Aftermath

WAKE OF THE RIDDLER by Janet Moms

Tempus was gone from Sanctuary, taking his Stepsons and the Rankan 3rd Commando with him, leaving only outcasts and dross behind.

In the wake of the Riddler's passing, the town seemed more changed than it should have been because one man (called variously Tempus, the Riddler, the Black, and more scatalogical apellations) had gathered his private army of less than a hundred and departed. Sanctuary seemed emptied, drained, frightened, and confused.

It cowered like a snow rabbit run to barren ground and surrounded by wolves. It shivered and sniffed the breeze, as if undecided as to which way to run. It hunkered in desperate paralysis, seeming to dream of better days while the cold spring wind blew wet promises of life inland from the sea and the wolves skulked closer, red tongues lolling in slaver- ing jaws.

Among fetid streets on this spring evening in question, militias are keeping order, stamping round comers with deliberate tread. Whores whisper rather than croon in their doorways. Drunks slither along white- washed walls, afraid to stagger boldly in gutters where beggars lurk with ready blades. And the wind comes in off the uneasy ocean with a chuckle on its breath; Tempus, his Stepsons, and the 3rd Commando have left the town to its fate, ridden off in disgust to new adventures capable of resolu- tion, wars winnable, and glory attainable. Sanctuary is not only doomed. but shunned by its last best hope, the Riddler and his fighters.

The wind thinks nothing of whipping the town vacant, of chilling its nobles to the bone, of locking the neutered sorcerers in the Mageguild and the impotent soldiers in their barracks. The wind is Sanctuary's own, wind of chaos, gale of gloom.

Spring has never felt so ominous in the Maze as it does this season, where the first rough gusts blow more detritus than rotting rinds and discarded rags through the streets. The sea wind rattles against the plate armor of the Rankan army regulars, clustered in fours as they police what can't be policed. It flaps the dark cloaks of Jubal the ex-slaver's beggars, his private force of cold enforcers who sell protection now at stalls and bars where Stepsons used to trade. It keens toward uptown and beats on the barred windows of the Mageguild where necromancers fear the unleashing of their dead now that magic has lost its power, more even than they fear the wrath of whores whose youth-and-beauty spells have worn away.

And the wind sneaks uptown, where what is left in Sanctuary that is noble tries to carry on, have its parties amidst the rubble left by warring factions of the various militias, by witches and warlocks, vampires and zombies, ghosts and demons, worshipers and gods.

This wind is of the sort you may remember, coming out of a gray wet sky which makes an end to boundaries and hides horizons. Sounds seem to come from nowhere, go nowhere. There is no distance and no proxim- ity, no future and no past. There is no warmth, even from the one beside you. When you reach out to take a hand for comfort, that hand is clammy as the grave. And the stirring of life these gusts portend is only legend, on such a day, as if the wind itself is here to reconnoiter the very earth and then decide if the world deserves another spring.

Or not.

Down by the docks, alone, Critias ponders that question. Do the beg- gar armies deserve the warm sun on their face? Do the vampire's undead, over in Shambles Cross, need the kiss of sunlight? Can there be a bright morning for the mages, barricaded inside their fortress where dusk al- ways reigns? Will Zip and his nightcrawlers among the Peoples Front for the Liberation of Sanctuary tip the balance for or against the seasons' change? And does it matter if spring ever comes to this blighted thieves' world again?

For Tempus has gone, turned his back on everything and everyone. No more eloquent an omen could be taken from a dozen slaughtered lambs with jaundiced livers or the birth of twins joined at the lips.

Gone and left ... what? Left Crit, is what-Crit, in putative charge of the ungovernable, so that Crit's partner, Straton, had turned and walked away without a word. Gone somewhere was Strat, and not to the departed armies, either. No, Strat hadn't gone upcountry with the Rid- dier, west to meet Niko and then embark on a secret sortie for Theron, emperor of Ranke. Strat, Crit was sure, had gone another way: down to embrace the darkness that was his lover, Ischade the vampire who held sway in Shambles Cross, down to the White Foal River where corpses floated till they waked. Down into hell and this time it wasn't Crit's fault, but Tempus's, who usually had more concern for the faring of his men.

But there'd been no reasoning with Tempus, who'd pulled the Stepsons out en masse, and the 3rd Commando with them, leaving the town to its own devices.

Leaving Crit to take responsibility for fair and all. For unfair and all. So there was a new pecking order in beleaguered Sanctuary, and one which was fair only to the extent that it insulted and imperiled everyone, while satisfying no one.

Put it down, Crit told himself, to the foul humor that caused Tempus to be called "the Black." Crit had the rest of the year to meet Theron's decree of a unified, pacified Sanctuary. If he couldn't manage it, Theron had promised to send the Rankan army here in force, a soldier in every hut and a fist in every face.

Not that Crit cared about the town per se. No, he didn't. But he cared about his reputation, about not failing, about always doing what he was charged to do.

Even though for the first time in his life he'd truly argued, threatened to quit, to mutiny, to bolt, when Tempus had charged him with imposing order where order had never been, Critias couldn't turn away from a job unfinished. No matter what it cost.

In short order it had cost him his only friends here: Straton, his right- side partner and Sacred Band brother; Kama, the Riddler's daughter, abandoned in Sanctuary along with those others who had most dis- pleased her father; Marc, the weaponsmith who'd been his liaison with townies such as Zip; and Zip himself, the PFLS leader and third-shift commander, who now looked on Crit as the enemy because Crit was at the top of Sanctuary's reporting chain.

Where he'd never craved to be, and where Strat had struggled so hard to land.

Shaking his head, Crit started as moisture that had condensed on his unkempt hair spattered his brow and cheeks. In nondescript dockside garb, he was waiting for a contact. Doing what he knew how to do because Crit was a shadow mover, not an empire shaker. Tempus had left him with a shattered infrastructure he needed to fuse, somehow, into a working whole. Or lose. Fail. Crit knew how to do everything required of a soldier but that-he didn't know how to fail. He'd never learned. Was constitutionally incapable of learning, Strat used to say.

I Crit missed Strat like food and water. He missed Kama less, but still loved her. And still hated the gutterslime she'd taken up with: Molin Torchholder, the politicized priest of a pantheon unnatural to this Ilsig soil.

All the Rankan conquerors of this Ilsigi town of Sanctuary, and the Beysib invaders who had come after and made an uneasy alliance by marriage with the Rankan governor, Prince Kadakithis, mistook the townspeople here for the sort that were governable. And now Crit was responsible to see that at least the appearance of governance was instilled and maintained here, where the balance between gods and magic had suddenly crumbled and all that was left to do was rule Sanctuary by force of arms.

As commander-in-chief of the policing forces, he was responsible to the prince/governor Kadakithis, who was answerable to Theron and might lose more than his palace if the emperor's demands weren't met; responsible to Kadakithis's Beysib consort, Shupansea, who wasn't even human, but some sort of fish-woman from across a forbidden sea; respon- sible to Kama because she was the Riddler's daughter and, by all the gods that loved the armies, Crit's woman more than Molin's.

Kama had conceived a child with Crit and they'd lost it on a battle- field. Since then, she'd found whatever man she could to sleep with who'd be most hurtful to Crit when he found out. Which he always did, because she was her father's daughter and thought that women's ways were for lesser creatures, the way her father thought that men's limits applied only to his enemies.

Crit wanted more than anything to find Strat and simply leave, go up to Ranke and plead his case to Theron, get a new commission from the emperor. He was wasted here. Only Tempus knew what he'd done to deserve it.

But here he was, with the rest of the unloved, unvalued, and unwanted -with Strat; with Kama; with Randal, a warrior-mage who was the lesser half of a broken Sacred Band pair; with Gayle, the only 3rd Com- mando Tempus had told to tarry.

And with those they'd hoped to leave behind: Ischade, the vampire; Janni the Stepson's half-reconstituted ghost; Snapper Jo, the fiend who had tended bar at the Vulgar Unicorn; and, uptown somewhere among the hellish ruins of last winter's incomprehensible war of magic, whatever was left of Haught, the Nisibisi mageling, and of Roxane, the Nisibisi witch.

Strat had said-the only thing he had said about the matter-that Tempus had flat run out of nerve, turned tail and fled, leaving Crit hold- ing the bag. The very bag that Strat wanted so badly in his grip, Crit had thought but hadn't said.

Waiting alone, with no backup (because with Strat gone to Ischade there wasn't a single man he'd trust at his back), down on the slippery dockside hoping his contact would show soon, Crit had had too much time to brood.

He knew it; he knew himself. For the kind of subterranean work he was trained to do, self-knowledge was a prerequisite. If it weren't, his distress over Strat and the horrid triangle of the two of them and the vampire might well have killed him before this. Might kill him yet, if he became too distracted by it.

He had a job to do. Lots of jobs. He'd made sure of that. He couldn't afford too much time for reflection. This task before him wasn't going to be simple, but he needed to occupy his mind with something besides the conundrum of his partner. Tonight, it was finding and restoring Tasfalen, whose entire noble family was missing and had been missing far too long. Torchholder wanted the popinjay found. Or wanted Crit killed in the finding, so that there'd be no rival of consequence for Kama's affections by the time Molin did whatever he was planning about his current wife.

Crit wasn't mistaking Molin Torchholder: in the priest's mind, this was a suicide mission he'd forced on Crit, knowing Crit wouldn't dele- gate this sort of task to what men he had available. Zip's half-tame militia wasn't good for much but swaggering and street fights on their night shift; Walegrin's barracks of day-soldiers soldiered well enough, but knew nothing of covert means; and Crit wouldn't ask at the Mageguild-even with the Stepsons' mage, Randal, there, the price of magical aid in Sanc- tuary was always too high.

So that left only Jubal's thugs, one of whom Crit awaited. Jubal's faceless horde of enforcers would spit out one with a face tonight, and that one would lead Crit to Tasfalen.

Once Crit had verified the continued existence of the noble (or lack of ft-a corpse would do), he could get Torchholder off his back. And see Kama. For Crit was about ready to force an end to that particular prob- lem: either bring Kama back with him from the palace, to take up her rightful place in what was left of the Stepsons' barracks, or use her affair with Molin to blackmail the priest.

He wasn't sure which he liked better, but he liked both alternatives dough to bare his teeth in a humorless smile as he waited.

And waited. And waited. He stood. He sat. He paced. He leaned. He heard his horse nickering, then pawing the cobbles. He checked its tack, Stroked its nose. Strat's bay horse would have evoked the nicker he'd heard, but Crit didn't see the bay horse anywhere.

Just as well; the bay made him nervous. Made everybody nervous who didn't like reincarnated horses with spots on their withers through which a man could glimpse hell itself if the light was right.

Because of the nicker, Crit realized he didn't want to see Strat right now. Not until he'd solved the problem of Kama and Torchholder. Not now, when the gray sky and the gray buildings and the gray dockside melded with the gray horse Tempus had left him, to take the sting out of deserting him.

The gray was a prize, one of the best from the Stepsons' stock farm up at Wizardwall. Worth more than a block of the Maze, contents included. Worth more than the whole town, to some men's way of thinking.

But Crit would have given it to Strat gladly if Strat would only re- nounce the ghost-horse and the vampire woman who'd conjured it for him . - .

"Psst," said a voice from behind him and Crit refused to flinch, or jump, or betray the heart-stopping urgency within him that counseled a dive for cover, a drawn sword.

He turned slowly and said, "You're late, hawkmask."

"We aren't hawkmasks any longer," said an oddly accented voice from under a shadowing hooded cloak. "And I never was. We're just free- lancing, we are. Just workin' for pay. You like meres, bein' you was one." A languorous, professional lilt in a northern-accented voice that never- theless had a deadly, nervous edge to it.

Crit squinted into the gloom but the only thing he saw better for his trouble was the rigging of a small fishing boat bobbing behind the stranger, much farther down the quayside than the cloaked man.

Was it a masking spell, or a trick of the light that veiled this face in gloom? The fellow was out of reach, but just barely. And familiar, but so was half of Sanctuary. Someone he'd rousted long ago, Crit's mind said, and started spinning through the years, seeking to match a face to the voice he recognized.

Crit asked, to hear the voice again, "What do you want, honest work? There isn't any, not here. Prefer my service to Jubal's? Is that what you're getting at?"

"Yours? You've got a service, now? That's how come the black man sent me to help you out?"

The hooded man's ^'s were sibilantly northern and the tension underly- ing his words was full of satisfaction.

Somebody they'd done something to once, for sure. Somebody the Sacred Band hadn't treated with softest gloves. Somebody who was en- joying this more than he ought, because he feared Crit and his kind more than he'd admit.

"Got a name, friend?" Crit said easily, shifting enough that he could slide his hand onto his belt and his fingers toward his knife's hilt without being either too obvious or too surreptitious. It wasn't a threat so much as a punctuation mark.

The contact saw, and tossed his head. "Vis. Ring a bell. Commander?"

Commander. Crit still couldn't get used to it, not in Sanctuary, not in this context, not with all its current connotations. Did Tempus still hold Crit's affair with Kama against him so venomously that he'd sentence him to years of hard labor here with violent death at the end of it?

For Crit remembered this "Vis" now, and what he recalled didn't put him at ease. Mradhon Vis, a northerner- Thief, malefactor, one-time part- ner-in-crime of the Nisibisi mageling, Haught. And gods knew of whom or what else. They'd beaten information out of Vis more than once, when the Stepsons were fighting the Nisibisi witch here. Strat, the Stepsons' chief interrogator, had. Crit had been in command of the intelligence unit then. They'd brought this fool up to the Shambles safe house, drawn the iron shutters, and taught him the sort of respect that turns to hatred if left untended.

There were dozens, perhaps scores, of Vises he and Strat had made in Sanctuary. If Crit lived long enough, one of them was going to try to kill him. Perhaps this one. Perhaps tonight.

"Vis," he repeated, his voice low. "Right, I remember. Well, let's go, Vis. Let's see what you've got."

"My pleasure. Commander," said the mercenary, and chuckled nas- tily. "If you'll follow me into those shadows there, the worst is yet to come."

"I'm telling you," whispered Kama intently to Straton over her beer, "Zip's moving the altar stones uptown to the Street of Temples-moving them and what they housed."

Finished, she sat back, eyeing the other patrons of the Vulgar Unicorn surreptitiously. No one had heard, she was certain. She'd been careful of her volume, as well as the drunken slur in her voice. No one human, that is. The fiend who was tending bar late tonight had great gray ears and eyes that looked every which way. His warty countenance was averted, but that meant nothing. In the bronze mirror behind the bar he could be watching them ...

"So what?" Strat growled, truculent, one arm absently rubbing his damaged shoulder. Perhaps once the best man with weapons among the Stepsons, Strat was doubly wounded now: Ischade either couldn't, or Wouldn't, heal his shoulder and there were no Stepsons here for him to be Mnong.

"So, we've got to stop it," she said. Her heart ached for Strat, and for them all, left here where nothing of consequence remained in the wake of er father's leave-taking. She and Strat had something in common now- amething more than Crit. They had to shore up the sagging bulwark of ommand because Tempus might be testing them. None of the others salized it, but Kama did. If her father rode into town of a morning, sady to welcome them back to the fold if only they'd put the town to ights, Kama didn't want to be found wanting.

But the big Stepson was too drunk, or too deeply hurt, to understand that she meant. "Stop it? Why? So Zip's found some sort of pet demon r minor deity-some Ilsig spirit to worship. What difference does it nake? The gods fare no better here than magic-or fighters."

Strat believed only in the magic of Ischade, Kama knew. He'd seen too nuch, too many dead reborn, too many undead abroad in the streets at light. Strat had seen his doom and embraced it: he was as much the 'ampire's creature as any of her slaves.

"C'mon, Straton," she insisted blearily, tugging on the Stepson's leeve. "Come with me. I'll show you."

"You and your lovers," Strat grumbled over the screech of his stool's egs on sawdusted board, "What the frog you wanna do about it if you ind him lickin' his demon's feet?"

"Ssh." Kama warned, and put her small hand to the flat of Strat's back, pushing him toward the door like a wife who'd made a nightly trip o the Unicorn to bring her drunken husband home to bed. Snapper Jo aluted her with his raffish inhuman grin, dipping his bristly chin in a ;esture of respect.

Great. Homage from a fiend, friends in high places, estranged from her real friends because of that: because of Molin, who had another wife, Crit ind Gayle and Randal avoided her like the plague. Only Straton, in limilar circumstances, of all the men she'd campaigned with in the Wiz- ird Wars, acknowledged her. And Zip ...

As Strat had jibed, Zip was another of her lovers. Men used their nuscle and their sex for intimidation, and no one thought ill of them for t. Kama was a different sort of operator, but used what she had to. Whatever worked to do the job. It stung her to the quick the way the men she'd fought beside treated her now, simply because she'd let the high priest wield his influence to help her. If her father had had a dozen lovers, or a hundred victims of his holy aping member, no Sanctuarite would have snickered or presumed to criticize. Maybe she should strip her next bed partner at knifepoint, prove herself her father's daughter to one and all. Maybe then Crit would stop looking past her when they met ...

Strat stumbled in the doorway, belched, and staggered down the stairs to the street. The bay horse whickered, its ears pricked. Kama shivered. The damned thing was dead as a doornail, just didn't know it. Strat didn't seem to know it either: he fumbled in his pouch, came up with a chunk of sugarbeet, and held it out on an open palm.

The ghost-horse's velvet lips delicately snatched the treat, and it snorted in pleasure.

Well, maybe not quite as dead as a doornail. But unnatural as hell. Unnatural as Sanctuary, a place Kama was determined to leave com- pletely out of the history she was writing of her father's exploits. Sanctu- ary deserved no chronicler, as it deserved nothing more than the oblitera- tion it was so obviously seeking.

The town had its own genius, Kama was sure, an Ilsig spirit that had finally had its fill of interlopers and was nudging the place itself toward oblivion's precipice. She wanted only to be quit of it before Sanctuary was razed to the ground by Rankans, gutted and left to rot by Beysibs, or torn stone from off of stone by internal strife.

A historian, Kama knew all the signs of a town dying. Sanctuary didn't lack a one: its gods were impotent; its magic had lost its power; its populace was polarized by generations of hatred; its children wanted only to destroy.

"What, Strat?" she said, startled by words undeciphered but still ring- ing in her ears. She looked up. The big Stepson was already mounted, reins in his right hand, his left arm carefully resting on one thigh.

"I said, finding Zip should be easy-it's his shift, the dead of night. You want him, let's go up to the command guardpost."

She shook her head- "Told you, he's moving those damned stones. And the porking whatever that lives in 'em, tonight. Heard it from a reliable source." The guardpost was safe for Strat, this time of night-Crit had the day shift; Strat's erstwhile partner spent his evenings in an old Sham- bles Cross safe house the Stepsons used to run.

"So where?" Strat's voice was suddenly uneasy.

"Down to the river, soldier. If you can handle it-the White Foal's banks, I mean, so close to Ischade's."

"Pork what I can handle, woman," said Strat, the booze getting to his tongue. "I've picked that snipe up by his collar more than he's picked up your skirts. You wanted help, you've got it. You change your mind, that's fine, too. But we can't just sit here."

She got her horse, her neck hot though the night was chill with the bone-deep cold of a recalcitrant spring. Her fingers were numb on her slick reins and the roan she rode bucked and danced under her. The wrong horse for this job, too skittish, too green. But the Stepsons had taken their string, leaving only what wasn't held in common. Except, of course, for the single Tros-bred that should have been hers, but had gone to Critias because Tempos wasn't above that sort of insult.

It wasn't fair, but her father had never been. Didn't want a daughter, didn't care however much Kama tried to make him. A woman wasn't consequential, not to him. And her affair with Torchholder had made things worse, not better.

Was Tempus trying to tell her, by giving Crit the horse and forcing Crit to stay on along with her here, that if she went back with Crit, he'd forgive them both? Was Crit being singled out as an acceptable choice? Or did Tempus just not give a frog's fart?

The latter, most likely. She was going to try to do the same. Try not to care. Try to understand and overcome the trial that was Sanctuary, the punishment of being stationed here. But because she was stationed here, assigned like any of his men to onerous duty, she hadn't had the heart to refuse to tarry. That would have been playing on her blood relationship, asking special favors, admitting that she, a woman, couldn't handle hard duty like the men.

Help the garrison commander and the hierarchy restore some order here, that's your job. You're a good intelligence collector. Collect, her fa- ther had said to her, but nothing more. Nothing personal, nothing be- yond what was said in that meeting where the rear guard was singled out.

And Crit had stared boldly at her across the table in the safe house, knowing already whom Tempus was intending to name as commander- in-chief of Sanctuary's disparate armed forces. Knowing she'd have to come to him, be under his command.

It stank. She kicked her roan and slapped its poll and, under diverse and punitive instruction, it settled down. Jogging beside the half-drunken Straton toward the river, she wished she was anywhere else, doing any- thing else. Trying to keep Zip from making this sort of mistake wasn't her job, but Crit's.

Straton knew that, too, but hadn't voiced it. Crit was head of the combined militias, including the fifty grunts that made up Walegrin's regular army barracks, but Zip, like Aye-Gophlan, was an undercom- mander, responsible for the second and third shifts each day.

Only Crit, or someone from the palace hierarchy, could tell Zip to leave the riverside altar be and make it stick.

But Kama would die before she went to Crit and asked him to solve a problem she couldn't. Bringing Strat into it made the message she was sending the more clear: We who love you won't be treated this way. You've snubbed us both for your precious command, now live with it. But don't expect us to bow and scrape.

Strat had wanted Sanctuary's commission, should have had it. Crit couldn't have wanted it less, so he got it. And that kept the vampire with her hidden agenda out of things, but at a personal cost only Tempus could have decreed. Only Tempus, who had no conscience, could split a Sacred Band pair like he'd split the love-match that had once been Kama and Critias.

Suddenly, she found her eyes blurry. She swiped impatiently at them with the back of her forearm. She couldn't afford emotion now; it clouded her judgment. Her anticipation of men was generally good. Of Critias, it was woefully inadequate.

Of Strat, her forewarning was little better. Or maybe it was just the fact that Strat was drunk and his horse a numinous creature that caused them to take a shortcut over the White Foal Bridge and down a road leading past Ischade's Foalside home.

Zip was transported, in an altered state where every night noise was new and hostile, down by the White Foal's edge where he could barely see the eerie lights from Ischade's house up the bank. He had a wheelbar- row and, at the bank's crest, a wagon. He had three of his militia guard- ing the wagon, but he'd permitted none to come down here. Not to the shrine.

No one should touch the piled stones but him, the thing he served had told him. As it had told him to bring it blood, and worse, it had decreed the time and manner of its uptown move. It wanted to live on the Street of Temples, with the gods. Zip had found it a place, an alley behind the Rankan Storm God's temple, and there it swore it would be content to stay.

And he'd found it a new sacrifice, a special gift that one of his girls had brought him. The girl wanted a job on the Street of Lanterns and deliver- ance from Ratfall. In exchange for what she'd found on the Downwind beach, Zip was happy to oblige. The red-eyed thing that lived inside the stones would tike its new gift, Zip was sure.

He hunkered down beside the knee-high pile and said, "Look here, Lord, I've got a present for you, when we're moved. But now I've got to start on the stones, by myself if you won't let my boys help."

He waited for a reply, but only a glimpse of a burning red eye and a sound like shifting weight came to him in response.

What was it he served here? Most times, it didn't speak. He was prompted without words to do this or that. He'd get a feeling of a pres- ence, and the things he brought it-pieces of human flesh, skins of warm blood, precious baubles-would disappear. Was it inimical only to Rankans, or to everyone? He wanted it to be his friend. He wanted it to be the Ilsigs' friend, guardian of the revolution, since he was bound to have one.

He wanted it to show itself, magnificent and powerful, and help bring down Zip's enemies. So far, all it had done was take the sacrifices, give him bad dreams, and let him know it wanted to move uptown.

So did they all. So did all of Zip's Ratfall movers, everyone trapped in the Maze and policed to wits* end. So did the twelve-year-old mothers and one-legged fathers of Zip's revolution, which he'd never wanted. He might have disavowed the struggle if Tempus hadn't tagged him. But Tempus had.

Zip didn't understand why the Rankan powers wanted Zip's help, or the PFLS on its side. The Rankans wouldn't believe that there really wasn 't a PFLS when he tried to explain that a score of gang members with lamb's blood and paintbrushes didn't make a political movement.

But since his thieves and mendicants would receive the protection of what police Crit had in Sanctuary if they took the night shift, and Zip took responsibility, his entry into the power structure and polite ... society ... had just happened.

It wasn't being co-opted by the enemy that bothered him the most. What bothered him the most was that his bad boys and girls were doing exactly what they'd done before-extort, blackmail, roust and rough- house, bum and plunder-and doing it now with the protection and for the benefit of the state.

It didn't make any sense, until it made all the sense in the world. And when Zip realized what Tempus had done to him, it had been too late. Zip was already part of the establishment, a hated enforcer, a dog with a Rankan collar, and his militia no better than any of the cannon fodder in Walegrin's demoralized army. They hadn't triumphed over the opposi- tion, they had become it.

They weren't the revolution, they were the sustaining force behind the injustice that had created them.

When he'd said that-shouted it, actually-to Crit in fury, the cynical Stepson had flashed white teeth and said, "The more things change, pud, the more they stay the same. What's your problem? Not having fun now that you're legal? It's all your type knows how to do, and this way you won't end up handiess or headless because of it. You're talent, and we're the talent scouts. Thank your slime gods you've been discovered and put to work before you ended up greasing some slaver's wagon wheels."

That was another thing that bothered Zip: Critias seemed to know more about Zip's affairs than anybody could. "Slime gods" was an obvi- ous reference to the altar. And as for the slavers ... Zip had sold more than one soul down that river of sighs, to finance the revolution. But then it had been a matter of conscience. Now it was a godsdamned state business, for pork's sake.

Gayle, the 3rd commando liaison man, had told him not to mind it, just make his list of expendables. He hated himself these days, as much as he hated Kama, the twit who had gotten him mixed up in all this, and her damned 3rd Commando ethos that excused the foulest misdeeds as exigencies. "Whatever works" might work for the Riddler's daughter and her lot of death dealers, but it didn't work for Zip.

Especially when, if he wasn't careful, he was going to become just like them. So here he had this altar, this god or whatever it was, this eater of sacrifices that never exactly said it could expiate his sins, wipe him clean, but surely must mean it. It was the thing in the altar with its red eyes that was making him believe there was some method to all his madness. It had a plan. It wanted Zip to infiltrate the Rankans and the Beysibs, to leam how to command and the weaknesses of their joint enemies. It was a living thing in there-or at least a real thing, which other gods weren't, as far as Zip could tell. It had wants and needs.

It wanted flesh and it needed blood and it wanted to move uptown and it needed Zip to be the militia commander to serve it.'He had to serve something. He couldn't justify what he and his little band of rebels were doing otherwise. He had to have a Cause and the red eyes in the altar, the slurping sound of fresh blood being drunk and the godlike belches after- wards, these were his Cause.

And only the river god knew what it wanted of Zip, but it did want him. Nobody had ever wanted him before. Then came, all at once, Kama and the Riddler and the river god and ... No, Kama had come before the god, but that didn't matter.

It mattered that he got the stones uptown. With a quill he marked each stone as he lifted it from the pile into his wheelbarrow. When the barrow was full, he could almost see into the heart of the altar.

But then he had to wheel the barrow up the slope, no easy task, and when he'd done that and given the stones to his boys to load on their ass- drawn wagon, someone came out of the gloom and hailed him.

"Yo," he called back, while motioning his boys to cover the stones in the wagon. "Who comes?"

One horse, out of the gloom; a single rider. He walked toward it, hand on his beltknife, his neck aprickle, back stiff.

Finally the rider answered, "Zip, it's me."

"Frog," Zip cursed under his breath. "Kama, stay there. The footing's tricky. I'll come up." He turned his head and said to his rebels, "Get down there, load the rest of the stones, take 'em where I told you. Careful to mark them and put them back just like they were. I'll catch up."

But he knew he wouldn't. And he knew the god was going to be angry, augh he didn't know what form the god's wrath might take. But then he thought he did: Kama was beautiful, sliding off her horse the diffuse light of a hidden moon. She always hit him that way, no atter how he told himself he didn't need the kind of trouble she repre- nted.

And she was trouble, in doeskin boots and leggings, smelling like new- own hay with trail dust in her hair. And all about her person, as clear her velvet thighs and firm breasts as in her face or her sweet breath, ere the indications of her class: her speech, her bearing, the gulf that as between them and never could be bridged, no matter how he tried. And he tried then again, wordlessly and desperately, as if laying her on her back in the mud was somehow going to do it. But it didn't. It never had, never would.

She laughed softly and accommodated him until urgency overtook her, but it was always the high-born girl with the velvet skin who was humming, who found him exciting for all the wrong reasons, who played with him casually when touching her was probably worth his life if Crit Molin found them.

So when she said, as she quivered, her mouth to his ear, "Strat's here with me, somewhere back there. Don't panic, just be quick," all his passion threatened to ebb, then exploded when her nails ran down his back.

"Damn you," he said, rolling over and off her, the best rejection he could manage and far too late.

"Stand in line for that," she chuckled, her fingers reaching for him, railing along him, tapping him intrusively with unspeakable truths. "It's been too long since we've done this."

He was staring up at the clouds which hid the moon like a translucent city wall. "Not long enough by half. Not when you're sleeping in with priests and commanders-in-chief. I'm a lowly watch officer, remember? I'm gettin' over you. Got something of my own now."

Like he hadn't, before. He bit his lip and almost looked away from her. But he couldn't. It was her damned body that did this to them both, every time. Riddler's daughter, enemy of the blood, twice his experience ind probably twice his brains. What did he think he was doing?

Then he thought he knew what she was doing: "Zip," she said in a ieductive tone he wished he'd heard long minutes earlier, "don't move that pile of stones. You don't know what you're disturbing. None of us to."

He sat bolt upright. "Now I get it. You ask nice, and Strat's along to ask nasty if I don't agree, right? Well, it's none of your business, Rankan whore." He jerked to his feet, fumbling with his pants. He couldn't see his fingers clearly and blinked fiercely, trying to lace himself together. "Don't come around me no more, hear? Not on your father's business or because one of your boyfriends thinks I need it. I don't. And I never will, not this way."

She was up, too, calling his name. He couldn't run from her, not from a woman where some of his boys might see. He remembered the time she'd nursed him back from the grave's edge, and the way she'd started all this, kissing him when he was too weak to do the sensible thing and bolt.

She liked 'em helpless, hurt, battle-scarred and war-weary, he knew. He couldn't figure what Molin had, but power was a legendary aphrodis- iac. And like her father, she spread it around.

He couldn't handle her. He kept wanting to treat her like a Ratfall girl -claim her, claim exclusivity with her. He had a comical vision of him- self sitting at some strategy table with her, all silked and leathered and shiny brass-plated in Ranke where her kind moved jade pieces represent- ing armies on marble mapboards. And jammed his hands in his pockets, walking hurriedly away.

"Zip," she called, catching up, reaching out, and he couldn't seem to jerk his elbow away. "We need you. /need you. And you owe me this-"

He stopped. He should have known it would come to that- "Right, we're all working together now and anyway, one time you saved my ass so I'm yours to command? No chance, lady. These're Ilsig matters, and you ain't one. Understand, or do I have to say it in Rankene?"

"I understand that you found some sort of talisman on the beach and that if you give it to that ... thing ... you've been feeding human flesh to, you might not be able to finish what you start. If you've got to move the stones, I'll make a deal with you."

He crossed his arms and looked down at her. At least he had that advantage: he was taller. He said; "Go on, let's hear it."

"I won't tell anyone about the altar, or what's in it, as long as no perceptible trouble comes from it, if you'll give me the talisman you were going to give to it."

"How do you find this crap out?" he blurted. "Is it Randal, your pet mage? You been following me? What?"

She just looked up at him, her eyes full of a surety and power that her little, female body shouldn't have been able to contain, let alone radiate. It was Tempus's blood in her, some more-than-human attribute, he was certain.

He said then, "No. I'm not doing anything like that. Why should I?" and turned to go back down the hill.

And Straton was there, on that freakish bay horse everybody knew about, come from nowhere, out of nothing, leaning on his saddlehorn, meaning his thumbnail with a glittering blade. There, right between Zip and the path down to the riverbank.

"Going somewhere, pud?" said Strat.

"Strat," said Kama, "I can handle this."

"I was just leaving," Zip replied.

"No you can't," said Strat to both of them. Then: "Zip, what she wants, you give her. What she ordered, you do. Or deal with me. Kama, there's something more important than piffles going on out there. Finish with your boy toy and let's get going."

Kama winced but held out her hand steadily and said to Zip, "Either give me the talisman, or Strat and I are going down there and crush five or six of those stones. Do you want to risk that, and what will follow if the three of us have a falling-out?"

Zip looked from the big fighter to the slight woman and saw a shared purpose there; an implacable, uncaring deadliness common among those ure that their Cause was worth serving. He had to leam to match their pirit. Until then, he'd never win against them.

He reached into his beltpouch and handed her the object a girl had bund in the seawrack. It hardly glittered. It wasn't even gold, just bronze. "Here, take it. And take out your lust somewhere else, from now on. I don't want to mess with you no more."

He heard Strat's raw titter as he stalked away, and it scratched blood from his soul- He wondered if the thing in the altar would consider the extenuating circumstances under which he'd lost its gift.

And what would happen if it did not.

Ischade's Foalside home was dimly lit, numinous. When they got there, Kama recognized Crit's gray horse and squeezed her eyes shut. No wonder Strat had come running to get her: Crit at Ischade's was naphtha too close to a torch.

"Gods, Strat, we both still love him, you know?"

"I figure," Strat agreed in an odd tone. "But he doesn't love us. Get him out of there, Kama. If I go in, it's just more trouble. She isn't going to take kindly to him sticking his nose in where it doesn't belong."

Kama was already off her horse, handing Strat its reins. "I know. You stay here, there's no use of you two getting into a brawl over this." Poised to sprint for the door, she turned back: "Strat, we have to get used to things the way my father left them. It hurts all of us. Crit didn't want this command. Not this way."

"That and a soldat will still get you laid at Myrtis's."

Bitterness unanswerable. Kama sprinted for the door she'd always shunned, behind which was something she didn't want anything to do with: Ischade.

Through the gate, up the steps, and stop, hearing your own breathing, wondering what you'll do if she's hurt him, ensorcelled him, gotten her claws into him like Strat, and Janni, and Stilcho and the rest . , .

Knocking with your heart pounding louder, suddenly aware of more than one male in there behind that forbidding door, and hoping those other voices aren't undead voices. You've only seen the undeads at a distance, and even the memory raises gooseflesh ... "Ah, Madame Is- chade, I'm here for Crit." Blurted like a fool in a voice higher than you've heard yourself use since school days.

Inky eyes deeper than any uncursed well, a pale face whose features are somehow indiscernible, and a hand cold as anything Kama could remember touching.

"Good," nodded the creature in her cowl. Behind her were colors, rioting jewel tones, but Ischade was all white and black. Black. "Come in." Black eyes, so deep you could sleep in them. -

Don't fall into any trap. Don't look at her too long. "Crit?" On tiptoes. "Crit?" The swathed shape moves away. "C/7Y?"

There he is, with two men she recognized: Vis, and a beggar with a stutter, a creature called Mor-am. Wrong company, wrong place, wrong something going down here.

Kama shivered and feit throwing stars she'd gotten from Niko nestled in her belt. Could you kill anything here? Would it stay dead? Could she take out the beggar, the mere, and Ischade if Crit needed that much help?

She could try, couldn't do less. But then Crit came slowly to the door, his gait telegraphing annoyance, but nothing worse. "Good evening," he said and Kama couldn't figure where the vampire had disappeared to. "What brings you here, Kama?"

He somehow shouldered her outside and then the door was closed, his hands on her shoulders, tight and hard, digging. "Fool," Crit whispered, "don't mix in this. I've got enough troubles." His lips hardly moved when he spoke; the hollows under his cheeks were too deep; his whole bearing was wrong and she was terrified.

"Crit, gods, whatever it is, you can't do it alone. Strat's with me, we're here to-"

"Strat? With you? He bunks here, Kama. Sleeps here. Does whatever he does here. For her. Not us. Go away. I'm finding someone for Torchholder. Special orders."

She tried to shake off his grip. It wouldn't shake. She said defiantly, "Whatever you're doing, I'm doing. Special orders."

He couldn't verify that, not without going to Randal. And Randal might lie for Kama, might say Tempus had sent a message.

The touch of him made her ache and she suddenly wondered whether if, for just one night, every lover in Sanctuary could be in the right bed, things might straighten out.

Critias's usually handsome Syrese face had none of its gentility tonight; it was a fright mask, just shields for eyes and a slash where his mouth should be- He tucked in his chin, bowed his head to stare into her face, then shook his head infinitesimally: "You want in, fine. We're going up- town to the ruined blocks, see if we can't find Tasfalen in one of the houses left standing there. That's where she says to look. Me, the two backstreeters she owns, and you. But no Strat."

"Crit, he-"

"Can't be trusted. Too much her creature. Tell him to back off, out of sight till I leave. Tell him if he wants to talk to me, get rid of the horse as a sign of good faith. Or of returning sanity. I don't need a ghost horse, or a ghost rider, which is what he's becoming. Go on. Tell him. Then meet me at the gate."

He gave her a little push and she wished he felt so strongly about her, even if those feelings were as hard and fierce as what he felt for Strat.

Like a page in court, she ran back to Strat's horse and said, '"He says he's going uptown to find Tasfalen for Torchholder. Doesn't want you involved. We'll talk to you iater. You stay with Ischade. If this goes wrong, we need someone on the outside who knows where we went and what happened. And we may need Ischade's-your help."

"He didn't say that."

"No, he didn't. I'm going with him, and I'm saying it."

"I'll come-"

"He did say that, Strat. He wants you here, just in case ..." It sounded like what it was, a whitewash.

Strat's horse backed a few steps and from there she heard Straton say, "Go on, then. Ischade's warned him off, told him something. I'll find out what. You need help, you'll get it." His voice was thick.

She was glad she couldn't see his face. She ran blindly to her horse, grabbed a handful of mane, vaulted to its back, and urged the skittish roan toward the iron gate where weird flowers bloomed. In her belt, the talisman she'd taken from Zip seemed hot against her leathers, hot enough to make her sweat.

It was the proximity to Ischade's wards, she told herself- Nothing to fret over. She had plenty to worry about without adding the talisman into the bargain.

Crit crossed one leg over his saddle's pommel and lit a smoke, staring at the building across the street. No sign on its steps or to either side of the rubble they'd passed getting here, of the whirlwinds and firestorm of destruction that had ravaged Tasfalen's ancestral home.

This building was intact, its shutters drawn. The vampire had been certain of where to look, but uncertain that looking was wise.

"She said," Crit told Kama, "that Tasfalen's in there, with Haught. You remember Haught."

"I remember," Kama said through clenched teeth.

Mor-am and Vis were off to one side, ordered to accompany them by Ischade, who evidently was in charge of more than her Foalside cottage. Damn Tempus, for putting Crit between sorcerous rocks and political hard places. Vis had brought him to Mor-am, who'd grinned and brought him to Ischade with more satisfaction than Crit liked.

And the vampire had been civil. Both of them had kept Strat's name out of the conversation. "Our mutual friend" was what they called Straton, and because of that friend, Ischade was willing to tell Crit where to look.

And to warn him: "There is more, Critias, in that home than just two men in a house. Do not go inside, but merely open the doors-if you can."

This was said for Strat's sake, Crit knew, not his own. He unclenched a fist with difficulty and found he'd dug his nails into his palm, that his fingers were stiff from the clench. "She said," he told Kama, "you'd have the right key for this lock."

"Excuse me?" The woman on the roan kneed her mount closer.

"You heard me. Got anything on you that might do the trick?"

"You're sure she didn't mean that metaphorically?"

And Crit knew what Kama was alluding to: Tempus and an inhuman sprite had coupled before a magically locked door uptown, and things had happened.

"I don't care what she meant, we're not trying anything like that. What have you got that might work?"

"Keys," said Kama with maddening common sense. "Lots of keys. To my place, the guardhouse, the Shambles safe house, Molin's-"

"Spare me the list. Let's try some." He swung first one leg and then the other over his gray's withers, reaching for his crossbow as soon as his feet hit the ground. A bolt might smash the lock, even if it were a stout one.

They drop-tied the horses without a word, a sign both of them were thinking this might not be survivable. Crit cast a look at Kama, wonder- ing how she'd managed to insinuate herself into this so fast, so deftly. And admitting he was glad to have someone there. He was a Sacred Bander, trained to depend on a partner. He wouldn't have tried this alone, and Vis wasn't the sort of man you could trust your right side to.

Not that Kama was any sort of man at all.

Having crossed the street, Crit looked back once because he'd heard Vis's voice-not words, just a tone. And saw a wave of farewell so elo- quently hostile and so gloating that he almost shot the mere there and then.

But Kama read his mind and touched his arm. "They're Ischade's.

They'll wait. They'll run back with word if we don't come out. We need that."

"Crap," Crit said.

"Agreed," Kama said with a ghost of her father's smile.

Then they climbed the steps and Crit put his back against the stone, crossbow ready, attempting to cover every avenue of attack while Kama tried key after key and cursed like a Nisibisi freeman.

Finally she said, "No luck. Nothing works." And slumped against the doorjamb.

They looked at each other too long, and Crit had to look away. It was in that silence that they heard something move inside, behind the stout wood of the door.

Then they looked at each other again,

"Want to knock?" Kama said lightly.

"I don't think so," Crit replied in the same tone. "We could start digging at the wood with-"

"Wait," said Kama, simultaneously digging in her belt. "This, maybe."

She held out a piece of bronze about half the length of her hand and shaped like a knobbed bar or rod.

"Never fit," he said critically, still holding his crossbow at the ready, still glancing from shadow to shadow down the quiet street. Still watch- ing Vis and Mor-am as best he could.

"Might not have to. It washed up on the beach. I heard about it from some of my ... people. Turned a gold coin to lead, and copper to clay, in the finder's purse."

"So?"

"So, let's see if it'll do something to that metal."

"We're here." Crit shrugged, trying to ignore the implications. Kama wasn't the finder. Kama had appropriated this thing from someone, for her own purposes- And she'd heard about it through some informer of whom Crit was totally ignorant. Nothing was going to work right in Sanctuary unless they all started pulling together. But what he wanted to do to Kama right then wouldn't facilitate anything of the sort.

She shrugged, too, added a sour twist of her thin lips, and bent to the door. He didn't dare look away to watch, but he heard her tap bronze against bronze. And curse. And tap again, and chortle.

"So?" he said when she stood up and carefully put the talisman back in her belt.

"So, do we want to be polite, now that the lock's no problem?"

He took one hand away from the crossbow and, balancing it on his hip, felt for the lock. It was gooey. He brought his fingers to his lips and smelled White Foal mud, rank with rot. He swore and asked her to explain herself.

"I heard," she said, "it might be something like this. That's all."

"Great." He spat over his shoulder. "Next time you 'hear' of some- thing like this, you come to me with it."

"I did."

"Beforehand," he said, just as there was a scuffling sound and then a dragging noise behind the door and he and Kama jumped back in unison.

The door opened like a casket's top. And there, behind it, stood some- thing very much like Tasfalen, the popinjay noble who'd been missing so long. "Yessss," said the noble in an entirely horrible voice, a voice that seemed not to have been used for a thousand years.

And behind this shape, Crit could see another: Haught.

And over those two images, he saw superimposed the glowing counte- nance of Ischade, a slight crease between her eyes, and Ischade was shaking her head, her lips forming a word.

And that word was "Run." In his inner ear, he heard it again; Run, if you value your soul.

"Come on, Kama. Sorry to disturb you, Tasfalen," said Crit as he backed down the stairs, Kama's arm in a deathgrip and still holding the loaded crossbow one-handed. "We just needed to verify your where- abouts. Stop by the palace when you can-Molin Torchholder wants to see you."

By the time he'd finished saying alt of that, he'd dragged Kama half- way to the street and she was whispering urgently, "What's the matter with you? Lost your mind? Your nerve?"

"Finished, that's all. We're finished here. I have no reason to arrest that man. I only had to find him." His voice was shaking and Kama heard it.

He didn't look at her as they made for their horses. He couldn't stand to see scorn in her eyes. But he saw it in the eyes of Ischade's two waiting minions, and it burned like hellfire.

"What's the matter, Stepson, Tempus take your balls upcountry?" Vis shouted from a safe distance as Crit mounted up.

He got off one quarrel, but his aim was half-hearted. It smashed harm- lessly against the brick beside Vis's head.

And then there was Kama to deal with, slouched in her saddle, frown- ing.

He said, "We have to report this to Torchholder. I need you. Let's go."

She reined her horse after his, either unwilling to dispute his statement or unable.

One way or the other, he'd let the matter of the talisman go if she'd just give him a chance. How he was going to keep Kama with him tonight, Crit couldn't fathom, but he was going to give it a try. Torchholder would have to make do with a written report. It was just too damned cold in Sanctuary to sleep alone tonight.

The sky was beginning to lighten, turning regal above the temple tops. Zip's black sweatband was sopping though the waning night was as chill on the Street of Temples as it had been at the White Foal's edge.

He straightened up from the piled stones in the alleyway, hand to the small of his back. He was alone now. He'd sent his boys scurrying with a flurry of invective when he'd realized what they'd done.

Or what he'd let them do. They'd touched the stones, because of Kama and Strat. Worse, they'd mismarked the ones they'd touched.

Zip had spent the rest of the night trying to sort out the mess. And all he had to show for his labors was an empty pile of stones that wouldn't sit exactly right, wouldn't form the beehive shape they'd had down at the riverbank.

One more time, he put the stones he was sure of-the top three-in place. And one more time they fell inward, toppled others, and ended in a jumble in the alley beside the Storm God of Ranke's temple.

And again, as the stones rolled and at last came to rest, the ground beneath Zip's feet seemed to tremble. This time, he hardly noticed the earth's tremors over his own.

The rivergod wasn't pleased, he could feel it. Maybe it was gone, or just wouldn't come here because he'd botched it, but Zip had an awful feeling that the red-eyed thing was more than a little miffed about the disarrayed condition of its home. Worse, he wasn't sure any more whether this site was good enough, being not quite on the Street of Tem- ples, but somewhat off the thoroughfare.

If only his boys had marked the stones. If only Kama and Strat hadn't interfered. If only the day would stay its coming a little while longer. Zip had been in tight spots before. Given time and calm, he could sort the matter out.

There were thirty-three stones in all. Some of them had Zip's careful marks. It couldn't be impossible to figure out which stones must com- prise the bottom row.

But it was. He couldn't do it. He'd tried four times. And now the dawn was threatening to break. First the sky would regain its blueness, eating up the stars. Then royal purple would creep along the temples' walls, then gouts of red and orange flame to eat the darkness. And when the celadon and rose of true dawn came, with them would come the priests and acolytes, padding toward their morning duties.

Zip would be discovered where Ilsigs feared to tread, in the reaches of a Rankan temple. And then the rivergod would have its revenge.

He knew it was that. He was shaking all over, anguished and weak. Too weak to run, too tired to hide. It was as if all his spirit had leeched away with the darkness, as if his soul was as dismantled as the home of stone he couldn't rebuild.

He squatted down beside the tumbled blocks of half-dressed limestone, nearly in tears. He wanted to make amends, he hadn't meant to let the unclean hands of his rebels desecrate the rivergod's temple. He'd tried to do the right thing ...

And, in extremis like so many men before him over thousands of years, Zip began to pray: Lord, he asked wordlessly, eyes closed, hands upon the stone he'd marked himself, the capstone of this puzzle he couldn't solve, 0 Lord, forgive thy servant. Evildoing has befallen me. In my fool- ishness, I have sinned against thee. Forgive thy servant and help me to make things right. Help thy servant to make thy temple and I will bring the blood of a virgin under twelve, the eyes of an ox, the penis of a Rankan noble-whatever thy desire is, just make it known to me and f will do that thing. But help me not fail in the making of thy temple, and give me a sign that this place is acceptable to thee. Before I get my ass hauled off to jail in the bargain, he added, still silent, eyes yet closed.

For he'd heard a sound that stiffened him as if he were turned to stone as unyielding as the blocks over which he labored: the click of a horse's hoof against a pebble, the scrape of an iron shoe on cobble.

Holding his breath, he heard more: the swish of a long tail, the creak of leather, the jingle of harness. Frog, I'm porked for good and all.

Obviously, he told himself, this was the god's wrath come upon him. He was going to open his eyes, turn around, and there would be some palace hotshot, some regular army mover, some Beysib lady fighter, wait- ing to take him off to the Hall of Justice for screwing around on the grounds of the Storm God's temple. Not even his commission as watch officer could save him now. Not from the penalty for desecrating holy ground when that ground was holy to Rankans.

He opened his eyes and looked straight ahead, at the jumble of altar stones. Well, he'd tried. He wondered what was going to happen to the altar stones, to the god's home, and to the god himself. Would it magi- cally get itself and its stones back to the river where it was safe? And if it couldn't, what would then befall poor Zip, who'd managed to pork up a god's life as well as his own?

He bit his tip and then, decided, turned from the waist to face his fate. There, behind him, was a single horseman. The horse loomed in the gloom, its great dark chest seeming to stare at Zip with a panther's eyes, a panther's gaping, toothsome jaws.

Zip blinked, and realized that what faced him was no creature half cat, half horse, but a warhorse wearing a pantherskin shabraque. And the panther who had given its skin to blanket this horse had been large, with glowing eyes, and so magnificent that its head had been not merely skinned, but stuffed so that glassy eyes stared at Zip as angrily as living eyes might have.

The horse was the color of White Foal clay, its mane and tail and stockings black. Its bridle and reins were of woven stuff like swampgrass, and from it wafted a marshy odor. It pawed the ground, neck arched, and only then was Zip's attention drawn to the rider, who was dis- mounting.

Zip never remembered scrambling to his feet, only the swing of the rider from his saddle, the cloak as dark as the predawn sky, and the feathered helm that inclined toward him as the rider said, "What have we here?"

"Uh, I'm just trying to put this back like it ought to be." Zip waved vaguely behind him, toward the altar stones tumbled there, trying to protect the unassembled shrine with his body.

The rider's helmet turned slowly. His visor was down. He was armored in browns; bronze or hardened leather or some combination, Zip couldn't tell. But armored in the way of well-to-do professionals: arms free and bare but for wrist braces, cuirass and loinguard, greaves below his knees, and all of it fitted custom to his body. Slung at his hip was a cavalryman's sword and equipment belt. Behind, on the saddle, Zip could see two shields, long and short, and a bow and quiver, but in the rider's hand was only a spear.

Coming toward him without another word, the man used the spear as a staff, digging the ground with its butt. And then, when this faceless apparition was nearly upon him and Zip was beginning to wonder if there were really eyes behind the frightful visor, he finally spoke again: "I see your problem."

And he walked right by Zip, whose nose was wrinkled at the salty smell of marsh emanating from him, and on toward the pile of stones.

"No, don't! Please! Nobody's supposed to touch-" Zip lunged un- thinkingly toward the armored man and the horse behind him screamed and reared, hooves flailing.

Zip threw up his arms and dived to the dirt as the horse stalked up- right toward him.

At the same time, the armored man turned slowly, from the waist, and held up his spear. The horse came down on all fours and bowed its head, snorting.

Zip scrambled to his feet. "Look, like I said, nobody's supposed to touch-"

The armored man's head swiveled toward him and the voice from behind the visor said, "This one first." His spear pointed to a certain stone, then jabbed toward it commandingly when Zip only stared. "This one. Now."

Zip found his hands on the stone. And then on another, the one that the spear touched next. And another, and another. Zip labored there, under the direction of that spear, until the sky was red and gold and he held the final stone in both his hands, chest heaving.

Poised over the pile, afraid that attempting to place the last stone would tumble all the others. Zip blurted breathlessly, "You're sure?"

The helmeted head nodded once, up and down, and the spear jabbed forward commandingly.

Zip placed the stone atop all the other stones and a spark seemed to jump from the rocks. It bit his hand, crawled up his wrist. It hurt like fire.

He staggered back, squinting at the stones suddenly too bright, as if they'd ignited. He shielded his eyes from the glare. A trick of the dawn light, he told himself when he opened his eyes again and the pile was still there, neither burning nor singed, not even smudged, but squat and sturdy.

Squat! Sturdy! A rough beehive of stones, solid as the temple wall in whose shadow it rested. Success! Relief flooded Zip. Before he knew it, he was on his knees at the low opening, peering inward, trying to see if the rivergod was there.

And he saw something, red and glowing, restless in its appointed dark. And reached out to touch the stones, which were cool and real and snug in place.

He pushed on one. It didn't shift. He pushed on two. They didn't budge. He chuckled and then he grinned. He put his cheek to the cool stone, knowing now that the spark that had seemed to bite him was just some phosphorescent insect and the rest had been illusion, a moment of Waking dream.

Because the god was not angry at him-it had come to abide in the temple he had built it!

He gave a wordless shout and then remembered the armored man. He got up from the altar, hand already outstretched to thank the stranger, but there was no one there. No man in fighter's garb. No horse in pantherskin shabraque with panther feet dangling from its back.

Nothing but increasing daylight in an alley where no Ilsig dared be caught, not even Zip, the third shift watch officer of Sanctuary.

"Gotta go, but I'll be back. Lord," he muttered, giving the shrine a final pat before he fled. "I'll be back."

Kama's roan had bolted during the night, found some way to slip its harness and make away. "She does it all the time," Kama said to Crit, who was sure someone had gotten into the barn and stolen the mare. "There's no door that beast can't open, no knot she can't chew through. She'll be out at the Stepsons' barracks, mark my words."

And that stopped all conjecture about the horse, and Kama's attempt to lighten Crit's mood. It wasn't the Stepsons' barracks any longer, not with so few Stepsons left. Nobody stayed there now. It was too lonely. The place was used for storage of gear and extra horses, but Crit stayed here, at the Shambles safe house; Strat stayed ... where Strat stayed. Randal, who could have claimed the right, was sleeping in the Mageguild, and Kama herself preferred any number of beds with men in them to a solitary one full of unhappy memories.

"I'll go out and check," she said lamely. "You've got to go to work, anyway. See you toni- later?"

"Tonight's fine with me," said Crit gently, and then with more fire in him: "If you want to join me over at Ischade's-I can't let this thing with Strat go on like this. I've got to get him out of there."

"Why?" Strat had been there for them, in his way. When they'd come back to the guardpost to write their report he'd been waiting, full of Ischade's warnings and a more honest concern. But Crit couldn't un- bend, wouldn't let Strat have an opening so that amends could be made.

"She says," Strat had offered, using the unadorned pronoun, as they always did, to represent Ischade; "that there's more trouble coming out of that house than you or youi's can handle. Leave it to us, all right?"

Crit hadn't said a word to that at first, just stared at Strat in that way he had that made you want to sink into the earth right there and then. And after too long a pause, he'd said what Kama hoped he wouldn't:

"Us, is it? You and her, you mean? Or some of your soulless zombies under mutual command?"

Strat had been braced for it, by then. Kama wanted to crawl under the table, pretend she didn't understand what was happening and suggest they all go to breakfast-anything but sit there, a mute witness to the rending of a Sacred Band oath.

Strat had said only, "Crit, I signed off" on your paperwork, what more do you want? You can't handle this. We won't tell anyone if you don't. Tasfalen's ... our business. So's Haught. Keep your people away from them, that's all I'm saying." And with that, Strat had left.

There was a time Kama would have taken Crit to her bosom on this son of rebound and felt like she'd won something. But the comfort he needed wasn't hers, and all the acrobatics he'd put both of them through so that he could finally fall into an exhausted sleep didn't help what was ailing Critias.

Or didn't help enough. Still, she said, "Wait for me tonight," and left him, thinking that, if things were going from bad to worse with Strat, Crit might really need her help. He needed someone's. And Kama knew that, no matter what trouble it caused with Molin or anybody else, what- ever Crit needed, she had to try to give him,

Love tends to be like that, even in Sanctuary.

Alone in his office, Critias pretended to work on the duty roster until his eyes started to sting. Then he gave it up, having made little progress, and began to put his papers away, thinking that he'd go down to Caravan Square and see if he could find Kama another horse.

But as he was leaving, Gayle came in, muttering that there was "some porker outside you'd better take a look at, sir-personal like."

"I'm not in the mood," Crit snapped, then said: "Sorry, Gayle, it's not you. It's that damned Zip. Anybody report anything odd last night?"

It was Zip's shift, so as to whatever had happened about the stone shrine, Crit didn't expect anything like an honest report from the watch officer. Wouldn't have, even if Zip could write more than his name.

"That's what I'm sayin'. Commander: you'd better come have a look at this guy, came in last night to the meres* hostel, claiming all sorts of privilege.-Now he's lookin' for Tempus." Gayle shrugged and grimaced, anticipating Crit's next question. "Didn't tell him anything, either way."

"'Just where 'outside' is this fellow?"

"Down at the Storm God's temple, like he owned it. Nice horse, nice gear, lots of loose change."

"Right. I'm on my way." They all knew the type-they were the type, before Tempus had welded them into something more usable by Empire.

Gayle was still hovering and Crit understood why: "Somebody's got to watch the shop, friend."

Gayle screwed up his face. "Forking waste, all this porked-up paper work's somethin' any porkin' fool can do."

"Not when it's mine, it isn't. Molin comes by, keep him here, tell him we're making copies and need his signature on something-anything. Try to find out what he's up to on this Tasfalen matter. And let him know that, far as we're concerned, it's closed: we found the man in question, he's not accused of anything, there's nothing more we can do."

Gayle was nodding intently, trying to memorize all of that, as Crit left.

His gray horse was still where Crit had tethered it, Enlil be praised. If that one disappeared, then it was going to become police business, and fast. But it hadn't. He rubbed its nose and it whickered softly as he mounted up and headed off into the early morning sunlight.

The worst thing about this new duty was getting used to sleeping at night, working in the daytime. For Crit's money, sunlight was something you left to the cattle. In Sanctuary, like most other venues he'd worked, what was worth doing got done at night.

But command made its demands, and when he got to the Storm God's temple he wished he'd commanded his mage, Randal, to come to the Street of Temples with him.

The horse that was tied in front of the temple screamed money and power from every trapping and the pantherskin shabraque it wore was of a style and quality Crit had never seen before.

"Where's the owner of this horse?" he demanded of the temple acolyte who'd obviously been paid to watch over it and was doing that from a distance: the shabraque wasn't the only part of this beast with teeth.

"In back, Commander, down that alley." The acolyte rolled its eunuch's eyes heavenward as if to say. Don't ask me why these warriors do what they do.

Crit looked at the tethered warhorse, whose saddle had hung on it both a large and small shield, and other implements of close and regimented fighting, and blew out a long, slow breath.

Crit's dues to the mercenary's guild were still paid up. He rode, rather than walked, down the alley on the southwest side of the Storm God's temple until he came to a man eating a skewer of lamb and drinking from a wineskin, leaning up against the temple wall near a pile of stones.

"Life to you," Crit said cautiously, keeping rein contact with his horse's mouth with one hand and his other on the crossbow he could shoot without disengaging from its saddle hook.

"And the rest, as follows," said the other man whose helmet, on the pile of stones, was of an ancient style from far to the west. "I'm looking for Tempus."

"You've found his first officer." Old habits died hard. "I'm holding the bag here till he returns." Everything about this fighter screamed trouble; the fact that he was looking for the Riddler didn't mitigate that: whoever Tempus wanted for his sortie, he'd already contacted.

"You'll do, then."

"Thanks. Do for what?"

"I'm offering my services- Tempus needs a little help here, I was told." The man was Crit's height but somewhat heavier, in his middle years, scarred enough by war and wind and sun to prove him mortal. His head was broad and strong and resembled, more than anything else, a human version of the helmet he'd set on the piled stones. The red-brown eyes in that face held Crit's implacably, and the Stepson had the unmistakable impression that he was being judged.

"He's not here, I said."

"But the problems are, and you're short-handed, so they say up at the guild hostel."

"Who sent you?" Bluntly put. If this fighter was a mere, as he said, the guild records could tell him something about the man he was looking at -if Crit needed to know any more.

A quirked smile that showed no teeth. "Your need, for certain-and the Riddler's. The Storm God, if you like."

Crit hated this sort of innuendo- The man he was looking at was of a fighting class not usually under his command, and if the newcomer was staying in Sanctuary, some accommodation between them would have to be made. The last thing he needed was a man like this working against him. And if he was what he seemed-an acquaintance of Tempus-then he might represent a light at the end of Crit's personal tunnel.

The man leaning against the wall merely chewed on his stick of lamb chunks and eyed Crit and the gray horse until Critias knew he must dismount or create an enemy,

When he'd done that, the newcomer threw away his stick of lamb and came toward him. When he reached the pile of stones, he put one foot up on it and retrieved his helmet. "I'm known as Shepherd," he said, and held out his hand.

"I bet you are," Crit replied, taking it. Between them was the pile of stones and, somehow, Crit didn't want to touch it. He remembered what Kama had said about Zip and the stones, but it didn't seem anywhere Bear as important as the man before him. "Well, Shepherd, I'm not using niy war name here, so it's just Critias." He disengaged his hand and unconsciously wiped it against his hip.

Behind Crit, his horse snorted. Duly prompted, the Stepson said, "We've got plenty of work for the right sort of man, but what kind depends on how long you're staying. And what sort of references you can produce. More, I hope, than just evidence of the Storm God's favor."

"More than gods' favor, yes," said Shepherd, tapping his foot on the pile of stones. "Gods: can't live with 'em, can't shoot 'em." He shook his head in mock disgust, to make it clear that the remark was a joke, but it seemed strange to Crit, as strange as this Shepherd come to Sanctuary in the wake of the Riddler.