Blood Ties

SANCTUARY NOCTURNE by Lynn Abbey

Walegrin had his back to Sanctuary-vulnerable, unconcerned. One foot rested on a broken-off piling; his folded forearms rested on his upraised knee. His eyes were empty, staring at the still, starlit harbor, watching for the faint ripple that might mean a breeze coming up.

A thick blanket of sun-steamed air had clung to the city these last four days. Last winter they-the powers in the palace-had told him to paint false plague signs along the streets. Then, in a dry spring, pestilence had erupted from the stagnant sewers and only luck, or divine intervention, had saved Sanctuary from a purging. Now, as the dank, foul air leeched vitality from every living creature, plague season had come in earnest and the nabobs were worried. Worried so much that they fled from the palace and their townhouses to outlying estates, some no more than Ilsigi ruins, to await a change in the wind. Improvements to the city's long-neglected ramparts had ground to a halt, as stone, brick, and work-gangs were openly diverted to providing comfort and security to those rich enough, or powerful enough, to afford it.

But if plague did break out, their walls, atriums, and shaded verandas wouldn't protect them. So they told him, the garrison commander, to keep the guards out and alert. His men grumbled, preferring to slouch over a desultory dice game in the barracks, but he welcomed a chance to get away from the walls that trapped the heat of summer as surely as they did the frigid dampness of winter.

Sanctuary itself was quiet. No one was moving an unnecessary muscle. The Street of Red Lanterns, which he had patrolled, had been almost deserted. Few men would pay to touch sweat-slicked flesh on a night like this.

It was ironic, in a way, that after a year or more of wizard-witched weather, the Street talk was about the failure of magic. Most of the brothels-the big houses like the Aphrodisia, anyway-usually bought cool night breezes from the journeymen up at the Mageguild, but this summer (a summer that was really no worse than any other) the big magic-banded doors stayed shut and the Hazard mages, when they were seen at all, were sweating through their robes like any common laborer.

Rumor said the worst was over and the magic was coming back, though only to the strongest, or the cursed, and as yet too unpredictable to sell at any price. Rumor said a lot of things, but Walegrin, who did Molin Torchholder's direct bidding, got the truth of them sometimes. Stormbringer's pillar, which had purged Sanctuary of its dead and deadly, had sucked away the ether that made magic work. It would be a dog's year before Sanctuary's Mageguild sold anything but charlatan spells or prestidigitation regardless of the hazardous ranking of its residents.

The black harbor water diffracted into diamonds of starlight; a breeze moved whisper-weak across the wharf. The ragged-eared cats with slitted sickly green eyes were stretched out along the damp planks. A mouse, or young rat, skittered up a mooring rope past a cat that didn't care enough to twitch its tail. If a man held still, like the cats-breathing slow, keeping his mind as calm as the water-he could forget the .heat and slip into a timeless daze that was almost pleasant.

Walegrin sought that oblivion and it eluded him. He was a Rankan soldier, the garrison commander, self-charged with patrolling the city. Such pride as he had stemmed from his ability to fulfill his duties. So his mind churned forward, pursuing the thoughts he'd lost before sunset. He had an appointment to keep: the true reason why tonight, more than any other, he rather than one of his men was making the rounds of Sanctuary's alleys.

The summer had seen a change in the city's social fabric that was as profound as it had been unexpected: Official protection had been extended to, and accepted by, the besieged remnants of the PFLS after their leader was betrayed and nearly killed within the palace walls. Gutter-fighters like Zip, whose lives had been measured in hours and minutes at the season's beginning, now dwelt in the Stepson barracks beyond Downwind and sweated hot and cold under the tutelage of Tempus's lieutenants.

And the cause of this change? None other than Prince Kadakithis's once-favorite cousin and Molin's never-favored niece: Chenaya Vigeles, a young woman of considerable talent and little sense. A young woman who had propositioned him with treason and upon whom, with the knowledge and permission of his superiors, Walegrin now spied.

Once, not so long ago, he had discounted the influence of women both in his own life and in the greater realities of the universe; then he had returned to Sanctuary. In this gods- and magic-cursed place, the worst always came from a woman's hand. He'd learned to hold his tongue and his liquor with women whose naked breasts stared back at him; women whose eyes glowed red with immortal anger and women whose love-play left a man dead in the dawn light-and all of them were saner than Chenaya.

Rumor said, and the Torch confirmed, that she was favored of Savankala himself. Rumor said she couldn't lose, whatever that meant, because she and the few frightened remnants of an unlamented Imperial dynasty had fled the Rankan capital after Theron's takeover and wound up here in Sanctuary which had never been known to attract anything or anyone but losers. But it meant something Walegrin knew that personally. And out at the Land's End estate, where she lived with her father, a small horde of gladiators, and the disaffected members of what had been the city's Rankan upper crust, there was a god-bugged priest who was determined to make a mortal goddess of her.

He'd seen the shrine Rashan was building, with stones pilfered not only from the ramparts but from long-neglected, best-forgotten altars. He'd passed the word along to Molin and watched his mentor seethe with rage, but he hadn't managed to pass along the danger-the awesomeness-he felt when Rashan made his Daughter-of the-Sun speeches or when Chenaya took him into her confidence and arms.

The water diffracted again, broken as a school of minnows scattered through a larger, slow-spreading circular ripple. Walegrin shed his reverie and stretched himself erect. His leather baldric, all he wore above the waist, slimed across his spine; the illusion of equilibrium between his flesh and the air vanished. He wiped the sweat-sheen from his forehead then wiped his hand on the limp homespun of his kilt. A nya-fish spread its fins, arching above the water to outrace the fleeing minnows. Walegrin slid the baldric into position and turned back to the city.

If there was an afterlife, if Sanctuary wasn't hell itself, then maybe he'd spend eternity as a nya-fish chasing minnows. At least fish didn't sweat.

The narrow, convoluted streets of the Maze held the heat. Turning down Odd Bin's Dodge, Walegrin passed through invisible walls of hot, stagnant air. He sniffed the air, thought about plague, and knew he'd have to send men in here to check the alleys for bodies come morning. From up on the rooftops, he heard the sounds that said love, or lust, had gained a momentary victory over the weather, but otherwise the Maze was uncommonly quiet for this hour.

Hand on his sword, he backed into a portico and put his shoulder against the half-hinged door. Picking his way across the rubble-strewn floor of what had been, until recently, one of the PFLS safe-houses, he approached the window casement, leaning away from the gray starlight, and tried to guess what route Kama would use to reach their rendezvous.

Kama.

Buoyed by the heat, Walegrin's mind drifted back in time and a few hundred yards deeper into the Maze; back to Tick's Cross and another night almost as hot as this one when he'd taken the midnight patrol. The night he'd agreed to let Zip live-at least until Tempus had ridden beyond Sanctuary's new gates.

He'd heard the horse first, moving too fast through the rutted muck that passed for paving stones hereabout, and made his way to the cross in time to see its rider go ass over elbow to the ground. The horse was well-trained and came to a shame-faced stop not five paces from its motionless rider. Walegrin grabbed the loose reins and led it back to the moonlit intersection.

Kama lay on her back, knees splayed and angled up-a posture more becoming a whore than a 3rd Commando assassin. Walegrin had looked only long enough to be sure it was her before turning discreetly, uncomfortably, away.

"It would be you. That's twice-damnit all," the husky voice had said, reminding him of the time his men had hauled her out of a malodorous cistern. "I've killed better men for less."

He had stared at her, knowing the absolute certainty of her claim and yet, for one wild, reckless moment able to see the absolute absurdity of her position. "Better for less?" he'd repeated in a bantering tone he used infrequently, even with his own men. "Better for less? Kama, either I'm the best or you'll have to kill me right now"-and immediately wished that someone had taken the trouble to cut his tongue out long ago.

But Kama, absorbing the picture she presented, had thrown her head back and laughed heartily at some private joke. She'd extended her filthy hand toward him and, using him as a brace, jumped to her feet.

"Buy me a drink, Walegrin; buy me a tun of the sourest wine in the Maze and you can be the best."

They said magic had vanished from Sanctuary, but there was a cold, bright spark of magic that moment as they led the lame horse from Tick's Cross, Kama listing against his shoulder-her laughter a quaver short of hysteria.

Molin Torchholder trusted her, including her in any strategy session her other duties allowed her to attend, and frequently accepting her opinions about Sanctuary's darker byways without question. She had been the one to convince them to go along with Tempus's PFLS schemes when he, Molin, and half a dozen others had demanded Zip's last drop of blood. But she was also Molin's woman. She shared his bed-and not simply because the Torch's betrothal offer had gotten her out of a tight spot with the Stepsons. There was genuine passion between them as well as a mutual understanding of intrigue that gave anyone who had known either individually a shiver of apprehension whenever they were seen talking intensely to each other.

So Walegrin used his privileged position as a keeper of Sanctuary's peace to wring not sour wine, but carefully aged, wicker-wrapped flasks of brandywine from one of the town's better-off innkeepers. Then, still leading her horse, they'd hiked beyond the walls to an abandoned estate, now occupied by one of the Beysa's innumerable female cousins. She'd sluiced the worst of the muck off her leathers in a still icy stream while he got started on the first flask and reminded himself ten times over that she was more dangerous than beautiful.

They'd talked until dawn: bragging, swapping anecdotes, and finally exchanging the stories they'd sworn no other living soul would hear. Toward dawn, when she was lying on her back again, watching the stars fade, magic passed between them again; Walegrin could have set aside his baldric and undone the damp laces of her tunic. He forbore, contenting himself with one agonizingly chaste kiss as a red-gold sliver of sunlight flashed above the eastern horizon.

"I always wanted a brother," she'd said in a whisper he wasn't sure he was supposed to hear.

There was a flicker of motion on the rooftops; nothing he could focus on, nothing that was repeated, but he knew she was coming in from above. Moments later the stairs creaked softly and she stood opposite him in the starlight. The supple leather of her tunic hung loosely from her shoulders and her face was matte-shadowed.

"Puttering gods below-you're not even sweating!" he greeted her.

"There are places worse than Sanctuary-and I've lived in most of them."

"I spent five years with the Raggah on the Sun's Anvil-it wasn't as bad as this and I still sweat like a pig."

Kama laughed and slid down the wall until her spine settled against the floor. "Say it's something I get from my father."

Walegrin, having once acknowledged that Tempus at his best was a heavier burden than his own father had been at his worst, redirected his conversation to the reason for their meeting. "It's getting bad at Land's End, Kama. Since they fished her out of the harbor Chenaya's like one of those damned Beysib fire bottles. She's got herself a head full of schemes and any one of them would rip us apart. The Torch's going to have to do something."

"He's going to have to wait his turn, isn't he? Ischade's not satisfied yet; neither is Tempus and the rest haven't even launched their attacks. I hear it was Jubal's men that fished her out and that he gave her a lecture that dried the water right off her. You know Molin; He's not one to waste energy when so many others are willing to-"

"It's not just Chenaya, Kama, it's Rashan, that pet priest of hers. Rashan and his crawling little altar out there. He sits out in the heat for hours and stares at Savankala's shadow. He's god-bugged-and he's got no love for the Torch."

"God-bugged?" she asked, her body tightening.

Walegrin stammered. It was his own phrase; one he'd first used for Molin himself when Stormbringer had been after him. He used it to describe a man's face after the gods had been in his mind-when he went about his business as if a nest of fire-ants raced under his skin. When he was not only unpredictable but nigh invincible. Walegrin had witnessed those changes more than once and had only one word for them: god-bugged.

"Yeah, god-bugged," Kama repeated after he had lapsed into silence. "Crit'd like that; maybe I'll tell him sometime. You think Rashan's god-bugged, too?"

"Even if he isn't, he's doing a good job of convincing Chenaya that she's got the gods' own work to do in Sanctuary."

"Savankala's not all-powerful down here, you know," she reminded Walegrin.

"I didn't say Savankala. The frogging priest's god-bugged. It could be any one of them. He's going out in the middle of the night stealing old stones from who knows where and piling them against his altar."

"You're starting to sound like Molin," Kama mused. "All right, I'll try to convince Molin to take Rashan seriously. Anything else?"

She pulled her legs in and started to rise.

"If he doesn't listen, we'll have to do something... ourselves."

Kama stopped in mid-ascent, her weight perfectly balanced on one bent leg, then sank gently back to the floor. "Like what?"

Walegrin swallowed hard, the tension in his throat bringing pain to his ears. "Like... take him out."

"Shit."

She stared past him. He hoped he had judged her right and she'd come to the same conclusion he'd already reached; hoped her affection for and loyalty to Molin Torchholder was strong enough. She laced her fingers through her hair and, unconsciously, brought it around as a curtain to hide her face as she thought.

"Yeah, if it comes to that. If."

Her hair fell back from her face which reflected that faint starlight. She was sweating now and needed to tug her tunic away from sticky skin like any other mortal.

"How's your sister, Walegrin?" she asked, sitting beside him in the casement now, seemingly eager to place some other thoughts in the front of her mind.

"The same, I guess."

Illyra had recovered from her wounds better than they had dreamed possible. A quick glance at her sitting under the shade of the forge awning and no one would suspect that she had lain near death for over a week with a suppurating gouge in her belly where the PFLS ax which had slain her daughter had come to rest. But her spirit-that was another matter.

"She never smiles, Kama. There's only two memories in her mind: the day Lillis died and the day the ship sailed for Bandara with Arton on it. It's gone beyond mourning."

"I tried to tell you both that in the spring."

The tension went out of Walegrin's neck; his chin slanted toward his breastbone. It was a delicate subject among them. Molin had used his own fortune to provide for Illyra's healing and when the seeress's mind proved more injured than her body he'd prevailed upon Kama's near-legendary talent for dissimulation to provoke the S'danzo's recovery. No one wanted to discuss it but it seemed likely that Illyra's damaged mind had both started and then mercifully aborted the spring plague outbreak.

"And we didn't listen." His voice was as despairing as his half-sister's ever was.

Kama twisted her hair through her fist. "Look, I wasn't sure, either. It bothered me that one woman, who wouldn't ever hurt anybody, was suffering more than anyone else in this whole filthy, stinking town. Gods below, man, the last thing I ever want to know is my destiny-but I'd belt myself into one of Rosanda's old gowns again and stand outside that forge in the midday heat if I thought it'd make a difference-"

"But it won't. She's healed wrong-like Strat."

"Maybe another child," she mused, ignoring Walegrin's remark about the stiff shouldered Stepson. "It wouldn't make her forget-but she'd have one to care for, to keep her going from one day to the next until she didn't feel the pain so sharply."

The ebony-haired fighter stared out the window as she spoke. Walegrin knew what had passed between herself and Critias. Knew about the unborn child she'd lost up along Wiz-ardwall and her secret fear that now there could never be another one.

"Gods below, her husband's a big man. He's thought about it but she's too soon recovered," Walegrin said, trying to force humor into his voice.

It worked better than he'd expected. Kama's lips twisted into a lewd, lopsided smile. "There're other ways than that, my man."

Walegrin was grateful that such light as reached down into the room fell on her rather than him. His face burned and his groin tensed. He hadn't always known, hadn't really suspected much one way or another until recently. Chenaya took far greater pleasure from her ability to astound and stupefy him than she did from any of his own exertions.

Sensing either his embarrassment or his detachment, Kama made ready to leave the room. "I'll talk to him, Walegrin, but you're still his only eyes and ears out at that place and he won't want to lose you. Maybe we'll take the priest; I've got the stomach for that, but we can't touch her. Even if she didn't have some sort of divine protection, she's still Kada-kithis's cousin and he'll crucify anyone who rids him of her."

"I know that. I tell it to myself over and over whenever I'm with her. She's using me all the while she pretends to listen or care. When we're alone there's hate and disgust. It's unnatural."

Kama paused at the foot of the stairs. "The only thing unnatural about it is that she's a woman and you're a man- otherwise many men think it's a most natural, and satisfactory, arrangement."

Bitterness and anger had pushed the taste of bile into his mouth. He almost asked about the men of the 3rd, or the Stepsons, or her father who could not lie with a woman, only rape one. In the end, though, he swallowed and stared out the casement, away from her.

"It helps, sometimes, to bathe, to scrub yourself with a coarse cloth until you've shed your own skin," she added in a gentler voice as she disappeared up the stairs.

He waited until he was certain she was gone before making his own way back through the twisted streets. There was an old Ilsigi bathhouse between the garrison barracks and their stables. Cythen made use of it frequently, regardless of the season, often getting his lieutenant, Thrusher, to help her build the fires and haul the water. He had generally ignored them; indulged them, if the truth be known, because they were shy about the time they spent together. Perhaps he would join them... no, not that, but leam how the fires were built and follow Kama's usually wise advice.

The narrow streets of the Maze gave way to the Street of Smells, which more than merited its name these days. He crossed it and made his way into the Shambles where the chamel houses, infirmaries, and butchers plied their trades. A year ago this had been where the dead dwelt: an area of Sanctuary given over to magic and other worlds. For a while, after the spring plague, the Shambles had been almost completely abandoned, but they were occupied again.

Theron had proclaimed his command to rebuild Sanctuary's walls throughout the Empire. Singly, in pairs and in small groups, men had begun to come to the Imperial anus to make their fortunes. Roustabouts, seventh sons, and exiles from the ongoing Wizardwall skirmishes took over the empty buildings of the Shambles and took their places on the work gangs. They drank, whored, and otherwise indulged themselves in ways that made longtime residents smile uncomfortably, for these men had great expectations that, so far, Sanctuary had not beaten out of them.

They had their own taverns as well-the Broken Mallet, Tunker's Hole, and Belching Bili's-laid out in a row, spilling sound and light onto Offal Court despite the night's heat. Walegrin watched as a man staggered out one bright doorway and relieved himself in the street before choosing another route. The newcomers didn't get into much trouble-yet.

The chamel houses were busy. Sacks of lime were stacked hight against the buildings. Moonlight turned the dust a glowing, yellow-green. It reflected off the carapaces of the night-flies, the jewel-colored insects which had recently appeared here and which were too beautiful to be vermin. He'd heard the Beysib glassmakers were having some success instilling the colors in their work and that traders were taking egg cases to aristocratic gardens all over the Empire.

Walegrin watched their swirling dance. Its ethereal beauty took the stench and the heat from his mind, but spared him enough awareness to know he was, suddenly, not alone. Tensing imperceptibly, he located the sound and let his fingers hook casually over his belt-and his sword hilt. He spun around into an armed crouch as the intruder hailed him. "Whoa! Commander?"

He recognized the voice and wished to the gods he didn't. With his sword still at the ready, he straightened up. "Yeah, it's me. What do you want. Zip?" The Rankan waited while the PFLS leader came down the street. There was an ugly shadow across the young man's face-courtesy of the treachery he'd found at Chenaya's hands. He'd been proud that Sanctuary had never marked him. Those days were probably over.

"You keepin' your promises. Commander?"

Walegrin shifted his weight nervously and with evident distaste slid his sword back into its scabbard. "Yeah, I'm keeping promises. You got a problem you can't handle?"

There was no love lost between these men. Zip had wielded the ax that had hacked Illyra's gut open and broken her daughter in two. They'd meant to fight to the death that day-only Tempus's accidental intervention had stopped them. Walegrin judged it extremely likely that he'd finish the job someday; someday after Tempus was gone and Zip's absence wouldn't raise embarrassing questions.

"Not me personally-unless you lied to your priest and the Riddler both. Well, you coming with me?"

Liking it not at all, Walegrin fell in step behind Zip and followed him into the alleyways. The truth was, and the garrison commander knew it, that Zip's feelings were never very personal. He and Illyra had had a run-in more than a year ago and he'd stabbed her then-but that had had nothing to do with his attack on her daughter and neither had meant that Zip felt any more strongly about her than he felt about anyone. Tempus's Ratfall farce had probably secured Zip's loyalty and good behavior about as well as it could be secured.

There wasn't really any reason for Walegrin's sweat to go cold as they tunnelled through another cellar and he knew he'd not get back to a street he recognized without help before

sunrise.

They were at another of the PFLS safe-houses, an old, uninviting structure whose only doorway opened on a blind courtyard. Glancing at the rooftops, Walegrin knew they weren't a stone's throw from the Wideway-but he'd never imagined this house and its courtyard existed. He wondered how many other boltholes like this the PFLS retained and if even Tempus truly had them under control.

"It's upstairs," Zip called and vanished through the half-ruined doorway.

It took a few moments for Walegrin's eyes to adjust to the faint-shadowed darkness of the house. By the time they had, he'd heard the groaning and flailing about in the upper room- the room to which Zip was leading him. The Torch had offered to keep Zip and the two other piffles who had survived Chenaya's ambush in sanctuary at the palace until their wounds had healed. Zip had refused for both himself and his men; Walegrin figured he regretted it now.

Certainly the smell of blood was strong enough in the airless room they were crowded into. A lump-tallow candle provided sputtering, smoky light. Walegrin took the sconce from the wall and studied the place. He shoved a smaller man aside and headed for the comer where the whimpering was coming from, then brought himself up short.

"It's a woman!"

"It usually is," Zip replied. "She's been like this for three days. Around sunset we thought she was going to have it, finally. But it's only gotten worse. You gonna help?"

Walegrin knelt down and had his worst suspicions confirmed. This was no hell-cat PFLS fighter; this wasn't even the result of a private quarrel; no, this was a girl, a child really, lying on the filthy wood, her clothes long since torn and discarded, laboring to get a child out of her belly.

"Sweet Sabellia's tits," he swore softly.

The girl opened her eyes. She tried to say something to him but the sounds that came from her were too ragged for him to understand.

"I could stitch up a cut, maybe. Maybe get Thrush.... Shit on a stick. Zip-I can't do anything for her. I'm not a goddamned midwife." He stood up and took a step away.

"She needs a midwife," another voice told him, the man he'd pushed aside who was no more a man than the girl in the comer was a woman.

"She needs more than a midwife. She needs a bloody miracle!"

"We'll settle for a midwife," Zip countered.

"You're crazy. Zip. Three days she's been here? Three days? Maybe two days ago; maybe even at sunset she needed a midwife. You can't possibly move her; she's half-dead already."

"She's not!" the youth shouted, his outrage turning to tears. "She needs a midwife-that's all." He turned to Zip, not Walegrin. "You said-you said you'd find someone."

The PFLS leader's facade of uncaring arrogance cracked a bit-enough so the garrison commander could recognize a familiar despair. You made your men trust you so you could ask them to do the impossible and get results, but then they turned around and asked you to do the impossible as well. Walegrin didn't need to like, or even respect. Zip to sympathize with him.

"What about it? You know anyone?" Zip asked.

"Who'd come here? At this hour?"

Walegrin twisted his bronze circlet free, pushed the loose hair off his forehead, and blew a lungful of air through his teeth. The unborn baby chose that moment to send its mother into a back-wrenching arc of pain and terror. As she thrashed about Walegrin saw more than he wanted to see: a tiny leg dangling below the girl's crotch. Even he knew babes were supposed to enter the world the other way around.

He locked stares with Zip and racked his memory for a competent, but foolhardy, midwife.

Molin Torchholder had told him, back when he'd begun taking orders from the priest, that in the Rankan Empire a place's population was usually about fifteen times its tax roll. Until the coming of the Beysib, the Prince had collected taxes, or tried to collect taxes, from some four hundred citizens: Say 6,000 people in the city, not counting Beysibs and newcomers, and Walegrin knew, or could recognize, most of them.

He had a memory for faces and names; had made a hobby of it since his childhood right here in Sanctuary: Moreover his mind was sufficiently flexible to recognize people years after he'd last seen them. He'd recognized Zip, remembering him as a street tough about his own age-always surrounded by followers, always fighting, never winning. He'd recognized another not long ago: a lady living in moderate style and comfort near Weaver's Way.

"Maybe," he told them and headed for the door.

"I'll be going with you," Zip countered and preceded him down the stairs.

They left a different way than they'd come, squat-walking through a gap Walegrin would not have noticed without Zip to lead him. The safe-house shared a wall with a dilapidated warehouse. A warehouse which should have been empty, judging by the way Zip recoiled when they confronted the burning lamps and the little man coming toward them.

"Muznut!" Zip shouted and the bald little man came to a shame-faced stop.

Dressed in drab Sanctuary rags, it took Walegrin a moment to realize he was actually looking at a Beysib who was well-known to, if not exactly friendly with, the PFLS leader. He didn't recognize the foreigner, but he'd know him the next time they crossed paths.

"We share with them, for a price," Zip tried to explain. "Some fish want to get out of the water." He turned to the Beysib and snarled: "Get back to your tub boat, old man. You've got no business here after sundown!"

The man's eyes went wide and glassy, like he'd seen a ghost, then he turned and ran. Zip stood staring after him.

"Umm," Walegrin said, pretending disinterest. "I thought we were in a hurry. If this is your shortcut to Weaver's Way, I don't think much of it." He sniffed disdainfully, as the locals expected the Rankans to do, and took note of the smells in the air. Only one was worth remembering: distilled light oil such as he had smelled when Chenaya ambushed the PFLS and they'd retaliated with their fire-bottles.

"Can't trust those fish," Zip said as they approached the door the Beysib had left open in his haste to leave the warehouse.

"Ain't that the truth," Walegrin agreed, and wondered if Zip were truly preoccupied enough to believe that a Rankan soldier hadn't figured out where the oil and glass for his fire-bottles was coming from.

The PFLS leader set a good pace along the Wideway. Sweat came up and clung to the both of them. Once they crossed the Processional, though, and entered Sanctuary's better neighborhoods, Walegrin took command with Zip walking nervously beside him.

"You sure about this place?" the dark-haired man demanded.

"Yeah. I'm no fool. You'll owe me one."

Zip stopped, touching Walegrin's arm as he did, so the two men stood facing each other.

"Pork all, Walegrin. It's for the girl back there, not me."

"That's part of the job. You owe me for keeping quiet about your warehouse back there and your fish glassblower."

"They're shit-dumb, man. He thinks we own the place, so we charge him rent."

"It's not going to wash. Zip." Walegrin watched as the other man went white and furious in the moonlight. "Now look: You're dealing with the guy who brought Enlibar steel to this hole. You got yourself a nice advantage there, but right now you don't need it, correct? Everybody's at peace; you're one of us. And, now that I've got the pieces in my head- well, I can get to better Beysib than your Maznut.

"But let's say I don't want to. Let's say I don't trust some of my allies any more than you do, but the time comes, maybe, that I need a fire-breathing hero, then you come running, Zip-or Shalpa's cloak itself won't hide you from me. Understood?"

Zip weighed his options in silence.

"Maybe you can find another warehouse," Walegrin bantered easily. "Maybe something will happen to me before it happens to you. I remember you from the Pits, long before Ratfall, and I'm betting you want to be a hero just once in your life. But you don't swear right now, and you'll tear Weaver's Way apart looking for her... and you won't find her." He smiled his best triumphant smile.

"What do you get out of it?"

"Maybe I'm going to need a home-grown, fire-breathing hero," Walegrin replied, thinking of Rashan and the altar out at Land's End and hoping that Kama would approve.

Zip gave his word and they continued in silence, alone on the streets, until they reached Weaver's Way.

"Keep out of sight," Walegrin told his companion before he climbed the steps to rap loudly on the door.

"Be gone wi' you!" a voice called from inside.

"It's the Prince's business! Open up or we'll break through the door."

There was a long silence, the sounds of two heavy bolts being drawn back, then the door cracked open. Walegrin smacked the heel of this hand against the upper part of the door and threw the weight of his hip against the lower. It gave another few inches but not enough for Walegrin to enter. He looked down at the house guard.

"I want to talk to the Mistress zil-Ineel. Call her." He emphasized his request with another shove, but the house guard was braced as securely as he was and the door didn't budge.

"Come back in the morning."

'Wow, fat man."

"Let him in, Enoir," a woman called from the top of the stairs. "What's Eevroen done now?" she asked wearily as she descended.

Walegrin gave the hapless Enoir a leering smile and pushed his way into the open room. "Nothing unusual," he told the woman. "I'm here to see you."

"I haven't done anything to warrant a midnight visit from the garrison," she retorted with enough fire to convince Walegrin that he had indeed come to the right house.

He softened his stance and his voice. "I need your help. Or, rather, a young girl in the Shambles needs your help."

"I... I don't know what you're talking about."

"You're Masha zil-Ineel; you were Mashanna sum-Peres t'lneel until your uncles went bankrupt and married you off to Eevroen. You lived on Dry Well Street in the Maze until somehow you got lucky, disappeared for almost a year, and came back to buy this place."

"I came by my good fortune the hard way: honestly. I've paid my taxes."

"When you lived in the Maze, Masha, you worked as a midwife-with a doctor present east of the Processional, without one the rest of the time. The girl in the Shambles- she's been in labor for three days, in this heat. Once upon a time visiting the Shambles was moving up for you; I'm hoping you won't be afraid to go there tonight."

Mash sighed and let her lamp rest on the handrail. "Three days? There won't be much I can do."

But she would come-the answer showed on her face before she said anything. Enoir protested and insisted he accompany her but she ordered him to remain at the house and retreated upstairs to dress. Walegrin waited, politely ignoring Enoir's barbed glances.

"You have an escort in the street?" Masha asked when she returned, one hand pulling a prim, but almost transparent, shawl around her shoulders and the other carrying a battered leather chest.

"Of course," Walegrin replied without hesitation as he, rather than Enoir, held the door open.

He called for Zip as soon as the door had shut behind them. "That is your escort?" Masha sneered, the edge in her voice trying to cover her discomfort and fear.

"No, that's our guide; I'm the escort. Let's get moving." Whatever Masha zil Ineel was doing now that she had money, she hadn't let it soften her. She let the shawl drape loosely from her shoulders and kept pace with them along the Path of Money. The heavy chest seemed not to slow her at all and she refused to let either man carry it. The moon set; Walegrin bought a brace of torches from the Processional night-crier and they continued along their way, avoiding the Maze though all of them knew the secrets of its dark passages. They came into the Shambles and halted.

A knot of torch fires was headed toward them, bobbing, even falling, as their bearers shouted into the still, hot air. It reminded the three native Sanctuarites of the riotous plague marches that told the city's better-off citizens when death had erupted in the slums. Silently Zip melted back into the shadows, pushing Masha and her white shawl behind him. Walegrin slipped the straps off his green-steel sword and shoved the stump of his own torch into a gap in the nearest wall.

A gang of newcomer workmen emerged from the darkness. They staggered and stumbled into each other and their shouting proved to be the once-tender chorus of a love ballad. Walegrin shrugged a good deal of the tension from his shoulders but held his ground as they took note of him and lurched to a halt.

"A whorehouse, off-sher, where the wimmen're pretty?" their ersatz leader requested, drawing the outline of what he considered an extremely attractive woman in the air between them. His cohorts broke off their singing to whistle and laugh their agreement.

Walegrin rubbed the loose hair from his forehead and tucked it under his bronze circlet. If he waited a few more moments at least two of the newcomers were going to pass out in the dust and their whole expedition would come to naught. But the men who worked on the walls were being paid daily in good Rankan coinage and the Street of Red Lanterns was suffering from the weather. He did his civic duty and pointed them out of the Shambles toward the Gate of Triumph where, if they did not fall afoul of Ischade, they would eventually find the great houses.

Zip was at his side before he had the torch pulled from the wall.

"Forking, loud fools," he snarled.

"Maybe we should give up our respective trades and build walls or unload barges for a living," Walegrin mused.

"Listen to them. They must be halfway into the square and you can still hear them! They'll get eaten alive."

The garrison commander raised one eyebrow. "Not while they're traveling in packs like that," he challenged. "You backed off quick enough."

And Zip stood silent. There were big men in Sanctuary. Tempus was about the biggest; Walegrin and his brother-in-law, Dubro, weren't exactly small-boned either. But, save for the Stepsons, the newcomers were the biggest, best-fed men Sanctuary had seen in a generation or more. Even if they were only common laborers, another man-a native man like Zip -would have to think seriously before bothering them.

"They're ruining the town," the PFLS leader said finally.

"Because they work for their bread? Because they pay fairly for what they need and save to bring their families here to live with them?" Masha interjected. "I thought you were bringing me down here to see a woman."

With a half-glance back toward the square, where the newcomers were still singing. Zip grabbed the torch from Wale-grin's hands and plunged into the Shambles backways.

The safe-house was ominously quiet as Zip doused the torch and led the way to the deeply shadowed stairway. He stopped short in the doorway to the upper room; Walegrin bumped into him. The girl was still lying in the comer silent and motionless. Her young lover squatted beside her, his face shiny with unmanly tears. The garrison commander scarcely noticed as Masha shoved him aside. Her movements did not interrupt the invective he privately directed to such gods and goddesses as should have taken a care in these matters. Like many fighting men, Walegrin could understand the sudden death that came on the edge of a weapon but he had no tolerance for the simpler sorts of dying that claimed ordinary mortals.

He watched, and was faintly curious, as Masha took a glass hom from her kit and, with the solid stem of it to her ear and its open bell against the girl's skin, performed a swift, but precise, examination.

"Get the torch over here!" she commanded. "She's still breathing; there's hope, at least, for the babe."

None of the men responded. She stood up and grabbed the nearest, the young man who had been crying.

"There's hope for your child, you fool!" She shook his tunic as she spoke and a glimmer of life returned to his eyes. "Find a basin. Make a fire and boil me some water."

"I... we have nothing but this." The young man gestured at the crudely furnished room.

"Well, find a basin... and clean rags while you're about it."

The young man looked at Zip, who stared blankly back at him.

"Your fish-eye, Muznut-next door," Walegrin suggested. "He'll have all that, won't he? Even the rags, I imagine."

Zip's face twisted unpleasantly for a moment, then, with a sigh, he turned back to the stairway, and the warehouse. The other men followed.

Masha hung her delicate shawl over a huge splinter in one of the wall beams and began unlacing her gown. There was messy work to be done and no sense to ruining her own clothing as well. She tore off the bottom panel of her shift and used one strip to bind her already dripping hair away from her face. With the rest she mopped up as much of the blood as she could and plotted the tasks before her.

They built a fire in the courtyard using some of Muznut's fine charcoal and such bumable rubble as was scattered about. The flames turned the ruined gardens into an inferno but the men stayed close by the fire, returning to the upper room only when Masha demanded fresh water or cloths. They said nothing to each other, choosing positions within the courtyard that allowed a clear view of the midwife's flickering shadow and yet shielded them from each other's casual glance.

Toward dawn the bats returned to their normally deserted lairs, their shrill peeps echoing off the walls and the men themselves as they protested the occupation of their homes. The day-birds took flight as well and the small square of sky above them turned a dirty gray that betokened another round of oppressive heat. Walegrin wanted a beaker of ale and the limited comfort of his officer's quarters in the palace wall, but he remained, rubbing his eyes and waiting until Masha was through.

"Arbold!" she called from the window.

The young man looked up. "Water?" he asked, giving the neglected fire a prod.

"No, just you."

He headed into the house. Walegrin and Zip exchanged glances before following him. Masha had expected them and was at the doorway to block their entrance.

"They've only got a few moments," she said softly.

The midwife had washed the new mother's face, smoothed her hair, and surrounded her with the last of Muznut's fine-woven fuse-cloth. Her eyes were bright and she was smiling at both her swaddled child and her lover. But her lips were ashen and her skin had a milky translucence in the dawn light. The men in the doorway knew Masha was right.

"The baby?" Zip whispered.

"A girl child," Masha replied. "Her leg is twisted now, but that may come right with time."

"If she has-" Walegrin began.

A final spasm racked the girl's body. A red stain spread swiftly across the cloth as she closed her eyes and gasped one more time. The child she had cradled with her waning strength slipped through her limp arms toward the floor; Arbold was too stunned to catch it.

"It killed her," he explained, his hands balled into fists at his sides, when Masha tried to place the infant in his arms. "It froggin' killed her!" His voice ascended to screaming rage.

The infant, which had been sleeping, awoke with the short-breathed cries peculiar to the just-bom. Masha held her protectively against her own breast as the young man's rant-ings showed no sign of abating.

"Killed her!" she shouted back. "How should an innocent child be held accountable for the chances of its birth? Let the blame, if there is any, fall on those fit to carry it. On those who left her mother here without care for three endless days. On the one who fathered her in the first place!"

But Arbold was in no mood to consider his own part in his lover's death. His rage shifted from the infant to Masha and Zip moved swiftly across the room to restrain his comrade.

"Is there one you trust to care for this child?" Masha asked Zip. "A mother? A sister, perhaps?"

For a heartbeat it seemed there might be two irrational men in the cramped, death-ridden room, then Zip emitted a short, bitter laugh. "No," he answered simply. "She was the last. No one's left."

Masha continued to hold the infant tightly, rocking from side to side across her hips like an animal searching for a bolthole. "What then?" she whispered, mostly to herself. "She needs a home. A wetnurse-"

Walegrin chose that moment to step between them. He looked down at the infant. Its hands were red and impossibly small-scarcely able to circle his forefinger; its face was dark-mottled as if it had taken a beating just in entering this life-which it probably had.

"I'll take her with me," Masha concluded, daring Zip or Arbold to challenge her.

"No," Walegrin said-and they all stared at him in surprise.

"Is the garrison commandeering babes-in-arms now?" Zip sneered.

The blond man shrugged. "Her mother's dead; her father refuses to acknowledge her: That makes her a ward of the state-unless you're thinking of raising her yourself."

Zip looked away.

"Now, Mistress zil-Ineel's an upstanding woman-but she's raised her own children and's not eager to raise another."

His ice-green eyes bore down on the midwife until she, too, looked away.

"I know a woman whose children have been taken from her. You know her too. Zip know her very well."

"Gods. No." Zip inhaled the words so they were barely audible.

"You'd gainsay me?" Walegrin's voice was as cold as his eyes.

"What? Who?" Arbold interrupted.

"The S'danzo. The one in the alley. You remember: the pillar of fire and the riots afterward?" Zip replied quickly, never taking his eyes away from Walegrin, whose hand rested on the exposed hilt of the only sword in the room.

"What would a S'danzo want-" the young man began.

"You'd gainsay me. Zip, now or ever?" Walegrin repeated.

The PFLS leader shook his head and extended an arm across Arbold's chest, pre empting any untoward response from that comer.

"Say goodbye to your daughter, pud," Walegrin commanded, lifting his hand from the sword-hilt and fumbling through his belt pouch instead. "This is for you," he dropped a silver coin in Masha's hand, "for the birth of a healthy child. And this is for her," he gestured to the dead woman before dropping similar coins in Zip's palm, "to buy a shroud and see her properly buried beyond the walls."

His hands were empty now; he reached out for the infant. Masha had already assessed his determination and placed the squirming bundle gently in the crook of his off-weapon arm.

"Shipri bless you," she whispered, pressing her thumb against the child's forehead so it left a white mark when she lifted it, then she spun her shawl off the splinter and tucked her leather chest under one arm. "I'm ready," she told Walegrin.

They left before the two piffles could say another word. Walegrin was more nervous about dropping the child than about having Zip at his back. He could feel it struggling against the bands of cloth and the awkwardness with which he held it. Once they had clambered through the courtyard and warehouse to the Wideway, he offered to swap burdens with the midwife.

"Never held a hungry newbom before?" Masha guessed as she settled the infant under her breast. Her companion grunted a noncommital reply. "I certainly hope you know what you're doing. Not every man's mistress is eager to take a foundling."

Walegrin adjusted the sweaty hair under his circlet and glanced at the rising sun. "We're taking the child to my half-sister in the Bazaar. Illyra the seeress-her own child was slain and she took Zip's ax in her belly in the fire riots last winter. And I have no idea if she'll want to keep it at all."

"You are a bold one," she aveired, shaking her head in amazement.

The heat was affecting the Bazaar as it affected the rest of the city. Most of the daily stalls were shuttered or deserted and the vendors who made their homes in the dust-choked plaza were standing idly by their wares, making little effort to confront potential customers. Lassitude had even touched Illyra's husband, Dubro. The forge was still banked although the sun was well above the harbor wall.

The smith saw them coming, took another bite of cheese, then came forward to meet them. The months since Illyra's injury had seen a mellowing of the uneasy relationship between the two men. Dubro, who blamed his half-brother-in-law not only for the absence of his son but for all the flaws of the Rankan Empire, had been forced to admit that Walegrin had done all any man could do to save his wife and daughter. He missed his son, mourned his daughter, but knew that he cherished Illyra above all else. He greeted Walegrin and Masha with a puzzled smile.

"Is Illyra about?" Walegrin asked.

"Abed, still. She sleeps poorly in this heat."

"Will she see us?"

Dubro shrugged and ducked under the lintel of his home. Illyra emerged moments later, squinting against the sun and looking nearly twice her natural age.

"You said you were patrolling nights until this heat broke."

"I was."

He explained the night's events to her-at least those that accounted for his presence with a midwife and infant. He said nothing about his conversation with Kama or the anger that had swept over him when he saw the newbom girl's life being bartered among unwilling patrons. Illyra listened politely but made no move to take the infant from Masha's arms.

"I'm no wetnurse. I can't care for the child, Walegrin. I tire too quickly now, and even if I didn't-I'd look at her and see Lillis."

"I know that; that's why I've brought her," her half-brother explained, with a sincere tactlessness that brought fire to Dubro's eyes and a sigh through Masha's lips.

"How could you?"

They were all staring at him. "Because her mother's dead in some stinking room in Shambles Cross and no one wanted her. She didn't ask to be born any more than Arton asked to become a god or Lillis asked to die."

"No other baby can replace my daughter, don't you understand that? I can't take her in my arms and tell myself that all's well with the world again. It isn't. It won't ever be."

The elegance and simplicity of logic that had allowed him to face down Zip and the child's father ceased to support Walegrin as he stared back at his half sister's face. Words themselves failed him as well and a crimson flush spread quickly from his shoulders to his forehead. In desperation he grabbed the infant himself and thrust it into her arms as if physical contact and the sheer force of his will would be sufficient.

"No, Walegrin," she protested softly, resisting the burden but not backing away from it. "You can't ask this of me."

"I'm the only one stupid enough to ask it of you, Illyra. You need a child, Illyra. You need to watch someone laugh and grow. Gods know it should have been your own children and not this one...." He turned to Dubro. "Tell her. Tell her this mourning's killing her. Tell her it's not good for any of us when she doesn't care about anything."

So it was that Dubro, after a long moment's hesitation, put his arms under Illyra's to support the child. The girl child did not immediately stop struggling within her swaddling nor did the oppressive weather vanish, but, after she sighed, Illyra did smile at the infant and it opened its blue-gray eyes and smiled back at her.