The Tower Of Fear

THE PLAYERS IN THE MANY-FACED GAME

Qushmarrah-The conquered city where events take place

THE QUSHMARRAHANS-

Called veydeen by the Dartar tribesmen, the literal meaning of the word being

stone-sitters. Applicable to any city dwellers

Aaron Habid-A carpenter and war veteran

Laella-Aaron's wife

Arif-Aaron's older son

Stafa-Aaron's younger son

Raheb Sayed-Aaron's mother-in-law

Tamisa ("Mish")-Aaron's sister-in-law

Taidiki-Aaron's brother-in-law, now dead

Billygoat-Aaron's friend and co-worker, who caulks the seams in ships

Naszif bar bel-Abek-a metalworker and war veteran Reyha-Naszifs wife, Laella'sbest friend Zouki-Naszifs son

Nakar the Abomination-a sorcerer, now dead, who ruled

Qushmarrah in the name of the god Gorloch The Witch-Nakar's wife Torgo-aeunuch serving the Witch

Azel-a professional killer, talented and deadly. A man of many faces

Muma-innkeeper and associate of Azel Ishabel bel-Shaduk-professional criminaland child-taker

The General-Leader of the Living, the Qushmarrahan resistance to the Herodian occupation; khadifa (colonel or chieftain) in the quarter called the Shu

General Hanno bel-Karba-the Qushmarrahan national hero

Colonel Sisu bel-Sidek-the General's adjutant and heir, khadifa of the waterfront

Meryel-woman shipping magnate, supporter of the Living, and bel-Sidek's lover

Colonel Salom Edgit-khadifa of the Tro quarter, caught between greed and honor

Colonel "King" Dabdahd-khadifa of the Astan quarter, a bootlicker

Colonel Ortbal Sagdet-khadifa of the Hahr quarter, more gangster than patriot

Colonel Carza-khadifa of the Minisia quarter, a fanatic

Colonel Zenobel-khadifa of the Shen quarter, a fanatic

Hadribel-second-in-command in the Shu quarter

THE DARTARS

Desert nomads, mercenaries acting as auxiliaries to Herod's occupation forces

Yoseh-a young warrior just in from the desert Nogah-Yoseh's older brother,

leader of his band Medjhah-Yoseh's older brother Mahdah-member of Yoseh'sband, a cousin Kosuth-member of Yoseh's band, a cousin Juba-member of Yoseh'sband, an adoptive cousin Faruk-member of Yoseh's band, a cousin MelchesheydekYoseh's father, something of a rogue

Fa'tad al-Akla-called the Eagle, commander of the Dartar mercenaries

Joab-captain of Yoseh's company and an old friend of Fa'tad Mo'atabar-sergeantof Yoseh's company, related to Joab

THE HERODIANS

Called ferrenghi by the Dartar tribesmen, the literal meaning of the wordbeing outsider, stranger, enemy. In contemporary usage specifically someonewhose allegiance lies with the imperial city, Herod.

General Lentello Cado-conqueror of Qushmarrah, now military governor andcommander of occupying forces

Taliga-General Cado's brother-in-law and batman

Colonel Bruda-Herodian intelligence chief in Qushmarrah

Marteo Sullo-civil governor of Qushmarrah

Annalaya-a witch brought to Qushmarrah by Sullo

Cullo-Aaron Habid's supervisor at work

Ala-eh-din Beyh-a wizard, antecedents unknown, whose successful attack uponNakar the Abomination made possible the Herodian conquest of Qushmarrah

OTHERS

Chorhkni, Suldan of Aquira-permanent threat on the eastern boundary of theHerodian empire

THE GODS

Gorloch-an ancient, ferocious deity long abandoned by most

Qushmarrahans Nakar-an angel in Gorloch s pantheon, associated with death, from whom the sorcerer Nakar adopted his name Azel-a messenger demon associated with the angel Nakar

Aram the Flame-a gentle, compassionate deity whose cult supplanted that ofGorloch

God-the Herodian deity, ferocious, jealous, contradictory. Extension of his cult is the excuse for Herodian conquests

Prolog.

The smoke was oppressive. It crept south into the Shu from the Shen, where sorcery had birthed fires when the invaders breached the Gate of Winter.

It brought chaos. Within it combatants recognized neither friend, foe, norfleeing civilian. Men struck now and wept later. Animals careened around inpanic. The heavy overcast turned back the light of day and worsened seeing.

Qushmarrahan, Dartar, and Herodian alike prayed for rain. Rain might quenchthe fires and cool the killing insanity.

Qushmarrah was lost but its men fought on. While Nakar lived they dared notsurrender.

The surrounding horizons were clear. It seemed the city was circumvallated bywalls of light. The clouds grew rapidly darker nearer the heart of the city.

Above the acropolis, over the citadel of Nakar the Abomination, those wereblack as the breath of Hell. The citadel's tower pierced their low bellies.

Lightning shattered darkness. Thunder crushed the uproar in the streets. Ahundred thousand smoke-teared eyes looked toward the sorcerer's stronghold.

Clouds above began to swirl, to stream inward, forming a whirlpool in the sky, a celestial maelstrom.

An end-of-the-world flash and crash rattled the city to its foundations.

The rains came. They fell in torrents like none before witnessed by man.

The sorcerer sat on his dark throne, amused. He would wait a while longerbefore he crushed the invaders. They would perish in agony, every one, Herodian and Dartar traitor ...

Something moved in the shadows at the far end of that last temple of Gorloch.

He sprang up, robes flying, eyes wide. He did not recognize the man but knewwhat he must be. "You!"

"Yes, High Priest." There was soft mockery in the voice. The man wore peasantgarb. He was too tall to be Herodian, too dark to be Qushmarrahan. The breathof the desert informed his voice but he was no Dartar. "Another has come."

Nakar relaxed. They came and they came but he devoured them all. "I shouldhave suspected." He chuckled. "Cado has been unnaturally lucky."

"Not my doing, wizard. Cado's genius, your failings, and human frailty."

The sorcerer sneered. "The fire is come. It will scour away the weakness ofAram. Herod's triumph will turn in her hands, like an adder. Gorloch willstand forth in his glory again. Come. I grow impatient. I will destroy themafter I finish you." He laughed. "Come, little dog of the desert. Let it bedone between me and yours. You are the last."

"No." The man's slow advance did not falter. "There is another trainingalready. Always there will be another somewhere, hidden from your eye, tillyou are driven from the world and torment it no more." A dagger flashed in hishand. It radiated power.

Fear touched the sorcerer for an instant. Then the rage came. He would sweepthem out of the path of destiny. "Gorloch, attend me!" He hurled himselftoward his challenger. They met before the great idol, beside the altar wherethousands had screamed their last that Gorloch might be pleased and hisapostle Nakar might live forever.

The Witch entered the temple as the men met. She gasped, unable to believeeven now that she saw it. How had the man gotten through the citadel'sdefenses? What man could have earned such great power?

Clouds of light and shadow contended. Larger than life, figures turned in analmost formal, elegant dance around the slice and dart of flashing mysticblades.

The shadow was overpowering the light slowly, consuming it, but she did notsee that in her fear for the man she loved. She saw only that an enemy wastrying to kill him and that enemy was a great enough wizard to have penetratedthe citadel's impenetrable defenses. She screamed, all reason fled before theprospect of loss. "Nakar!"

Startled, the shadow turned her way.

The light struck its blow.

Nakar's bellow shook the fortress. He lurched into his enemy, clawing at hisattacker's throat. Their struggle flung them against the altar.

The Witch wailed. She had killed him with her interruption. While they yetfought, before death claimed its prize, she wove her greatest spell ever, binding them in timelessness. Someday she would bring back the man she loved, when she found the way.

She finished. In pain, as she collapsed, she cried, "AZEL!" The summons rolledthrough the citadel but there was no answer. Nakar had sent his right hand faraway, to work his will in another land. There would be no help.

It was too late. For now.

The avalanche of rain faded as fast as it had come. The clouds blew away fromQushmarrah like the souls of men newly dead. Throughout the city men began tolay down their arms. Nakar was gone.

In the Shu the stillness yielded to the cry of a newborn. And a moment laterits cries were joined by those of another entrant into the lists of life.

The war ended. The wheel turned. A new story began.

The boys came up Char Street in a mouthy pack. The hazy turquoise of the baybacked them. There were twenty of them, ranging from three to eight years old.

The pretend they were playing reflected their parents' private rejection ofhistory. They were soldiers returning victorious from Dak-es-Souetta.

Their rowdiness caught the old woman's ear. She looked up from her mending. Ascowl deepened the wrinkles webbing her dark leather face. She thought theirparents ought to whip some sense into them.

One of the boys kicked something the size of a melon. Another raced forward, snatched it up out of the dust, shook it overhead, and shouted.

The old woman's frown deepened. Wrinkles became gullies of shadow. Where hadthey gotten a skull?

The boy dropped the headbone and booted it. It ricocheted off a man's leg.

Another man kicked it past the old woman. It vanished in a canebreak of legs.

That was a busy street.

The old woman saw char marks on the skull before it disappeared.

Of course. They were razing the ruins near the Gate of Winter where, afterbreaching the wall, several hundred invaders had perished in a fire touchedoff by errant sorceries. The area would be rich in treasures for small boys.

The pack raced after their plaything, disrupting commerce and generatingcurses both good-natured and otherwise. One boy, about six, stopped in frontof the old woman. He was very formal as he said, "Good afternoon, GrandmotherSayhed."

The old woman smiled. She had teeth missing. With equal formality, shereplied, "Good day, young Zouki. You've been exploring where they're tearingthe old buildings down?"

Zouki nodded and grinned. He was missing teeth, too.

At the beginning and at the end, toothless, the old woman reflected. LikeQushmarrah.

The boy asked, "Can Arif come out?"

"No."

Zouki looked startled. "How come?"

"It wouldn't be safe. You boys will be in big trouble in a few minutes." Theold woman put her mending down. She pointed in the direction of the bay.

The boy looked, saw the eight black riders swaying like the masts of shipsabove the turbulent human sea. The leader rated a horse. The others rode camels. They came straight up the hill, leaving it to the mob to get out oftheir way. Dartar mercenaries.

They were in no hurry to get anywhere. They were after no one. Just a routinepatrol. But if they saw the boys abusing the skull ...

Zouki gawked.

The old woman said, "Get along now, Zouki. Don't bring the heathen to ourdoor."

The boy spun and plunged after his friends, throwing a shout ahead. The oldwoman continued to stare at the riders. They were close now.

They were young. The leader was the eldest. He might be twenty-three. None of the others had reached twenty. They wore black veils to mask their features, but those were not heavy. One could not have been more than sixteen.

As the Dartar riders came abreast of her, that youngest's eye met the oldwoman's. Her stare was hot and sharp, accusing. The youth blushed and lookedaway. The old woman muttered, "Well you might be ashamed, turncoat."

"Oh, Mother. He's not responsible. He was a child when the Dartar tribesbetrayed us."

"Dak-es-Souetta," the old woman hissed as she looked up at her daughter, whohad come from the house with a child on her hip. "Never forgiven, neverforgotten, Laella. Herod is a passing wind. Qushmarrah is eternal. Qushmarrahwill stand when the invader is dust. Qushmarrah will remember the Dartartreachery." She spat toward the mercenaries.

"Why don't you go burn a memorial tusk at the gate of the citadel of Nakar theAbomination, Mother? I'm sure the Witch will appreciate the gesture."

Laella retreated into the house. The old woman sputtered curses under herbreath. Another symptom of the conquest. Children showing no respect for theirparents.

She glanced uphill. The citadel of Nakar the Abomination could not be seenfrom her vantage. Even so, chills tramped her spine.

Some good had come of the occupation. Even she would admit that much. Even shethought Ala-eh-din Beyh a hero. Before his sacrifice no one would have daredcall Nakar "the Abomination" in any voice but the most breathless whisper.

The old woman pointed and Zouki's gaze followed the spearthrust of herwithered arm.

The Dartar riders were like something out of the nighttime monster stories theolder boys told to scare their little brothers. All in black, with nothing buthard eyes and a bit of dark, tattooed cheek showing.

He spun and ran into the crowd, alternately yelling, "Yahoud!" and apologizingto the adults he jostled. With everyone taller, and the dust so thick at hislevel, it was impossible to see his friends. He thought he heard his name.

Baml He ran into Yahoud, who had just lifted the skull from the dust. "Youdope!" Yahoud said. "Look out where you're going."

"Yahoud. Dartars." "What?"

"Dartars are coming. Right back there."

"Really?"

"Yes."

Yahoud looked at the skull a moment. "Here, Zouki. Go throw it into thatalley."

Zouki held the skull in both hands and wove through the press. The alley wasnot far away. Before he reached it several boys were following him, alerted by Yahoud.

He was about to step into the alley when he saw the vague shape back in theshadows. He paused.

A voice just loud enough to be heard said, "Bring it here, boy. Give it tome."

Zouki took three steps, paused. He did not like this.

"Will you hurry it up?"

Zouki responded to the authority in the voice, taking another three steps.

That was one too many. The man leaped. A hand slammed down on his shoulder, aclamp of agony. "Yahoud!"

"Are you Zouki, son of Naszif?"

"Yahoud!"

"Answer me, brat!"

"Yes! Yahoud!"

Children crowded the alley mouth, shouting. The man shifted his grip toZouki's arm and dragged him deeper into the shadows. Zouki screamed and kickedand struck out with the skull he still clenched.

Yoseh fought the awe that threatened to overwhelm him whenever he left theDartar compound. So many people. So many thousands of people, more than hecould have conceived of as inhabiting the whole world a year ago. And the bay?

Who cold conceive such a sprawl of water, vast as an arm of the Takes, but theblue of heavenstone? With far vaster expanses of sea beyond the Brothers, theheadlands flanking the strait that led into the bay.

And the buildings! He did not believe he would get used to the buildings, ever. In his native mountains there were no builded things at all, exceptancient fortresses that had begun their fall to ruin centuries ago.

There was an eddy and swirl in the mass of humanity ahead. An exuberant crywent up.

"Medjhah," Yoseh said. "That's the mudha-el-bal." Though that battle cry wasstill heard in the canyons of the Khadatqa Mountains, here even Dartars weredenied it.

"And we should go cut them down, Yoseh?" his brother asked. Medjhah was an oldQushmarrah hand after a year in service. "Eight of us meting out capitalpunishment to kids amongst a couple thousand of their relatives? If theferrenghi want them punished, let them see to it themselves. Let them bear thehatred."

Their elder brother Nogah, who was the captain of their little company, turnedin his saddle, said, "Well spoken, Medjhah. Yoseh, we're not here to die forthe ferrenghi. We're here to take their wages."

Yoseh grunted. Ahead, one of the children had gone to the side of the street to talk to a crone seated on a mat. Old people lined the street on both sides, some on mats, some seated on steps, some trying to hawk, some just watchingthe parade of life. It was a miracle they did not get trampled.

The crone pointed. The boy looked, saw Yoseh and his companions. His eyesbugged. He yipped and dashed into the crowd.

"You see?" Medjhah said. "The streets of Qushmarrah are free of heresy andsedition."

The others laughed. Yoseh did not. As the youngest he was always the brunt oftheir humor. He looked at the old woman. She looked back, her face as empty asa statue's. But he could sense the angry hatred within, like the lakes ofmolten rock simmering deep within the holy mountain Khared Dun. Sometimes thegod in the mountain became angry enough to spew fiery destruction upon anyoneunfortunate enough to be nearby. The crone reminded him of the holy mountain.

That old woman had lost somebody at Dak-es-Souetta.

He felt the heat climb his cheeks. He tore his gaze from the old woman andcalled up all his Dartar contempt for city dwellers. But the embarrassmentcontinued to mount. He had forgotten what he was. Now all these sessile goatflops would see a Dartar betraying his feelings.

Yoseh was very conscious of his youth, of his inexperience, of the unfadednewness of the manhood tattoos upon his face, and of the lance across his lap.

Medjhah assured him that the self-consciousness would pass, that none of thesecity veydeen even noticed.

Yoseh knew that. But knowing with the head and knowing with the heart could beseparated by the journey of the hundred nights.

Someone shouted. Yoseh saw the children rush to the side of the street. Adults followed after more shouts. The children seemed distressed.

Nogah yelled. He begun swinging the butt of his lance, urging his horsethrough the press. Yoseh did not understand. He had difficulties with thecants and dialects of Qushmarrah. But something was happening that Nogahconsidered to be within their venue. He kicked his mount. The camel promptlytried to take a bite out of the nearest citizen.

The crowd was thickest around the mouth of an alley about four feet wide. Thechildren clustered and raised a repetitive wailing chant that sounded like,

"Bedija ghal Bedija gha!"

Nogah shouted at Faruk. Faruk sounded the horn that would summon any Dartar orferrenghi troops within hearing. The crowd began to thin immediately. Nogahsaid, "Yoseh, Medjhah, Kosuth, go in there after them. The rest of us will tryto get around and cut them off. You. Boy. Hold these animals."

The Dartars dismounted in a clatter. Still baffled, Yoseh followed his brotherand cousin into the dark, dank, stinking alleyway. His lance was unwieldy inthat narrow passage.

Fifty feet in they heard a cry. It sounded like an echoing call for help.

Twenty feet onward the alley split at right angles. They paused, listened.

Medjhah shrugged, said, "This way," and turned to his right.

Ten steps. That cry again, from behind. The Dartars turned and ran the otherdirection, Yoseh now in the lead and more bewildered than ever. He kept hislancehead extended before him.

Fifty yards. A hundred. All upslope, tiring. "Slow down," Medjhah said. "Let'sbe careful. It could be a trap." The veydeen were not all passive about theoccupation.

A whisper of scuffling came from up ahead.

The alley bent to the right. Yoseh dashed around the angle and sensed apresence. It resolved into vague shapes struggling. A man trying to drag aboy. Panic swept the man's face momentarily. Then he flung a hand towardYoseh.

The alley filled with a blinding light and heat and a child's cry of despair.

Yoseh went down as Medjhah and Kosuth stumbled into him from behind. The fireburned like the furnaces of hell.

"Gorloch, thou art merciful," Azel murmured as he watched the target takesomething from an older boy and hurry toward the alley whence he watched. Hehad anticipated a long and difficult stalk. They had become wary. But thisbird was flying to the snare like it wanted to be caught.

What the hell was the kid lugging? A goddamned skull. Where the hell did heget that?

Azel fell back a few steps, hoping the kid's eyes would be used to the glareoff the bay and he would come into the alley blind.

No such luck. The kid was not seeing good, but he was seeing good enough. Hestopped a dozen feet too soon.

"Bring it here, boy. Give it to me." The kid moved some. Not enough. He wasn'tcompletely unwary. "Will you hurry it up?"

That got the brat close enough. Azel leaped, grabbed. The kid started yelling.

Azel made him give his name. Taking the wrong brat would be worse than doingnothing.

The kid kicked and yelled and flailed around with the skull. Azel ignoredthat, backed up, watched the brats at the alley's mouth, yelling themselves.

Then figures in black appeared, their weapons glittering.

Azel cursed. "Dartars. Where the hell did they come from?" Fear snapped athim. He spent a part of it by yanking the boy violently. He would lose thosewhoreson turncoats in the maze webbing the Shu quarter south of Char Street.

No one alive knew that one better.

Only the brat wouldn't let him get the head start he needed. He kept onfighting and kicking, yelling and tripping. Azel smacked him around as much ashe dared, but not as much as he wanted. There would be no tolerance shown ifhe delivered damaged goods.

Then they were there in the labyrinth with him, the mercenary betrayers, withabsolute terror coursing before them, and for the first time ever Azel foundhimself compelled to employ his penultimate recourse.

The ultimate recourse fluttered blackly behind his lids as he clung to thebrat with one hand while flinging the contents of the envelope, his eyessealed.

Heat drove him back.

The Dartars cursed and clattered into one another. The kid squealed and quitstruggling. Azel opened his eyes. "That's more like it, you little bastard."

He glared at the Dartars. If he didn't have to keep the kid in hand he wouldstick them with their own spears.

He grabbed up the by now passive boy and draped him over his shoulder. The boyclung to the skull as though it was a protective talisman.

This time it was hard. This time it took all his knowledge of the labyrinth tolose the hunters. Dartars and Herodians and angry citizens were everywhere.

Azel zigged and dodged and at times even crouched in hiding, the kid clampedhelpless and silent in his arms. Of all the damnable luck, those black-clothedcamel jockeys turning up when they did.

There was a warning in what had happened. The easy times were over. And theywere barely past halfway down the list. With Gorloch knew how many more yet tobe discovered.

There was going to be some serious talk after he made this delivery. No waywas he going out again with nothing but a pack of flash to cover his ass.

He reached the outlet from the maze that lay nearest his destination. The bratstarted to struggle again, but that did not last. And he finally turned looseof the damned skull.

Azel scanned the square he had to cross. He saw no sign of excitement. He haddistanced the hunt but probably not the news that a child had been snatched.

Should he try it now, in the long shadows of afternoon, or await the friendlydarkness?

The square was almost empty. The kid was out of fight again. Gorloch knew whatmight creep out of the labyrinth behind him if he sat on his hands.

He grabbed the brat's paw and headed out, fast, like an angry parent. The kidstumbled and whimpered, and that fed the illusion.

As he tramped across the square Azel lifted his gaze and rehearsed andnurtured the rage he was going to vent.

And that fed the illusion, too.

Aaron pressed up the hill, the black fear gnawing his heart. He was a man keptstrong and trim by his labors, but emotion had driven him to a violent stormup the long climb from the waterfront. His legs were billets of lead, as theywere in his nightmares.

It was over now. Long over. But some of the spectators remained, still telling one another what had happened. Beyond them were a handful of Herodian soldiersand several Dartar horsemen. Ranking Dartar, Aaron realized after a secondlook. Startled, he found himself exchanging momentary glances with a fierce- eyed old man who had the face of a raptor and a savage grey beard.

Fa'tad al-Akla himself! Fa'tad the Eagle, commander of all the Dartarmercenaries, bloodthirsty as a vampire, merciless as a hungry snake. What washe doing? Making himself a target for the Living?

Of course not. Was he not supposed to know as little of fear as the desertwindstorms that brewed over the Takes and raged north over the KhadatqaMountains and beyond, to inundate Qush-marrah with dust and torment it with aferocious dry heat? Fa'tad al-Akla held the Living in contempt.

Aaron thought them quixotic at best. But he also believed they were going tokill Fa'tad, and he did not think it would be long before the dark angelbrushed the Eagle with the shadow of his wing.

Ahead, in front of the house, he saw Laella and her mother. They were notbereaved. His heart spread white wings. Then it soared as he spied Arif.

His son was all right! The nightmare had not come true!

Arif saw him coming and ran to meet him. He snatched the boy up and surroundedhim in a hug almost brutal in its intensity. Arif squealed, surprised. Peoplestared. It was not a culture that encouraged emotional display.

Arif wanted to tell him all the news but he had squeezed the breath out of theboy.

Aaron joined Laella and her mother. His wife had Stafa, their younger son, seated upon her left hip. Stafa was midway between his second and thirdbirthdays, and on his better days he was happy mischief incarnate. Arif was, by contrast, a quiet child, often seeming sad.

The younger boy reached out. "I want some Daddy hugs."

Aaron reached and let him monkey over to sit on the hip opposite Arif, grinning. Aaron told Laella, "I heard. I was afraid it was Arif."

There was pain and relief and guilt in Laella's eyes as she said, "No. It wasZouki. Reyha's Zouki."

"Oh."

Laella's mother watched Fa'tad with the fixity and dispassionate intensity ofa vulture waiting for. a corpse to cool out. "They went after him."

Aaron turned. "What?"

"The Dartar patrol. They were right here when Zouki was taken. Not much morethan boys themselves. The children screamed 'Bedija gha!' and the Dartars wentafter the taker."

She sounded amazed. As if so human a thing was beyond comprehension if done bythe villains of Dak-es-Souetta.

"And?"

Laella said, "Three went in Tosh Alley. And they caught him." She did notsound joyful.

"Something bad happened?"

"They were all burned when they brought them out. Not dead. Not really badhurt. But one of them's clothes was smoldering."

Aaron grunted.

"Aaron, something has to be done."

He grunted again. He agreed. But he did not know what could be done. There hadbeen talk among the men, but it never went beyond that. One could do nothingwhen one did not know which way to strike.

The old woman muttered something.

"Mother?" Aaron asked.

"The Dartars think the Living did it."

So. No wonder she was in shock. For her the Dartars had become the wellspringof all evil. And here they had tried to rescue a child, and thought the lastragtag remnants of Qush-marrahan partisans had done the grabbing.

"The children yelled 'Bedija gha!' Could that be it? Are the old godsstirring?"

Bedija gha sprang from an older form of the language. Today it meant "childstealer."

In Qushmarrah, as in all cities in all times and lands, there werepeople who wanted to buy children. For whatever reason. So there were otherswilling to harvest and sell. But before "child-stealer" or "kidnapper," in theold days bedija gha had had a more sinister and specific meaning, "collectorof sacrifices."

That had been in the time of Gorloch, cast down and banished by Aram longsince. The god's followers had been dispersed, his temples demolished, and hispriests forbidden human sacrifice.

He had not gone quickly or quietly, though. Superseded gods never do.

Aram the Flame had brought light to Qushmarrah but Gorloch had clung to theshadows and it was not till the coming of the Herodians, with their strange, nameless, omnipotent god, that Gorloch's last High Priest's time had ended.

Aaron shivered and glanced uphill. Nakar the Abomination. How he had deservedthat name, that dark sorcerer-priest-king unassailable in his citadel. BlessAla-eh-din Beyh and the Herodians for having laid that terror to rest.

Laella said, "No, it couldn't be Gorloch. They say Nakar was the last priestwho knew the rites." Her mother nodded agreement without taking her eyes offthe Eagle. "And the Witch never was a believer."

"There must be manuscripts that tell about the rituals."

"You're trying to talk yourself into something again, Aaron." Laella smiled totake the sting out of the admonition.

She was right. He wanted conspiracies to explain away his fear of something hedid not understand. Chances were there was no more child-stealing going on nowthan there had been at any other time. He was just more aware of it because heand his contemporaries were of an age to have children of an age to be atrisk. That and the fact that there had been a rash of kidnappings in the area, some as broad-daylight-brazen as this latest. A thing like that caused a lotof talk that led to more talk that maybe magnified the problem out of allproportion.

If it were not for the nightmares ...

He realized his arms were aching with the weight of the children. "All right, Stafa. Back to Mom. Arif, down you go. Daddy's arms are tired."

Stafa flashed his little white teeth and shook his head "Can't," he said.

"Yes, you can," Laella told him. "Come here. Your father's been working hardall day."

"Can't. My dad."

Aaron bent and let Arif down. Arifs feelings were hurt, of course, but he hidthat as he always did. He was convinced everyone loved his brother more thanhim, and no logical argument could reach his heart and convince it that asmaller child always needed more attention.

The firstborn are always the sad ones, Aaron thought, and felt vaguely guilty.

He always seemed to expect more of Arif.

He leaned toward Laella, who tried to pry Stafa off him. Stafa laughed anddeclared, "Can't! Daddy's Stafa!" He grabbed two fistfuls of Aaron's hair.

Aaron suppressed the usual flash of anger and impatience and played the gameout.

Laella finally peeled the boy off. The battle shifted ground. She wanted toput him down and he did not want to be put. Laella won. Stafa went into apout, declared, "I hate you, Mom!" He ran and clung to Nana's leg. But the oldwoman had no attention to spare.

Aaron grabbed Arif up and set him on his left hip, ignoring the ache in hisarm and shoulders. "Come on, big guy. Let's see what's going on." His reliefat finding Arif safe persisted. It left him feeling select and immune and moredaring than was his nature. He even managed to meet the Eagle's eye withoutflinching.

Bel-Sidek dragged his log of a bad leg up the slope of Char Street. It gotworse every day. His pride was under ever more severe strain. How long beforeit broke, he surrendered, and he became just another crippled veteran beggingat street side?

As it did every time, the thought sparked white-hot rage. He would notsurrender! He would not become a vegetable patch beside the thoroughfare, watered by the charity of Herodian conquerors whose generosity consisted of tossing back fragments of the ghosts of plunder ripped from the heart ofQushmarrah.

Bel-Sidek sometimes tended toward a dramatic turn of mind.

The leg did not hurt as badly, nor drag nearly so much, when the thought of acommander of a thousand begging at street side drove him into a fury. Dartarand Herodian had humiliated him and reduced him by strength of arms and rightof conquest. But he would not finish what they had begun. He would not degradehimself.

"They have not won," he muttered. "They have not beaten me. I am one of theliving."

For the true believer the formula was as potent as a magical cantrip.

There was something wrong with his surroundings. He stopped instantly, comingout of himself to look around suspiciously. Yes! Dartars and Herodianseverywhere. How had they ... ?

Wait. Maybe not. Whatever had happened, it was over long since. And the enemydid not have that grim look he got when his own had been hurt. Someone wouldhave gotten hurt had they found the General.

Still ...

Still, it had been something that interested them a great deal. A great deal.

That was Fa'tad al-Akla himself. The Eagle would not be out here for trivia.

Was he at risk here? Had they been found out? Was it a search?

No. Hardly. How would the old man know them in their present circumstances, after ten years, when he and the General had been but faces in the backgroundwhen last they had crossed paths?

There was Raheb Sayhed and her daughter. Raheb spent her life planted on hermat there. Nothing escaped her. He limped over to the two women.

A smiling face peeped around Raheb's skirt. Bel-Sidek grinned. "Ola, Stafa."

He liked the child. "Ola, Raheb. Laella."

The older woman replied, "Ola, Khadifa." She inclined her head almostimperceptibly, to show that she still honored him. She continued to stare atFa'tad.

Bel-Sidek frowned his question at the daughter.

Laella said, "The foundations of her world took a shaking this afternoon."

"What happened?"

"A child-stealing. Reyha's son, Zouki. A Dartar patrol was right in front ofthe house when it happened. They tried to rescue Zouki. Three of them gothurt."

"That explains Fa'tad."

"Maybe. But I don't think so. They weren't hurt bad. I hear he's here because they think the Living had something to do with it."

"That's absurd."

"Is it?" "Why would they take a six-year-old kid?"

"Why would they beat up shopkeepers and steal from artisans and leave their own people floating in the bay while never, ever, laying a finger on the people they're supposed to be fighting?" "You're exaggerating."

"Am I? Let me tell you something, Khadifa. There are ordinary, everyday, loyal people in Qushmarrah-people who hate Herod and Dartars as much as you do- who're so fed up with the Living they've talked about maybe letting Fa'tad find out some names."

"Laella."

Bel-Sidek turned. "Aaron. How are you?"

"Upset. I have small children. It disturbs me that the Dartars seem more interested in their safety than do those of my own people who might say they have some claim on my sympathy. People who, by their nature, ought to have some insight into the problem if there's a racket behind the child-stealing." Bel-Sidek understood. He did not like it. "I hear what you're saying, Aaron. Here. Come. Walk with me to my house." He began dragging the leg uphill.

The man turned his son over to his wife and followed. It did not take him long to catch up. Bel-Sidek asked, "Is it true, what she said?" "You know how women are when they're scared or mad. Say any damned thing that pops into their head."

"Yes." He glanced back at Raheb, still frozen in place. There was an omen as sinister as her daughter's threat. "I know some people who know some people.

I'll say something to someone." "Thank you. How is your father doing?"

"He sleeps a lot now. The pain doesn't bother him as much as it did."

"Good."

"I'll tell him you asked about him." The old man wakened when the door slammed. It had to be slammed or it would not close all the way. "Bel-Sidek?" He winced as the pain shot down his side. "Yes, General."

The old man composed himself before the khadifa entered the dimness of hisroom. Only a part of the dimness was due to a lack of lighting. His eyes weregrowing feeble. He could make out few details of bel-Sidek when he appeared.

"Was it a good day, Khadifa?"

"It began well. Three ships came with the morning tide. There was work. Weneedn't worry about where our meals will come from for a few days."

"But?"

"I encountered an unpleasant situation coming home. It was illuminating."

"Political?"

"Yes."

"Report."

He listened carefully, with a feeling for nuance. His hearing was excellent.

Time had been that kind. He heard not only objective substance but theimplication that the khadifa was troubled in heart.

"The woman-Raheb?-bothers you. Why?"

"She had one son. Taidiki. Her sunrise. Her full moon. He went to Dak-es- Souetta with my Thousand. A brave lad. He held his ground till the end. He wasone of the forty-eight of mine who came home. He came back in worse shape thanI did. A lot worse. But he was a proud kid. He thought he'd done something.

His mother cried for him, but she was proud of him, too. And of everyone whofought the odds at Dak-es-Souetta. Fanatically so."

"Is there a punch line to this story, Khadifa?"

"A year ago Taidiki went into the street and started telling anyone who wouldlisten the same things his sister said today, only he spoke morestraightforwardly. He said hard things about our class and the Living. He saidthe Dartar tribes were not the traitors of Dak-es-Souetta, that Qushmarrah hadbetrayed them first by ignoring them in their need. They had done only whatthey had to do so their children could eat. When one of the Living tried tohush him, he denounced the man. When the man resorted to threats, Taidiki'sneighbors-our neighbors- beat him senseless."

"I'm still waiting for the punch line.''

"Taidiki took his own life afterward, as a protest. He said Qushmarrah hadmurdered him already and he hadn't had sense enough to lie down."

"The point?"

"That was the moment I first realized there were people of Qushmarrah who wereless than enchanted with our efforts."

"And?"

"A more dramatic incident occurred in the Hahr day before yesterday. TheDartars rounded up eighteen ground-level members. They had been denouncedanonymously. The Dartars did not bother interrogating them. They just executed them there in the street. Some of the onlookers cheered."

"I see."

"Do you? Some of the brethren have been feathering ..."

"I said I see." The General reflected for several minutes. "Khadifa, your father has just had another of his spells and thinks he's dying again. Youround up your brother and cousins and have them here later tonight so they canbe given their legacies."

"Yes sir."

"Fa'tad is in the street out there?"

"Yes sir."

"Help me to the door. I want to see him."

"Is it worth the risk, sir?"

"Is he going to recognize a man who's been dead for six years?"

He did not get his fuzzy glimpse of the enemy. Fa'tad al-Akla and his tribesmen, and the Herodian infantrymen, had gone. Char Street had become itsnormal twilight self.

"What's this?" Aaron asked, looking at the concoction Laella had set beforehim. He shifted on his cushion. The aches of work and the terror of the afternoon were fading. His question was one of honest inquiry, not complaint.

"What does it look like?"

"Haifa yellow squash with stuff baked inside it."

"Can't put anything past you when you put your mind to it, can I?"

Arif said, "I don't like this stuff, Mom." Stafa echoed him immediately. The younger boy was just into that stage.

"You haven't tried it yet."

Aaron didn't think he would like it, either, but it turned out to be good. The boys did right by their portions, too.

Laella had filled the partially baked squash halves with a mix of chopped andsliced vegetables, and slivers of mutton, in a heavy, spicy brown sauce. There were mushrooms and nut meats in there, too. And dates promised for afterwardfor boys who ate their supper.

Old Raheb worked on her meal without speaking. Hers had been cooked longer so meat and vegetables would be easier prey for toothless gums. Tonight sheworked every mouthful twice as long as usual. Aaron pretended not to notice.

Nobody could get quite as fixated as Laella's mother. If one of her fixationswon an audience it could turn into years of high drama.

Look at Taidiki. She had been mourning Taidiki since Dak-es-Souetta. He mightnot have broken had she not been there wailing all the time.

Aaron needed distracting himself. "What do you think of it, Mish?"

Tamisa, Laella's fourteen-year-old sister, completed the household. For a timeafter Dak-es-Souetta there had been other sisters. They had gotten married oneby one. The latest had gone just before Taidiki's mad gesture.

Maybe that had contributed to Taidiki's despair. All those sisters to dowryand no other relatives to soften the blows to his patrimony.

Raheb did not mourn her husband, did she? He had fallen at Dak-es-Souetta, hadn't he? But she hadn't so much as mentioned his name since moving in here.

Tamisa said, "It's all right." Howling praise. About as definite a statementas anyone could get out of her these days. She had changed over the eightyears Aaron had known her. Sometimes he felt vaguely guilty about that, thoughhe did not see how he could be responsible. Too much time spent close to hermother, he thought.

He worried endlessly that Arif and Stafa would drift down the same pathway toa life of quiet despair. He worried about his sons too much, he knew. Childrensurvived childhood. He had. It was being grown-up that was lethal.

Laella said, "When we're done I want to go see if I can do anything forReyha."

"I thought you might."

"Mish can clean up."

"Of course."

"We've known each other a long time. We went through labor together. There wasstill fighting in the streets."

"I know."

"We lay there holding hands and listening to people killing each otheroutside, not sure that somebody wouldn't break in and do something to us."

"I know." There was a part of Laella that could not forgive him for havingbeen a prisoner of the Herodians on that critical day, unreasonable as sheknew that to be.

"Zouki came only a minute after Arif. It was the last day of the war. The dayAla-eh-din Beyh broke the barrier and killed Nakar the Abomination."

"I know." He knew the preamble was all because he would have to take her ifshe was to go see Reyha. And he loathed Reyha's husband, Naszif.

Naszif was an ironwright and prosperous. The Herodians had plenty of work formetalworkers and gave Naszif all he could handle. Aaron and Naszif had been inthe same artillery engineers troop. Aaron was convinced that Naszif hadbetrayed them during the siege of the Seven Towers in Harak Pass.

Three of the towers had been reduced already. There was never a doubt that theHerodians would break through. The defenders were supposed to buy time untilthe defeated of Dak-es-Souetta, the new levies, and the allies could gather onthe Plain of Chordan. The lords of Marek, Tuhn, and Caldera were sendingseventy thousand men.

But someone heeded either cowardice or the Herodian offer of rewards and unsealed the tower's postern. The treachery advanced the Herodian causesufficiently that they were able to reach the Plain of Chordan in time to keepit all from coming together.

"When we heard, we both had the same crazy idea. Name our sons Peace," Laellasaid.

"I know."

"Why don't you like Naszif? You were in everything together."

"That's why. I know him." He had told no one what he believed about Naszif.

Not even Laella.

"But ..."

"I was there and you weren't. The subject is closed. Get yourself ready ifyou're going to go. Arif, Stafa, one story from Nana, then go to bed."

In one year the coast as far as Caldera had fallen to Herod. Not, Aaron wasconvinced, because of the great and so close thing at Dak-es-Souetta, butbecause of one traitor in one tower in Harak Pass.

When he started brooding about it he got himself out of the mood by mockinghimself for thinking someone as insignificant as he could have been so nearthe heart of any crucial historical event.

Yoseh lay on his cot with his hands behind his head, staring into the darknessbetween the ceiling beams. The burn on his face hurt. The ointment didn't domuch to help.

"Why so thoughtful tonight?"

Yoseh looked up at Nogah. He replied with complete honesty. "That man in thatalley. He could have killed us if he'd wanted. All of us. Easy."

"Probably. But he didn't."

"But he did want to. I could see it in his face, behind the fear and surprise.

He hated us and wanted to kill us but it was more important to keep thatlittle boy under control."

Nogah looked at him a moment, then nodded. "Come on. Fa'tad wants to ask youabout it."

The muscles across Yoseh's stomach tightened till he felt like he was havingcramps. His eyes began blinking. He could not stop. "No. I can't."

"Come on, Yoseh. He's only a man."

"He's only Fa'tad al-Akla. He scares the Demon out of me."

Nogah smiled. "It's about time somebody did that, little brother. You'vealways had too much brass for your own good. Come on."

Yoseh rose. He followed Nogah, wondering if this was how men felt as they wentto the gallows.

The Dartar compound was outside Qushmarrah proper, beyond the Gate of Autumn, on a field where the city's soldiers once trained. A thin curtain wall twelvefeet high surrounded it. All the buildings within abutted against this, theirroofs forming a platform for defenders. Everything was crudely constructed ofmud brick painted to protect it from the rain. The wall enclosed about threeacres.

Yoseh and Nogah had to cross the enclosure to reach Fa'tad. Stars had comeout. The air overhead was unusually clear. Camels and horses, goats and cattlemumbled to one another. The smell of hay and crowded animals was strong. "Itmust be about time to send a herd south," Yoseh said.

"Any day now. There are enough men whose time is up to take them."

"You've been here five years, Nogah. Why do you stay?"

"I don't know."

"Foo. I'm your brother, Nogah. I've known you all my life. You would'vethought about it a lot each time before you signed on again."

"Maybe I can do more good here, earning the ferrenghi silver that buys theherds. Down there I'd be just another mouth."

"Not to mention that while you're up here you don't have to keep butting headswith Father."

Nogah snorted. Then he chuckled. "No. Up here I have Fa'tad al-Akla, with whomthere is no arguing. Father you can wear down sometimes."

"Before I left he almost broke down and became human. 'Four sons I send to Fa'tad now. And none of them come back. You come back when your time is done, little Yoseh. You come home.'"

"That sounds like him. And I'm sure he sent some blustery message to hisprodigals."

He had, of course, but Yoseh hadn't bothered to report it. "Yes."

They walked a few steps. Nogah said, "So?"

"He said, Tell my Nogah, my firstborn, to come home. Tell him I am one stepahead of the dark angel and beginning to limp. An heir's place is beside hisfather in his last hour.'"

"His last hour, eh? One step ahead of old Death?"

"He said it. I didn't."

"And he just took another wife."

"Yes."

"That's the third one since I came north."

"There are a lot of women who can't find husbands because so many of the young men don't come back from duty in Qush-marrah."

"So Father is easing the shortage."

"His duty to the tribe, he told me. If he hadn't taken the poor girls in, their fathers might have put them out of their tents. They might have starved."

"No doubt these foundling waifs come without dowries, too." "Are you kidding? He'll take ugly but he won't take poor."

"And they always call him that charming old rogue Mel-chesheydek." They reached the opposite side of the compound. Nogah said, "Nogah, Yahada. We're here." "I'll tell him." The guard posted outside Fa'tad's quarters stepped inside.

"It's a serious problem, Nogah," Yoseh said. "The old men are talking about making it so nobody can join Fa'tad who hasn't already taken a wife and at least gotten her with child."

"Those sour old bellies must be full, then."

"What?"

"They didn't talk that way when they were starving. Then it was send the boys whether they want to go or not."

Yahada opened the door. "Come in."

Yoseh preceded his brother, his knees starting to shake. His first glimpse of Fa'tad did nothing to reassure him. Those eyes ... Grey as iron and cold asthe bottom of a well. There was no anger in them, but still he felt like aclumsy child.

Fa'tad nodded infinitesimally, "Nogah." The old man sat cross-legged on asmall cushion. He had filled the room with the appurtenances of a caveshelter. They did not hide the truth. "This is your brother Yoseh?"

"Yes sir."

"I overheard what you said a moment ago. Is it true, Yoseh, that they intend to meddle with me down there?"

Yoseh did not know how to answer. The question sounded like one with a snarebuilt into it. He chose his words carefully. "They want to encourage the youngmen to return home more quickly."

A specter of a smile twitched Fa'tad's lips. "Oh, yes. As they so quickly didwhen they were young auxiliaries scouting for Qushmarrah's armies. You wereright, Nogah. Their bellies are full, and sour with memories of what they lostwith their youth. Yahada, find Barok. Tell him he needn't worry about how he'sgoing to get all that livestock safely to the mountain." Fa'tad smiled agenuine smile. He looked at Yoseh as if he were speaking to him alone. "Theyneed to be reminded that the drought is still with us." His face clouded, thenlost all expression.

Eight years of drought. There was nothing to match it in Dartar history.

"Your brother told me what happened this afternoon, Yoseh. Now I want to hear your part of it from you."

Yoseh fumbled the story out.

"Would you recognize the man again?"

"Yes sir."

"Describe him."

"He was short, even for the veydeen. And very wide. Very muscular. Not a young man. Middle thirties to early forties. Dark for veydeen. Very quick, and Ithink very strong. His nose was flattened, like somebody smashed it in. Widemouth and heavy lips."

"Beard?"

"No sir."

"Obvious scars?"

"Well ... I can't be sure. His lip curled up, like this, a little. There was a man back home with a lip like that from a knife wound."

"Uhm."

Nogah asked, "You know the man, sir?"

"No. But I'd like to meet him, Yoseh, how did he make the fire?"

"He just reached down and got something out of his belt

"An envelope? A packet? A sachet?"

Yoseh glanced at Nogah, back. "Yes sir. One of those."

"Hunh! Do what he did, as closely as you can ape it. Slowly."

Yoseh did so, puzzled by Fa'tad's interest and cowed by the intensity of his scrutiny.

"He reached across his body with his left hand and emptied the packet at you backhanded?"

"Yes sir."

"And the stuff he threw. Did you get a good look at it before it caught fire?"

"It was dust, sir. Yellow, I think. Yes. Almost saffron." Nogah asked, "Sir, is this important?"

"The gestures probably not. He had one hand busy holding a child. But I'm very interested in the powder. What sort of powder is inert in an envelope open to the air but bursts into flames when it's thrown?" "Sorcery?" Nogah suggested softly.

"Certainly a possibility. I'm very interested in such a dust."

"Yes sir."

"I'm also interested in that maze of passages in the Shu. We have more trouble with the Shu than any other quarter. Because the villains can use that maze to come and go as they please."

Yoseh had a feeling Fa'tad was leading up to something. His suspicion was confirmed immediately. "I want you to go up there tomorrow, Nogah. Start exploring. Start mapping.

There is no map of that area. Even people who live there don't know what's going on out their back doors. Starting tomorrow everyone not on duty for the ferrenghi will be up there exploring. We'll go in there and stay. We'll take the maze away from Qushmarrah's bad men." Nogah said, "Yes sir." Yoseh echoed him hastily. "That will be all for now. Yoseh, if you recall anything significant, I want to know right away."

"Yes sir." Yoseh got out as fast as youthful dignity would allow. His legs almost betrayed him returning across the compound. Zouki sat inside the door of the cage, leaning against the cold iron bars, motionless, for a long time. He was so scared he had wet himself.

There were thirty other kids in the cage. They were scared, too. They seemed to have spaced themselves out. Only two, who looked like twins, were close to each other. The kids all seemed to be about his age. They all stared at him.

They did not seem starved or abused. They were clean and clothed. But they were scared and Zouki thought they must cry a lot. He wanted to cry. He wanted his mother.

He looked at all those kids looking back at him and didn't know what else to do. So he did cry.

Azel had just finished a meal for which the cook ought to be convicted. Hecould not guess what he had eaten.

Torgo walked in. "She's ready for you now." He sounded like a man talking to acockroach.

"Yeah? Good. Who cooks this slop? They ought to be staked out on an anthill.

The brats get fed better."

"The children are valuable. Come."

Following Torgo, staring at the eunuch's huge, broad back, Azel said,

"Torgo,'I like your attitude so much I think I'm going to kill you. You ball- less wonder. Maybe pretty soon now." He looked at the eunuch's bare feet andknew just how he would start.

Torgo glanced back, for a moment the expression on his big round flabby facemore puzzled than anything. Then a slow smile spread. "You're welcome to try.

But you'll be disappointed."

"You bad, Torgo? You think you're bad? You ain't never been out of this dump.

You ain't never seen the real world. Out there is where the bad boys play. Youdon't know bad from dog turds. You ain't bad. You ain't even hard. You're justpig-stupid and mean."

And pretty good at keeping his temper, Azel reflected.

Few who lived in the citadel went in or out. The Herodians knew who they were.

If any got recognized those bastards would realize there was a way through thebarrier, after all. Only Azel and a few other trusted agents came and wentthrough what the barrier's creator had nicknamed the Postern of Fate.

Two of those agents were women who busted their butts doing the groceryshopping and whatnot.

Azel wondered if he really would get aggravated enough with Torgo to take himout. Maybe. If the eunuch kept on with his airs.

Well, whatever. He shut the eunuch out of mind and scanned his surroundings.

An ordinary hallway. Except that it was decked out in enough treasure toransom a platoon of princes. The whole damned citadel was like that. But oldNakar, he was the boss wazoo around Qushmarrah for a long time. And when theyknocked down the temples and busted up the idols he was the kind of guy whomade them pay for the privilege of replacing Gorloch with their candy-ass Aramthe Flame. When they had done that he started taking any damned thing hepleased.

Azel could not figure out why the old boy had let them get away with dumpingGorloch. He knew Nakar had claimed there was no point imposing on jerks whorefused to believe. But he never quite figured out why that mattered.

He had been around, up and down the coast, and even across the sea, out wherethe gods were really bizarre, and he thought he knew one thing about religion: the fact of actual belief did not matter. You had to know how to go throughthe motions and you had to be able to say, "How much?" whenever a priest stuckout his hand and said, "Gimme." That was all.

Azel did not know if he was a believer or not. He had been doing all the rightthings for so long it was all habit. He did know he found the ferociousGorloch a more satisfying deity than Aram with his softhearted, softheaded, otherworldly love and forgive-thy-neighbor crap.

He irked Torgo by chuckling. If he wanted a stand-up, he-man god he ought togo with the Herodian's anonymous deity, who had no other name but God. Thatone was all thunder and lightning and kicking ass. But a goddamned psycho, too. His doctrine was all do what I tell you or die, sucker, and the hell withit's something stupid, or it conflicts with something you've already been toldto do.

Herod had not pressed religious issues in Qushmarrah. Yet. The Herodians werespread thin. If ever they felt secure enough to dispense with theunpredictable Dartar meres it would be Granny bar the door, Qushmarrah you'regoing to get the One True Faith. Or burn.

Azel chuckled again, remembering a scheme he'd bounced off the Genera] three, four years back. It involved having kids-so small any Herodian laying a handon them would get torn apart-go around giving the occupiers chunks of stonewith lots of points and sharp edges.

It would have worked. They would have laughed Herod out of town. But the oldman had said it was undignified to attack a man through his toilet habits.

Crap. You went after your enemies any way you could, and you kicked them whenthey were down.

Azel chuckled again, because that irritated the eunuch. But he cut it off asthey approached the guard at the door of the audience chamber. Time to workhimself up.

A hundred years ago she had been the greatest beauty on the coast, and forthat alone suitors had come to Caldera from as far west as Deoro Etrain, whereOcean hammered and raged against bleak and rocky shores. They had come fromthe east, from far Aquira, Karen, and Bokhar. They had come from over the sea, on ships with sails purple and scarlet and blue the color of heavenstone, fromCathede and Nargon and Barthea. Those princes and lords could have swoonedwhen they saw the reality. They would have taken her with her beauty alone fordowry.

But there was more. Much more. It made them bring great treasures with whichto gift Caldera.

She had been that one girl child in a generation born with a talent forsorcery. That one in a generation whose talent could become a tool more potentthan the genius of any general.

She had had the world at her feet then. And young as she had been, alreadythey had begun to call her the Witch-more because of the way she had toyedwith them than because of her talent. She had led them around, taunting theminto escalating their offers, with no real intention of selling herself off, or of allowing the lords of Caldera to auction her ...

That had been their plan and wish. Gold, power, alliances. Her father himselfhad been one of those she had made excruciatingly uncomfortable, with a cruelcase of boils, when the attempt to sell her was made.

Then the Archimage of Qushmarrah, Nakar, had come to Caldera.

He had not come in style or state. He had brought no gifts or promises.

Already his dread god had been shorn of significance by the fickleQushmarrahan mob. He had only his unassailable citadel and his ruthlessdeathgrip on the political power in Qushmarrah.

He had been half as old as the world even then, though he had looked a fit, lean, virile forty. He had been a darkly handsome man with wavy black hairspotted by a hen's egg of silver above his right eye, an inch and a halfbehind his hairline. His eyes had been dark and magnetic and afire withintrigue.

She had known the moment she met his smoldering gaze.

Dark tales clustered around him like moths fluttering around a lamp. They saidthis. They said that. They said he lived on, young, not because of hissorcery, nor because he was first acolyte to, and favored of, his god, butbecause he had become one of the undead, the devourers of blood and souls.

None of that mattered after that first meeting of eye with eye. None of thatmattered now.

She had aged, but not her hundred years. She looked a well-preserved thirty- five. Little of the impact of her beauty had faded. It remained her mostpotent tool.

It was a tool without a handle or edge when she dealt with Azel. Azel seemedblind or just plain indifferent.

He pushed inside behind Torgo. Torgo's jaw was tight. Azel's taunting hadbegun to reach him.

She steeled herself. Azel would be brash and crude and raw in an effort to puther on the defensive. He would succeed, probably. Because of that absolute, deadly confidence with which he faced everyone-even those able to swat himlike a fly.

She did not know his true name. Her husband had called him Azel, afterGorloch's demonic messenger. Nakar had trusted Azel. Azel was, she believed, the only living being Nakar had trusted without reservation. And even he, majestic and dauntless as a storm in his power, had been a little afraid ofAzel.

The trouble was, Azel never failed to accomplish what he set out to do. Thatmade you uncomfortable when you tried to push him a direction he did not wantto go.

"Good evening, Azel. I understand you have a problem."

"We all got a problem, woman. They're closing in. I had to use my flash packetto get a gang of Dartars off my back today."

She knew where he was going. He'd hinted before that he thought she waspushing the project too hard, that gathering too many subjects too fast wouldcatch the eye of the Herodian commander. "Tell me the circumstances, Azel."

She wanted to stall.

But she had had time to think already, since Torgo had told her Azel insistedon an audience. She had not gotten her mind ordered.

Why did he rattle her so?

Azel told it in his clipped, raw way.

"It was a coincidence, then. Not something to worry about, after all."

"You missed the point, woman."

"Torgo!" Offended by the man's tone, the eunuch had started to move. Azelgrinned. "If I'm blind, Azel, open my eyes. Show me the point I missed."

"I had to use flash to give Dartars the slip. If I wanted to hang on to thekid. I should've killed them. But I couldn't do that without letting go of thebrat."

"I still don't see ..."

"Flash, woman. Flash. You think every guy that hangs out in alleys has got apocket full of flash to throw when the heat closes in?"

"Oh."

"Yeah. It's going to start them wondering. Maybe even wondering why it was sodamned important to hang on to the kid. They're going to start askingquestions. If they get any honest answers they might start seeing patterns.

There's plenty of clues if they pay attention."

"So what would you suggest?"

"Back off awhile. Don't give them anything more to check out. You got thirtykids down there and don't have a notion if one of them isn't the one you want.

Let it ride till you find out."

"No. There are nineteen more on the list, Azel. And it's mathematicallycertain that between five and ten remain unidentified. That's almost as big agroup. Another third of the whole. Every hour we delay is an hour of risk.

It's been a lucky group of children. Only six have died between birth and thepresent. But if the one we want is one that had died or will die before we gethold of him, we end up starting all over with a new group. A group, in fact, for every one that died. How much greater the risks, then, with groups ofyounger children? The thing grows monstrous, Azel."

"How much chance you got of pulling it off if the Herodians figure it out? Ifyou keep us on the street and one of us gets caught? Zippo, woman. Zero.

Zilch. They figure out what's happening they're going to be on you like asnake on shit."

"That terror is less fearsome than the mathematical horrors that come of each additional death, Azel. We will continue the current program."

"The hell we will. I'm not getting myself torn apart by the mob or put to thequestion by Herod. I'm off the case until I decide it's safe to work itagain."

"You've said you believe in the project."

"I do. It's Qushmarrah's last hope. But what does believing in something haveto do with walking off a cliff to hear the splat when you hit bottom? Back off. Take it easy. Let it cool down. And when you go on, give us bettertools."

The anger, born of frustration, grew in her. She fought it. Argument would do no good. Azel never did anything he did not want to do. "Very well. I'll go onwithout you. When you're ready to continue your work Torgo will give you your next assignment."

Azel stared at her till it was impossible to meet his gaze. Then he shook his head in disgust and walked out. Torgo stepped closer. "Did you watch us as we came to the chamber, my lady?"

"I caught part of it, Torgo. You have to ignore it. Don't let him get to you."

"He made threats."

"That's his nature. Forget it."

"Then you don't want anything done about him?"

"Not yet. He could be useful still. We have a long way to go."

"But ..."

"If it becomes necessary to remove him I'll let you know."

Torgo bowed, satisfied for the moment.

She would not send Torgo after Azel. Not unless it was Torgo she wanted dead.

Azel stepped into the vast dark hall that was Gorloch's last bastion in the world. Rites continued to be held there-attended only by the few believers who lived in the citadel. Last rites. A wake for a lost, majestic fury.

The appropriate candles were burning but, it seemed, they could not beat backthe darkness as they had in earlier times. The only real light glowed aroundthe great altar where the sacrifices had been given up to Gorloch. But eventhat light had faded. It had not been fed for six years. The glow no longerbeat back the night enough to reveal the great idol that looked down upon all.

Azel stirred himself, strode forward. His heels clicked upon the basalt floor.

Echoes bounded and rebounded and mixed till they sounded like the noise madeby the wings of a flight of bats.

Azel paused beyond the glow, considered the tableau frozen before him.

Nakar still lay arched backward over the altar, Ala-eh-din Beyh's enchanteddagger in his heart. One hand gripped the altar for leverage. The other was aclaw at the end of an extended arm, now clamped upon air as once it had beenclamped upon the Herodian sorcerer-hero's throat. Ala-eh-din Beyh lay on his side at Nakar's feet, still locked in the stance of a man using both hands todrive a blade into an enemy's heart while trying to lean back from a handtearing at his throat.

All the Witch's power had been able to do only that much to separate them. Theenchantment into which she had put them at death was that powerful.

Azel came to view the tableau each time he visited the citadel. Each time he came the darkness seemed to have closed in a little more.

If it devoured the glow entirely would it be too late for the project? Toolate for Qushmarrah?

Was the Witch so driven because she was racing against the darkness?

As he did each time he came, Azel genuflected slightly-but whether to Nakar, the altar, or to the god in the darkness beyond, even he could not have said.

Then he turned and left that place, and went out through the Postern of Fateinto the real world of a Qushmarrah sprawled helpless at the feet of herconquerors.

Bel-Sidek got the General seated at his table only moments before the first ofthe "nephews" arrived. The old man had called forth surprising reserves ofwill and had banished the appearance of ill health. He almost looked like theGeneral of old.

That first to arrive was "King" Dabdahd, who ran the Astan quarter. King wasthe least important of the guests expected. No trouble came out of the Astan.

King was the General's man.

Qushmarrah within the wall was divided into seven "quarters": the Shu, theShen, the Tro, and the Hahr (the original four quarters of the "Old City"), the Astan, the Minisia, and the waterfront. Bel-Sidek and the General ran thewaterfront and the Shu. The troublesome quarter, the Hahr, belonged to oneOrtbal Sagdet.

There were other quarters beyond the wall but they weren't even considered NewCity. They did not interest bel-Sidek or the General. The General's authorityextended only to the wall.

Bel-Sidek posted himself at the door, to greet the General's heirs as theyarrived.

"Good evening, King," the General said. "Make yourself comfortable. You'reseveral minutes early." His tone said he understood that meant King hadsomething to say before the others arrived-and he did not approve.

King always arrived early. King always had something to say about the others.

He was a petty, spiteful, back-stabbing, exasperating man working on gettinghimself designated heir apparent to a sick old man.

He had his good side, his uses, his talents, not the least of which was hisability to swim in the social waters inhabited by the big fish of the Herodianoccupation. His courage he had proven at Dak-es-Souetta.

Dabdahd said, "I saw Sagdet on my way here. He said he wouldn't be coming."

"Indeed? And why not?"

King did look chagrined as he said, "You know I've never been shy aboutexpressing my opinion of Sagdet, nor reluctant to report his shortcomings andpecadillos, but tonight I'll restrict myself to the observation that OrtbalSagdet no longer feels he is bound by your authority. Maybe Salom Edgit willstate it for him."

Dabdahd talked that way. Like he was making speeches he had rehearsed. Bel- Sidek thought he probably had.

Salom Edgit ran the Tro and was Sagdet's crony. His record at Dak-es-Souettawas a match for the best, but he had changed since then. Bel-Sidek thought ofhim as an onion rotting slowly from the heart outward, layer by layer.

Salom Edgit arrived only moments after King finished. He looked at the manfrom the Astan and seemed disappointed. Bel-Sidek suspected he'd had somethinghe'd wanted to say before the others arrived, too.

Bel-Sidek considered the two. Dabdahd was a tall man but slim, courageousenough but small at heart. Edgit was a slight man, short, still tough andgutsy, but somehow he had lost the vision that had breathed life into theLiving. His autonomy had died. He seemed to have become a chameleon, changingto look more and more like Ortbal Sagdet.

Carza and Zenobel arrived together. Bel-Sidek was sure that was significant.

Those two had no use for one another. The only thing they had in common wastheir dedication to the cause. Each bordered on being a fanatic. But theydisagreed fundamentally on strategy.

Zenobel wanted to build a strong secret army of patriots that could be wieldedin one furious hammer stroke. In the Shen he was doing things his way. TheShen was as quiet and trustworthy as the Astan.

Carza's vision was apocalyptic. He wanted to bring down the fire. He wanted totemper Qushmarrah in a holocaust that would rid the city of human dross andconsume the invaders. He did not expect to survive the fire himself.

He was willing to pay the price.

The General was not.

Carza was always a moment of frustration short of breaking away and raisingthe standard of holy war.

The General made a sign indicating that bel-Sidek should remain where he was.

When the newcomers had settled, he said, "Disturbing events in the Hahr twodays ago, khadifas." The strength of his voice surprised everyone. "Eighteensoldiers identified by citizens and executed by the Dartars."

Salom Edgit said, "The traitors will be rooted out and slaughtered."

"No. They will not. They were driven to it. When a man's supposed guardianbecomes more savage and rapacious than his avowed enemies, what is he to do? Ihave investigated, Salom. The people of the Hahr have been provoked beyondendurance. There will be no reprisals."

Edgit snapped, "We let a bunch of shopkeepers and artisans get away withbetraying us? The policy from the beginning has been ..."

"There will be no reprisals, Salom. None. The Living have heard what thosepeople were saying. There will be no more extortion. Those who fail to heedthis directive will be replaced. Am I clear?"

Edgit fumed. Twice he started to speak, thought better of it.

After a half minute of silence, during which bel-Sidek tortured himself tryingto understand how the old man could have probed events in the Hahr, theGeneral said, "Let us consider al-Akla's motives for doing what he did.

Eighteen soldiers taken and executed without questioning. The firstimplication is obvious. He wishes to place his men in a favorable light whilesparing the consciences of those who denounced them.

"But the Eagle flies high and far. His vision isn't that simple. His actioncould suggest that he had no need to question those men because he alreadyknew everything they could have told him. An unpleasant supposition butplausible considering the way things are run in the Hahr.

"Be still, Salom. This senile old man, who doesn't have the grace to die andleave you to the spoils, isn't finished."

Bel-Sidek watched carefully as Edgit fought the temper for which he was wellknown. Bel-Sidek wondered, and expected Salom was wondering, if the old manwasn't trying to provoke an outburst.

The General continued, "What message was Fa'tad sending us when he killed ourmen? What else is in his mind? The Eagle soars on the high wind, aboveeveryone and everything, but he is also like the sea. He has dark deeps, andmany secrets lie hidden within them. We don't know what surprises mightsurface from them."

No one said a word, though the General let silence expand till it became arushing cold wind pouring through the nighted and frightened hollows in everyheart.

"Carza. Have you surrendered? Have we lost Qushmarrah forever? Have we come tothe day of every man for himself?"

"No sir."

"Bel-Sidek?"

"I have a leg and two arms left. Sir."

"Zenobal?"

"There is no defeat, General."

"King?"

"I am among the living."

"Yes. As am I, to the despair of some. But I will not last much longer. I donot need to last. We are close to an event that will make this the year of Qushmarrah's delivery. We in the active organization need only buy time."

For the first time since the meet's commencement the General suffered a spasm that was too much for will to control. Bel-Sidek straightened, poised to help if summoned.

But it passed.

One day it would not.

"These are my commands. No member shall extort anything-whether monies, goods, or anything else-from any citizen of Qushmarrah. None of the Living shall participate in gangsterism or hooliganism in any form. Anyone guilty will discover that while the lion is old he has a tooth or two left. That is all for tonight. Tomorrow night we will meet again. The khadifa of the Hahr will join us." Salom Edgit concealed surprise ineffectually. Bel-Sidek watched his mouth twitch with words aching to be free, that dared not be spoken. The General had asserted his primacy successfully. For the moment.

As Edgit approached the door, the General said, "Salom, I'll want your answer tomorrow night." "Answer, sir?"

"To the question 'Is Salom Edgit a thief or a soldier?'"

The old man could barely discern movement as bel-Sidek shut the door. "How did I do, Khadifa?" "Superbly, sir. But I'm concerned about the physical price you paid. We'd better get you to bed."

The body wanted nothing more. But, "The work isn't finished. Bring writing materials."

Bel-Sidek did as he was instructed, started to settle to take dictation.

"No. I will do this myself. Put the things here before me."

Bel-Sidek obliged again, retreated to the far end of the room. He understood.

The old man inscribed his message with painstaking effort, making no mistakes. He amazed himself, what with his shaking hands and aching flesh. He sanded the ink, folded the paper, inscribed a solitary character on the outside.

"Now you can put me to bed. Then take that to Muma's hostelry. Give it to Muma himself. No one else. Insist. Then go spend the night with your widowed friend." He did not have to caution bel-Sidek against prying. The khadifa would deliver the message unopened. "Should we risk having you stay here alone after so much exertion?"

"We'll risk it, Khadifa. And I won't be alone long."

That was as much as bel-Sidek needed to know.

Aaron sat there looking at Naszif, mind void of conversation. Across the roomReyha burbled in Laella's arms. Naszifs face was pallid and wooden. He hadgotten through the amenities by rote. Aaron doubted that he knew who hisguests were.

A part of Aaron insisted that Naszif deserved any misfortune Aram handed him.

Another part-the part that so loved Arif and Stafa-empathized. Zouki wasNaszifs only son. The only one he would ever have by Reyha. And under Herodianlaw he could not put her aside, nor could he take a second wife.

Under Herodian law, which would not have been in place had the Seven Towersheld a few more days.

"Thus do the Fates conspire to render justice," Aaron muttered. Naszifs eyesunglazed for a moment, but he just looked puzzled, like a man who had heard aninexplicable sound. Then he slipped away into silent torment.

Laella sped him a look of appeal. It said, Do something! Say something!

Say what? That he was glad it was Naszif who had the pain? Reyha was herfriend. He had brought her so she could do what she could do. More she had noright to ask.

For all Naszif was a traitor and a bootlicker, though, Aaron had to admit thathe cared for his wife and son. Strongly. And in that care, perhaps, the seedsof treason might have found root. Aaron recalled Naszifs growing distress asReyha's day had approached. Maybe he had convinced himself that the Herodianswould let him run to Reyha if he opened the tower before her time.

Men had done meaner things for reasons less exalted than love.

Aaron swallowed. His throat had gone dry. Through that aridity he forced,

"They found two children that were stolen. Last week. In the Hahr. Where GoatCreek runs out of that boggy ground they're always talking about filling butnever get around to doing anything about."

Naszif began to show signs of interest. Laella sped Aaron a look of gratitude.

He continued, "The kids were all right. Healthy. Well fed. Decently clothed.

They just didn't remember anything."

"Where did you hear that, Aaron? When?" Suddenly, Naszif was all attention.

"If there was news like that I think I would have heard."

"I heard it yesterday at work. From this old man they call Billygoat. He's acaulker. He lives across from where they found the kids."

Naszifs intensity disturbed Aaron. He had tossed the incident out as a crumbof hope, not because he felt it meant anything. Concerned though he was aboutArif, he had given the story no weight. In a city the size of Qushmarrahchildren would be stolen and a few would turn up again.

"How could something as important as that happen and the news not be all overthe city, Aaron?"

"Be reasonable. Because it isn't news. You and me, we got a reason to care.

Most people don't. Only reason Billygoat told me was I was fussing about Arifand he wanted to cheer me up."

"But if there were two, maybe there were more. Maybe a lot. And nobody eversaid anything."

"That's possible. Good news don't travel like bad news does." Aaron noted thatReyha had stopped sobbing and was listening, face alight with irrational hope.

Naszif said, "I'm going to look into it. I'm going to ask around. Maybethere's something going on."

Aaron wondered what he had started. All he'd wanted was to lend a little support.

Laella said, "Those Dartars that tried to get Zouki back. They seemed to thinkthe Living did it."

Aaron sighed. He had known that would come. Sooner or later. When Laella gotan idea in her head she could hang on as long as her mother.

That's absurd," Naszif said.

"How do you know?"

Aaron had not repeated bel-Sidek's assurances for Laella, though she, likeeveryone in the neighborhood, suspected that the cripple was connected withthe Living and might even be important. She did not need more ammunition to becast into the volleys of gossip flying around the neighborhood.

"I just know," Naszif said, and there was a smugness to his declaration thatset Aaron's teeth on edge, that hurled a moral dilemma into his face like abucket of lava.

Naszif among the Living? Naszif, who might have been a tool of Herod oncebefore ...

Suddenly, like lightning's strike, there were a thousand questions to bedebated between himself and the ceiling beams. It was going to be a long andsleepless night.

His abrupt withdrawal excited no interest. Naszif was preoccupied.

Laella did look at him oddly, though. She would have questions. Whether toanswer would be the first decision. If so, then he would have to decide howmuch he dared reveal ...

Zouki managed to cry himself into a shallow, fitful, whimpering sleep, interrupted often by the outbreak of nightmare from one of the other children in the cage.

Azel strode into Muma's Place with no thoughts beyond getting a decent meal and a hot bath, not necessarily in that order. The bath was overdue. Then a long sleep. Tomorrow was soon enough to decide what he'd do with the week or so he would let the Witch stew. Ride up to the Elephant Rocks country and do some hunting? Too much like work.

Maybe to al-Quarda territory to fish in the sinkholes there. Whatever, wherever, someplace alone. He needed to get away from people and all the chains of duty, honor, loyalty, with which they tried to bind him, trying to jerk him this way and that. He needed to go somewhere where every step was not a step on a tightrope. He picked a table out of the way. It was late enough for the place to be quiet and offer him a choice of seating.

Maybe he ought to let her roast for two weeks. Or even a month. She needed dead time to make her think, time to understand that she was not letting reason be her guide. Azel grew wary the instant he spotted Muma. Muma no longer waited tables. Muma no longer stayed awake till this unholy hour. He glanced around carefully, looking for that odd late patron who took special notice of Muma's remarkable behavior. Anyone paying special attention did so with superbly feigned indifference.

Muma came to Azel's table.

"Muma."

"Azel." The proprietor invited himself to sit.

"You're up late."

"Got dragged out of a warm bed."

"I never have liked dropping in here late and finding you up. It's like coming home and finding vultures perched on the roof trees. You know the news ain't going to be good."

"Uhm." "What is it this time?"

"What would it be? A message." Palm flat on the table, Muma pushed something across. "You know the sign." That was not a question.

"Yeah. How old is it?"

"Half an hour, tops. Not stinking yet at all."

"Hmph! Time to get some food down, then."

"You know the sign."

"I got to take time to read the damned thing, don't I?" "I suppose. What doyou want?"

"Something portable. This is bound to tell me to go somewhere and do somethingtwo hours before it was written."

"Be right back with something." Muma hoisted himself up and waddled away.

Azel read the message. Come to me as soon as you receive this. There was nosignature.

Elegantly simple. Nothing there to tell Herodian or Dartar a thing. Even thesign on the outside, a crudely drawn palm sparrow, had no obvious or suspectmeaning or symbolism. If it fell into enemy hands it was unlikely to exciteany interest, unless by circumstance.

Muma came back with a loaf and a lump of a vigorous goafs-milk cheese. Azel muttered, "It must be my day for gourmet dining." "You're going out?"

"Of course. What else? Are your sons awake? I don't see any trouble around, but it's the kind you don't see that catches you up."

"They're awake. I told them. They'll cover you." Meaning anyone who tried tofollow him would be in for some major distress.

Azel stood, handed a coin across, collected his provender. "Later, Muma."

"Good luck."

"With him I may need it."

The night had grown cool and clammy. Dew had started to form. Down nearer theharbor it would be getting foggy. The air was still as death. His heels sentechoes frolicking through the night. He did not sense anyone following him. Hesaw no sign of Muma's sons. But they were good. They would not be seen, unlessby a watcher a moment before the risks of his trade caught up.

Nevertheless, Azel took his usual detour through the Shu maze, where the onlyway a follower could stay on him would be by sorcery. He knew the maze wellenough to walk it eyes closed at midnight.

In places it was just as dark at noon.

He left the maze for Char Street through the same alleyway he had used thatafternoon. Fog had gotten that far up the hill already. He turned right.

And three steps later nearly collided with a man and woman coming downhill. Hemuttered an apology as, startled, they dodged around him. His own damnedfault, walking on cat feet, listening for footsteps behind him and paying noattention at all to the path ahead. He followed their hasty footsteps andurgent, whispered reassurances without turning his head. He let his heels falllike those of an honest man so they would know he hadn't doubled back on them.

He walked a hundred yards past his destination, then crossed Char Street andreturned downhill on quiet feet. A hundred yards below his destination he crossed again and walked uphill. There was no sign of the couple he hadstartled. Nor were there any of the watchers against whom his maneuver wasdirected. He had not expected any, but when you had an al-Akla and a Cadofinagling on the occupier's side you took precautions.

He glided to the door and inside with serpentine grace.

Salom Edgit had not gone home after leaving the General, though hislieutenants were there awaiting his report. Instead, he had gone a half mileout of his way, to an upthrust of rock called the Parrot's Beak by most butremembered as the Kraken's Beak by a few of the old folks. It was supposed tobe haunted by the shades of eight brothers who had been murdered there in theyear of the city's founding.

Salom had been fleeing to the Parrot's Beak for time out to think for as longas he could remember. If ghosts there were, they accepted him. He'd never beendiscommoded by a supernatural intervention.

He perched on the tip of the Beak and without focusing on anything, stared outat what could be seen of Qushmarrah by starlight. A tide of mist was risingfrom the harbor.

He spent an hour there,then went off down into the Hahr.

Salom hammered till Ortbal's man opened up. "Yes, Khad-ifa?"

"I need to see Ortbal."

"His Lordship is sleeping, sir."

"His Lordship? You go tell Ortbal to get his fat royal butt up before ...

Never mind. I'll tell him myself. His Lordship. Aram have mercy on fools." Hepushed past the protesting batman, stamped through the house. It had severalstoreys but Ortbal, being lazy, seldom left the ground floor. He noted thatthe house, like Ortbal himself, had begun to take on airs. He kicked openSagdet's bedroom door.

There was light aplenty inside. Ortbal was at his pleasures.

"You! Out!" Salom snapped at the woman.

She fled like a whipped dog.

Ortbal reddened, but he restrained his anger. Salom Edgit was not the kind ofman who busted in on people. And he was mad as hell. You were careful withSalom when his temper was up. He was unpredictable. Dangerous. Ortbal Sagdetwas not the sort to put himself at risk. "You're upset, Salom."

"Damned right, I'm upset. Look at you! ... Yes. I'm upset. I'm overreacting.

I know it and I can't stop."

"Rough meeting?" The slightest concern edged Sagdet's voice.

"You should have been there."

"I was making a statement by staying away."

"Your statement was heard, understood, and dismissed as trivial. That wasn't ablind, senile, dying old man, Ortbal. That was the General and he was incharge every second. He did the talking. Not a word got spoken that he didn'task for. He didn't ask, he didn't argue, he just told. And he knew abouteverything that's been going on."

"King."

"No. More than King."

"You'd better give me the details." Sagdet's concern was plain now.

Salom told it. Sagdet interjected questions as he progressed.

"No reprisals at all?"

"Those were his orders."

"My people are going to be real irritated about that."

"I don't think he cares, Ortbal. You know that? I don't think he's concerned about your ..." "Stuff the moralizing and get on with it." And a minute later, "Did he say how I'm supposed to raise operating funds?"

"If the old man was here he'd just look at this bordello and tell you he lives where he lives."

"He would. The old bastard expects us all to live like vermin."

And later, Sagdet exploded with incredulity. "He said I'd be there tomorrow night?" "He did. And you'd better show. You miscalculated your time and started your break too early. You'd better back off. Let time finish its work."

"Time, huh?"

Ortbal asked several questions. Then, "What did he hit you with, old friend?"

"He told me I had to decide if I was a thief or a soldier."

"And you've made up your mind, haven't you? You still buy this foolishness called the Living. After six years of Herodian occupation you still think that crazy old man can do what armies couldn't."

"That isn't the question, Ortbal. I don't know if he can do it or not.

Probably not. That doesn't matter. He told me to decide if I'm a thief or a soldier. I'm not a thief. I came here because I owe you the debts of friendship. I had to caution you. I've acquitted my obligation." "Probably expected you to run straight here, too. Twisted your tail just so and here you came."

"Maybe."

"So we come to a parting of roads. If I don't show up tomorrow night. Whatwill he do if I don't show?"

"I don't know."

"What can he do?"

"You take that attitude you might find out. He for sure won't sit still."

"So I'd better do some thinking."

"Will you be there?"

"You'll find that out when you walk in the door, Salom." Sagdet smiled. Thatonly made his pudgy face look malicious. Edgit knew he had no intention ofshowing.

Azel paused to lengthen the wick in the little lamp inside the door. A voicecroaked, "I'm in bed."

Azel stepped into the bedroom. The old man looked terrible. He set the lampdown. "You were waiting? You were that confident I would get your messageright away?"

"No. I sleep a lot but I'm a very light sleeper. You woke me when you openedthe door."

Azel felt he had not made enough noise to disturb a mouse. "I'll have tolighten my step."

"I have very good ears. Was that you with the boy in the alley today?"

"It was. It was a close thing."

"The Dartars were so interested Fa'tad himself came out to poke around."

Azel was astonished. "Really?"

"Yes. You be careful. That man has a nose better than my ears. Lay off for awhile. You don't have to round up the whole population overnight."

"Tell it to the Witch. I tried. She's got a thirty-brat backlog and it takesthree days to make sure each one isn't the one she's looking for. But shewon't slow down. She's gotten obsessed with the idea that she's got to get allthe kids rounded up before any of them kick off. Like she's sure that if evenone of them croaks that'll be the one she wants and she'll have to do the whole damned thing over again."

"Behind another five- or six-year wait. I can understand her anxiety. I shareit. I won't live that long and I'd like to see results before I go. But notnegative results, which is what we'll get if Cado or Fa'tad catches on.

Fa'tad's behavior today indicates that caution is necessary. Would it do anygood if I were to admonish her myself?"

"No. Her deal with us is a marriage of convenience. She's only interested ingetting what she wants."

"Any suggestions?"

Azel answered with an uncharacteristic shrug. "I walked out. For the time being. That'll slow her down."

"But she has other help."

"Yeah. Two other guys."

"Are they any good? Who are they?"

"They're good. Not as good as me, but good. One is named Sadat Agmed. He's in it for the money. The other is Ishabal bel-Shaduk."

"Comes of religious stock, no doubt."

"Very. He's the fanatic."

"The other sounds Dartar."

"His father was. He hates them."

"Could you persuade them to lay off for a while, too?"

"I doubt it. I'm not supposed to know who they are."

"I'll think about the problem. Anything else? Anything from Cado's direction?"

"He's expecting a new civil governor any day now."

The General smiled. A rare event. "That would be what? The eighth since the conquest?" "Ninth. They just send people they'd rather not have around but don't dare kill in Herod." "And the Living take the blame." "Or harvest the credit. Was there some reason you sent for me?" "The problem in the Hahr has become critical. As I feared. Quick action now appears to be the only long-term solution."

"Ah?"

"This is a difficult thing."

"Is it? How soon do you need it?"

"Sunset tomorrow at the latest. But the sooner the better."

"That's tight."

"It will become difficult after that time. I thought you were going to scout the terrain should action become necessary."

"I did."

"Can you manage?"

"If I must."

"You must. Will you need help?"

"No."

"Let me know when it's done."

"Right." Azel walked away from the old man. He tapped the lamp wick down andput it back where he had found it. Then he went out into the fog. He did acareful circuit to make sure no watcher had taken station while he was inside.

He believed in being careful.

Bel-Sidek stood staring out at the fog that covered most of Qushmarrah. Hecould not see much. On a night with a moon, that fog would have stretched likea sprawl of silvery carpet from which parts of buildings grew. To his right, on a slightly higher elevation, the blot of the citadel of Nakar theAbomination masked the stars. Funny. Six years and still a black odor leakedout of the place.

The Witch and her crew were still in there, still holding out, untouchablebehind the barrier only Ala-eh-din Beyh had been able to penetrate. How thehell did they survive in there?

One popular theory held that they hadn't. It contended that the Witch and allof Nakar's people had killed themselves after their master's fall.

Bel-Sidek did not believe that, though he had no evidence to the contrary.

From behind him Meryel asked, "Is it the old man?"

Without turning, he replied, "How did you know?"

"You only brood when you're troubled by someone you love. I think you've madeyour peace with yourself about your son and your wife."

Bel-Sidek's son, Hastra, was another of those who had not come home from Dakes- Souetta. As Meryel's husband had not. Hastra, his only child, the star ofhis heart. For years he had brooded the what-ifs. What if there had been noDartar treachery at Dak-es-Souetta? Win or lose, would the poisonous hatredstill blacken his blood? Was he, like so many men he knew, hanging everything on the horns of the Dartar demon, so to evade taking anyresponsibility that was his own? He'd never worked that out, only come torealize that the brooding was as pathetic and pointless as the howling of adog over the still form of a fallen master.

The wife was another story. The wife had nothing to do with win or lose orDartar treachery. The woman, whose very name he strove to drive from his mind, had deserted him almost before his wounds had healed. With the connivance and blessing of her family. Almost unheard-of in Qushmarrah, a dowry abandoned.

But they'd had an eye for the main chance. And who wanted a cripple in the family? Political or physical?

"There's you," bel-Sidek said.

"I never give you cause to brood."

True. Quite true.

The wife had run to one of the new breed of Qushmarrahans, that the Herodianswere making over in their own image. The man had adopted all the approveddress and manners and had taken the conquering god for his own. And he hadprospered, collaborating with the army of occupation. And then he had died ofan inability to breathe, for which bel-Sidek had had no responsibility at all.

He suspected the General had given the order. He had not asked, and neverwould.

"Is it something you want to talk about?"

"I don't think so." Out there, beneath that fog, men were moving. Some werevillains and some were soldiers of the Living. There would be bodies in themorning. And who would know which had been slain by whom? The General, perhaps.

Let Fa'tad play his transparent games and take away the day. The nightbelonged to the old order, and would come out of the shadows someday soon.

"Maybe I do want to talk," he said. He closed the filigreed doors to thebalcony, turned to face his companion.

Meryel was seven years older than he. Her skin was too dark and her featurestoo coarse for her ever to have been thought beautiful. Or even pretty. Agenerous dowry had helped her marry well.

She was too short and too fat and dressed with the eye for style of agoatherd. She drank rivers of date wine, proscribed by both Aram and theHerodians' tempestuous god. She was, invariably, inevitably, an embarrassmentin public. She said the wrong things at the wrong times and burst into gigglesin the wrong places.

She was his best friend.

"He's shutting me out. More and more, he's hiding things from me. He didn'tused to send me away when he wanted to meet with somebody. But the last sixmonths ..."

"You distrust his reasons?"

"No."

"Does he distrust you?"

"No. Of course not. How could he and live with me?"

"You don't think it's the normal course of security?"

"No."

"You do talk where you shouldn't."

Bel-Sidek looked at her sharply.

"Here. To me."

"I'm sure you've been checked every way he can imagine." He knew she had, knew the General trusted her almost as much as he trusted her himself.

"Should I be flattered? Is it just that your feelings are hurt, then?"

"No. Maybe. I guess that's part of it. But I'm worried for him, too."

"And have you considered the chance that his ego is involved, too?"

"How so?"

"I don't know. I don't know what he's up to. I do know he thinks enough of you to have made you his adjutant. Of all those who would have taken it. To me that says he values your opinion. Maybe that's why he's shutting you out." "I don't follow that."

"He's a sick old man. He doesn't have much time. He knows that. He's desperate for results before he goes. Maybe he has a scheme he knows you wouldn't approve." "That's possible."

She really was quite a remarkable woman, so inept in some ways and so damnably competent in others. In a culture wholly dominated by males she had established her independence, if not equality. She had managed that because she understood money, power, and the power of money.

The one truly daring thing she had done was, on hearing the first grim whispers from Dak-es-Souetta, to assume that her husband was among the dead.

She had moved instantly to assume an iron grip on both his fortune and her dowry, and had not been the slightest bit hesitant to use force and terror to stay the claims of both families. They said she had had her own father beaten. And yet ... she could not cope in the society into which her wealth had propelled her.

Nor did she care, apparently. Apparently all she wanted was the power to make half the human race leave her alone. Amazing contradictions these days, bel-Sidek reflected. Meryel was a boil on the face of all the old man held holy, yet he must approve of her, if not for bel-Sidek's sake, then for the sake of the coffers of the Living. She was one of the movement's strongest supporters. What a tangle of ethics and traditions had come out of one day's dying.

"That could explain it," bel-Sidek admitted. "But I don't like it."

"Of course you don't. If you were going to like it you'd know everything there was to know already. Wouldn't you?"

"I suppose." He opened the filigreed doors and stepped out onto the balcony.

Qushmarrah had not changed in his absence. The tide of fog had risen a littlehigher, that was all. The air was so damnably still that the boundary betweenfog and not-fog was as sharp as a saber's edge. As he watched, a man camestriding up out of it like some thing of dark legend marching out of the mistsof nightmare.

What a turn of mind tonight, he thought. The man was probably a baker on hisway to work.

Meryel said, "Since you aren't in a mood for anything else, why not talkbusiness? I have two ships coming in from Benagra. I'll need reliable men tounload them."

It was how they had come to meet. He was khadifa of the waterfront. She hadstrong interests in shipping, gently helped to grow by the gentlemen of theLiving. Her captains imported the arms that dared not be smithed anywhere inQushmarrah.

As Azel strode up out of the fog he was thinking that there was still a chancehe could get some sleep tonight, but he'd have to forget about getting awayfor any fishing or hunting. He had been out of touch in several directions andit looked like things were going to happen. A week away and he might return toa chaos he could not unravel.

He glanced at the hulking blot of the citadel, wondered if the Witch wasgetting any sleep tonight. Probably. She thought she was like the citadelitself: above the dirt and turmoil of Qushmarrah.

She might end up learning the hard way.

He crested the hill, putting the harbor side behind him. Ahead lay the Hahr, the most prosperous quarter of the Old City. Behind lay the Shu, the poorestand most densely populated quarter, where sons had stacked homes beside andatop those of their fathers till half the quarter was like some enormous madmud daubers' nest where anyone who lived off the thoroughfares first had toclimb up to the sunlight and cross the rooftops in order to reach a street.

The labyrinth underlay it all, sometimes open all the way to the sky, moreoften built over and now with old doorways sealed lest doom slip up by thatroute. The maze was so deadly that even the most desperate homeless seldomstole in for shelter. That territory belonged to the boldest of the bad boys.

Azel had met people in there who made him nervous. Weird people. Crazy people.

People you had to deal with harshly to get your message across. And some whojust could not learn.

Azel had grown up in the Shu. At seven he had been orphaned and left homeless.

He did not remember much about his parents except that his mother had criedall the time and his father had yelled almost as much and had beaten them alla lot. He had a notion that it might have been he who had set the fire thatconsumed them-except that he had an equally fuzzy recollection of his brothergiving the old man fifteen or twenty good ones to the head with a hammerbefore the fire.

He hadn't seen his brother since.

There was nothing he wanted to remember from those days, no little heirloom hecarried around and treasured.

At fourteen he had gone to sea and had gotten to know most of the ports aroundthe rim of the sea. He had survived them all and most of them had survived him. At twenty-one he had returned to Qushmarrah.

It had not been long before he had fallen in with the remnants of the Gorlochcult. Its grim philosophy appealed to him, though he took from it only whatsuited him and discarded the rest. He was not weak. He had no higher god thanhimself.

Soon he caught the eye of the High Priest, Nakar. The sorcerer gave him oddjobs. He handled them swiftly, efficiently, no matter how difficult or cruel.

In a moment of humor Nakar had begun calling him Azel after the demon whocarried Gorloch's messages to the living world. Azel the Destroyer.

Never did he commit himself to the god or to the man. Not entirely. Azel couldnot give himself wholly to anyone but Azel.

He had missed Dak-es-Souetta. He hadn't been trapped in any of the towers atHarak Pass. He hadn't participated in the rout on the Plain of Chordan nor hadhe been there for the hopeless defense of Qushmarrah after the pride of heryouth and manhood had been slaughtered or scattered, chaff driven by the hotbreath of Death.

His absence did not shame him. It would not have shamed him had he done nothing for the city that had done nothing for him. He knew nothing aboutshame. But he had in fact been doing something. He had been in Agadar, westalong the coast, where the Herodian armies had landed. His few carefullystruck blows against Herodian commanders had-unfortunately, as it haddeveloped-delayed the invading armies the month necessary for Fa'tad al-Aklato gather his tribal warriors and race to Dak-es-Souetta.

Thus do the Fates conspire.

Azel paused across the street from the house that was his destination. Almostthe instant his feet stopped moving the door opened over there. Azel easedback into deeper shadow.

Could it be?

Of course not. The Fates neither loved him so well nor hated Sagdet so much.

He sank down onto his heels, tucked his hands in, turned his face down, andwatched under his brows. The man passed within ten feet without seeing him.

It was the one called Edgit. Perhaps the old man would want to know that hehad been here.

Azel moved almost before Edgit was out of sight. He had scouted the house. Thebest way in was through the front door. If he got there quickly whoever hadlet Edgit out might think the guest had returned for something.

He knocked. In seconds the door opened. An irritated voice started to say,

"His Lordship ..."

Azel shot his left hand to the man's throat, gripped. He brought his right around in a hook to the temple. A brass knuckleduster took the impact. The mansagged.

Azel lowered him to the floor, easing him out of the way of the door, which heclosed but did not latch. Quickly, but with care because he did not know theinterior layout, he passed through the house to the back, then to the eastside, to unlatch the doors there and open alternate avenues of retreat. Onlythen did he approach the one room from which sounds of life could be heard.

The door was not latched. And the sounds were what he'd suspected them to be: those of a man and woman rutting.

Gorloch be praised! Or the Fates, if it be deserved. The woman was astride, facing away, and the man had his eyes closed. Azel slipped into the room. Hepicked up a discarded sash as he crossed the room, wrapped one end around hisleft hand, let the other fall free. The woman sensed his approach in the laststep, started to turn. His blow stilled her curiosity before she caught aglimpse of him No stopping the man from seeing him and loosing a startled, squeaking, "You!

What the hell are you doing?" as he thrashed out of his entanglement with thewoman and started to flee on all fours. "Who sent you? The General? Is hetrying to scare me? I don't have to put up with this!"

Fat jiggled olive skin. Absurd broad buttocks humped and swayed. He gainedground. He reached the corner where Azel wanted him, scrabbled at the walls toget to his feet, spun with a mouth full of bluster and threats.

None of which got spoken.

"Oh, Aram! You mean it! Damn it, man... . I'll back down. Tell him! I'll doit his way. You don't have to do this! We can deal!" He raised pudgy hands, pushed at the air. "Don't! What do you want? I've got money... . Please?"

Azel was close enough. Leaving one imaginary opening to his right, he feintedwith the sash in his left hand.

Sagdet darted for the perceived opening.

Azel's fist smashed into the side of his head. He spun against the wall.

Before Sagdet could recover his wits Azel had the sash around his neck and aknee in the middle of his back.

Sagdet struggled, as any dying thing must, but his efforts only served to puthim facedown on the floor, where his assailant had a greater advantage. Oncethere he could do nothing but paw and claw and pound the stolen carpet againstwhich he was being crushed.

Azel felt the body shudder, smelled the stench as sphincters relaxed. Sagdetmust have had an abominable diet. He held on for a count of another twenty, then knotted the sash in place.

He went to the woman, touched her throat. Her pulse was strong and regular.

Good. None should be hurt who had not earned it.

He walked a reverse course through the house, leaving the side and back doorsopen wide. He checked the pulse of the man he had left inside the front door, found it a little ragged but not dangerously so. He looked outside carefullybefore he departed. Leaving the front door standing open, too.

It would not be long before thieves accepted the invitation and swept to theplunder, obliterating completely the reality of what had happened.

The General wakened to the whisper of the street door. The light of the lampmoved across the outer room. "Is that you?"

"Yes."

"Back already?"

"Yes."

"It's done?"

"It's done. The man Edgit was leaving as I arrived."

Something stirred in the old man's innards, settled in the pit of his gut liketen pounds of hot, poisonous sand. He could not become accustomed to orderingexecutions. "Good, then."

The lamp moved away, back toward the street door. "He promised that he'd mendhis ways. That he'd never do it again."

The old man listened to the door close, perhaps shutting him off from half athought. What the hell had the man meant?

That had not been a taunt, nor an accusation, nor even a bald statement offact. It had had an odor of admonition about it, a smell of the cautionaryparable.

The mass in his gut grew heavier.

He drifted off to sleep without having figured it out.

Aaron tore chunks off a sheet of unleavened bread and used them to dip bitesof whatever it was that Mish had made for breakfast. He did not notice that the bread had been burned on one side or that the rest of the meal could not be identified even by someone paying close attention. He barely noticed whatMish was doing while Laella still slept.

After the late night with Reyha and Naszif they had come home to find Stafarestless and whiny with a mild fever and stubbornly insisting that he had notbeen weaned.

Aaron thought Laella had made a mistake nursing the boy as long as she had butthat was not on his mind. Nor was he preoccupied with the task that faced himat work. He had not built and set a mast step before, but it was just a job ofcarpentry and he had faith in his skills as a carpenter.

No. His preoccupation remained Naszif and what, if anything, to do about him.

And he knew he had come to an impasse because he was unable to remove himselffrom the situation far enough to view it dispassionately. He could notdiscern, much less untangle, his chains of personal and moral and patrioticobligation. If such existed. He was not sure they did.

It all depended, first, upon the depth of his conviction that Naszif hadopened that hidden postern. If the accusation was mere prejudice, if there wasdoubt about the guilt, if someone else had been the malefactor, then there wasno problem. Naszif could be ignored.

But if Naszif was guilty, then the Living might be clutching an asp to itsbosom.

Was it his place to be concerned? He had a sentimental, romantic attachment tothe Living, but no commitment. He wasn't sure he really wanted them to doanything about the occupation. Some out-of-the-dark, miraculous triumph by thediehards might hurt him more than it helped.

Before the coming of Herod his life had been good. But it was better now. Hegot paid more. And there was as much work as he wanted, so that he could takehome as much money as he wanted. And the Herodian operators never tried tocheat a man of his wages.

He had prospered under the Herodian occupation. He had been lucky. To balancethe extra mouths in his household Aram in his kindness had given him nodaughters to dowry. He had almost enough saved to get his family out of theShu, over the hill, and into the Astan, where they could have a decent life.

If Laella did not become pregnant in the next year ...

He could work for himself in the Astan, doing work he enjoyed. Building shipsrequired craftsmanship but allowed no scope for individual vision or artistry.

Among the few concrete certainties in Aaron's world was his conviction thatNaszif had opened that postern in that tower.

Coming home last night he had asked Laella who she considered to be her bestfriend. He had gotten the expected answer without hesitation or reflection: Reyha. Then he had asked who she considered her worst enemy, or who she mosthated. Consciously he had anticipated hearing the name of a neighbor with whomshe had been feuding for years. But unconsciously, maybe, he had expectedsomething akin to the answer he did get after several minutes of reflection.

"The people who made Taidiki kill himself."

And that was ambiguous enough to include almost everyone.

He had wanted to narrow it a little, maybe get a hint of how she would feel ifhe told her about Naszif and the postern, but just then the man had come outof the fog like a specter, startling and frightening them, and had gainedreality only after he had passed them and his feet had begun hitting theground. After that they were too nervous to do anything but hurry for home anda door that could lock out the frights of the night.

Aaron wanted to talk. To Laella preferably, but to anyone who might show him apath out of his quandary. The situation had led him to a shocking realization.

He had no friends. He did not know anyone he trusted enough to ask advice. His ties beyond his family were tenuous and transitory, involving men with whom he worked. Men who, for the most part, he never saw again after a job was over.

What had become of the close friends of youth?

Dak-es-Souetta, mostly. Mish asked, "Are you working today, Aaron?"

The boys started in before he could answer. "Don't go to work today, Dad. Stay home, Dad." It was a minor Herodian religious holiday and he could take the day off. If hedid, though, tomorrow he would have to present his Herodian employers with anattendance token from one of the Herodian temples. A price he did not care topay. Not to mention not wanting to lose the income. And maybe get a badreputation. That mast step had to go in today.

"Yes. I'm working."

"Oh, Dad!"

Mish scowled. That meant she had to manage the household at least till Laella rose.

The Herodians did not take off for minor holidays.

Aaron said nothing to Mish, but he added her to his mental agenda. He was fed up with her sulks and pouts and shirkings. If she thought she had it so bad here, let her go out there and try to whine her way through the real world.

"Dad! Stafa's got to pee."

"No, I don't!" Stafa stood slightly hunched, one hand gripping his crotch.

"Go pee in the pot, Stafa."

"No."

"Stafa, go pee in the pot." "No!"

The boy had reached that stage of housebreaking where he was aware of what he had to do but still fervently opposed having to do it for himself. "I'll spank your butt." "Carry me, Dad."

"Carry you? You get over there."

"No. Carry me."

"Come here, you argumentative little rat."

All trust, Stafa came to him. He grabbed the boy's right foot, lifted it while Stafa clung to his shoulder for balance. "You see this, Stafa? What's this?"

"That's my foot."

Aaron shifted to Stafa's left foot. "And what's this?"

"That's my other foot."

"And why do you think the Good Lord Aram put feet on the ends of your legs?"

Stafa did not pause to think. He just said it. "To keep my toes pointing out."

Everyone laughed but Arif. Even Mish. Stafa grinned, though he understood nobetter than Arif. Aaron rose. "All right, brat. You win." He grabbed Stafaunder the arms and carried him to the chamber pot. The boy wiggled and kickedhappily.

It was a story to tell at work.

It took his mind off his troubles. Mish handed him his usual lunch of bread, cheese, and sausage and he took off.

The sun had not yet risen.

Glop! Plop! Slop! In quick succession the Qushmarrahan cooks filled Yoseh'sbowl with a three-ounce chunk of blubbery flesh cooked forever and an hour, six ounces of some mushy stuff that might have started life in a grain field, and half a small loaf that was meant to be broken into pieces and used to dipthe mush.

"Oh, boy," Yoseh said. "I was hoping we'd have this stuff again this morning."

They had had the same thing every morning since he had come to the city.

Mo'atabar, whose duties approximated those of a sergeant to a commander of ahundred in the Herodian army, said, "Every day is feast day in Qushmarrah, where the streets are paved with gold."

That came every morning, too, just like the mush. It was one of Mo'atabar'sdaily rituals, like his inevitable serenade in the barracks each morning, while dawn was still an uncertain impulse in the councils of the gods. "Riseand shine, my children. Rise and shine. It's another glorious day in servicein the city of lead and gold."

The men always laughed when Mo'atabar did one of his things. Yoseh knew he wasbeing sarcastic and making mock of tribal ideas about Qushmarrah, but he didnot see the humor.

He and his brothers and cousins settled to eat. Nobody said much. Nogah was ina grim mood. What last night had looked like an opportunity to do somethingunusual and maybe make a splash had turned on him. This morning the word wasthat the whole troop was going in to work on the Shu maze. One hundredeighteen men, not eight. Mo'atabar and his uncle Joab, the captain, would baskin the warmth of Fa'tad's approval if the operation uncovered something al- Akla wanted to find.

Yoseh suspected Fa'tad had had one of his visions, or intuitions, orinspirations, or whatever they were, and had decided that the Shu maze wassufficiently important to rate more manpower and the watchful eye of one of his oldest cronies.

Joab was one of those half dozen men who had flown wingtip-to-wingtip with theEagle for forty years.

Nogah ought to think about that and not about his hurt feelings.

The sun was still just an imminent threat when the troop rode out of thecompound and turned toward the Gate of Autumn. Yoseh and his companions rodepoint. An honor, of sorts, but one Yoseh was willing to forgo if things shouldlook like they were getting sticky.

He had not come to Qushmarrah to become the hero of epic adventures, nor toget dead.

The gate was not yet open. Other traffic was arriving, too, piling up in thesmall square the gate towers commanded. Joab rode forward and began cursingthe sleepy Herodian gatemen in their own language, calling them the sons ofwhores, feeders on the dung of camels, and suppurating pustules upon themanhood of their god. Joab did not like Herodians. He insulted Herodiansoldiers every chance he got, in repayment for the insult implicit in the factthat the Herodian military commander required the tribesmen to be out of thecity and in their compound by nightfall every evening.

Yoseh said, "He's provoking them. Deliberately. Someday somebody is going toget mad and try to kill him."

"No," Nogah said. "He scares the shit out of them. They think he's crazy."

"So do I."

"It's all an act. Something Fa'tad put him up to, to make them think we're allcrazy. I think."

"You think?"

"You never know with Fa'tad."

Joab's fulminations had their effect. The gate groaned open. Arrogantly, Joabled his troop through before the merchants. The regular patrols were arriving.

They attached themselves to the column. The merchants had to wait while athousand tribesmen entered the city.

Yoseh hadn't been north a week before he had realized there was a verycomplicated and subtle game going on between Fa'tad and Cado, the Herodianmilitary governor. Herodian troops held all the key points of the city, andwhat had been the palace of the city's impotent figurehead prince was nowcalled Government House and was occupied by Cado and his captains. Cado kepthis men out of sight as much as possible. Their standards were seldom seen inpublic. The hand, the mailed fist, of the occupation was always Dartar.

Fa'tad had responded by making his men work as a police force of sorts, metingout instant and ferocious retribution to the city's human predators wheneverand wherever they were unearthed. They settled disputes impartially. Theyscared up employers who needed workers and people who needed work and put themtogether. Where it was within their power they tried to relieve the sufferingof the poor.

"So we end up helping old women cross the street and change the young ones'babies," Nogah grumped. "And for what? Answer me that, kid. So we can win thesympathy of the lower classes? They don't have any power and their sympathywon't send one head of livestock down south."

"I think Fa'tad's mind encompasses more than the chore of keeping the tribesfrom starving."

"That's the problem. He's so busy scheming he can't keep his mind on thebusiness that brought us here."

The patrols dispersed into the city but Joab's troop kept on westward, downone of the broad avenues of the Astan, across Goat Creek, a hundred fiftyyards along the foot of the tumbled and brushy remnants of the Old Wall. Oneof the older men behind Yoseh began reminiscing about how the damned stubbornveydeen had tried to make a stand along here and the damned fool ferrenghi hadwanted Fa'tad to make a mounted charge across the boggy ground and creek andup the rubble to dislodge them.

"Al-Akla told them what to do with their charge. So they sent in their ownmen. And they got murdered just like Fa'tad said they would."

The column passed through a gap in the rubble flanked by broken columns, aonetime gateway. It entered the narrow streets of the Hahr, climbed the hillto the wide-open plazas around the citadel. Yoseh could not look at that placewithout shuddering, though he knew Ala-eh-din Beyh had rendered it powerlessStill ...

Still, the Herodians persisted in trying to figure out how to break in. Maybejust to recover the body of their hero, but maybe for something more. Maybefor the fabled treasure.

Yoseh half suspected that Fa'tad had his eyes on the treasure, too.

The column passed through the spaciousness of the acropolis and entered theShu, nudging the head of Char Street tentatively at first, like a snakechecking the mouth of a gopher hole. Then it surged forward.

Char Street was aboil with humanity already. Like a flyblown carcass, Yosehthought, feeling the weight of their numbers pressing in on him. They partedbefore the pressure of the column, then stood at the street sides gawking. Howlong since they had seen such a force of Dartars in the Shu? Since the days ofQushmarrah's fall? Maybe not even then. There wasn't much in the Shu worthfighting for.

Men began dropping off the column's tail in sixes and eights each time anentryway to the labyrinth appeared. Yoseh soon realized that a hundredeighteen men were not enough to cover just the rat holes on Char Street, letalone all the others around the periphery.

Nogah told Mo'atabar, "This is the place."

"Go ahead. Peel off."

Nogah beckoned the rest of them to the side of the street, jostlingQushmarrahans who took that in silence. Yoseh looked into the mouth of that alley and shivered. Superstitious dread, he told himself. That dangerous, widelittle man was long gone.

The column moved on. They watched, waiting to dismount. Yoseh glanced downtoward the heavenstone blue of the bay. His eyes met those of the same oldwoman he had seen yesterday afternoon. This morning the iron was missing fromher expression. She looked a little puzzled, a little lost.

A girl came to the door behind her. Yoseh's gaze was drawn to her unveiledface. His eyes bugged. Their gazes met.

The old woman snarled something at the girl.

She retreated, but only a step or two. Just far enough not to be seen from thecorner of the crone's eye. She continued to stare. And so did Yoseh, whichgave her away.

Mahdah struck him in the thigh. "Yoseh, you want to come down from there?" Andhe realized it was the third time he had been told to dismount. Cheeks hot, hemade the camel kneel, ' slid off.

Nogah said, "You and Medjhah stay with the animals, kid." Yoseh had thefeeling his brother was laughing behind his veil. Nogah punched Mahdah'sshoulder as they got their stuff together to go into the alley. "Justyesterday he was asking me why we stay in Qushmarrah."

Bel-Sidek watched the Dartar column come down the hill, the groups droppingoff at each alley, and had to struggle to keep from gaping. "What the hell isgoing on?" he muttered. He'd never seen anything like it. He counted bodies.

Over a hundred of the bastards. What the hell was Fa'tad up to now?

The man was like that wild hare they had out along the marges of the Takes, always zigging just when the wild dogs expected it to zag. It showed a littlewiggle of the tail like it was going to go right and when the dogs were setfor the move it bounded to the left and gained thirty yards while they weregetting their legs untangled.

The Dartars just kept coming. The teams that dropped off began preparing ropesand shields and weapons and torches.

They were serious about invading the labyrinth.

Why? It was an exercise in futility.

Another of Fa'tad's efforts to please the mob? Another symbolic gesture?

Bel-Sidek was anxious to get across and check on the old man, but there was nopushing through the Dartars. Not without attracting unwanted attention.

"What are they doing, sir?"

Bel-Sidek glanced sideways at the man who had spoken. He was one of theassistants to one of the old man's lieutenants here in the Shu. Naszif something, a slimy little man bel-Sidek did not like. Almost by chance the manknew he was involved with the movement and more important than he. He had asubtly ingratiating manner that repelled bel-Sidek more than did King's openass-kissing.

"I was just wondering that myself. I don't think I missed anything about what happened here yesterday. It certainly doesn't deserve this kind of response."

The man's face went through amazing contortions.

"Are you all right?"

"Excuse me, sir. It was my son that was taken. That was what started it all." "Oh. I'm sorry. Have you had any news?"

"None, sir. Though a man I knew in the army told me about a couple of missing children turning up again. I've been checking around this morning and I've heard about several others that turned up, too, so I'm hopeful." "You have my prayers," bel-Sidek said. He wished he could get away. But there was no walking off.

"Thank you, sir. Did you hear about the murder, sir?" Bel-Sidek groaned inwardly. "No. I didn't."

"Over in the Hahr. A very rich man. There're rumors that he was the head of the Living in the Hahr." Bel-Sidek became alert and interested. He tried to feign mild curiosity. "What happened?"

"Thieves, the way I heard it. His house was stripped clean. He'd been strangled." Bel-Sidek thought he covered well. The end of the Dartar column was past.

"Interesting. Excuse me. I have to check on my father. He's been alone forseveral hours." He pushed across the street.

Sagdet strangled and his house cleaned out by thieves? That sounded remarkablylike the doom that had befallen half a dozen prominent men in recent years, among them three civil governors and his own wife's second husband. It hadn'toccurred to him to see a pattern before. He'd believed that the passing of thegovernors had been engineered in Government House, with Cado's connivance, though the Living had not refused to take the blame. The instances notinvolving governors, though, definitely bore the smell of punitivedeathstrokes by the Living.

Bel-Sidek was in a contemplative mood when he entered the house.

"That you, Khadifa?"

"Yes sir."

"I had begun to fear I was going to have to live off my own fat."

The old man's chiding was more teasing than carping. Still, bel-Sidek was vexed. He was feeling touchy.

"I was delayed."

"So I see. What is that uproar out there?"

Bel-Sidek listened. The street noise was a little louder than usual, but notenough for him to have noticed. "That's one half of the Shu asking the otherhalf what the hell the Dartars are up to." He stared down at the frail figurein the bed. The bed was the old man's only concession to the privilege ofrank. "Joab and better than a hundred men are out there. Looks like they'regoing to invade the labyrinth. They brought the necessary weapons and tools."

The General's husk of a face wrinkled in perplexity. "Why would they do that?"

What sort of viper's nest seethed behind those cataracted eyes? "I don't havethe foggiest idea. Because Fa'tad told him to. You're the expert on the mindof Fa'tad al-Akla."

"Do I detect a note of something sour, Khadifa? Do you have a grievance?"

"Last night you told us the khadifa of the Hahr would be with us for a generalpolicy meeting tonight."

"So I did. You object?"

"Not at all. But this morning a man on the street-that slimy Naszif creatureof Hadribel's-told me that Sagdet was murdered during the night. By thieves, perhaps. His house had been stripped of everything of value. But the timingstrikes me as remarkable and the nature of the death as unusually similar toseveral that have been claimed as executions by the movement."

The old man did not respond for a long time. Bel-Sidek waited him out, halfhis mind listening for a change in the street noise. There would be no gettingout if Joab was up to some elaborate ploy meant to net them. If he was alertthere would be time to silence the General and maybe himself while they werebreaking down the door and rushing the bedroom.

Morbid thoughts. These days, always the morbid thoughts, always the flexingthe muscles in anticipation of the worst.

"There is an operation already begun, Khadifa, that could mean the triumph ofthe movement. Right now it is young and vulnerable, like a newly hatchedchick. It must be nurtured. Exposure, even inadvertent exposure, through theprivateering of some of our brethren, could bring on the destruction of theentire movement."

A blatant grab for his sense of the dramatic. Bel-Sidek allowed himself adeprecatory snort.

"We have been drifting underground for months, to give Fa'tad and Cado theidea we're fraying around the edges and starting to fall apart. Except in theHahr, where Ortbal Sagdet decided to go ripping off on adventures of his own."

Essentially true, bel-Sidek admitted to himself.

"This is a crucial time, Khadifa. Every minute of the next six months will becritical. Ortbal Sagdet was never much of an asset, and lately had become adeadly liability. He was trying to spread the infection."

He spread it to Salom Edgit, of course. "But to have him killed ..."

"Could make of him an asset in death. You analyze the situation, Khadifa.

Armed only with the knowledge you possess as khadifa of the harbor. You'revery good at analyses. When you arrive at a superior solution, please informme."

"You said he would be here tonight."

"I said the khadifa of the Hahr would be here. I said nothing about OrtbalSagdet. See what's happening out there. Then fix breakfast."

The old man closed his eyes. Bel-Sidek knew he had been dismissed.

Before he reached the street door bel-Sidek understood that there had been no options with Ortbal. Not if they wanted Sagdet's organization intact and tameand doing what it was supposed to do.

Sagdet's death, with its signature, ought to have a salutarily instructionaleffect throughout the organization.

Necessary or not politically, bel-Sidek did not like them slaying their own.

The Dartars appeared to be doing exactly what it looked like they were doing: invading the maze. He reported that.

The old man said, "Fa'tad is tugging on Cado's mustache again. He knows theyhave a new civil governor coming and Cado is all tied up getting ready forthat. So the Eagle gives him something big and completely meaningless to drivehim crazy while he can't do anything. And maybe on the side, he's up tosomething sneaky. I'd vex Cado some myself if I dared."

"I see." Bel-Sidek went to make breakfast. The old man was probably right.

Fa'tad spent a lot of energy aggravating Cado. But it had no meaning beyondthe fact that they had an unhappy marriage. They still slept in the same bed.

When breakfast was done and cleaned up he took another look into the street.

The Dartars were dragging prisoners out now. Amazing.

He reported the development and suggested that it might be wise for him tostay home.

The old man told him to get his butt out of the house and down to thewaterfront.

Zouki was awake but pretending otherwise. It was morning now. He was all criedout but was still so scared he was numb. All he could think of was his mother.

Some of the other kids were talking. He wanted to yell at them to shut up. Buthe just lay there, being as small as he could, somehow hoping no one wouldnotice him.

The others fell silent. He could not help opening his eyes to see what washappening.

The biggest man he'd ever seen was fumbling with the lock on the cage door.

Behind him were two women with a shelved cart about six feet long. The shelveswere burdened with deep, covered dishes. He smelled it then. Food. Hot food.

It smelled good. He was hungry.

He sat up without considering what he was doing. He looked around. Hissurroundings surprised him. They were not nearly as awful as he had imaginedlast night. By the light of day he 'saw that the cage was huge. The children, while spread out, were all near the entrance. The cage was at least a hundredfeet across and fifty feet high. There were all kinds of trees and bushes andstuff in it. And birds in the trees, up high, almost to where the sunlightcame in through giant windows.

Down lower, he saw the curious faces of several rock apes peeking out of thebushes. The apes were as big as some of the kids. Maybe they were hungry, too.

The giant man got the door open. He came inside, started pointing his fingeraround like he was counting kids. When he was satisfied he beckoned the women, who rolled the cart through the entrance. The big man stepped in behind toblock the exit.

The women began handing dishes to children. Zouki noted that no one went tothem. Also, no one refused to take one of the deep stoneware dishes, orwhatever they were. The little girl nearest him whispered shyly, "You have toeat. Or they'll make you."

Now there was another cart coming, this one managed by four men. Zoukiaccepted a dish from one of the women. It was square, a little over a foot toa side, five inches deep, and elaborately decorated in designs in royal blue.

It was warm. He raised the heavy cloth covering.

There was a cup of something brown. There were two very small bread loaves, what looked like honey, and some orange segments. He did not recognizeanything else, but it all looked good, smelled good, and had to be expensive, the kind of stuff they had at home only on the most important holy days.

He started eating.

He felt better immediately.

The men from the second cart carried a thing like a trunk into the cage andset it down beside another exactly like it. It sloshed. So did the other whenthe men picked it up to take it away. That one was a kind of giant chamberpot. Zouki had seen the other kids use it and had gone to urinate into ithimself once he knew. There was another like it thirty feet along.

The men came back to exchange that. Then they hauled in a taller case andexchanged it for its twin. This one contained fresh drinking water.

The women had finished passing out food. They stepped away from the childrenand waited. The four men got shovels and bags and went back into the foliage, apparently to clean up after the rock apes. None of the adults said a word.

Some of the children finished quickly. What they did then seemed to depend onthe child. Some took their dishes to the women, who scraped the remains oftheir meals onto one of several metal trays sitting atop their cart. When oneof those was full one of the men took it into the foliage for the rock apes.

He brought a dirty pan back.

Most of the children were not bold enough to approach the women. They just left their plates where they were and moved away. The men collected them forthe women.

The giant man never left the entrance.

The adults all went away.

Zouki spent a long time in a bubble of fear, homesickness, and longing for hismother. But curiosity about the apes slowly intruded upon his misery. Hefinally went to see what could be seen.

Before he got to the foliage the men and women appeared again, pushing cartsthat were not the same as those they had brought before. Once more the giantstood guard after the carts had come into the cage.

Each of the women selected a child that she led to a cart. The kids went docilely. The women stripped them naked and lifted them into the carts andbegan to wash and scrub them.

The carts were tubs on wheels. Part of them, anyway.

Zouki did not like baths. He asked the girl who had spoken to him earlier, "Dowe all have to take a bath?"

"You do. You're new."

Holy Aram! They were even washing their hair! He hated having his hair washedmore than he hated anything else in the world. He thought about running tohide with the apes, but he could not move.

The women removed their victims from the tubs, toweled them off, and dressedthem in clean clothing taken from a hamper on the end of the cart. Then theywent after more kids.

One headed straight for Zouki!

His muscles refused to act. He could do nothing but shake and start to leaktears.

The woman was not unkind as she took his hand, hoisted him, and led himunresisting to her cart.

He did not fight back till he saw the pitcher rising to dump water over hishead. He squealed and batted at it, missed. The water gushed down over hishead while a firm hand held him still. He shrieked then, and started pumpinghis legs up and down, running in place, splashing.

Firm hands sat him down in the water and forced him to lean forward. Water cascaded over him, leaving him sputtering. Hands began rubbing soap into hisscalp. But after the indignity of the wash and rinse there was more, somethingthat smelled vile and burned his head.

A woman's voice asked, "Is this the new one?"

"Yes, ma'am." Another woman. The one torturing him.

"Is he in good shape?"

"Except for head and body lice, which they all have when they come in, he appears to be in good health and excellent physical condition."

"Good. Are you about ready to pull him out of there?" "One more rinse, ma'am."

Water splashed over Zouki's head. Then hands hoisted him out of the tub, set him on the floor, began drying his hair with a towel. He opened his eyes. Facing him was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.

She reached out and took his face between her hands, her palms against his cheeks, and made him look into her eyes. "Don't be afraid. Nobody's going to hurt you."

"I want mom!"

"I know." She patted his cheek.

The woman toweling Zouki asked, "Is he the one, ma'am?"

"I don't think so. Not obviously."

Zouki thought she looked very sad.

Arif considered the tactical situation. Mom was trying to get dressed while Stafa was trying to climb on her and Mish was complaining about something Nana had said to her. None of them were watching the door. It was a good time to go see what was happening. He just walked out the door like it was something he was allowed to do anytime he wanted.

As children will, he had forgotten to take into account all facets of the situation. His grandmother grabbed hold of his clothing and with one yank sat him down beside her. "Where do you think you're going, Arif?" "I was just ..."

"Just what, Arif?"

"Just going to see what the Dartars are doing." He stuck out his lower lip.

"A bird is going to nest there." Nana pinched his lip. "You know the rule. You and Stafa can't go out unless a grown-up goes with you."

"I was just going right up there."

"Right up there is where the bad man grabbed Zouki yesterday. Remember?"

"Well, he wouldn't grab me! If he did I'd punch him in the nose! I'd punch him so hard ..."

"Arif!" Nana glared at him. Her face was starkly serious. "This isn't a game.

It isn't play. It's real. How are you going to get away from the bad men when you can't even get away from your old Nana?" She reiterated, "It's not a game, Arif. Now tell me the rules. What are you supposed to do?"

Lip out farther, Arif began reciting the litany of responses he was to make ifsomebody tried to kidnap him.

Mish rushed out of the house. "Mom, did you see Arif? He ..." She saw himsitting there. Almost instantly, her eye strayed to the Dartars up the street.

She did not hear a word Nana said. She always got deaf whenever Mom or Nanastarted yelling at her.

Azel strolled all the way around Government House twice, looking to see whowas watching, if anyone was. He did not spot anyone. If someone was around hewas good enough not to give himself away. That would be unusual for theground-level men of the Living and impossible for the Dartars, who could not- and probably would not-disguise themselves as anything but what they were.

There were jokes and parables about the Dartar inability to adapt. "Stubbornas a Dartar," was a maxim as old as Qushmarrah itself.

Azel strolled to a tradesman's entrance, knocked. A soldier opened a peekhole.

"What you want?" he demanded.

"I got to see Colonel Bruda about the cut flowers he ordered." He grinned. Theguy wouldn't know what the hell was going on, but he'd have a damned goodidea, what with all the guys coming around about flowers for the Colonel. Hecould not be unique, could he? What the hell would a Colonel do with a ton ofposies?

The Herodian bolted up behind Azel. In his own language he told his partner,

"I'm going to take this gink up to Bruda. Hold the fort."

The partner grunted. He had not bothered to look up from his lap. Too long ingarrison, Azel figured.

His guide led him through dusty, seldom-used passages. He amused himselftrying to estimate Government House's backdoor traffic from the disturbancesin the dust. He played the same game every time.

The guide turned into the long north-south hall. Azel glanced back. Nobodybehind them. Nobody up ahead. There never was, but you had to check. Youdidn't let up.

Should he do it?

Why the hell not? There wasn't a damned thing they could do. He grinned.

He got his weight behind the punch and buried it in the soldier's left kidney.

The man folded around the blow, then crumpled. Azel leaned against the walland waited. When the soldier finally began to get himself together and lookedup, there were tears in his eyes.

"Gink, eh? You gotta learn not to let your asshole overload your brain." Hesaid it in Herodian vulgate, not the formal, upper-class Herodian mostoutsiders learned.

He saw something stir behind the soldier's eyes. "Don't even think about it.

I'd tie your ears in a bowknot." He extended a helping hand. "Let's go see theMessenger of the Faith." Though most everyone, including the common Herodiansoldiers, used old-fashioned designations, among themselves the true believersused ranks that were religious.

The man let Azel help. He started off unsteadily, bent slightly, head hanging.

"I don't reckon I hit you that hard, but if you start pissing blood you bettersee your regimental doc."

The soldier said nothing. He took Azel up several floors and into a room wherea Herodian ensign, still looking forward to his first shave, jumped up andopened another door, said something to someone on the other side. Then he toldAzel, "He'll see you in a minute."

The soldier shuffled out

"What was the matter with him?"

"Made a mistake. Made an ethnic slur."

The boy did not meet his eye. Azel grinned, moved to a window, looked out atthe bay. Hell of a view of the harbor. He wondered if he'd ever go to seaagain. Not likely. That was a young man's game. A young, stupid, blind man'sgame. If you saw or figured out what you were walking into you didn't walk.

"Rose?"

Azel turned. Colonel Bruda beckoned him. Azel followed him into the other room, grinning. He was not a tall man himself but he could see the top ofBruda's shiny head. "I figured out how you guys can win every battle from hereon in."

Bruda faced him, frowning.

"You just pick a sunny day for the fight, put all your officers out front, andhave them bow to the enemy."

Bruda's frown deepened. He did not get it.

"I never seen a one of you guys that was over twenty-five that wasn't bald asa lizard's egg. You'd blind them with the reflections. Then you could just gofinish them off."

"Your sense of humor is something we don't need, Rose."

"You need some of my talents, you take them all."

"Consider the possibility that you may not be as indispensable as you'd liketo think, Rose."

Azel grinned. Bruda was as predictable as sundown. "Hell. You know, GovernorStraba said something just like that when he still thought I worked for himand not for Cado."

Bruda lost some color.

These Herodians were something. Hell on a six-legged camel in a gang, withtheir vaunted discipline and religious fervor. But catch them solo with acrack like that and they drizzled down their legs.

Of course, Bruda was the investigator of record in the hard, messy death ofGovernor Straba. Not a very good investigator, Colonel Bruda. He hadn't caughta whiff of the truth. He had no idea that Azel wasn't the killer.

Let him think whatever he wanted if it kept his knees knocking.

Azel had traced the murderer but had kept that to himself. It might be usefulsomeday.

"You'll have to wait a few minutes, Rose. He's with someone. But he knowsyou're here."

"All right." Azel went to the window and contemplated the harbor. For theserenity of the sea ... The serenity that masked the darknesses moving in thedeeps, beneath the turquoise surface. Heavenstone, the Dartars called it. Ha.

Nothing to do with heaven. Gorloch knew.

Gorloch knew that behind every facade there was nothing but shadow.

Ultimately, there was nothing but The Shadow.

Gorloch knew.

Bruda made little noises behind him as he tried to work but could not concentrate. Azel heard his sigh of relief when the room's second door opened.

"Rose?"

Azel turned. "Ah. My favorite courtier."

The man's name was Taliga. Like all the Herodian aristocracy he was short andbald. Azel made no secret of the fact that he thought Taliga an incompetentasshole who would starve to death quickly if ever Cado-his brother-in-law-gotan attack of smarts and planted a boot in his butt.

On some level Taliga was aware that he was a parasite. He hated Azel forwaving it in front of him, in public. He was Azel's deadliest living enemy.

Azel knew that. He had created Taliga deliberately. Someday the Herodianswould deem him a greater liability than an asset. When that decision was madehe wanted the sanction handed to an incompetent first. Taliga was his alarm.

He did not bait the man today, beyond the initial crack. He attempted smalltalk, grinning all the time. Friendliness, too, would set Taliga's teeth onedge. It was a Herodian maxim that your enemies were at their friendliest andmost solicitous just before they sank the knife in your back.

The military governor awaited them in a small, spartan room on the highestlevel of Government House. His own quarters. He took the admonitions of hisfaith personally. He said, "Thank you, Taliga. Good morning, Rose. It's been awhile."

Azel waited till Taliga was out of the room. "Hasn't been anything worth coming in about."

"What did you do to Taliga this time? He was severely distressed."

"Nothing, General. I was the soul of civility. I asked about his wife anddaughters. I commiserated properly when he reported that your sister has beensuffering from a recurring flux."

"You're a dangerous man, Rose. You know us entirely too well."

"Sir?"

"And you dissemble altogether too convincingly. But I suppose that's whyyou're so good at what you do and I should be thankful you work for me and notfor my enemies."

"There's truth in that, sir."

"You're also altogether too blunt. It makes you needless enemies. SomedayTaliga will try to kill you."

"To carry bluntness a step further, sir, if he tries that they'll find piecesof him in every quarter of Qushmarrah." "He's not much, Rose, but he'sfamily." Azel restrained a smile. Something had given unflappable, pudgy, buttough-as-shield-leather Cado a sour stomach and he wanted to work it off withsome verbal fencing. "I like working for you, sir. But I like being alive evenbetter. I ain't let nobody push me since I was seven years old. Ain't likelyI'd start now. It's like, anybody who ever leaned on me and had to pay theprice belonged to somebody's family."

"So. Let's stop being bull apes pounding our chests. You're here after a longdrought. Does this mean there's finally something worth reporting?"

"Not much. The Living are either felling apart or going undergroundcompletely. Probably both. And mostly felling apart in the Hahr."

"That's where al-Akla executed those men." "One sign of an impendingcollapse." "Al-Akla's little scheme is beginning to work, then." "Those guysmade it work. The thing that brought me in, it ain't much more than a rumor, but if it's true it's sure the Living is coming apart, at least in the Hahr."

"What's the rumor?"

"A guy named Ortbal Sagdet got himself killed down there last night. That's afact. I checked. The rumor is, he was the Living's number one boy down there.

Thieves got him, looks like. Thieves usually know enough not to mess aroundwhere there's gonna be comebacks that'll get them dead."

"How soon can you get a confirmation on whether or not this Sagdet was whatrumor says?" Cado's piggy little eyes were sparkling. "Never." "Eh?"

"How am I supposed to get your confirmation?" "You belong to the Living."

"I'm what they call a ground-level soldier. The bottom of the heap. And I'mnever going to be anything more."

"Why not?"

"The Living is an Old Boys outfit. I got three marks against me. The big oneis, I wasn't out there to get my butt kicked at Dak-es-Souetta. The other twoare I didn't get it kicked at the Seven Towers or on the Plain of Chordan, either. So it won't ever matter who I am or what I could do for them, I'llnever be anything but a spear carrier."

Cado got up and went to a window. Physically he fit the stereotype of theHerodian ruling class. He was short, bald, and plump. He could posture, bepompous, and was vulnerable to flattery. Like the rest. Unlike most, though, there was a razor-sharp mind under his shiny pate. "Where were you in thosedays, Rose?"

"Out of town."

"You did say you used to be a sailor, didn't you? That that was how youlearned Herodian. And there's little room on the seas these days forQushmarrahan ships. Well, no matter. We're here, and it's now. If there is away to identify Sagdet positively as a high officer of the Living, I'd begenerously grateful."

"If there's a way I'll find it, sir."

"I know you will. And what of our friend the Eagle? Anything to report there?"

"I screwed up. I got me a job grooming horses for them but the first day, oneof them got to mouthing off about city people and I broke both his legs forhim. I didn't figure it would be smart to hang around after that."

"You're a man of great violence, aren't you?"

"Sometimes that's the only way to get a message across. I never saw you guyssending out missionaries to spread the One True Faith."

"A point. I ..." Cado went red with anger.

Azel faced the window as an ensign invaded the room, so excited he hadn'tbothered to knock, so young he still had hair. "Sir!" he exploded. "Signalfrom the South Light. The new governor's galley is in sight."

"Damn! The bastard would have good winds coming across, wouldn't he?" Cadokicked a stool across the room. "Machio, don't you ever bust in here like thisagain. If it's the end of the world in five seconds you knock and wait.

Understand?"

"Yes sir."

"All right. Thank you. Get out."

The ensign went, tail between his legs.

"Our troubles redouble when we're least prepared to handle what we alreadyhave. Rose, I want you to stick with me today. I want you studying this Sullopig from the beginning. He's the first one they've sent who could be genuinelydangerous."

"Stay with you? For the public reception and everything?"

"Yes."

"Too dangerous. There are people who would recognize me. I'll have no value ifanyone suspects I work for you. Not to mention it might shorten my lifeexpectancy."

"I want to explore your thoughts about what al-Akla might be up to in the Shu.

I'll have you outfitted as a soldier in my personal bodyguard. You'll pass.

Nobody looks at the men behind the commander."

"In the Shu? He isn't up to anything in the Shu that I've heard, sir."

"He sent Joab and more than a hundred men into the maze down there this morning. You hadn't heard?"

"No sir. I was working the Sagdet angle." Azel was disturbed. This was notgood. He did have to find out what it meant. Soon. But it looked like Cado wasgoing to keep him tied up all day. Damn!

He should not have come.

Aaron removed the last of the clamping straps that had held the parts of themast step motionless while the adhesive between joins and around the holdingpegs had set. He waved to the men working the hoist. They began lowering theharness that would lift the mast step so they could swing it over and drop itinto the ship's half-completed hull.

The new Herodian foreman, Cullo, who had not yet been on the job two weeks, came to inspect the finished product. "Perfect," he pronounced it. "I've neverseen more perfect joins, Aaron. They're cabinetry quality."

"That's the sort of work I was taught, sir. And what I'd be doing if I waswell off enough to do whatever I wanted."

"Forget that. Stay with us. In five years you'd be a master shipwright."

"Yes sir." The way the Herodians were stripping the little forest on the hillssouth of Qushmarrah there would be no timber left in five years. Under the oldregime every tree taken had had to be justified and every ounce of it put tosome use. If he could find no other reason to dislike Herodians, Aaron coulddislike them because they were locusts, stripping resources and wealthwherever their armies were successful. He suspected greed moved them more thandid religious fervor.

He helped secure the harness, then stepped back. There would be nothing to dotill the laborers had the mast step ready to drop into the hull. Cullo was onto someone else, so he went and found Billygoat where he was pounding andtamping caulking rope into laps of clinker planks with a wooden mallet andwedge. The old man was quick and deft. He was ten feet ahead of his assistant, who was sealing the laps with hot pitch.

"That stuff stinks," Aaron told the old man. "Pitch? You get used to it. Gets to smell damned good if you're out of work for a while. You dogging it?"

"Hoisting the step."

"Uhm."

"They decided what to name her yet?" Billygoat knew everything before the foremen did. There was a battle going on at the top over the name of the ship.

A struggle between zealots and practical merchants who knew she would beentering ports where the Herodian god would not find a warm welcome.

"Nope. Something on your mind, Aaron?"

"Yeah." He did not know how to broach it without sounding like an old woman, so he just had at it. "Remember when you told me about they found those lost kids out by Goat Creek?"

"Uhm." The older man's hands never stopped moving.

"You ever heard about them finding any other ones?"

"Worried again?"

"Some. Not for me this time. Friend of my wife had her little boy taken yesterday. An only child." "Uhm." Billygoat paused to look at him directly. "You got one hell of a big determination to let this business fuss you, don't you, Aaron?"

What could he say? He couldn't mention the dreams and the nightmare certainty that something would happen to Arif. After all your precautions? they would ask. You have to be crazy. Maybe he was.

"Now you bring it up, though, Aaron, yeah, it seems I do remember hearing about two, three other kids that turned up the same way. Good clothes, good health, short on memories of what happened to them while they was missing." Billygoat's hands were busy again.

"They knew their families?" "I never heard anything said otherwise."

Aaron sighed a sigh that started right down in the roots of his soul. There was something to hang on to and nurture. "Good, then," Billygoat said. "And what else do you have on your mind this morning, young man?" Part of Billygoat's charm was his assumption of the old man's role, though he was far from elderly. Aaron was startled. Was he that obvious when he was troubled?

"Yep. The old man's a mind reader. What the hell did you expect, Aaron, mopingaround here all morning? Nobody pays attention? Come on. Spit it out."

"It isn't that easy, Billygoat. It's one of those things where you've got tomake a choice, and even ignoring it is a choice, and no matter what you choosesomebody is going to get hurt. So what you have to do is pick who gets it."

"Yeah. Those kind are a blue-assed baboon bitch, ain't they? Homar, it's timeyou broke. You're getting tired and sloppy trying to keep up. I see a coupleplaces you're going to have to do over."

Aaron couldn't see anything wrong with Homar's work. Neither could Homar, hesuspected, but Billygoat's assistant cleaned his tools, put more charcoal on, broke up a couple of pitch billets and put them in to melt, then went away.

"So, Aaron. Let's talk about it."

"What do you know about the Living?"

Billygoat's eyes got wary. "As little as I can. Knowing too much could get youa chance to swim across the bay with a hundred pounds of rocks tied to yourtoes."

"Yeah." He hadn't thought of that angle. "What I meant was, are they somethingworthwhile, or are they just a bunch of diehards making it rougher for therest of us?"

Billygoat smiled. "You don't get me that easy, Aaron. It's in the eye of thebeholder. Why don't you lay out the problem and if I see something I'll say soand if I don't I'll forget you even asked."

Aaron thought about it a minute, but there was not much going on inside hishead. All he wanted to do was puke it up, get it out of his gut before itpoisoned him.

"Say there was a guy who betrayed Qushmarrah in a way that was just asimportant as what Fa'tad did, only hardly anybody noticed, and only one guyknew, and the traitor didn't know he knew, and one day years later suddenly itlooked like the traitor was now somebody real important in the Living. If heworked for the Herodians before ..."

"I see." Billygoat raised a hand for silence. He had stopped working. "Say nomore." He turned inward for several minutes. Then, "With the years interveningthere would have grown up knots of personal considerations and complications, not so? The fight for Qushmarrah is over and lost. The traitor probably has afamily now, all completely innocent, who would suffer terribly from anybelated justice. Yet if he were indeed high in the councils of the Living, andstill a tool of Herod, and the Living are a worthy group of men with a realchance of restoring Qushmarrah's independence and glory ... Yes sir, Aaron, truly a blue-assed bitch baboon of a problem."

Someone up top yelled at Aaron to come on. The men on the hoist were ready tolower the mast step.

"I'll think about this, Aaron. For every no-win situation I've ever seenthere's always been an extra way out if you could just back off and look atthe whole map from a skewed angle. Talk to me later. Get up there before they get pissed."

"Thanks, Billygoat." Aaron trotted to the nearest scaffolding, clambered up, crossed the ship on a work deck of loose planks, checked that everything hehad brought up earlier was still handy. His helpers were ready. "Lower away!"

The step assembly came down slowly. The men helping turned it, aligned it, guided it into place. Aaron beckoned the foreman. "It looks like a good fit.

But let's check the join points to make sure."

Ten minutes later he was puffed with pride. Only one place did he need toplane a bit offa beam end. Cullo told him, "You have to stay in this business, Aaron. We'd get the contracts filled in half the time."

Aaron shrugged, went to the side, had the men on the hoist lift the assembly afoot and a half. His helpers started brushing all the join points withadhesive. He let it set up a little, then had the assembly dropped into placeagain. His helpers started driving adhesive-soaked pegs immediately, four tothe join, of which there were twelve: four at deck level, two to the side; four halfway down a pair of the midships ribs, two to the side again; and fouron the keel itself.

"A successful experiment," the foreman told Aaron. "It's saved us a week overputting it together in place, piece by piece. I'm sure you'll get a fat bonus.

How soon can you start on the steps for the cargo booms?"

"I still have to finish this. After the glue seasons I have to cut the peggingflush, sand the joins smooth, layer on some more glue, then cover everythingwith lacquer."

"All stuff that could be done by somebody else, under your supervision, whileyou're getting the other steps. What the hell is going on?"

Men were gathering in the bow of the unfinished ship, chattering and pointingtoward the harbor. Aaron followed the foreman forward to see what was up.

A huge galley was working her way in. She wore the gaudiest sail Aaron hadever seen. "Who is it?"

"Must be the new civil governor. Early. And now everything goes to hell whilewe fake up celebrations to show him how overjoyed Qushmarrah is that he'sfinally come."

Aaron leaned on the rail, watching the Herodian galley, and smiled slightly, remembering how cynical his father had been about government and those whogoverned.

Bel-Sidek was hard at it, holystoning the foredeck of a tubby merchantman outof Pella, a Herodian tributary where friends of the Living worked the docks.

Behind him, stevedores shuffled to the dock and back aboard, loading andunloading at the same time.

Sacks of something were going off and sacks of something else were coming onand bel-Sidek could not quite see the point because he could not distinguishone group of sacks from the other. But inside a few of those coming off therewould be lethal tools for the Living.

Someone hailed him from the dock. The voice was breathless. For a moment he feared it was going to be a warning that the customs goons were coming and hewould have to get his men scattered before they could be identified. But whenhe got to the rail he saw one of that very select group of men entrusted withcarrying messages between the khadifas. The man pointed toward the bay andshouted, "The new governor's ship is coming in."

Bel-Sidek cursed and signaled his understanding. "Early. The bald-headedlittle bastard would get here early." He tried to look for the ship but all hecould see in that direction was the tips of the lighthouses atop the Brothers.

The Pellans had taken the cheapest commercial wharfage available. That putthem behind a jungle of masts and spars belonging to Qushmarrah's fishermenand sponge and pearl divers. And small-time smugglers. If there was anydistinction between the bunch.

He limped off the ship and got himself to the nearest height where he couldsee the harbor. After a minute he began to chuckle. Other gawkers looked himaskance. He controlled himself.

The governor's ship and two fast war galleys escorting her had bulled theirway past commercial traffic beyond the Brothers and now several delayedvessels were coming in behind them. Including Meryel's two ships with the armsdown in their holds. There would be no trouble getting them off-loaded andsafely away. The whole Herodian colony would be going crazy and would cease tofunction for a few days.

Would the old man take the opportunity to welcome the new tyrant? He hadbefore. But if Meryel was right and there was some special operation shaping ... Could it have something to do with the new governor? Doubtful. The Generalhad talked in terms of months.

Might as well go back to work. The governor's arrival would make no differencein his life, at least today.

As he was passing the new shipyards, put up where the old public baths hadstood till they had been demolished because they offended Herodian morality, aman fell into step beside him. "So. Billygoat. Haven't seen you in a while.

What's up? What're you doing these days?"

"Working in the shipyard. As if you didn't know."

Bel-Sidek did know. He kept track of those few of his men who had come homefrom Dak-es-Souetta. "What is it?"

"The younger men there, they bring me their problems. I had a beauty turn uptoday. You were the only one I could think of who could maybe help solve it.

And like a gift from Aram, here you are. I saw you, it was like a command fromthe gods."

"I don't follow."

"Wait till I explain. I don't know if you're connected or not, but you're theonly one I could think of who might know somebody involved with the Living."

Bel-Sidek did not respond.

"One of the guys-certainly not connected in any way-has convinced himself he knows the identity of a Qushmarrahan who was as guilty of treason during thewar as al-Akla. He kept it to himself. But now he's stumbled across somethingto make him think the traitor is in a high place in the Living. He fears thatonce in Herodian pay, always bought."

"Eh!" Bel-Sidek rolled it around in his mind, a small part of him hoping hewasn't sweating, blanching, or otherwise giving himself away. "Exactly what doyou want, Sergeant?"

"Mainly, I want to figure out if the guy is imagining things. He believes it, but people believe impossible things every day. I never heard of any traitorbut al-Akla. I sure as hell ain't heard of one that was as important as him inhow things came out."

"I know of no such man myself but that doesn't mean one didn't exist. Come.

I'll buy you a lunch while we let reason gnaw at this." Bel-Sidek suspected hehad given himself away but had a feeling the risk would be worthwhile.

"I won't name you any names, Colonel."

You will, my friend. You will if we want you to. He glanced at the man. Andmaybe you wouldn't. You were always a stubborn bastard.

"We'll set the hounds of reason loose first, eh?"

They went into a place that served good bheghase, a thick and spicy fish andvegetable soup into which the fish was introduced two minutes before serving.

It was an indulgence bel-Sidek allowed himself too seldom.

He savored a few mouthfuls before saying, "Granting that no names need benamed, I'll have to have a clue or two with which to work. Is your friend aveteran?"

"Who isn't?"

"A point. Not many. Dak-es-Souetta?"

"No."

"Ah. Now we're getting somewhere. A vet, but not of Dak-es-Souetta. Works in ashipyard. Must be a building tradesman. Most of those were in the fieldengineer outfits assigned to the Seven Towers. I presume he knows aboutwhatever because he saw it happen. If it happened." He looked at Billygoat.

"You fishing for an opinion?"

"Yes."

"He believes it, like I said. If he hadn't sounded like a man trying to carryan unbearable load I wouldn't be here."

"The Seven Towers. I'll have to research it. The Herodians had me in chains while that was happening."

"I can suggest what to look for."

"Uhm?"

"The Seven Towers were supposed to hold out long enough for the allies, thereserves, and the survivors of Dak-es-Souetta to assemble on the Plain ofChordan. But they didn't."

"Could one traitor have been the reason the strategy didn't work?"

Billygoat shrugged. "I was five men down the chain from you."

"I'll find out. I'll ask someone who was there. Thank you, Sergeant. Enjoy thebheghase." Bel-Sidek limped away hurriedly, headed for the Pellan merchantman.

Two of the men on his stevedore crew had fought at the Seven Towers. One had been an officer, amilitary engineer.

He rounded the two up. "Take an early lunch."

One man, bel-Pedra, depended entirely upon his income from stevedoring. "We'reliable to get fired." There were limits to the sacrifices you could ask.

"I'll take care of it."

"What's going on, sir?"

"I've just discovered that I need some background about the Seven Towers andwhat happened there. Something's come up where it could be important for me toknow. Malachi?"

Malachi was the man who had not yet spoken. He got off the bale where he hadbeen seated, settled on the battered timber decking of the pier. "You've beenthrough the pass, sir?"

"Never. We went out along the coast road."

"Yes. Demolishing the bridges behind you so the enemy, if victorious, had tocome to Qushmarrah through the hills."

"Do I detect a critical note?"

"Call it a disgruntled note, sir. For five generations that was the strategy.

But when it was put to the test it didn't work."

"It should have."

"In theory." Malachi used a finger to sketch an imaginary chart. "The roadruns into the pass heading due east but when it gets to the crest it elbowssixty degrees south. There are four towers on the outside of this curve, twoon either side of the summit. Three on the inside curve, with the middleperched on the crest. No names, just numbers, with the odds to the outside, evens in, counting from the far end. Number Four is the keystone piece. It'sthree times as big and defensible as the others.

"Note the angular relationships between the towers. When all seven are intactonly One and Seven have much of a shadow where they don't get supporting firefrom the other towers. That isn't big enough to exploit well. Four has noshadow at all.

"Interesting from your professional viewpoint, I'm sure," bel-Sidek said.

"What went wrong?"

"I don't know. We took away every option but reducing the towers in series."

"Sounds like the hard way."

"Hard, but the cheapest way for them. Also the slowest, which is why we wantedthem to do it that way. Their sappers and engineers were good, but we madethem pay dear to take One, Two, and Three. What happened later I don't know. Iwas in Three."

"Bel-Pedra?" bel-Sidek asked.

"I was in Five, sir. I don't think I can help much. They went after Four likelions for three days and didn't get nothing but bloody noses. Then the suncomes up on the fourth morning and there's the Herodian standard showing uptop and heralds down front telling us they'd make us rich if we'd just openup. We dumped the toilet pails on them and they went away. Five minutes laterwe were taking fire from the heavy engines on top of Four. Whatever happened, the guys there never had time to destroy those."

Bel-Sidek pursued that tale a little, not because he was interested butbecause he did not want his next question to sound especially important. Hegot the two men to discuss Herodian tactics in the assaults on the varioustowers. Then he asked Malachi, "Did they try to get Three to surrender beforethey attacked?"

"Oh, they tried that with everybody. A matter of form. They have some kind oflaw. They got the same answer every time, and they expected it."

"Uhm. Bel-Pedra, you'd better get back to work. Malachi, I have a chore foryou." He let bel-Pedra depart. "Go over to the new Herodian shipyard and findBhani Sytef. You want a list of all employees who were at the Seven Towers.

You want to know which tower they served in. He's supposed to know things likethat, but with so many working there I'd be astonished if he actually did.

Just get a list of those he does know about. If it isn't enough I'll get backto him."

Malachi rose. He looked puzzled. "What's going on?"

"I don't know. But the big boys are trying to connect some people up with someother people and the only lead they've got is that maybe these guys were allin the same outfit at the Seven Towers."

Bel-Sidek was well known to the Living in his quarter, but very few knew himto be khadifa of the waterfront. At every level he appeared as the agent ofthe men a step or two up the chain of command. There were risks. Bel-Sidekfelt having access to all his men all the time was worth those risks. Theharbor quarter was the busiest for the Living and needed the most directattention.

They want to ask people from outside the movement first?"

Bel-Sidek shrugged. "I don't decide how things get done, I just do the job."

"Nothing ever changes, does it?"

"Not in the army."

Malachi left. And he returned much sooner than bel-Sidek expected.

"You were wrong, sir. He knew them well. There were only three men he couldn't pin down for sure." He proffered a piece of paper. "I'll see that he gets a commendation. Back to work. I fixed you with the Pellans."

Bel-Sidek settled and ran a finger down the list. His finger jerked. "I should've guessed." And it all fell into place, right along with the solution.

He wanted to run to the General immediately. But he still had to assemble thegangs to work Meryel's ships.

The new governor's galley was trying to warp into its pier and having a hellof a time even with help from several tugs. Bel-Sidek smiled and murmured, "Ihope that breeze is an omen."

Medjhah shaded his eyes and peered at the harbor. "Ships coming in. Fancyones."

Yoseh yanked his attention away from the girl's house. Medjhah pointed.

Three ships were crossing the slice of harbor visible from Char Street.

"Warships?" "The two on the outside. Must be somebody important."

"Ferrenghi, probably."

It took Medjhah a few seconds to get it. "Yeah. They all think they're big stuff, don't they?" Yoseh's attention drifted back to that doorway. The girl was mere again. And the old woman was giving him a truly ferocious look.

He felt puckish. He winked at her.

She was astonished. She was scandalized. Then, for an instant, a smile threatened to crack the dried mud of her face. Then she became more the basilisk than ever. "Now what the hell?" Medjhah grumbled.

A dozen Dartar horsemen were hastening down the hill, speaking to the men at each entrance of the maze. Each pause caused an immediate stir. Yoseh guessed,

"Fa'tad is calling us in for some reason." Soon he was proven right. A man told them to call everybody out of the labyrinth and get ready to move out.

"I'll go get them," Medjhah said. He had grown bored watching the animals and the traffic in Char Street. "Give her a good-bye kiss for me, too." He laughed as he went into the alley.

Yoseh began checking and tightening the animals' tack. At least they did nothave prisoners to worry them, like some of the other groups.

They had become part of the scenery quickly and the curious crowds hadthinned. But now people began coming out again, to see the Dartars packing upas hastily as they had arrived.

Yoseh glanced down the street, The girl was watching and the crone wasglaring. The three ships were out of sight.

Medjhah was taking a long time. Should he go see? No. These veydeen wouldsteal the animals, or scatter them at the least, just for meanness.

He realized he was alone in a street with hundreds who hated him. He drew himself up and tried to look older and tougher and a lot more fearless than hefelt.

He was worried.

Then he heard Nogah cursing Joab and Fa'tad, the veydeen and ferrenghi, Cadoand the gods, and anyone else who occurred to him. Yoseh felt betterimmediately.

A couple of disgusting, frightened veydeen stumbled out ahead of Yoseh'sbrothers and cousins. Their hands were bound behind them. One tried to run.

Somebody stuck a spear between his legs. He pitched forward. Nogah jumped onhim and kicked him viciously three or four times. Yoseh was astonished andappalled.

Then he noticed the cut and stain on Nogah's left sleeve. Blood did not showwell against the black, so the wound had not been obvious. Which was why theyall wore black.

Nogah growled, "Are the animals ready?"

"Yes. Is that bad?"

"No. But it hurts like hell." He yelled at the others, telling them to get theprisoners coffled up and get themselves mounted.

"It's still bleeding some, Nogah."

"That'll keep it clean."

"You want me to look at it?"

"Here? In the damned street?"

"Oh." Of course. Not in front of the veydeen.

"Thanks anyway, kid. The ache will remind me that even things that live underrocks can hurt you if you aren't careful."

Yoseh glanced at the prisoners. They did have a texture that reminded him ofgrubs.

It was not long before Joab came up the hill, the column re-forming behindhim. As Yoseh turned his camel into line some impulse caused him to wave tothe girl in the doorway. Though not blatantly. No.

For a wonder the crone wasn't looking.

For a double wonder the girl returned his wave shyly. Then she fled into thedarkness inside her home.

He did not wake up till they reached the compound and everyone started tellinghim he had to get changed into his best apparel. A new civil governor wasarriving from Herod and everyone had to turn out for the welcoming parade.

He was still bemused when they formed up on the plazas of the acropolis, fivethousand men in black, perfectly motionless on their mounts. Opposite them, across an aisle a hundred feet wide, were the Herodian infantry in their whiteand red, only their officers mounted, twelve thousand strong.

With this driblet in the tide Herod held Qushmarrah. Yoseh thought it a vainand foolish thing to parade the weakness of the occupying forces.

The new governor was a long time coming. When he did, Yoseh was not impressed, despite the Moretian guards before and behind, the chariots, the gaudytrappings and people. No one else was impressed, either. The governor was amorbidly fat man on a litter. He did not look like he would be able to get upwithout help. There were snickers and titters till Fa'tad turned his scowlupon the formation.

The Herodians had the same problem.

The Qushmarrahan youths who were perched on the monuments and rooftops behindthe formations had no superiors to silence them. They were loud with theirmockery and abuse.

Yoseh was almost embarrassed for the fat man. Sullo? Sullo, yes.

General Cado and his staff emerged from Government House, clad in spartancontrast to the new governor's opulence. More show for the veydeen? Of course.

Yoseh was in a good position to observe, thirty yards from Fa'tad and only inthe second rank. Sullo's Moretians spread out. The governor reached the footof the Government House steps a moment before General Gado did so. Yes, ittook the help of two men to set Sullo upright The veydeen hooligans howled.

General Cado stepped down and threw his arms around Sullo. Sullo reciprocated.

They embraced like brothers who had been separated for years.

If Yoseh understood the way Herodians operated, that meant a hatred betweenthem deeper than the pits of Khorglot. There were ghost knives in their back- thumping hands.

Yoseh's eyes bugged. "Nogah."

Nogah ignored him.

"Nogah!"

"Quiet in ranks," Nogah hissed. Medjhah scowled at him.

"All right. But you'll regret it."

Nogah looked over his shoulder, eyes baleful. Yoseh ignored him, kept his gazefixed on the man he had picked out of General Cado's bodyguard.

Zouki was so bored he forgot to be scared. Till the big man came. Then all thekids got quiet and shaky. Some started to whimper. One of the girls skitteredinto the foliage to hide with the rock apes.

The big man came in and scooped up a boy who went into hysterics immediately.

The giant went out and locked the door to the cage. Zouki stared at the bone- white nuts of his fists while the boy's screams faded and knew he'd never seethat kid again.

Raheb said nothing as Aaron came to the house. She just nodded and began theslow, painful chore of getting herself upright. Aaron did not offer to help.

Any effort to help would be spurned.

The woman believed she was a curse and a burden upon her daughter's house andshe was not going to accept any help of any kind that was not absolutelyforced upon her. Aaron accepted that.

His feelings toward Raheb were mixed. Always there were eddies andcrosscurrents and dangerous undertows when the mother of the wife lived in thehousehold of the wife. Still, he could have done worse for a mother-in-law. Heknew men who got more grief with their wives' mothers living all the wayacross town.

Arif spied him first. "Daddy's home!" He charged, a flurry of clumsy limbs.

Aaron caught him and lifted him up and squeezed him. Stafa roared in at kneelevel and wrapped both arms and legs around his shin and grinned up at him.

Laella's question was in her eyes. She was always troubled when he arrivedhome off schedule. "They dismissed us early. Because of the new governorcoming in. Only have to work a half day tomorrow. They expect the wholeHerodian colony to have to assemble for speeches by General Cado and the newgovernor. His name is Sullo, I think."

"Why do they waste the time?" Raheb wanted to know.

"What?"

"Somebody's just going to kill him. They always do."

Startled, Aaron realized she was right. Eight civil governors in six years.

They killed them off within a few months every time. Qushmarrah spent moretime awaiting the arrival of new civil governors than she did being ruled by them.

He shrugged. That was a trouble for the Herodians. He squeezed Arif. The boysquealed. Aaron took a few steps. Stafa clung to his leg and giggled andproclaimed, "We've got you now, long-legged demon!"

"Decorum!" Aaron laughed. "What we need around this house is a little decorumand discipline."

Arif laughed and hugged his neck. Stafa repeated, "We got you now, long-leggeddemon." But Aaron's remark did not go over well elsewhere. Raheb grumbledsarcastic agreement. Mish's eyes sparked with rebellion. She muttered toherself. Laella looked put upon.

"Problem?"

Mish surprised him by answering. "Mother thinks I was flirting with a Dartarsoldier." She spoke each word almost as a separate sentence and loaded everyone with the infinite, weary exasperation of the very young.

"That's enough of that, Mish," Laella said. "Mother! We've been through italready."

"Dartar?" Aaron asked.

"You should've seen, Dad," Arif said. "There were hundreds of them. Thousands.

With camels and everything."

Stafa said, "Forty-three," which was his favorite number of the week and meanta lot instead of any specific number.

"Dartars? What is this?"

"They came this morning," Laella said. "A hundred. Maybe a few more. They putmen outside all the entrances to the maze and then they went in. They tookprisoners."

Raheb said, "And about time that cesspit was cleaned, too. Maybe those Dartarmaggots are good for something, after all."

Which led Mish to a caustic remark. Her mother responded. Laella snapped,

"That's enough of that! You're both old enough to know better." She pinchedher temples between thumb and forefinger. "I'm yelling at my mother and sisterlike they were kids squabbling."

"You need to get out. Let's go for a walk. Up to the Parrot's Beak."

"I haven't done the marketing yet. It was too rowdy out there while theDartars were here."

"Never mind. We'll manage. What happened to the Dartars?"

"After they were here a few hours messengers came and they all went awayagain."

"Probably because of the new governor. Come on. Let's go walk."

She saw it was important to him, so she collected her shawl.

"I want to go, Dad."

"Me, too." Stafa still clung to his leg, grinning, stubborn as a barnacle. Hedeposited Arif on the floor.

"You boys stay with Nana."

"Aw, that's not fair. You don't never let me ..."

"Yeah, you long-legged creep. I hate you."

Aaron rolled his eyes toward heaven. "Let's sell them both to the Turoks." TheTuroks were nomads who ranged south of the Takes, reputedly so ferocious eventhe Dartars feared them. Turoks seldom visited Qushmarrah. The only TuroksAaron had seen he'd been unable to distinguish from Dartars.

Selling the children to the Turoks was a family joke. Laella completed theritual. "The Turoks wouldn't take them. They're too mean. You boys behave forNana. Mish, you can make mountain bread. There're beans soaking in the crock.

There's cheese. There're odds and ends. Put something together."

Mish put on her martyr's disguise, filled the house with her agonizedadolescent sighs.

Raheb shook her head in disgust and took herself back outside to abort asquabble provoked by proximity.

"Are you going?" Laella asked, Aaron suspected more sharply than she intended.

"I still have this grinning goiter on my shin."

Stafa giggled.

Laella peeled him off amidst a one-child chorus of hate-you-moms and depositedhim amongst blocks Aaron had made from scraps from the shipyard. Arif observedsourly. Aaron hugged him. Laella twisted her shawl around her head and acrossher face and followed Aaron into the street. She said, "Give me time to relax.

Mom and Mish have been at it all morning."

He grunted. He had no intention of saying anything till he had relaxedhimself. In some way.

They did not exchange a word all the way to the Parrot's Beak.

The acropolis was crowded. The parade for the new governor was still breakingup, with soldiers moving back to their barracks or garrisons or duty stations.

They moved through the traffic and found a place in the shade of the Beak.

They settled. They remained silent. The breeze tugged at their hair andclothing. Clouds banking beyond the Brothers suggested some rain moving inlater.

Laella waited.

"I want to tell you about something. I don't really want to talk about it. Idon't want to answer a lot of questions." The trouble with talking with Laella was that she always asked a thousand questions that had nothing to do withanything, about half of them vaguely accusatory. Interposed would be two orthree questions that were too much to the point.

"It's about what's been bothering you?"

"Yes." That was one. "Just let me tell it."

She bit down angrily.

"This has been eating at me for six years. Last night it came to a head. Ihave to make a move. But I don't know what." Before he finished that his hand was moving. He laid a finger across her lips as she started to open her mouth.

"Six years ago one of the men in my company opened a secret postern gate andlet the Herodians into the tower we were holding at the Seven Towers. Healmost got me killed. He did get half the men in the outfit killed. He almostgot me sold across the sea as a slave. They were going to do that with all theprisoners that had trades. Till they decided that would cause more hate inQush-marrah than it was worth. He got a lot more people killed here in thecity."

He lapsed into several minutes of silence. Laella bemused him by keeping herpeace. It was not like her to recognize a time for quiet.

"Do you know that if we'd held the pass for two more days the allies and thenew levies would have had time to assemble on the Plain of Chordan?"

Laella nodded. "Everyone says."

"We could've held out for another week. We knew it and they knew it. They wereso desperate they started trying to run cavalry past us at night. Not theDartars. Fa'tad is too smart to let his men get massacred the way we massacredthem."

Laella was frowning. "Is there a point to this?"

"Maybe I'm straying. But I want you to know that the Herodians knew theycouldn't win if they didn't get to the Plain of Chordan first. Even withFa'tad to help. People who were on our side forget that part and just jabberabout Dak-es-Souetta. Maybe because everybody who ever thought they wereanybody in Qushmarrah was there and they don't want their defeat to be lessimportant than one man opening a postern gate. I mean, how could all thosetens of thousands of men getting killed be less significant?"

"You think you know who did it."

"I don't think I know. I'm not guessing. I know."

"Naszif."

He was startled into open-mouthed silence.

"It explains so much, doesn't it? Why you've always been the way you are abouthim. How he's managed to do so well without working very hard at it. Youshould hear how Reyha worries about his making so much. And you kept thisbottled up all this time."

"There's Reyha. And Zouki. And the war is over and lost."

"And no bitterness? No urge to get even?"

"Hell, yes, there is! I got a father and two brothers under the ground on the Plain of Chordan. Pop was too old to go to Dak-es-Souetta. Tuddo and Rani weretoo young ... Yeah. I'm bitter. Yeah. I hate. But what happens to Reyha andZouki if you take Naszif away? The war didn't leave them anyone else at all."

Almost shyly, like the first time they had been allowed to be together alone, she touched his hand. "You're a good man, Aaron. Thank you for telling me."

"I'm not done yet."

"There's more?" "You didn't pay a lot of attention to Naszif last night, did you?"

"I ignore him as much as I can." She smiled. "I don't like him, either. Even Reyha doesn't like him very much. But a woman has to live with what she has to live with. What about Naszif last night?" "He made me have to make my decision all over again. And it was hard enoughthe first time, and living with it."

"Why again?" Straight to the point today. None of the usual nonsense.

"Because at the end last night Naszif was practically bragging that he's a bigman in the Living."

"But what does that ...Oh."

"Yes. Maybe he's still getting Qushmarrahans killed."

Bel-Sidek waited patiently while the old man considered what he had said. When the General spoke, he observed, "I note that you haven't named a single name."

"I wasn't told any names."

"But you wouldn't be telling me if you didn't think you knew the man."

"Yes."

"So?"

"Your solutions tend to be abrupt and permanent. You see a threat, you extinguish it. But in this I see a great opportunity to stick it to Cado big. If the whole thing doesn't turn out to be somebody's pipe dream."

The General reflected. He said, "You're right on all counts, Khadifa. It is an opportunity. And rightfully yours to exploit-if, as you say, it isn't a pipe dream." Thank you, sir."

"But you have to know you have game afoot, for certain. Then you have to decide if you let him know you know or not. If you just feed him select lieshe'll continue hurting us elsewhere. If you try to turn him you run the riskof losing him if he panics. Either way, it's likely that Cado or Bruda willsense a change in the texture of the information he supplies. Unless you'revery careful."

"That much I know."

"What first?"

"Find out for sure."

"I have a suggestion. I have a man to do the finding out. He's the best the movement has. He'll do the job right."

Bel-Sidek smiled.

"True, you'd have to give me the name. But I've said he's yours. I think this is important enough to give to someone who won't screw it up. We have too many amateurs at the ground level. Or he might recognize someone." "I'll trade you a name for a name."

The old man thought about it. "No. I can't. His rules. You find out when I go." Bel-Sidek considered that and the General's previous remarks. "All right. You watch your man Naszif."

The General remained still for a long time. His pallor deepened. "You're sure?" "He's the one."

"We praise the gods, who are merciful, and smile upon us."

"Sir?"

"I was going to send Hadribel to take charge of the Hahr and add Naszif to the command staff of the Shu. Even if he did not recognize me himself chances are Cado would once he described the khadifa of the Shu." "Promote him, anyway, sir. You don't have to reveal yourself.

If he's running with the Herodian pack it'll give him something he'll want to report to his masters." "Yes. Bring writing materials."

Bel-Sidek waited a long time while the old man wrote. The General's efforts seemed weaker and more painful than they had been the evening before. Bel- Sidek worried silently. The old man wrote three notes.

"Take this one to the same place you went last night. Then take the others to Hadribel. This one is for him. He's to deliver the other to Naszif himself after he has supper. You go to your friend's house. Stay there till time for tonight's meeting."

"Yes, sir." Bel-Sidek went, his leg aching so badly he began mumbling, "I will not yield. I am not beaten. I am among the living."

Azel rambled in and dumped himself into a chair at the only open table in Muma's Place. Muma himself came right away, settled opposite him. "Bad day?" "Just rough. You got any of that Narbonian beer hidden in the cellar still? I feel like swilling a pail full."

"There's still a little down there. You can't drink it out here."

"I know." "You may not have time for it," Muma said, rising.

Azel watched Muma cross to the kitchen doorway. A limping man arrived there moments later. The limping man was deft of hand. Azel almost missed the passing of the message. Muma summoned one of his sons. The youngest went out with the crippled man.