The Dead of Winter

HELL TO PAY Janet Morris

On the first day of winter-a sodden, sullen dawn of the sort only Sanctuary's southern sea-whipped weather could provide-the bona fide Stepsons, elite fighters trained by the immortal Tempus himself, crept round the barracks estate held by pretenders to their unit name and defilers of all the Sacred Banders stood for.

Supported by Sync's Rankan 3rd Commando renegades and less quotidian allies wraiths of the netherworld lent to the Band by Ischade, the necromant who loved the band's commander, Straton; Randal, the Stepsons' own staff enchanter; and Zip's gutterbred PFLS rebels-they stormed gates once theirs at sunrise, naphtha fireballs and high-torque arrows whizzing from crossbows in their hands.

By midmorning the rout was over, the whitewashed walls once meant to keep in slaves now bright with blood of ersatz Stepsons who'd betrayed their mercenaries' oaths and now would pay the customary, ancient price.

For nonperformance was the greatest sin, the only error unforgivable, among the meres. And Sacred Banders, the paired fighters who cored the Stepsons unit which had spent eighteen months warring on Wizardwall's high peaks and beyond, could not forgive incompetence, nor cowardice, nor graft nor greed. The affront had brought the ten core pairs to Strat, their line commander and half a Sacred Band pair himself, with ultimata: either the barracks was reclaimed, and purified, the honor and the glory of their unit restored so that Stepsons could once again hold their heads high in the town, or they were leaving- going up to Tyse to find Tempus and lay before him their grievances.

So it was that Strat walked now among the slaughter within the barracks' outer walls, among corpses burned past recognition and others disemboweled, among women and children gutted for being where they had no right to be and housepets slit from jaws to tails, their entrails already out at Vashanka's field altar of handhewn stones, ready to be offered to the god.

Ischade walked with him, inky eyes agleam within her hood. He'd promised Ischade something, one night last autumn. He wondered if this was it-if the killing had gotten out of hand because Ischade was there, and not because Zip's Popular Front for the Liberation of Sanctuary knew nothing of restraint and Sync's 3rd Commando, not to be outdone, forsook all thoughts of proper measure once it was clear that the ersatz Stepsons had been keeping dogs on grounds consecrated to Vashanka, the Rankan god of rape and pillage.

Rape, of course, was still under way in the stables and in the long low barracks. Strat saw Ischade turn her head away at the piteous cries of women who'd been where women had no right to be and now paid the soldiers' tithe.

Around them, PFLS rebels ran to and fro, heavy sacks or gleaming tack upon their shoulders-pillaging had begun.

Strat didn't move to stop the stealing or the defilement of the luckless few who'd been comely enough to live a little longer than their fellows. He was the ranking officer and his was the burden of command-even when, as now, he didn't like it.

Crit, Strat's absent partner, might have foreseen and forestalled the moment when the 3rd's bloodthirsty nature surfaced and Zip's rabble followed suit, and blood began to spill like Vashanka's rains or a whore's tears.

But he hadn't. Not until it was far too late. And then, knowing that if he tried to stop them he'd lose only his command, he'd had to let the bloodlust work through the assault force like dysentery works through those fool enough to drink from the White Foal River.

Ischade knew his pain; her hand was on his arm. But the necromant was wise-she said not one word to the Stepsons' chief interrogator and line commander as they came upon Randal-the Tysian Hazard who was the only magical ally besides herself the Stepsons tolerated-quartering a dog to roast and bury at the barracks' compass points.

"For luck, Witchy-Ears?" Straton growled to Randal, and Ischade relaxed. "It's hardly lucky for that pup."

He must take his anguish out on someone, vent his spleen. She'd thought while they walked among the corpses askew on training grounds and open-legged in doorways that the "someone" might be her. She'd raised shades to help the siege even one named Janni who'd been a Stepson before his death. And Strat, who'd known Janni and Stilcho and others among Ischade's part-living cadre when they'd laid a clearer claim to life, had had shadows in his eyes.

The same shadows of disgust scoured his mouth now as the big Stepson spat over his shoulder and demanded, "Randal, give me an answer."

But Randal, the big-eared, freckled mage who was so cautious and yet no man's fool or pawn despite his slight and unassuming person, knew that Straton wanted more than a reason for the sacrifice of a cur. Strat wanted someone to tell him that the massacre he walked through fit somehow into the Stepsons' code of honor.

But it didn't. Not in any way at all. It was war out of hand and blood begetting blood and the only justification or reason for it was the nature of Sanctuary itself- Sanctuary was out of balance, gnawing on its own leg while it frothed at the mouth, beset by enemies from within and without. The town was full of factions among men and among gods and among sorcerers, so full that even Ischade, who had interests here, had to come out into daylight to protect them, and to throw in her lot with Straton's Sacred Band and Sync's amoral 3rd Commando.

When Randal didn't answer, just favored Strat with an eloquent sickened look full of accusation, since Strat was putatively in command, Ischade said to the officer beside her, "Order is its own reward. And reason makes its bed with us, not with the Beysib interlopers who have the Prince enthralled, or with the quasi-mages locked up tight in their guild, or with Roxane's undead death squads."

Then Randal put down his knife and wiped his long nose with a gory hand. "Maybe it'll bring your god back, Strat. Rouse Vashanka from wheresoever the Pillage Lord is sleeping. The men think so, that's sure enough." The mage rose up and made a pass over the quartered dog and all four parts of it-fore and hind-rose into the air, dripping fluids, and floated away toward the field altar out behind the training ground.

Strat watched the pieces disappear around a corner before he said, "Vashanka? Back? What makes you think the god's gone? He's reverted to His second childhood, is all. He's lost all sense of proportion like a child." Then Strat turned on Ischade, as she'd thought he might, and his eyes were as flat and hard as her nerves told her his heart had become.

"Does this suit you, then, Ischade? All this 'order' that you see here? Will it help us-give us a few nights more for you to lie with me without your 'needs' taking over? Are you sated? Can a necromant ever have enough? Is it safe for you to take me home?"

Home to her embrace, he meant. To her odd and shadowed house, all gleam and velvet by the White Foal's edge. Straton made her soul ache and because of him she'd mixed in where no necromant belonged. And it was true: The death here was partly of her making; she'd be content now, without having to stalk the night for victims, for days.

She saw in his eyes that he knew too much, that all she'd done to give him what he wanted-her-for stolen evenings on brocade cushions was about to exact the price she'd always known it must.

Randal, knowing the conversation was getting too intimate for outsiders, hurried off, wiping hands on his winter woolens as he followed his sacrifice out toward the altar and called over his shoulder, "You'll have to say the rites, Ace." Ace was Straton's war name. "I'm not qualified, being an envoy of magic and thus an enemy of gods-even yours."

Strat ignored the Hazard and watched Ischade still. "Is it my fault?" he asked simply. "Some consequence of lying with you against all that's natural?"

"No more than Janni's fate, or Stilcho's, can be laid at any other's feet. Men make their own fates-it's personal, not a matter for debate." She reached up, taking a chance, touching his lips gone white as the big Stepson struggled for control, his hand upon his sword hilt. He might well try to kill her there and then, to exorcise his guilt and pain.

Then what would she do? Hurt this one, in whose arms she could be a woman, not a Power too fearful to survive for any other man? Never. Or not unless he forced it.

Her touch on his lips didn't cause him to toss his head or step away. He said, "Ischade, this is more than I bargained for ..."

"It's more, Strat, than any of us bargained for." Her hand slipped from his lips, down his neck, across the sloping shoulder to rest on his powerful right arm-in a moment she could numb it, if there was need. "It's your god, warring against the Ilsig gods and the Beysib gods-if they have them-turning men's heads and hearts. Not us. We're as close to innocent as your sword, which would as soon stay in its scabbard. Trust me. We all knew there'd be hell to pay, should this day come."

Strat nodded slowly: Ersatz Stepsons had rousted real ones in the town, and even dared to confront the black-souled 3rd Commando rangers. And Zip's indigenous fighters had reason to hate all oppressors-the PFLS would as soon have made the gutters run with blood up to Zip's knees.

"So now what?" said the big man, distress naked in his tone.

The necromant looked up, reached up again, craned her neck so that her hood fell back and only her hair shadowed her face. "Now you remember the promise you made me, that first night-not to blame me for being what I am, not to blame yourself for doing what you have to do. And not to ask too many questions whose answers you won't like."

The soldier closed his eyes, remembering what she'd bade him forget until the time was right. And when he opened them, they'd softened just a bit. "Your place?" he said tiredly. "Or mine?"

That night, down in Sanctuary on a perpetually dank street called Mageway, in a tower of the citadel of magic, Randal the Tysian Hazard woke in his Mageguild bed, strangling in his own sheets.

The slight mage went pale beneath his freckles-pale to his prodigious ears-as the sheets, pure and innocent linen as far as anyone knew, bound him tighter. If he ever got out of this alive, he'd have to have a talk with his treacherous bedclothes-they had no right to treat him this way. Had his mouth not been stoppered by their grasp, he could have shouted counterspells or cursed his inanimate bedclothes, come alive. But Randal's mouth, as well as his hands and feet, was bound tight by hostile magic.

His eyes, alas, were not. Randal stared into a darkness which lightened perceptibly before the bed on which he struggled, helpless, as the Nisibisi witch Roxane coalesced from nimbus, a sensuous smile upon her face.

Roxane, Death's Queen, was Randal's nemesis, a hated enemy, a worrisome foe.

The young mage writhed within the prison of his sheets and wordless exhortations came from his gagged mouth. Roxane, whom he'd fought on Wizardwall, had sworn to kill him-not just for what he'd done to help Tempus's Stepsons and Bashir's guerrilla fighters reclaim their homeland, Wizardwall, from Nisibisi wizards, but because Randal had once been the right-side partner of Stealth, called Nikodemos, a soul the witch Roxane sought to claim.

Sweating freely, Randal tried to wriggle off his Mageguild bed as Roxane's form lost its wraithlike quality and became palpably present. He succeeded only in banging his head against the wall, and cowered there, wishing witches couldn't slit Mageguild wards like butter, wishing he'd never fought with Stepsons or claimed a Nisi warlock's Globe of Power, wishing he'd never heard of Nikodemos or inherited Niko's panoply, armor forged by the entelechy of dream.

"Umn hmn, nnh nohnu, rgorhrrr!" Randal shouted at the witch who now had human form, even down to perfumed flesh whose scent mixed with his own acrid, fearful sweat: Go away, you horror, evermore!

Roxane only laughed, a tinkling laugh, not horrid, and minced over to his bedside with exaggerated care: "Say you what, little mageling? Say again?" She leaned close, smiling broadly, her lovely sanguine face no older than a marriageable girl's. Her fearsome faith, behind those eyes which supped on fear and now were feasting on Randal's anguish, was older than the Mageguild in which she stood-stood against reason, against nature, against the best magic Rankan trained adepts and even Randal, who'd learned Nisi ways to counter the warring warlocks from the high peaks, could field.

"Whhd whd drr whdd? Whr hheh?" Randal said from behind his sopping, choking gag of sheets: What do you want? Why me?

And the Nisibisi witch stretched elegantly, leaned close, and answered. "Want? Why, Witchy-Ears, your soul, of course. Now, now, don't thrash around so. Don't waste your strength, such as it is. You've got 'til winter's shortest day to anticipate its loss. Unless, of course ..." The luminous eyes that had been the last sight of too many great adepts and doomed warriors came close to his, and widened. "Unless you can prevail on Stealth, called Nikodemos, to help you save it. But then, we both know it's not likely he'd put his person in jeopardy for yours.... Sacred Band oath or not, Niko's left you, deserted you as he's deserted me. Isn't that so, little maladroit nonadept? Or do you think honor and glory and an abrogated bond could bring your one-time partner down to Sanctuary to save you from a long and painful stint as one of my ... servants?" Teeth gleamed above Randal in the dark, as all of Roxane's manifestation gleamed with an unholy and inhuman light.

The Tysian Hazard-class adept lay unmoving, listening to his breathing rasp unwilling to answer, to hope, or to even long for Niko's presence. For that was what the witch wanted, he finally realized. Not his magic Globe of Power, bound with the most deadly protections years of fighting Roxane's kind had taught mages of lesser power to devise; not the Aske Ionian panoply without which, should he somehow survive this evening, Randal would never sleep again because that panoply was protection against such magics as Roxane's sort could weave about a simple Hazard-class enchanter. Not any of these did the witch crave, but Niko-Niko back in Sanctuary, in the flesh.

And Randal, who loved Niko better than he loved himself, who revered Niko in his heart with all the loyalty a rightman was sworn to give his left-side leader even though Niko had formally dissolved their pairbond long before, would gladly have given up his soul to Roxane right then and there to prevent a call going out on ethereal waves to summon Niko into Roxane's foul embrace.

He would have, if his mind had been able to control his fear. But it could not: Roxane was fear's drover, mistress of terror, the very fount from which the death squads plaguing Sanctuary sprang.

She began to make arcane and convoluted passes with her red-nailed hands over Randal's immobilized body and Randal began to quake. His mouth dried up, his heart beat fast, his pulse sought to rip right through his throat. Panicked, he lost all sense of logic; unable to think, his mind was hers to mold and to command.

As she wove her web of terror, Randal's mage's talent screamed silently for help.

It screamed so well and so loudly, with every atom of his imperiled being, that far away to the west, in his cabin before a pool of gravel neatly raked, high on a cliffside overlooking the misty seascape of the Bandaran Islands' chain, Nikodemos paused in his meditation and rubbed gooseflesh rising suddenly on his arms.

And rose, and sought the cliffside, and stared out to sea awhile before he bent, picked up a fist-sized stone, and cast it into the waves. Then Niko began making preparations to leave-to forsake his mystical retreat once more for the World, and for the World's buttocks, the town called Sanctuary, where of all places in the Rankan Empire Niko, follower of maat-the mystery of Balance and Transcendent Perception-and son of the armies, least wanted to go.

Even for Niko's sable stallion, the trek from Bandara to Sanctuary had been long and hard. Not as long or hard as it would have been for Niko on a lesser horse, but long enough and hard enough that when Niko arrived in town, bearded and white with trail dirt, he checked into the mercenaries' guild north of the palace and went immediately to sleep.

When he woke, he washed his face with water from an ice-crusted bedside pot, scratched his two-months growth of beard and decided not to shave it, then went down to the common room to eat and get a brief.

The guild hostel's common room was unchanged- wine-dark even in morning, quiet all and every day. On its sideboard stood steaming bowls of mulled wine and goat's blood and, beside, cheese and barley and nuts for men who needed possets in the morning to brace them for hard work to come.

These days, in Sanctuary, the meres were eating better -a function, Niko determined from the talk around him as he filled a bowl, of their new regard and esteem in a town coming apart at its seams, a town where personal protection was a commodity at an all-time high. There was lamb on the sideboard this morning, a whole pig with an apple in its mouth, and fish stuffed with savory. It hadn't been this way when last Niko'd worked here-then the meres were tolerated, but not sent goodies from the Palace and from the fisherfolk or from the merchants.

It hadn't been this way, before.... He ate his fill and got his brief from the dispatching agent, who sketched a map of faction lines which divided up the town.

"Look here. Stealth, I'll only tell you once," the dispatching agent said intently. "The Green Line runs along Palace Park; above it are your patrons-the Palace types, the merchant class, and the Beysibs ... don't tell me what you think of that. The Maze's surrounded by Jubal's Blue Line; you'll need this pass to get in there." The dispatcher, who'd lost one eye before Niko had ever set foot in Sanctuary, pulled an armband from his hip pocket and handed it to Niko.

The band was sewn from parallel strips of colored cloth: green, red, black, blue, and yellow. Niko fingered it, said, "Fine, just don't call me Stealth in here-or anywhere. I need to sniff around before I make my presence known," and tied it on his upper arm before he looked questioning-ly at the dispatcher.

The old soldier in patched off-duty gear said, "You're on call to the Green Liners, remember, no matter what name you choose. The red's for the Blood Line: that's Zip's PFLS-Popular Front for the Liberation of Sanctuary. Third Commando's backing that lot, so unless you've friends there, be careful in Ratfall, and in all of Downwind-that's their turf. The Blue Line follows the White Foal-those two witches down there, Ischade and the Nisibisi witch-bitch, have death squads to enforce their will, and Shambles Cross is theirs. The Black Line's round the Mageguild-the quays and harbors, down to the sea; the Yellow Line your own Stepsons threw up out west of Downwind and Shambles. You need any help, son, take my name in vain."

Niko nodded, said, "My thanks, sir. Life to you, and-"

"Your commander? Tempus? Will he follow? Is he here?" The eagerness in the dispatcher's voice gave Niko pause. Stealth's caution must have showed in his face, for the rough-hewn, one-eyed mere continued: "Strat's reclaimed the barracks for the Stepsons, but it was bloodier than a weekend pass to hell. We'd like to see the Riddler- nobody lessor's going to straighten this season's mess out."

"Maybe," Niko said carefully, "after the weather breaks-it's snow to your horse's belly upcountry by now." He wasn't empowered to say more. But he could ask his own question now. "And Randal? The Tysian Hazard who came downcountry with the advance force? Seen him?"

"Randal?" The bristling jaw worked and Niko knew that he wasn't going to like what he was about to hear. "Strat was asking for him, three, four times. Seems he was spirited right out of the Mageguild-or left on his own. You never know with wizards, do ya, son? I mean, maybe he up and left. It was right after the sack ofJubal's old-of the Stepsons' barracks, and it was so bad Strat took to sleeping here with us until they got the place cleaned up."

"Randal wouldn't do that," Niko said under his breath, rising to his feet.

"What's that, soldier?"

"Nothing. Thanks for the work-and the advance." The mercenary, who was older than he looked, even with a beard to point up hard-won scars, patted the purse hanging from his swordbelt. "I'll see you after a while."

Stealth needed to get out of there, ride perimeters, make sense of the worsened chaos in a town which had been as bad, last time he'd been here, as Niko would have thought a town could be.

And that got him to thinking, as he tacked up his horse and led it snorting into the sulky air of a late dawn only a week shy of the year's shortest day, about the last tour he'd done here.

Two winters ago. Stealth, called Nikodemos, had lost his first partner in Sanctuary-the man he'd partnered with according to Sacred Band rules for better than a decade had been killed here. It had hurt like nothing since his childhood servitude on Wizardwall had hurt; it had happened down on Wideway, in a wharfside warehouse. Return to Sanctuary was bringing back too many memories, unlaid ghosts and hidden pain. The following spring, still here as part ofTempus's cohort of Stepsons, he'd lost his second partner, Janni. He'd lost Janni to the Nisibisi witch. Death's Queen, and left then, quit Sanctuary for cleaner wars, he'd thought, up north.

In the north he'd found the wars no cleaner-he'd fought Datan, lord archmage of Wizardwall, and Roxane on Tyse's slopes and up on the high peaks where he'd spent his youth as one of the fierce guerrillas called Successors, led now by his boyhood friend, Bashir. Then Niko had fought beside Bashir and Tempus, his commander, against the Mygdonians, venturing beyond Wizardwall to see what no man should see-Mygdonian might allied with renegade magic so that all the defenders Tempus arrayed against them were, by default, pawns in a war of magic against the gods.

After that campaign, he'd taken part in the change of emperors that occurred during the Festival of Man and then, tired to his bones of war and restless in his spirit and his heart, he'd taken a youth-a refugee child half Mygdonian and half a wizard-far west to the Bandaran isles of mist and mysticism where Niko himself was raised, where he'd learned to revere the elder gods and the elder wisdoms of the secular adepts, who saw gods in men and men in gods and had no truck with such young and warring deities as Ilsigi and Rankan alike brought alive with prayers and sacrifice.

Yet all the blood he'd spilled and honors he'd won and tears he'd shed, far from Sanctuary, fell away from him as soon as he'd saddled his sable stallion in the stable behind the mercenaries' guildhall and gone venturing in the town. For there was one thread of continuity, one sameness Niko's maat sensed in Sanctuary that had been with him since last he'd served here as one of Tempus's Stepsons and-with the exception of his time in far Bandara-had been with him ever since as it was with him still: Roxane, the Nisibisi witch.

Sidling through the upscale crowd in the Alekeep to find the owner, a man Niko had known well enough to court his daughter when he'd been stationed here before and a man who had a right to know that the daughter's shade, long undead under the witch's spell, had finally been put to rest by Niko's own hand, the fighter called Stealth was suddenly so aware of Roxane that he fancied he could smell her musk upon the beerhall's air.

She was here, somewhere. Close at hand. His maat told him so-he could glimpse the cobalt-shining trails of Roxane's magic out of the corner of his inner eye the way some lesser man might glimpse a stalker's shadow in his peripheral vision. Niko's soul had its own peripheral vision in the discipline of transcendent perception, a skill which let him track a person or sense a presence or gather the gist of emotions aimed his way, though he could not eavesdrop on specific thoughts.

The Alekeep was freshly whitewashed and full of determined revelers, men and women whose position in the town demanded that they show themselves at business as usual, undisturbed by PFLS rebels or Beysib interlopers or Nisibisi wizardry. Here Rankan Mageguild functionaries in robes that made them look like badly-set tables hobnobbed with caravanners and Palace hierophants all intent on the same end: safety for their business transactions from the interference of warring factions; safety for their persons and their kin from undeads and less numinous terrorists; safety-it was the most sought after commodity in Sanctuary these days.

Safety, so far as Niko was concerned whenever he came out of Bandara into the World, was beside the point. In his cabin on its cliff he could be safe, but then his gifts of maat and his deep perceptions were turned inward, useful only to the student, not, as they were meant, carried by him abroad in the World to turn a fate or two or stem a tide gone too far in any one direction.

Maat forced its bearer out, among its opposite, Chaos, to set whatever imbalances he could to rights. It always hurt, it always cost, and he always longed for Bandara when his strength was spent. But, when he was home, he always grew restless, strong and able, and so he'd come out again, even into Sanctuary, where Balance was just an abstract, where everything was always wrong, and where nothing any man-or even demigod like Niko's commander Tempus-could do would bring even an intimation of lasting peace. But peace, Niko's teacher had said, was death. He would have it by and by.

The witch, Roxane, was death also. He hoped she couldn't sense him as clearly as he could her. Though he'd been at pains to keep his visit here a secret from those who'd use him if they could, Niko was drawn to Roxane like a Sanctuary whore to a well-heeled drunk or, if rumor could be believed, like Prince Kadakithis to the Beysa Shupansea.

Not even Bandara's gravel ponds or deep seaside meditation had cleansed his soul of its longing for the flesh of the witch who loved him.

So he'd come down again to Sanctuary, on the excuse of answering Randal's ephemeral summons. But it was Roxane he'd come to see. And touch. And talk to.

For Niko had to exorcise her, take her talons from his soul, cleanse his heart of her. He'd admitted it to himself this season in Bandara. At least that was a start. The lore of his mystery whispered that any problem, named and known, was soluble. But since the name of Niko's problem was Roxane, Stealth wasn't sure that it was so.

Thus, he must confront her. Here, somewhere. Make her let him go.

But he didn't find her in the Alekeep, just a fat old man with a wispy pate who'd aged too much in the passing seasons, who had a winter in his eyes with more bite to it than any Sanctuary ever blew in off the endless sea.

The old man, when Niko told him of his daughter's fate, simply nodded, chin on fist, and said to Niko, "You did your best, son. As we're all doing now. It seems so long ago, and we've such troubles here...." He paused, and sighed a quavery sigh, and wiped red eyes with his sleeve then, so Niko knew that the father's hurt was still fresh and sharp.

Niko got up from the marble table where he'd found the father, alone with the night's receipts, and looked down. "If there's ever anything I can do, sir anything at all. I'm at the mercenaries' guildhall, will be for a week or two."

The old barkeep blew his nose on the leather of his chiton's hem, then craned his neck. "Do? Leave my other daughters be, is all."

Niko held the barkeep's feisty gaze until the man relented. "Sorry, son. We all know none's to blame for undeads but their makers. Luck go with you. Stepson. What is it your brothers of the sword say? Ah, I've got it: Life to you, and everlasting glory." There was too much bitterness in the father's voice for Niko to have misunderstood what remained unsaid.

But he had to ask. "Sir, I need a favor-don't call me th at here, or anywhere. Tell no one I'm in town. I came to you only because ... I had to. For Tamzen's sake." That was the first time either man had used the name of the girl who'd been daughter to the elder and lover to the younger, a girl now safe and peacefully dead, who hadn't been for far too long while Roxane had made use of her, and other children she'd added to her crew of zombies, children taken from among the finest homes of Sanctuary and now buried on the slopes of Wizardwall.

He got out of there as soon as the old man shielded his eyes with his hand and muttered something like assent. He shouldn't have come. It had done the Alekeep's owner harm, not good. But he'd had to do it, for himself. Because the girl had been used by the witch against him, because he'd had to kill a child to save a childish soul. He wondered whether he'd expected the old man to absolve him, as if anyone could. Then he wondered where he'd go as he stepped out into the Green Zone streets and saw torches flaring Mazeward-tiny at this distance, but a warning that there was trouble in the lower quarter of the town.

Niko didn't want to mix in any of Sanctuary's internecine disputes, to be recruited by any side-even Strat's- or even know specifics of who was right and wrong. Probably everyone was equally culpable and innocent; wars had a way of blotting out absolutes; and civil wars, or wars of liberation, were the worst.

He wandered better streets, his hand upon his scabbard, until he came to an intersection where a corner estate had an open gate and, beyond, a beggar was crouched. A beggar this far uptown was unlikely.

Niko was just about to turn away, reminding himself that he was no longer policing Sanctuary as a Stepson on covert business, but here on his own recognizance, when he heard a voice he thought he knew.

"Seh," said a shadow separating itself out from shadows across from where the beggar sat. The curse was Nisi; the voice was, too.

He stepped closer and the shadows became two, and they were arguing as they came abreast of the beggar, who stood right up and demanded where they'd been so long.

"He's drunk, can't you see?" said the first voice and Niko's gift gave him a different kind of light to place the face and find the name he'd known long since.

The first speaker was a Nisi renegade named Vis, a man who owed Niko at least one favor, and might know the answer to the question Niko most wanted to ask: the whereabouts of the Nisibisi witch.

The second shadow spoke, as the drunken beggar clawed at its clothes and Niko's sight grew sharper, showing him bluish sparks swirling round the taller of the two shadows solidifying despite the moonless dark. "Mor-am, you idiot! Get up! What's Moria going to say? Fool, and worse! There's death out here. Don't get too cocky...." The rest was a hostile hiss from a lowered voice, but Niko had placed this man easier than the first: The deeply accented voice, the velvet tones, had made him know the other speaker was an ex-slave named Haught.

This Haught was a freedman. The Nisibisi witch had freed him. And Niko had saved him from interrogation, long ago, at Straton's hands. Strat, the Stepsons' chief inquisitor, was no man to cross and one who was so good at what he did that his mere reputation loosened tongues and bowels.

So it was not that these were strangers, or even that they picked the beggar up between them and carried him toward the open gate beyond which lights blazed in skin-covered windows, that gave Niko pause. It was that Haught, who'd been little more than a frightened whelp, the slave's collar bound 'round his very soul, when last Niko had chanced across him, was giving orders with assurance and had, by the way his aura glittered blue, magical attributes to back him up.

There was nothing magical about Vis's aura, just the red and pink of distress and passion held in check-and fear, the spice of it tingling Niko's nerves as he moved to intercept them at the gate, sword drawn and warming as it always did when in proximity to magic.

"Vis, he's got a weap-"

"Remember me, puds?" Niko said, halting all three in a practiced interception. "Don't move; I just want to talk."

Vis's hand was on his hip and a naked blade would surely follow; Niko let his attention dwell on Vis, though Haught ought to have been his first concern.

And yet Haught didn't push the beggar (moaning, "Whaddya mean, Haught, 's nothin' wrong with a little fresh air ...") at Niko or cast a spell, just said, "Years ago-the northern fighter, isn't it? Oh yes, I remember you. And so does someone else, I'd bet-"

Vis-too taut, planning something-interrupted, "What is it, soldier? Money? We'll give you money. And work for an idle blade if ... Remember you?" Vis took a step forward and Niko felt, rather than saw, eyes narrow: "Right, that's right. I know who you are. We owe you one, is that it? For saving us from Tempus's covert actors downtown. Well, come on in. We'll talk about it indoors."

"If," Haught put in on that silken tongue that made Niko wonder what he might be walking into, "you'll sheath that blade and treat our invitation as what it is ... a luxury. If you want to fight, we'll not be using bronze or steel in any case."

Niko looked between the two, still holding up their beggar friend, and sheathed his blade. "I don't want your hospitality, just some information. I'm looking for Roxane -and don't tell me you don't know who I mean."

It was Haught's laughter that made Niko know he'd found more than he'd bargained for: It sent chills screeching up and down his spine, so self-assured it was and so full of taunt and anticipation. "Of course I know-me and my mistress both know. But don't you think, fighter, that by now Roxane's looking for you? Come in, don't come, wait here, go your way-whatever choice, she'll find you."

My mistress, Haught had said. Someone else, then, had taught him what Niko saw there-enough magic for it to be an attribute, not an affectation; real magic, not the prestidigitator's tricks that abounded in Sanctuary's third-rate Mageguild.

Niko shook his head and his hand of its own accord found his sword's pommel and rested there as he retreated a pace.

By then Vis was saying, "It's not a thing I'd seek, soldier, were I you. But we'll give you what we can to help you on your way to her. Yes, by all that's unholy, we'll surely give you that."

When Roxane, in her Foalside haunt, an old manor house refurbished from velvet hangings to weeds head-high in her "garden," heard a footstep belonging not to an undead or to one of her snakes-who occasionally took human form-outside her window, she went personally to see who her uninvited guest might be.

It was a Nisi type, a youth she'd never noticed, some local denizen with a trace of Nisibisi blood.

His soul was smooth and unctuous over customary evil; he was some familiar of another power here. He said, far back in the dark with wards springing up between them, "I've brought you something. Madam. You're going to like him. A gift from Haught, in case things go your way in the end."

Then there was a soft "pop" and the presence was gone, if it had ever been there. Haught. She'd remember.

Just as she was turning, a pebble skittered, a soft whicker cut the night. She blinked-twice in one night, her best wards violated, slit like cobwebs? She'd have to make the rounds tomorrow, set up new protections.

And then she concentrated on what was there: a horse, for certain; and a person on it, a person drugged and tied to its saddle.

A present from this Haught. She'd have to thank him. She went out into her garden of thornbush and nightshade, down to where the water mandrake threw poisonous tubers high along the White Foal's edge.

And there, in the luminous spill from the polluted river's waves, she glimpsed him. Niko, drugged to a stupor, or drunk-the same. Her heart wrenched, she ran three steps, then calmed herself. He was here but not of his own will.

Fingers working a soft and silken spell, she half-danced toward him. Niko was her beloved and yet her undoing lay within him. Seeing him was more the proof: She wanted to take him, cut his bonds away, heal him and caress him. Not the proper reaction for a witch. Not the proper motivation for Death's Queen. She'd sent for him, used Randal the mageling to lure him, but she dared not take him now, not use him thus. Not when this Haught was obviously tempting her.

Not when Roxane had a war on her hands, a war of power with a necromant called Ischade, a creature of night who might just have orchestrated this untimely meeting.

So, while Niko, bent over his horse's neck, slept on, she came up to the horse, which flattened its ears but did not move away, cut the bonds that held the fighter to his saddle, and said, before sending him away, "Not now, my love. Not yet. Your partner Janni, your beloved Sacred Band brother, is the thrall of the necromant Ischade-he lies in unpeaceful earth, is rousted out to do her foul bidding and wear her awful collar at night. You must free him from this unnatural servitude, beloved, and then we will be together. Do you understand me, Niko?"

Niko's ashen head raised and he opened his eyes-eyes still asleep, yet registering all they saw. Roxane's heart leaped; she loved the touch of his gaze, the feel of his breath, the smell of his suffering.

Her fingers spelled his fate: He would remember this moment as a true dream-a dream that, his maat would understand, bore all he needed to know.

She stepped forward and kissed him, and a moan escaped his lips. It was hardly more than a sigh, but enough of a sign to Roxane, who could read his heart, that Niko had come to her at last-of his own free will, to the extent that free will was possessed by mere men.

"Go to Ischade. Free Janni's spirit. Then get you both here to me, and I shall succor you."

She touched his forehead and he sat up straight. His free hands reined the horse around and he rode away- ensorceled, knowing and yet unknowing, back to his hostel where he could sleep undisturbed.

And tomorrow, he would do evil unto evil for her sake, and then, as he had never truly been, Nikodemos would be hers.

In the meantime, Roxane had preparations to make. She quit the Foalside, went inside, and looked in upon the Hazard Randal. Her prisoner was playing cards with her two snakes-snakes which she'd given human form to guard him. Or sort of human form-their eyes were still ophidian, their mouths lipless, their skin bore an ineradicable cast of green.

The mage, his torso bound to his chair with blue pythons of power, had both hands free and just enough free will left to give her a friendly wave: She had him tranquilized, waiting out the time until his death day-the week's end, come Ilsday, if Niko did not return by then.

A little saddened at the realization that, if Niko did come back, she'd have to free the mage-her word was good; it had to be; she dealt with too many arbiters of souls-Roxane waved a hand to lift the calming spell from Randal.

If she had to free him, she'd not keep him comfy, safe and warm, till then. She'd let him suffer, help him feel as much pain as his slender body could. After all, she was Death's Queen. Perhaps if she scared him long enough and well enough, the Tysian magician would take his own life, trying to escape, or die from terror-a death she'd have the benefit of but not the blame.

And in his chair, Randal's face went white beneath his freckles and his whole frame began to rock while, with every lunge and quaver, the nonmaterial bonds around his chest grew tighter and the snakes (stupid snakes who never understood anything) began querulously to complain that it was Randal's bet and wonder what was wrong as cards fell from his twitching fingers.

Strat was out at Ischade's, where he shouldn't be but mostly was at night, just taking off his clothes when the damned door to her front room opened with a wind behind it that nearly doused the fire in her hearth.

Accursed Haught, her trainee, stood there, arch mischief glowing in his eyes. Strat hitched up his linen loinguard and said, "Won't you ever learn to knock?" feeling a bit abashed among Ischade's silks and scarlet throw pillows and trinkets of gem and noble metal-the woman loved bright colors, but never wore them out of doors.

Woman? Had he thought that, said it to himself? She wasn't exactly that, and he'd better remember it. Haught, once slave-bait, looked at Strat and through him as if he didn't exist as he entered and the door closed behind him of its own accord.

"Best remember that you're mortal, Nisi boy. And that respect is due your betters, be you slave or free," Strat warned, looking at his feet where, somewhere in a confusion of cushions, his service dagger lay buried. Best to teach this witch's familiar some manners before he'd have to do worse. -

But behind him he heard a stirring and a soft step as sinuous as any cat's. "Haught, greet Straton civilly," came her voice from behind him and then her hand was on his spine, pouring patience into him where patience had no right to be.

"Damned kid comes and goes like he owns the-"

Haught was abreast of him, then, speaking to the necromant beyond. "You'd want this warning, if you weren't so busy. Want to be ready. Trouble's on the way."

Then something unspeakable happened: Ischade, hushing the Nisi ex-slave, came round Strat and did something to the other man, something that included not quite touching him but circling him, something Strat didn't like because it was intimate and didn't trust because he could tell that information was being exchanged in a way he didn't understand. Abruptly, the creature called Haught turned in a flare of cloak and arrogance and the door opened wide, then shut again behind him, leaving candles flickering huge shadows upon the wall and a chill in the air Strat was expecting Ischade to dispell with a caress.

But she didn't. She said, "Ace, come here. Before the fire. Sit with me."

He did that and she cuddled by his knee in that way she had, so much a woman then that Strat could barely refrain from pulling her onto his lap. She looked up from under the darkness that veiled her and her eyes clamped on his: "What I am, you know. What I do, you understand better than many. What life Janni has with me, his soul has chosen. Someone is going to come here, and if you don't tell him all of that, the result will not sit well with you. Do you understand?"

"Ischade? Someone? A threat to you? I'll protect you, you know-"

"Hush. Don't promise what you'll not deliver. This one is a friend of yours, a brother. Keep him from my doorway or, despite what I'd like to promise you, he'll become a memory. One that will hang between us in the air forever." She reached up toward his face.

He jerked his head back; she lay her head upon his knee. He couldn't tell if she was crying, but he felt as if he would, so sad was she and so helpless did the big Stepson feel.

An hour later, outside her door, stationed like a sentry, he began to wonder if her creature hadn't lied. Then his big bay, tied at her low gate, let out a challenge and some horse answered from the dark.

Sword drawn, he sidled down to calm the beast, wondering what in hell he was supposed to do about something she hadn't explained, when a darkness separated from the midnight chill and a tiny coal, red-hot, seemed to bobble toward him in midair.

Closer it came, until the soft radiance of Ischade's hedges caught its edges and he made out a mounted man smoking something-pulcis, by the smell of it, laced with krrf and rolled in broadleaf.

"Hold and state your business, stranger," Strat called out.

"Strat?" said a soft voice full of distaste and some measure of disbelief. "Ace, if it's really you, tell me something a man would have had to fight on Wizardwall to know."

"Ha! Bashir can't hold his liquor, is what-not even laced with blood and water," Strat responded, then added, "Stealth? Niko, is that you?"

The little coal of red grew brighter as the smoker inhaled and in its flare Strat could see the face of Nikodemos-bearded, but with scars showing like white tracks among the hair, just where those scars should be.

A surge of joy went through the Stepsons' leader. "Is Crit with you? The Riddler-is Tempus come back?" Then he sobered: Niko was the problem Ischade'd sent him out here to deal with. Now her distress, and her cautions, made good sense.

"No, I'm alone," came Niko's voice soft as a winter gust as sounds and the movement of the smoke's coal let Straton know the Sacred Bander was dismounting.

They had a bond that should have been deeper than Straton's with Ischade-that had to be. Straton considered alternatives as Niko tied his Askelonian to the fence on the other side of Ischade's gate from where Strat's bay was tethered, and vaulted over the hedge, then grinned: "Not good form to enter a witch's home through a portal she's chosen. How'd you find out about this? No matter-I'm glad to have your help, Ace. Janni's going to be, too."

So that was it-Janni. All Straton's mixed feelings about Ischade's minions roiled around in him and kept him speechless until he realized that Niko was reaching over the fence to get a bow and bladder of naphtha and rags from his horse's saddle.

"Niko, man, this isn't the time or the place for the talk we've got to have."

Stealth turned and as Strat bore down upon him, the Bandaran fighter said, "Strat, I've got to do this. It's my fault, in a way. I've got to free him."

"No, you don't. From what? For whom? He's fighting a war he still has a stake in-fighting it his way. I've fought beside him. Stealth, things are different here from the way they were upcountry. You can't make any headway without magic on your-"

"Side?" Niko supplied the missing word, his face glowing red from the coal of the smoke between his lips. Then he dropped the smoke and ground it under his heel. "Got a girlfriend, do you, Straton? Crit would beat your ass. Diddling around with magic. Now either help me, as your oath demands, or step aside. Go your way. I owe you too much to make an issue of what's right and wrong between us." Niko's hand went to his belt and Straton stiffened: Niko was an expert with throwing stars and poisoned metal blossoms and every kind of edged weapon Strat knew enough to name. The two were thought to be, by Banders, of nearly equal prowess, though Strat's was fading as he aged, Niko's coming on.

"Whatever I'm doing. Stealth, is worse than what you've done? Don't I remember some fight up at the Festival, one in which you protected the Nisibisi witch from a priestess of Enlil?"

That stopped Niko's hand, about to lever a bolt to ready in his crossbow. "That's not fair, Ace."

"We're not talking fair-we're talking women. Or womanish avatars, or whatever they are. You leave this one alone-she's on our side; she's fought with us, for us ... saved Sync from Roxane, for one thing." Suspicion leaped into Straton's mind, suspicion enough to chase the memory of Janni's tortured shade. "Roxane didn't put you up to this, did she? Did she, Stealth?"

Niko, a flint in one hand, naphtha bladder in the other, paused with the bladder poised above the rags on his arrow's tip. "What difference does that make? What's going on here, anyway? Randal's disappeared and no one's looking for him? You're sleeping with a necromant and no one gives a damn?"

"You stay around, and you'll find out. But I can guarantee you're not going to like it. I don't. Crit wouldn't. Tempus would bust all our butts. But he's not here, is he? It's you and me. And I'm bound to protect this ... lady, here."

"More bound to her than to me? Sacred-" Niko stopped and stared, his mouth half open, at something behind Strat, so that the big fighter turned to see what Niko saw.

On Ischade's doorstep, beside the necromant swathed in her black and hooded robe, was Janni-or what remained of Janni. The ex-Stepson, ex-living thing was red and yellow and showing bone; things glittered on him like fireworks or luminescent grubs. He had holes for eyes and too-long hair and the smell of newly-turned earth proceeded him down the steps.

Despite himself, Strat looked over his shoulder at Niko, who slumped against the waist-high fence, his eyes slitted as if against some blinding light, his crossbow pointing at the ground.

Strat heard Ischade murmur, "Go then. Go to your partner, Janni. Stay awhile. Have your reunion." Then, louder, "Strat! Come in. Let them be alone. Let them solve it-I was wrong; it's between these two, not us."

And then, as Niko threw the bow up to his shoulder and took fluid, sudden aim at Ischade-before Straton could put himself between her and Niko's arrow, or even thought to move-Ischade was beside him, facing Niko with a look on her face Strat had never seen before: deep pain, compassion, even acknowledgment of a kindred soul.

"So you're the one. The special one. Nikodemos, over whom even the god Enlil and the entelechy of dreams contend." She nodded as if in her drawing room, sipping tea at some civil table. "I see why. Nikodemos, don't choose your enemies too quickly. The witch who sent you here has Randal-is that not a greater wrong, a deeper evil, than giving the opportunity for vengeance to a soul such as Janni, who craves it?"

Ischade waited, but Niko didn't answer. His gaze was fixed on the thing that shambled toward him, arms outstretched, to embrace its erstwhile partner.

Strat, were he the one faced with love from such a zombie, would have run screaming, or shot the bow, or lopped the head off the undead who sought to hold him.

But Niko took a deep breath that Strat could hear, so shuddering was it, dropped the bow, and held his own arms out, saying, "Janni. How is it with you? Is she right?"

And Strat had to turn away; he couldn't watch Niko, full of life, embrace that thing who'd once ridden at his side.

And when he did, Ischade was waiting there to take Strat's hand and cool his brow and usher him inside.

But no matter the depth of her eyes or the quality of her ministrations, this time Straton knew he had no chance of forgetting what he saw when a Sacred Band pair was reunited, the living and the dead.

Niko was drinking off his chill in the Ale keep, which opened with the rising sun, when he realized that somebody was drawing his picture.

A little fellow with a pot belly and black circles under his eyes, who was sitting in the beamed common hall's far corner, was looking at him too often, then looking down at a board he held on his lap.

Just the day barman was present, so Niko didn't try to ignore a problem in the making. He'd had too rough a night, at any rate, to have patience with anyone let alone a limner who didn't ask permission.

But when he was halfway to the other man, his intention clear enough, the day barman reached out a hand to stay him. "I'd not, were I you, sir. That's Lalo the Limner, who drew the Black Unicorn that came alive in the Maze and killed so many. Just let the scribbler be."

"As far as I know, I'm alive already, man," Niko said, knowing that his accursed temper had already slipped its bonds and that things would doubtless get worse before he got it in check again. "And I don't like having my picture scrawled on anything-walls, doors, hearts. Maybe I'll turn the tables and draw my sign on that fat, soft belly...."

By then, the little, rat-faced limner was scrabbling up, running for the door, his sketching board under his arm. Niko didn't chase him.

He went back to his table and sat there, digging in the wood with the point of his blade the way Janni used to do, thinking of the meeting he'd had and wanted to forget with a dead thing happy to fight beyond mortal battles at the bidding of the necromant, wondering if he should-or could-find a way to put Janni's soul to rest despite its assurance that it was content enough as it was. Did it know? Was it really Janni? Did the oath they'd sworn still obtain when one respondent wasn't a man any longer?

Niko didn't know. He couldn't decide. He tried not to drink too much, but drink dulled the picture in his mind's eye, and at nightfall he was still sitting there, trying unsuccessfully to get thoroughly drunk, when the priest known as Torchholder happened to come in with others of his perfumed breed, all with their curl-toed winter shoes and their gaudy jewelry.

Torchholder knew him, but Niko didn't have the sense to leave before the High Priest of Vashanka recognized the fighter who'd been with Tempus at the Mageguild's Fete two winters past.

So when the priest sat down opposite him, Niko raised his head from the palm on which he'd been propping it and stared owlishly at the priest. "Yeah? Can I help you, citizen?"

"Perhaps, fighter, I can help you."

"Not if you can't lay the undead, not a chance of it."

"Pardon?" Torchholder was watching the half drunk Sacred Bander closely, looking for some sign. "We can do whatever the god demands, and we know you are pious and well disposed to-"

"Enlil," Niko interrupted firmly. "Gotta have a god around here, so I'm making it plain: Mine's Enlil, when I need one. Which is as infrequently as possible." Stealth's hand went to his belt and Torchholder froze in place.

But Niko only patted his weaponbelt and brought the hand back to the table, where he propped his chin on it. "Weapons'11 do me, mosttimes. Other times ..." The Sacred Bander leaned forward. "You any good at fighting witches? I've got a friend I'd like to get out of one's clutches ..."

Torchholder made a warding sign with practiced fluency before his face. "We'd like to show you something, Nikodemos called-"

"Ssh!" Niko said with exaggerated care, and looked around, right and left, before leaning forward to whisper. "Don't call me that. Not here. Not ever. I'm just visiting. I can't stay. Too much magic. Hurts, you know. Dead partners that aren't dead. Ex-partners that aren't ex.... Very confusing-"

"We know, we know," soothed the priest with wicked eyes. "We're here to help you sort it out. Come with us and-"

"Who's we?" Niko wanted to know, but two of Molin's cohort already had him by the armpits. They lifted the only mildly protesting fighter up and eased him out the door to where a carriage with ivory screens was waiting and, after some little difficulty, boosted him inside and closed the door.

Niko, who'd been abducted more than once in his life, expected the carriage to jerk and horses to lunge and to be carried off into the night. He also expected to fight being bound hand and foot. And he expected to be alone in there, after that, or at least alone but for the company of guards.

None of his expectations came to pass. Before him, on the other side of the carriage, were two children, one on either side of a harried looking woman who might once have been beautiful and whom Niko, who liked women, vaguely recalled: a temple dancer. The two children were hardly more than babes, but one of them, the fair-haired, sat right up and clapped his little hands.

And the sound of those hands clapping rang in Niko's ears like the thunder of the god Vashanka, like the Storm God's own lightning that seemed to issue from the childish mouth as the boy began to giggle in joy.

Niko sat back, slouched against the opposite corner of the wagon, and said, "What the ... ?"

And though the child was now just a child again, another, deeper voice, rang in the Stepson's head, saying, Look on Me, favorite of the Riddler, and take word back to your leader that I am come again. And that 1 would take advantage of all you have to give before the little world that is thine suffers unto perishing. The boy from whose mouth the words could not have issued was saying, "Sowdier? Hewo? Make fwiends? Fwiends? Take big ride? Water pwace? Soon? Me want go soon!"

Niko, stone sober, sat up, looked at the woman sharply and then nodded politely, as he hadn't before. "You're that one's mother? That temple dancer-Seylalha, the First Consort who bore Vashanka's child." It wasn't really a question; the woman didn't bother to answer.

Niko leaned forward, toward the two children, the darker of whom had his thumb in his mouth and regarded Niko with round black eyes. The fair child smiled beatifi-cally. "Soon?" the boy said, though it was too young a child to be discussing anything as sensitive as Niko knew it was.

He said, "Soon, if you're worthy, boy. Pure in heart. Honorable. Loving of life all life. It won't be easy. I'll have to get permission. And you've got to control-what's inside you. Or they won't have you in Bandara, no matter how they care for me."

"Good," said the fair child, or maybe just "Goo"; Niko wasn't sure.

These were toddlers, the both. Too young and, if Niko's maat was right and a god had chosen one as His repository, too dangerous. Niko said to the woman, "Tell the priests I'll do what I can. But he must be taught restraint. No child can control his temper at that age. Both of them, then, must be prepared."

And he pushed on the wagon's door, which opened and let the sobered fighter out into the blessedly cold and normal Sanctuary night.

Normal, except for the presence of Molin Torchholder and the little scribbler, whom the priest held by the collar. "Nikodemos, look at this," said the priest without preamble as if Niko were now his ally-which, so far as Stealth was concerned, he indubitably was not.

Still, the picture that the scribbler, who was protesting that he had a right to do as he willed, had scribed was odd: It was of Niko, but with Tempus looking over his shoulder and both of them seemed to be enfolded in the wings of a dark angel who looked altogether too much like Roxane.

"Leave the picture, artist, and go your way." It was Niko's order, but Torchholder let go of the bandy-legged limner, who hurried off without asking when or if he'd get his artwork back.

"That's my problem ... that picture. Forget you've seen it. Yours, if you want what the god wants, is to get those children schooled where they can be disciplined-by Bandaran adepts."

"What makes you assume I want any such-"

"Torchholder, don't you know what you've got there? More trouble than Sanctuary can handle. Infants-one infant, anyhow-with a god in him. With the power of a god. A Storm God. Can you reason out the rest?"

Torchholder muttered something about things having gone too far.

Niko retorted, "They're not going any further unless and until my partner Randal-who's being held by Roxane, I hear tell-is returned to me unharmed. Then I'll ride up and ask Tempus what he wants to do-if anything-about the matter of the godchild you so cavalierly visited upon a town that had troubles enough without one. But one way or the other, the resolution isn't going to help you one whit. Get my meaning?"

The architect-priest winced and his face screwed up as if he'd tasted something sour. "We can't help you with the witch, fighter-not unless you want simple manpower."

"Good enough. As long as it's priest-power." And Niko began giving orders that Torchholder had no alternative but to obey.

On the dawn of the shortest day of the year, Niko had still not come back to Roxane.

It was time to make an end to Randal, whom she despised enough-almost-to make the slight dealt her by the mortal whom she'd consented to love less stinging.

Almost, but not quite. If witches could cry, Roxane would have shed tears of humiliation and of unrequited love. But a witch shouldn't be crying over mortals, and Roxane was reconstituted from the weakness that had beset her during the Wizard Wars. If Niko wouldn't come to her, she'd make him notorious in hell for all the lonely souls his faithless, feckless self-interest had sent there.

She was just getting the snakes to put aside the card game and fetch the mage when hoofbeats sounded upon her cart-track drive.

Wroth and no longer hopeful, she snatched aside the curtain, though the day was bright and clear as winter days can be, with a sky of powder blue and horsetail clouds. And there, amazingly, was Niko, on a big sable horse of the sort that only Askelon bred in Meridian, his panoply agleam as it came within orb of all her magic.

So she had to shut down her wards and go outside to greet him, leaving Randal half unbound with only the snakes to guard him.

Still, it was sweeter than she'd thought it could be, when anger had consumed her-ecstasy just to see him.

He'd shaved. His boyish face was smiling. He rode up to her and slipped off his horse, cavalry style, and slapped its rump. "Go home, horse, to your stable," he told it, then told her, "I won't need him here, I'm sure."

Here. Then he was staying. He understood. But he'd not done anything she'd asked.

So she said, "And Janni? What of the soul of your poor partner? How can you leave him with Ischade-that whore of darkness? How can you-"

"How can you torture Randal?" Niko said levelly, taking a step closer to Roxane, hands empty and out stretched. "It makes it so hard for me to do this. Can't you-for my sake, won't you let him go? Unharmed. Unensorceled. Free of even the taint of hostile magic."

As he spoke, he pulled her against him gently until she pushed back, fearful of the burns his armor could inflict. "If you'll get rid of that-gear," she bargained, trying to keep her hackles from rising. He should know better than to come to her armored with protections forged by the entelechy of dream. Stupid boy. He was beautiful but dumb, pure, but too innocent to be as canny as his smile portended.

She waved a hand behind her. "Done." And as she spoke, a howl of rage and triumph issued from inside and something, with a crash, came bursting out the window.

Niko gazed after Randal as the mage ran, full-tilt, into the bushes. He nodded. "Now it's just the two of us, is that it?"

"Well ..." she temporized, "there are my snakes, of course." She was primping up her beauty in a way he couldn't see, letting her young and girlish simulacrum come forward, easing the evil and the danger in her face and form. By all she revered, did she love this boy with his hazel eyes so clear and his quiet soul. By all she held sacred, the feel of his hand on her back as he ushered her into her own house in gentlemanly fashion was unlike the touch of any man or mage she'd ever known.

She wanted only to keep him. She sent away the snakes, having to discorporate one who objected that she would then be defenseless, open to attack by man or god.

"Take that silly armor off, beloved, and we'll have a bath together," she murmured, preparing to spell water, hot and steaming, in her gold-footed tub.

And when she turned again, he'd done that and stood before her, hands out to strip her clothes away, and his body announced its intention to make her welcome.

Welcome her he did, in hot water and hot passion, until, amid the moment of her joy and just before she was about to begin a rune to claim his soul forever, a commotion began outside her door.

First it was lightning that rocked her to her foundations, then thunder, then the sound of many running feet and chanting priests as all Vashanka's priesthood came tramping up her cart-track, battle-streamers on their standards and horns to blow the eardrums out of evil to their lips.

He was as nonplussed as she. He held her in his arms and pressed her close, telling her, "Don't worry, I'll take care of them. You stay here, and call back all your minions-not that I don't think I can protect you, but just in case."

She watched him dress hurriedly, strapping on his armor over wet skin, and run outside, his weapons at hand and ready.

No mortal had ever come to her defense before. So when, snakes by her side and undeads rising, she saw them wrestle him to the ground, disarm him, put him in a cage (no doubt the cage they'd meant for her) and drive away with him, she wept for Niko, who loved her but had been taken from her by the hated priesthood.

And she planned revenge-not only upon the priesthood, but upon Ischade, the trickster necromant, and Randal, who should never have been allowed to get away, and on all of Sanctuary-all but Niko, who was innocent of all and who, if only he could have stayed a little longer, would have proclaimed in his own words his love for her and thus become hers forevermore.

As for the rest-now there would be hell to pay.