, a necklace like drops of blood-a dusky skin, straight hair black as night, eyes-
Eyes that every man in his youth knew were waiting for him, somewhere, somewhen, if he was man enough... .
He forgot about his thieving. He forgot about everything except this woman, never even took offense that she insisted he go into the back room and bathe- One could hardly take it amiss, since she offered him a gentleman's clothes, the kind of perfumed soap the gentry used, and trailed a finger along his neck and said, softly, smelling of foreign spices and musk-
"Do everything I tell you and you'll be here more than tonight, you'll be here many, many days and nights-do you like that idea? You won't have to steal again. You'll have everything you could want-does that appeal to you?"
He could not believe this was happening. He only stared at her, with the soap in his hands, and said, "Are you a witch?"
"Do you think so?-What's your name?"
It was dangerous to answer that with witches. He had heard so. He looked into her eyes and found himself saying truthfully: "Taz. Taz Chandi."
Her finger traced his chin. "How old are you, Taz?"
He said, lying, knowing she was at least older, but he had no idea how much older, "Twenty-two."
"Nineteen," she said, and he knew he had been dangerously foolish to lie: he was afraid then. But she kissed his lips gently and sweetly, and left him to his bath and his anticipations ... which were for the first time since he was twelve-outlandish and hopeful and full of delicious dreams ...
Til he heard the front gate squeak and, with thoughts of returning husbands or ogres or Shalpa only knew what sort of interruption in this lovenest, hastily dressed in what the lady had provided.
Crit trod the garden path most warily, with an eye to the front door. He was sure the vampire knew he was there. He had his hand on his sword for all the good it would do, tramping through the weeds, under dead trees, up the rickety steps.
The door opened as he had thought it would, since he had been unblasted by magics getting this far; it opened the instant he trod on the last step, and she came out-wrapped in black and glaring at him with the warmth of an adder.
"What do you want?" she asked. "Am I not through with Stepsons?" He kept his hand on his hilt, like a religious talisman. He said, "Evidently you aren't through with my partner. I'm here to ask you to leave him alone."
He was not a man who found asking easy, and all but impossible when it sounded like empty-handed begging-because he had no negotiating points and there was not a damned thing he could do to the bitch, not a damned thing he could do to save his life if she took a notion to do to him what she had done to Strat, and so many, many others.
In point of fact he knew he was a fool to come here, but he had gone in under fire for Strat before, and more to the point, Strat had gone in for him; at times he had wanted to beat Strat senseless for his foolishnessonce he had even done it; and once he had thought he had a chance of shaking Strat back to sense. But Sanctuary had dealt hard with them both, as it dealt with everyone who came here. It was a sink that drank down lives. And Strat's seemed to be the price it wanted.
So he came here, unarmed as witches and wizards reckoned such things, and looked up at the witch, and said the only thing he could say:
"Let him go."
Ischade held her door in her hands, a shadow against the lamplight slanting past her and reflecting off the boards. She said, "I have, Crit."
"The hell!" He came up that last step onto the porch, where he towered over her. "Stop playing games'"
"I assu
re you." She left the door standing half-open and came closer, holding her cloak about her, black velvet about bare shoulders, a whisper of silk, a waft of musk. He was sure she was naked under it-some other tryst, some other damned soul. "Leave! Now!"
"Name your price. A favor. A disappearance. I'm not particular. You want some pretty boy, dammit, 1*11 buy you one, just leave my partner alone."
The shapely chin set, eyes hooded like a snake's. "What about you, Crit?"
He glanced away quickly, but not quickly enough.
"Look at me," she said, and he had to, knowing it was a slide over the brink, knowing there was no way out. Her hell-burned eyes had no bottom, except Hell itself, and there was no looking away. But he could still want to be off the porch, down the walk, and out the gate, that was the bad part-he could still want escape.
"Bargain?" he said. When he had begun to deal with her, maybe he had known that. Maybe that was why he had ditched Strat and come here, stupid as it was, because he was out of answers, and he finally cared about something again, and hated his helplessness.
"Get out of here," she said, and shoved him without laying a hand on him. "Get out of here, dammit!"
He caught his balance at the bottom of the steps, he caught his breath there, staring up at cold rejection of himself, his offers, his stupid hope of weaseling himself and Strat both out of this situation-a hope of escape for both of them ... in a day that Ranke was falling and they were posted here behind the lines, no use, no future, no damn use to anyone including themselves. Strat could not leave this city. Take him out by force and he would escape and ride back to it, that was how bad it wasand he had known that, had not objected overmuch when Tempus had left them here in command of the rear guard.
He had hoped to solve this-cure Strat and get him away from this woman.
"Out!" she said, and that voice went through brain and bone.
He heard the door slam before he got to the gate.
He had thought about killing her-but that thought had completely fled him when he stood in front of her. His hand had been on his sword all the time, for all the foolish good it had been: he had not even been able to think of it in that context when he had been close enough. He flung open the low iron gate, heard it clang shut behind him.
"Ma'am," the boy said tentatively, with his knife in hand- With a thief's knife, a gentleman's clothes; and a staunch resolve on a fresh-scrubbed face. "M'lady?"
Ischade gazed at this chivalry in the light and the heat of the candles, heat so intense it made sweat run, light that blinded and blazed whiteand a fool of a thief stood there with this mooncalf look and a knife for their mutual defense-
"He could spit you like a pig," she spat at him. "That man's the garrison commander, that's a Stepson, thief!"
One was my lover. One was.
Gods, she thought, dropping her eyes against her hand, shaking her head, I sent him away. I broke the spell, dammit, Isethimfree, there's no more spell, dammit to the hells!
But it was not Crit she was thinking of.
"M'lady?"
It was an anxious voice. The lights had dimmed. She looked at her young thief and saw still the scrubbed, frightened face-the knife clutched in a white-knuckled fist.
"What are you doing with that?" she demanded.
He looked less and less certain-even what he was doing here. He tucked that hand behind him, said diffidently, "In case he was comin' in here, m'lady."
"What, to defend me?"
He shrugged, twitched the knife-arm shoulder, looked abashedly at the floor and up again.
Gods.
She held the cloak about her, she beckoned him closer, she looked at a face that looked so very much different than her unkempt thief.
A pretty boy, Crit had said. When she wanted Strat, who was not a boy, who was most certainly not a boy-
She touched his face, worked a small sorcery, brushed the hair from his brow. He tried to put his arms around her, jerked her close-
She pushed him away, both attracted and repelled-for all the wrong reasons. She said coldly, "There's clothes, there's money, take what you want and get out of here. I'll call you on another night. For your own sake-listen to me now."
His jaw set. He prepared some foolish argument, some protestation of his manhood, his impatience.
She waved an arm and the door banged open, disturbing all the candles and the lamps. She let go her spell ...
He stayed for nothing. He ran. She heard the gate, let him past her wards, and banged that shut and the door, clang! boom! after him.
She was shaking after that. She dropped her head against her hand and tried to forget the lust that was her curse, that at times and by the pull of the moon was stronger than reason, stronger than love-
The desire that killed-killed everyone but Strat. Strat had found a way to survive, until things changed, until Strat turned moody and sullen and the anger grew in him-the anger to invoke the curse and kill him.
So she had driven him away, given him back to Crit, given him his freedom from her ensorcelments-
Crit, tonight, came here to offer stupid bargains, with no knowledge whether she would even keep her word-Crit was not lying, he could not be lying, under those terms, there was still some attraction; and that fool boy, the thief-with a knife, ready to use it if Crit had burst through the door-
For what, she asked herself, for what, except male stupidity?
For what reason in hell, except a man would not hear No... .
For what reason, gods, except Strat was a fool and Strat did not understand her.
Like the boy who thought he was going to be a hero. Like Strat-who did not know how to lose and did not know how to retreat from what he thought was his right and her obligation to him.
Who-gods!-had been with her too long, had been too close to her not to know what she was and who should have, for once in his stubborn, prideful life, run the way the boy had.
But Strat did not understand that.
She looked up at the ceiling, at the blaze of lights that glittered in her eyes.
And stopped what she was feeling, shut it off cold, because love was the killing-urge, it was all mixed up with tenderness, it wound all through it, because when a man intimate with her started making up his own mind what he wanted, and once frustration became force, that someone died; and it was pleasure and it was anger at a fool and it was pain and revenge all wrapped together.
"Damn!" she cried, to any god who might be listening, and to the thrice-damned and very dead mage who had set the curse on her. Lights blazed about her, candles unconsumed.
Like her endless, deathless life-no less now than it had been a hundred years ago ...
And so many, many dead to her account - . .
Crit came quietly into the stableyard of the safe-house, threw the reins over his horse's head, and led the horse through the gate, quietly still, figuring Gayle must be upstairs-not that the commander needed an excuse for late-night exits and entrances-whether from some night business at headquarters or a late night on the Street of Red Lanterns; they had all been working odd shifts, they were still cleaning up paperwork and dealing with files, and whatever sleep Gayle or Kama was getting was hard-won.
He walked the horse quietly to the stable door, and turned suddenly, with a reach at his sword, because of a step alongside the stable in the dark, a large shadow.
Shepherd.
The big man said, "Strat hasn't gone uptown, he's gone to see Randal."
"For what?" Crit demanded in his frustration. He had no difficulty believing Strat had gone off somewhere-Randal was hardly where he would have guessed, but he had no reason to doubt this uninvited visitor. Shepherd-came and went like a ghost, him and his outmoded leather armor and that big clay-colored horse of his, with the panther-skin shabraque; reins of woven grass, the scent of the marsh about him-a spook for sure if Crit had ever seen one-came in when the Riddler had left with most of the forces, and talked about Debt and the Honor of the Corps, and t
hings that the last guard was too out of sorts to hear these depressing, final days... .
Shepherd shrugged, casting a large shadow in the stableyard lamplight as he stood aside. "Your partner's in trouble. But you understand that. Make no bargains with the witch."
"What do you want?" It bothered Crit; it had been bothering Crit ever since this man had showed up, the way this man moved in claiming to be a mere, assumed so much, came and went as if the rules meant nothing to him; and why in hell Crit let him get away with it Crit himself had no idea-
Except there was a great deal in this man that reminded him of the Riddler.
"Go to Randal," Shepherd said, and when Crit started back to the stable, caught his arm. "Be surprised at nothing. Your time here is coming to an end."
"Hell!" Crit stalked off a few paces toward the stables and stopped abruptly to ask, "Whose time? Who told you?-What's Strat up to, dammit?"
But Shepherd was gone.
Ischade had left the river-house, walked the pre-dawn streets of Sanctuary with no destination in mind-thinking about Crit, thinking about what existed between those two, and what a fool Strat was-
She would have made him commander over Sanctuary-she might have, if Tempus had not stepped in to redeem his man, and put Crit in command in Strat's place.
She would have made him more than that, if that had not happened;
she would have made him more than a lord of the Rankan Empire-if Tempus had not stepped in, if there had not been the war, and if there had been some hope of Strat continuing to be for her what he had been-
But all those things had turned dangerous, and impossible; and she found herself tonight, having rejected Crit's desperate move, having thrown her young thief out of the house, walking the warehouse district near the river and toward that street uptown that led to the hill-
And thinking of things that might have been-in these strange days of peace in the ravaged streets of Sanctuary; in these strange days of war in the very heart of Empire.
Stealers' Sky tw-12 Page 16
