Wings of Omen

WHAT WOMEN DO BEST by Chris & Janet Morris

From a hunting blind of artfully piled garbage guarded by a dozen fat, half -tamed rats, an Ilsig head, then another, and another, caught the moonlight as the death squad emerged from the tunnels to go stalking Beysibs in the Maze.

They called their leader "Zip," when they called him anything at all. He didn't encourage familiarity; he'd always been a loner, a creature of the streets without family or friends. Even before the Beysib had come and the waves of executions had begun, the street urchins and the Maze-dwellers had stayed clear of the knife-boy who was half Ilsig and half some race much paler, who hired out for copper to any enforcer in the Maze or disgruntled dealer in Downwind. And who, it was said, brought an eye or tongue or liver from every soul he murdered to Vashanka's half-forgotten altar on the White Foal River's edge.

Even his death squad was afraid of him. Zip knew. And that was fine with him: every now and again, a member was captured by the Rankan oppressors or the Beysib oppressors: the less these idealists of revolution knew of him, the less they could reveal under torture or blandishment. He'd had a friend once, or at least a close acquaintance-an Ilsig thief called Hanse. But Hanse, with all his shining blades and his high-toned airs, had gone the way of everything in Sanctuary since the Beysibs' ships had docked: to oblivion, to hell in a basket.

Standing up straight for a moment in the moon-licked gloom to get his bearings. Zip heard laughter rounding a comer, saw a flash of pantaloon, and ducked back with a hiss and a signal to his group, who'd been trained by Nisibisi insurgents and knew this game as well as he.

The moonlight wasn't bright enough to tell the color of the Beysib males'-Zip didn't think of them as "men"- pantaloons, but he'd be willing to bet they were of claret velvet or shiny purple silk. Killing Beysibs was about as exciting as killing ants, and as fruitless: there were just too damned many of them.

The three coming toward his hunting party were drunk as Rankans and limp as any man might be who'd just come out of the Street of Red Lanterns empty of seed and purse.

He could almost see their fish-eyes bulging; he could hear their jewelry clank. For pussy-whipped sons of snake-women, these were loud and brash, taller than average, and with a better command of street-Rankene: from under their glittering, veil-draped hats, profanity worthy of the Rankan Hell-Hounds cut the night.

There remained nearly the whole Street of Red Lanterns between the two parties. "Pre-position," Zip breathed, and his two young squad members slipped away to find their places.

They'd done this every night since Harvest Moon; the only result of it Zip had seen was a second, then a third wave of Beysib ritual executions. .But since those ceremonially slaughtered were hated Rankan overlords and IIsigs who served the Rankans and the Bey, it wasn't keeping any of the revolutionaries up at night.

And you had to do something. Kadakithis had been a harsh ruler, but the Rankan barbarians were spoken of wistfully and with something bordering on affection now that the Beysib had come: a matriarchy complete with female mercenaries, assassins, magicians more utterly ruthless than men could ever be. It was enough to have brought Zip into the orb of the Revolution-his manhood was something he'd fight to keep. It was going to take more than a few exposed fish-folk titties to make him bow his head or renege on his heritage.

Right now, he was going to kill a couple of Beysib boy-toys and lay their pertinent equipment on Vashanka's Foal-side altar: maybe the Rankan murder-god could be roused to action; Death knew that the Ilsig gods were out of their depth with these women-despots whose spittle was as venomous as the pet snakes they kept and the spells they spoke. The Revolution could use the publicity and Zip could use the money their jewelry was going to bring once Marc melted it down.

Down the street came the Beysib boywhores, laughing in deeper voices than Beysib men usually dared. Zip could make out some words now: "-porking town down on its porking hands and knees with its butt in the air while those porkers pork it-"

Another voice cut in: "I've told you once, Gayle, to watch your mouth. Now I'm making it an order. Beysibs don't- God's balls!"

Without warning, and according to plan. Zip's two cohorts jumped out from concealment as the three Beysibs passed them.

Zip readied his throwing knives: once the Beysibs were herded his way, they were as good as dead. He widened his stance, feeling his pulse begin to pound.

But these Beysibs didn't run: from under their cloaks or out of their pantaloons, weapons suddenly appeared: Zip could hear the grate of metal as swords left their scabbards and the dismayed shouts from his cohorts as they tried to engage swordsmen with rusty daggers and sharpened wooden sticks.

Zip had a wrist slingshot; it was his emergency weapon. He didn't mean to use it; he was still thinking to himself that he was better off not getting involved, that these weren't your average Beysibs-maybe not Beysibs at all-and that he didn't owe the death-squad members anything, when he found himself letting fly once, then again, with his wrist slingshot and making as much noise as he could while running pell-mell toward the fray.

One of his missiles found its target: with a yelp, a pan-talooned figure went to its knees. Another turned his head, cursing like a soldier, and something whizzed past Zip's ear. He felt warmth, wetness, and knew he'd been grazed.

Then he realized that neither of his squad members were standing: he slowed to a walk, his breathing heavy, trying to see if the two lying in the dirt were moving. He thought one was; the other seemed too still.

His adversaries, whoever they were, seemed to want to continue the argument: the two with the swords moved toward him, parallel to one another, splitting the street into defensible halves, far enough away from the buildings to avoid any more lurkers in doorways, and from each other to give each room to handle anything that might come his way. Neither spoke; they closed on him with businesslike economy and a certain eagerness that gave Zip just enough time for second thoughts: These were professional tactics, put into practice by professionals. When times had been easier in Sanctuary and an old warhorse named Tempus had formed a special forces unit of Stepsons and then invited any Ilsigs who dared to train for a citizens' militia. Zip had taken the opportunity to leam all he could about the Rankan enemy: Zip had been taught "street control" by the same book as those now advancing down this particular street toward him.

Two to one against professionals, there was no chance that he could win.

He raised his hands as if in surrender.

The two soldiers-in-disguise growled low to one another in what might have been Court Rankene.

Before they could decide the obvious-to take him alive and spend the evening asking him questions it would be painful, perhaps crippling, not to answer-Zip did what he had to do: let fly with a palmed dagger and then a specially pronged slingshot missile.

Both casts sped murderously true-not into the probably armored chests of the two big men with swords (whose companion was now on his feet and falling in behind them, perfectly and by-the-drill covering every move they made) but into the exposed neck and chest of Zip's own two men: no revolutionary could be captured alive; everyone knew too much; they'd all signed suicide pacts in blood but, in this case. Zip knew he'd better help these two along. Rankan interrogation could be very nasty.

Then as the rear man yelled, "Get the bastard," and the two in front lunged toward him. Zip wheeled and dove for the tunnel entrance, down among the garbage and the rats, pulled the cobble-faced cover in place behind him, and shot the stout interior bolt.

Two days later, Hakiem was sitting on a bench in Promise Park-not one of his accustomed haunts.

He considered himself, as a storyteller, a neutral party in this war between Ranke and the Harka Bey for control of Sanctuary. In his innermost heart he couldn't help but take sides, though, and since his side was the side of the Ilsigi, whose land this once was and whose sorrow he now shared, he'd gotten just a little bit involved with helping the Revolution.

This was nothing new for Hakiem: he'd been a little involved with Jubal the ex slaver, a little involved with Prince/Governor Kadakithis's Hell-Hounds... with everything, if truth be known, that concerned his beloved, benighted town.

He kept telling himself that there was a good story in whatever it was he shouldn't be getting involved in. The Revolution, which might be the greatest story Sanctuary would ever offer him, was also the most dangerous. Involved in it were Rankans and Ilsigs, fighting together- though some didn't know it and others wouldn't admit it- against the heinous matriarchy of the Beysibs.

But, Hakiem reminded himself as he waited for his contact to appear, he was an old man: he wouldn't have lived to be old if he were too foolish. And Hakiem, who'd been safe on the sidelines, an observer and a certified neutral all his life, was beginning to feel the tug of revolutionary fervor himself-politics, he well knew, was an old man's game: old men sent young men out to lose their lives for principles. He'd have to be careful not to become as deluded as those the Ilsigi populace fought: the Beysibs, the Rankans, the Nisibisi and whoever else wanted to put their stamp on his poor little sandspit of a town.

Whoever had sent him the note which had bade him come here (Hakiem, for the tale most worth telling this season, meet me at the bench under the parasol pine in Promise Park at midday, two days hence.) was willing to take outrageous chances: even in daylight, the Beysib discouraged public gatherings. Two, these days, was a public gathering.

Still, this was the first time the rebels had tried to contact him, although it seemed to Hakiem that they should have realized they needed him sooner: without rumor, without the proper stirring stories of heroism and success, without a vision of the Revolution to come, no insurgency could succeed.

Two blond, bare-breasted Bey women went by, their bulging eyes downcast, demurely veiled, Beysib males prancing behind them, and behind those, Ilsig boys carrying sunshades.

When they'd gone, Hakiem took a deep breath. He didn't have any assurances that it was the revolutionaries who'd sent him the note: he'd made an assumption, one that might not be true. Either of the fish-women with their trained serpents who now receded into the distance, their entourage behind, could have sent that note.

Hakiem rubbed his face, bleary-eyed and weary: this final indignity heaped upon luckless Sanctuary was almost too much for him to bear. Daily, the rubble piles grew greater and the body count mounted. Orphans now outnumbered parented children, and child gangs as deadly as the Nisibisi-sponsored death squads roamed the town at night when (everywhere but in the Maze, which was impossible to police) the Beysib curfew was in force.

Once, the town of Sanctuary had been sneered at as the anus of Empire-but at least then it had been part of something comprehensible: the Rankan Empire, venal and vicious, was a creation of men and manpower, not of women and sorcery. The Harka Bey and their sorceresses imposed a rule of supernatural terror upon Sanctuary that all priests- Ilsig and Rankan alike-agreed would soon bring down the wrath of the elder gods.

An Ilsigi priest, in his fiery sermons (held surreptitously north of town in the Old Ruins), had warned that the gods might send Sanctuary to the bottom of the sea if the populace did not unite and oust the Bey.

Some had hoped Kadakithis might show his face there last night; but no one in the city had seen the poor Prince/Governor up close since the takeover: sometimes a personage who looked very like Kadakithis appeared at the high window in the Hall of Justice, but the whispers were that this was only a simulacrum of Kadakithis, that the Prince/ Governor languished, all but dead, under the Beysa Shupansea's spell. And the rumors were not so far from the truth, though Kadakithis was held in thrall by love, not magic.

Things were so much worse now than they'd been when the Nisibisi witches had come down from the north preaching Ilsig liberation and prophesying a great upheaval to come that, had the most terrible Nisibisi witch-Roxane, Death's Queen-appeared now before Hakiem and demanded his soul in payment for the opportunity to tell a tale of Sane- f tuary's freedom, Hakiem would gladly have given it.

Things were so damned depressing, sometimes he wanted to cry.

When he wiped his eyes and took his old, gnarled hands away, a woman stood there before him.

He drew in a shocked breath and almost cowered: was it a witch? Was it dreaded Roxane, come back from the northern war? Roxane, who had all but destroyed the Stepsons and made undead slaves of her conquests? Had he just pacted with a witch? By the mechanism of a thought, just an errant thought? Surely, no one could lose their soul so easily, so offhandedly....

The woman was tall and broad-shouldered, with a turn chin and clear narrow eyes; her hair was as black as a wizard's, her clothes nondescript but cut to facilitate easy movement-her tunic vented, her Ilsig leggings bloused at the knees and disappearing into calf-high, laced boots.

"Hakiem, are you? I'm Kama. Shall we walk?"

"Walk? I'm... waiting for someone-my apprentice," he lied lamely. Was this a Bey mercenary? He didn't know they covered their breasts or wore pants. Was he to be arrested? That would be a story- "Inside a Beysib Interrogation Cell"-if only he might live to tell it....

"Walk." The woman's voice was throaty as she chuckled. "It's safer, for this kind of meet. And the someone you're waiting for, I hope, is me." She smiled, and there was something familiar about her eyes, as if an old acquaintance looked out of them. She extended her hand to him as if he were infirm, some old woman to be helped to her feet. Women were getting altogether out of hand in Sanctuary this season.

He brushed her hand aside and got up stiffly, hoping she wouldn't notice.

She was saying, "-your apprentice? That idea's not half-bad. I'd probably qualify, having won first prize at the last Festival of Man, wouldn't you think?"

"First prize? Festival of Man?" Hakiem repeated dumbly. "What did you say your name was?" The Festival of Man was held once every four years, far to the north. It was a festival for kings and armies, a matter of war games and athletic events, and there was a poetry contest for historians of the field and tellers of heroic tales that every storyteller alive dreamed of winning. But even to attend you had to be sponsored by a king, a greatful army, a powerful lord. Who was this woman? She'd told him, but he was so melancholy and so depressed-no, let's face it, fool: you're getting old!-he couldn't recall what she'd said.

"Can I trust you, old man? Or am I safe because, though I told you once, you've already forgot?" Her mouth twisted in a defensive little grin that definitely reminded him of someone else. But who?

Hakiem said carefully, "You can trust me if your heart is in the right place. Candy." That was what she'd said, he thought-or close enough to make her correct him.

She looked at her booted feet as they scuffed up autumn dirt and when she raised her head she looked right at him: "I'm Kama, of the Rankan 3rd Commando. If your heart's in the right place, you'll put me in touch with the rebels. Otherwise," she shrugged, "you folks are going to have a lot of dead amateurs and a stillborn Revolution."

"What? What are you talking about? Rebels? I know no rebels-"

"Wonderful. I like your spirit, old man. You're the ears of this town, and some say the mouth. Tell whomever you don't know that I'll be at Marc's Junky Weapons Shop an hour before curfew and thereafter, tonight, to make sure we don't have another little problem like we had on the Street of Red Lanterns two nights ago. If we're going to kick some Beysib pantaloons, we'll need every man we've got."

Hakiem had the distinct feeling that this Kama of the Rankan 3rd Commando had forgotten that she, herself, was a woman. "I can't promise anything," he said politically. "After all, I've only your word and-"

"Just do it, old man; save the talk for those who'll listen. And show up tonight, if you dare, to hear some tales you'll die from telling. Even if you don't, I'll be telling everyone I meet I'm your apprentice-do try to remember my name."

She increased her pace, leaving him behind as if he were standing still.

Watching her draw away, Hakiem stopped trying to catch up. There were too many Bey around. If he wanted a story worth dying for, he could drop by Marc's.

He wasn't sure if he would, or sure that not going would save him from involvement by implication. But then, she- Kama-knew that. He'd been too daunted by her talk of the Festival of Man and her whole bearing to consider much of what she'd said.

Now, walking unseeingly Mazeward, toward the Vulgar Unicom for the first of many drinks, he did: the Rankan 3rd Commando were rangers with a very bad reputation since the real Stepsons had left town, filling their ranks with locals, to fight the Wizard Wars in the north, there had been no force on the side of Empire worth rallying round. If the 3rd Commando was here, then the Empire hadn't given up on Sanctuary, all was not lost, and resistance was really possible.

Of course, given the stories about the 3rd's brutality and their provenance they'd been formed by Tempus long ago to quash just such a revolt as might be brewing in Sanctuary-the cure for Sanctuary's Beysib ills might well be worse than the disease.

Straton wasn't at all sure this was going to work. He hadn't seen Ischade, the vampire woman who lived down by the. White Foal, since before the war for Wizardwall, when he'd been an on-duty Stepson, with the whole cadre behind him and Critias beside him, and the only troubles in Sanctuary were sorcery and refractory death squads and the occasional assassination: all standard stuff.

Strat wished Crit was here, then slid off his horse before Ischade's oddly shadowed house and, crossbow at the ready, tethered his big bay horse outside. Crit would be along, one of these days. The whole unit was drifting in, a man here, a pair there; along with Sync's 3rd Commando, they had a good chance of putting things to rights-if they could just figure out what "rights" were. Sync thought they should put every Beysib in town on one big funerary pyre and give 'em to the gods, for starters.

Straton wasn't taking orders from Sync: with Crit still upcountry and Niko in transit with Tempus, Straton was in charge of the Stepsons, who wanted only to kill every idiot who'd made the unit designation "Stepson" a slur and a curse here while they'd been gone.

But Kama had prevailed on Strat to try enlisting the vampire woman's aid. Kama was Tempus's daughter; Strat still respected her for that-not for anything she'd done or earned, just for being his commander's progeny.

So he'd come back here, despite the fact that Ischade the vampire woman was more dangerous than a bedroom full of Harka Bey, to "invite" Ischade to the little party Sync and he were throwing at Marc's.

He'd probably have come anyway, he told himself: Ischade was dangerous enough to be interesting, the sort of woman you never forget once you look into her eyes. And he'd looked into them: deep, hellhole eyes that made him wonder what kind of death she offered her victims....

Nothing for it but to knock on the damn door and get it over with, then.

He pulled on his leather tunic and assayed the walk up to her threshold; as he did, the interior lights flickered and dimmed weirdly. The last time he'd been here, his eyesight had been bothering him. It wasn't, anymore, thanks to a benign spell cast during his northern sortie.

So he'd really see her, this time.

On her doorstep, he hesitated; then he muttered a prayer that consigned his soul to the appropriate god should he die here, and knocked.

He heard movement within, then nothing.

He knocked again.

This time, the movement came closer and the lights in her front windows winked out.

"Ischade," he called out gruffly, a dagger in hand to pick the lock or slice its thong or pound upon the wooden door with all his might, "open up. It's-"

The door seemed to disappear before him; off balance, for he'd been about to thump on it hard with his dagger's hilt, he took a stumbling step forward.

"I know," said a velvet voice coming from a wraithlike face cowled in inky shadows, "who you are. I remember you. Have you tired of giving death? Or have you brought me another gift?" Her eyes lifted up to his, her hood fell back, and yet, somehow, backlit in her doorway, her face was still in shadow.

Her eyes, however, were not.

Straton found himself forgetful of his purpose. He wasn't a womanizer; he wasn't an impressionable boy; yet Ischade's gaze was like some drug which made the world recede and all he wanted to do was look at her, touch her, brave the danger of her, and do to her what he was nearly certain none of the sheep she'd fed upon had ever managed to do.

He said, "Invite me in."

She said, "I have a visitor, within."

He replied, "Get rid of him."

She smiled: "My thought exactly. You will wait here?"

He agreed: "Don't be long."

When her door closed, it was as if a bond had broken, a leash been snapped, a drug worn off.

He found that he was shivering, and it wasn't anywhere near as cold in autumnal Sanctuary as it had been on Wi-zardwall; despite his shaking hands, there was sweat beading on his upper lip. He wiped it and regretted shaving for this court enterprise.

Either he was lucky, and she'd be sated by whatever meat she had in there, so that he could talk to her, convince her, make some sort of deal with her, or he was walking into serious trouble, without Crit or any of his team to get him out if he got in too deep.

About the time he was deciding that no one would ever think the worse of him if he just walked away from this one, left Ischade's stone unturned, and said she hadn't been at home, the door reopened and a delicate, white hand reached out to him: "Come in, Straton," said the vampire woman. "It's been a long time since one such as you has come to me."

Sync had saved the fabled crimelord Jubal for himself. The Sanctuary veterans he had on staff had warned him about the vicious squalor of Downwind, but he hadn't believed them.

Now he believed, but he believed more in his good right arm and the attractiveness of the offer he had to make.

This Jubal was black and stout as a gnarled tree, older than Sync had been led to believe by half, and sporting a fey blue hawkmask that would have bothered Sync more if the sycophants around the ex-slaver weren't verifying Jubal's identity by every deferential move they made.

The head bootlicker here was named Saliman; the hovel was reasonably commodious once you got inside, but the band of pseudo-beggars ranged around it would give Sync a strenuous afternoon if he had to cut his way through them to get out. He'd unbridled his horse as a precaution: if he whistled. Sync was going to have twelve hundred Rankan pounds of iron hooves and snapping jaws to back him up. 3rd Commando training told him he didn't need more than that: one man, one horse, one holocaust on demand.

Sync wasn't a politician; he was a field commander. But he wasn't in this Downwind potty to fight; he was here to talk.

Jubal, in a flurry of feathered robes, sat down on something very like a throne and said-in a muffled voice through his mask: "Talk, mercenary."

Sync replied: "Get rid of the mask and your playmates, and we'll talk. This is between us, or not at all."

Jubal responded, "Then perhaps it's not at all. But then you've wasted our time, and we don't like that. Do we?"

Ten scruffy locals made threatening noises.

"Look here, slumlord, are you in the pay of the Beysibs? If not, let's get serious. I didn't come here to give your staff combat lessons. If they need 'em, I've got trainers in the 3rd Commando who specialize in making silk purses out of sow's ears."

Three of the ten were edging forward. Jubal stopped them with a raised hand. From under the mask came what might have been a rattling sigh. "3rd Commando? Should I be impressed?"

Sync said, "I don't know what you're supposed to be, Jubal, in that damn feathered cape and mask. Is everybody in this town in drag?" He crossed his arms, thinking he should have sent a Sanctuary veteran to bring this black man in by the ear. He had to remind himself forcefully not to call Jubal a Wriggly to his face. It was a damned shame, having to join forces with an enemy you'd thoroughly beaten years ago-and on equal terms. The misfortunes of war were neverending.

"Not everybody," Jubal said, leaning forward.

The naked threat in his voice told Sync that he'd pushed just about as far as he could with this ex-gladiator cum slaver cum power player, so he changed tack: "That's comforting. Now, since you won't get rid of your bodyguards, even though it looks to me like you'd be safe enough defending yourself, I'm going to tell you why I'm here and we can have a democratic referendum on how much of a share in the profits your men here get, how much you keep, what everybody's got to do, and who else is-"

"All right," Jubal interrupted. "All right. Saliman, clear the room and make sure no one gets too curious."

"But my lord-" Saliman sputtered.

"Do it!"

Almost as if by magic, the muscle men disappeared.

"Now, what's on your mind. Sink?"

"You must have heard that the 3rd is operating independent of the Emperor-we're on our own."

"Yes?" Jubal purred.

"We're trying to put together a coalition to rid Sanctuary of the Harka Babies and install an interim ruler who suits us-make Sanctuary an independent state: I've got half an army with no place to call home."

"And you'd like to make your home in Sanctuary?"

"Remains to be seen. But if we try this, we'd like you to be a part of it working with us. Nobody's going to take and hold Sanctuary without your active cooperation, we've heard."

"How do you know the Beysibs haven't heard it too?" Jubal asked cannily.

The old black was sharp, but Sync could feel that he was buying the deal-lock, stock, and misrepresentations. "Because they're having too much trouble, from too many unidentified quarters."

Jubal laughed. The laugh was amplified by his hawkmask and boomed so loud in the small room that its curtains quivered. "That may be, that may be. But flattery won't get you everywhere-just somewhere. Now, let's hear the specifics." The ex gladiator's arms came out from under his cloak and Sync could see purple scars that told one seasoned veteran of too many wars that he was looking at another.

Sync said honestly: "You can't believe I'd go into that here, with all those ears you've got. I want you to come to a little party we're having, at Marc's Weapons Shop on the Street of Smiths, this evening. Representatives of every faction my Long Recon people think useful will be there. I want to put them together-with your help, of course- in one well-coordinated, working unit."

"Intriguing." Jubal's hawkmask bobbed slowly. "And then what?"

"Then we're going to make this town what it ought to be, what it used to be, what it wants to be: a freehold, a thieves' world, a safe haven where men like you and I don't have to kiss any pomaded pederasts' rings and women do what women do best."

Again, Jubal laughed. When he sobered, he raised his mask-not enough for Sync to see the face beneath; just enough to wipe his eyes. "You, me, and what army?"

"You, me, the 3rd Commando, and Tempus's original Stepsons. Plus, perhaps, the local death squads and revolutionaries, your odd mercenary, the downtrodden Ilsig populace, and the regular army garrison-the ranking officer over there is an old friend of mine. That enough manpower for you?"

"Might be, might be," Jubal chuckled.

"Then you'll come, tonight?"

"I'll be there," Jubal agreed.

Marc's Weapons Shop had a trap door behind the counter, as well as a firing range out back, two display cases filled with blades, and two walls of high torque crossbows.

Beneath, in the cellar, arcane and forbidden weaponry was kept-alchemical incendiaries, wrist slingshots such as Zip's, instruments of interrogation and of silent kill: poisons and persuaders.

It was early, before the scheduled evening meeting, and Zip and Marc were arguing, alone, while above Marc's blonde and nubile wife minded the store.

"You can't ask me to do this, Marc," Zip said from the comer in which he was hunched, bowstring-taut and feral, his eyes darting from shadow to shadow, looking for the trap he was sure would soon be sprung.

"I've got to ask you, boy, or watch you commit suicide: you can't fight this bunch. You trained with Stepsons; you know that now they're drifting into town again, things are going to change. You stayed out of trouble when they were around last time; now, you can't. They'll tan your hide and use it for a saddle blanket; your polished teeth'll decorate some war-horse's headstall. I don't want to see that happen."

"So you gave them my name? I trusted you. I got into this whole thing by accident. I don't want to be any rebel leader; I don't want to incite any riots or start any twelve-gods-damned revolutions; I just want to protect my own self. Why did you do this to me?"

"They're smart. They've had reconnaissance people in town for weeks-they knew about you already. If you aren't with them, that bunch assumes you're against them."

"Who? The Buggemauts? The Whoresons? Who cares?"

"You'll care, when they make you two inches taller before they make you six inches shorter-mercenaries are a very suspicious breed. I know Strat's Stepsons, and I trust them: they have to be trustworthy-it's all they've got: one another and the value of their word. Tempus will be along, Strat says, presently: that means the Storm God-if you still care about Vashanka-is coming home. I'm not good with words..." Marc rubbed his beard miserably; his round, brown eyes pleaded with the gutterbred fighter jammed against the joint of two walls as if he were already at bay. "Please just stay and listen to their proposal: without you, the death squads will never give this alliance a chance."

"You're addled. Bewitched. Most of the death squad members got their start with Roxane, the Nisibisi witch. It's a trap: the Stepsons and the 3rd are looking for revenge. Roxane didn't exactly lose gracefully fighting the Stepsons; they lost men; meres never forget."

"You've got to stay... if not for yourself, for me. They've spotted you; they know you're using this place to rearm, to meet, to get in and out of the tunnels. If you don't pretend to join them, I'm having this conversation with a dead man-it's just a matter of days."

"Well, at least you're being honest, now." Zip pushed himself up against the wall. He had a two-day growth of beard and looked a decade older than the years he'd lived. Erect, leaning back in his comer, he said despairingly, "I don't suppose it would do any good to make you promise not to reveal any more of our names?..."

"On pain of death? Kill me now, then. And my wife. And everyone else that's helped you. I own, boy, I've seen a lot of action, too many wars to suit me, and I'm telling you: the only way to live through what's brewing in Sanctuary is to make a deal with the 3rd Commando."

"Just so long as it isn't the damn Rankan army-it isn't, you can promise me that, can't you? Can't you?"

Marc looked at his big-knuckled hands. The slit-eyed, scruffy youth before him had been orphaned in the Rankan takeover of Sanctuary. He didn't remember his parents and he'd grown up fast and hard, hating Rankans all the way. He'd had no connections, no advantages, no mentors: Marc had known Zip for years, and never dared to get involved- this kind died young and they died unpleasantly.

Now, for some reason known only to the gods. Marc was involved: it was a matter of pride, of gut resentment, of life and death.

"No, boy, I can't promise you that. But maybe they can. All / can promise is that if you don't show up, not me, or my wife, or this shop is going to exist in the morning: they'll level the place and bury us in it."

"Thanks for not pressuring me."

"You're welcome. Thanks for making my shop your favorite haunt."

"I give. Look, tell me who's going to be here."

With a sick feeling in his stomach, fingering an amulet of Shalpa in hopes that the goddess could keep this boy from diving through the open hole by his side into the tunnels and never coming up. Marc began to explain about the vampire woman, Ischade; the crime lord, Jubal; the Rankan 3rd Commando leader, Sync; the storyteller, Hakiem, and the acting garrison commander, Walegrin.

As he did, watching Zip's unbelieving eyes go icy and hostile. Marc couldn't even convince himself that tonight's meeting wasn't going to be a wholesale slaughter. Judging by the guest list, somebody could get rid of every troublemaker in Sanctuary worth mentioning in one cleansing fire- he hoped to hell that "somebody" didn't turn out to be Strat.

The only element missing from the list of invited guests was a representative of black magic-some honcho from the mageguild, or Enas Yorl, or some Hazard-class enchanter who might be able to keep order through fear of mortal curse.

And if the Stepsons hadn't been allergic to magicians, they'd probably have invited one of them, too.

By the time Sync got to the meeting, the air was already blue with krrf smoke, the packed-clay floor littered with wine dregs.

Kama was presiding, as best she could, over a crowd of thirty-five people who, under any other circumstances, would have been locked in mortal combat by now.

Hakiem the storyteller was the only person in the room who was unarmed, though Sync was well aware that the mouth was mightier than the sword in a situation like this. If things went badly, the rest could be let go, but Hakiem would have to die.

Walegrin, big, blond, and out of uniform, sat in the middle of a half-dozen plain-clothed officers who, by being invited here, would be sufficiently compromised that even if they weren't actively helpful, they wouldn't hinder Sync's progress.

Straton was sitting off by himself in a comer on a winekeg with a woman who must be the vampire, Ischade, else they wouldn't have had that much space to themselves. It was a good thing Critias wasn't in town, or Strat never would have gone after the vampire woman. Sync had to stop himself from looking for signs of vampire-bite on Strat's neck.

The young guerrilla fighter whom Sync, Gay Ie, and Strat had tangled with on the Street of Red Lanterns-the one who'd killed his own men rather than let them be captured- had the other far comer, a mangy cur scratched fleas by his knee. Sync nodded to Zip and threaded his way to him through the crowd: if there was one single element of this riffraff he needed to secure his tactical advantage, it was this scruffy rebel leader. Reaching him, with all eyes on them. Sync held out his hand and said, "Last time, we forgot to introduce ourselves. I'm Sync. You're?..."

"Zip will do." Eyes slitted, he shook Sync's hand.

"I'm glad you came. When this is over, I'll buy you a meal and we'll compare notes."

He turned and headed toward the table Marc had set up at the front of the room before Zip could ask him what kind of notes or decline his invitation.

Standing beside Kama, Sync waited for Jubal to settle down. Jubal was another one to whom this crowd gave extra room, though he'd come in late with only his first lieutenant-Jubal had been skulking outside in the shadows, waiting for Sync to arrive.

"Now that we're all here," Sync scanned the room, making sure that this was indeed the case; a particular pair of wolfish eyes in a furry face met his and he nodded as he continued, "I'd like to turn the meeting over to our resident expert on covert enterprise, secrecy, and wizardry, Randal, our own ex-Hazard, formerly of the Tysian mageguild."

Mutters broke out; men and women moved away from one another; necks craned, looking for the sorcerer in their midst.

From Ischade's comer, a musical laugh sounded. As all eyes turned to her, the mangy cur, part wolf by the look of it, who'd been scratching fleas near Zip's knee, stretched, yawned, and got to his feet.

The dog, with a sneeze and a sniffle, wandered in seemingly haphazard fashion up to the table, where Kama knelt down, ready with the cloak she'd been v/earing, and fastened it around the old dog's neck.

In the back of the room, Zip rose to his feet without a sound; Marc the blademonger put out a hand to stay him.

But no one noticed: the crowd's attention was on the dog before them, changing before their eyes into a man.

It was a smooth transition, smoother than Randal usually could manage. He didn't even sneeze much.

When the mage rose to full man's height, the cloak and the smoke and the shadows thrown by flickering candles in that subterranean meeting room made him seem more imposing than he really was.

For the first time. Sync had that warm feeling in the pit of his stomach that he got when a strategy became reality.

Randal said, "Thank you. Commander."

Sync murmured, "You're welcome," and sat down.

"Good evening, gentle folk," Randal began. "I bring you greetings from Tempus, and from all our friends on Wi-zardwall. The plight of Sanctuary since the Stepsons left it has come to our attention, and with your help, we're going to set about making things right here-ousting the Beysibs and returning Sanctuary to its former... ah... glory."

There was a general murmur of agreement.

Randal smiled his boyish, winning smile. The redoubtable mage, his hair grown long enough to cover his too-large ears and too-thin neck, was a born crowd pleaser. When he sneezed concussively, he blamed it on his "lack of suitable garments" and the cold; the crowd bought it. They were so anxious to have the advantage of wizardly aid in fighting the Beysibs that if Randal had talked to them in the shape of a mule or a salamander, they would have listened respectfully, silently, gratefully.

It bothered Sync, just a little, that the credibility of honest fighters wasn't sufficient to satisfy this rabble, but a simple shape-change trick by a fey magician made everybody in the place feel like conquering heroes. He'd counted on that being the case, but it still troubled him: fighters tended to dislike sorcerers, class to class.

If there was one exception, one person not charmed and convinced by Randal's tricks (including the materialization of a topographical map of Sanctuary, a feast fit for the Beysibs in Kadakithis's palace, and "working capital" to the tune of five thousand Rankan soldats), it was Zip.

Marc knew it, and Sync knew it.

When the meeting was over. Marc delayed Zip's exit so that Sync could close in on the youth.

Sync detoured only long enough to ask Strat, in an undertone, "Still got your soul, buddy?" and receive a curt nod in reply before he took the rebel leader by the elbow and suggested they go to the Vulgar Unicorn for a "drink and whatever."

To Sync's relief. Zip agreed, saying: "If we're going to do this, we'd better do it right."

"What's 'right'?" Sync asked, not understanding.

"Right? With One-Thumb's help, soldier. Or are you afraid of Nisibisi magic? It's not like your little baby wizard's, up there." He indicated Randal disrespectfully.

"Magic? I'm afraid of your kind of magic-a knife in the back in the dead of night-not theirs," Sync quipped, wondering if this gutterpud wasn't smarter than he looked: no Stepson, no 3rd Commando, and especially no Rankan regular army officer, wanted anything to do with the Nisibisi witch-caste.

When Sync headed for the trapdoor with its stairs leading up into Marc's shop. Zip's hand closed hard on his arm: "Not that way, fool. You want to go to the Unicorn, we go through the tunnels. Smith Street's under curfew, even if the Maze isn't; and, wherever you are these days, two men together rouse suspicion. Come on-that is, unless you're afraid of getting those nice boots wet."

Sync didn't know how Zip could find his way through that dank and slippery darkness. They slogged through sewage, then cleaner water up to their knees, in a phosphorescent green-dark counter-Maze no sane fighter would have entered without ropes, torches, chalk, and reinforcements.

Zip seemed right at home; his voice, at least, was relaxed, though Sync couldn't see his face and was concentrating on holding onto Zip's shoulder, as he'd been instructed, trying not to listen to the part of his brain that kept telling him he'd regret putting himself at the mercy of this sewerlord: Zip could lose him down here and Sync might never find his way out.

But the guerrilla either hadn't thought about treachery, or didn't intend any: Zip's tone was almost friendly as he asked, "Surely you don't expect this so called alliance of yours to hold?" His last word echoed: hold, old. Id, d.

"No," Sync replied, "but before we start warring, we like to introduce ourselves. Anyway, it's good form, and we might pick up a few allies, even if we can't form a coalition townwide."

"In two weeks," Zip said with jocular bitterness, "there'll be twice as many factions fighting, thanks to you: army, death squads, revolutionary idealists, Beysib bitches, your rangers, ersatz Stepsons, real Stepsons-what's the point?"

"That's the point. It doesn't have to happen that way."

"If everyone lets you control it. The chance of that is about even with me marrying Roxane and becoming the reigning Nisibisi warlock."

Right about then. Sync began to wonder if Zip was really taking him to the Vulgar Unicorn. Even the mention of Roxane's name made his skin crawl. He'd had quite enough of wizard wars. That was one of the things Sanctuary had to offer as a winter billet: enough trouble to keep his men from going stale, and no uncounterable magic, just the Bey-sibs and the weakling sorcerers of Sanctuary's third-rate mageguild in a town that was a war-gamer's paradise.

"Roxane's that good a friend of yours, is she?" Sync took a shot in the dark.

"She's that much of a problem-you'll find out yourself, sooner or later. She's one very big reason why I can't hook up with you. Another is, I can't speak for everybody- hardly for anybody at all."

"Just the Nisibisi-trained and funded death squads?"

"That's right. Take a left turn here; we're going to start climbing stone steps; they're slippery; there's fifteen, then a landing, then ten more."

They climbed in the dark. Sync continued his interrogation: "I've heard that you control most of the territory in Downwind-that you've held it against the Beysibs and that at this point they've given up trying to take it back."

"Most of the territory? Three blocks? That's what I've got, all I can hold. We don't have drool in the way of arms, or fighters, or anything much but a little Nisibisi support. I'll show my territory to you some time. You won't be impressed."

"I'll be the judge of that." Sync had lost count of the stairs; he tried to mount one and his foot thumped down hard through thin air: they'd made the first landing. Three strides, and they were climbing again. With a sinking feeling that had nothing to do with being underground and at the mercy of a boy guerrilla, Sync asked: "I'd like to meet her, sometime soon-this Roxane. Can you arrange it?"

"Life too dull for you? Just can't wait to lose your soul? Heard that undeads have more fun?"

"I'm serious."

"I wish I wasn't. If you promise me you won't consider it an act of war on my part, I'll hook you up tonight."

"Thanks, I'd appreciate it."

"We'll see about that-maybe you won't be able to appreciate anything, afterward. Any next of kin you want me to notify? At least tell that baby-mage of yours to avenge you?"

Sync chuckled, but he couldn't make it sound convincing. "Randal's going to be introducing himself to Sanctuary, this evening. If Roxane's really here, he won't need to be notified. They've met before."

"Here we are. I'm just going to slide this bolt and then we'll climb up, one at a time-I'll go first. And she's really here. Ask One-Thumb."

There was the sound of wood grating, then a square of blinding light, then a dark silhouette in its midst as Zip levered himself up.

Following, Sync reflected that though this wasn't as harmless an alibi as he'd expected, at least he'd be in public, drinking in the Unicorn when as many of the hundred ruling Beysib women as had accepted an invitation to the opening of "Randal's Pleasure Palace" uptown became wax statues in the exhibit of "Beysib Culture" which was the prime attraction of the mage's Beysib trap.

This Sync didn't understand what he was getting himself into. Zip knew. The trick was to let the crazy bastard have his way without Zip taking the blame for what became of the 3rd's commanding officer.

Zip hated officers, armies, authoritarian types. He also hated Roxane, when he dared. But not too often-she was more dangerous than three 3rd Commando cadres and she had him by the jewels.

She'd appreciate Sync, all right, if Zip could deliver him. He didn't know why he felt reluctant to do it. Sync was just another murderer, and the worst kind: professional, efficient, charismatic in a Rankan sort of way. The less Rankans in Zip's world, the better. But still, if the Rankans got together and decimated the Beysibs, there'd be less Rankans for the Nisibisi sympathizers to deal with later. Right now, what was good for the Nisibisi-sponsored Revolution was good for Zip.

So he took some chances, letting Sync see how Zip's sort got around in town without being noticed, even showing him where you left your sewer-reeking clothes in One-Thumb's wine cellar and where you got fresh ones before you slunk up the back way and into the Unicorn crowd through the outhouse entrance as if you'd always been there.

One-Thumb wasn't behind the bar; he was probably upstairs with Roxane, or out at the estate-in which case, there'd be nothing Zip could do tonight: you didn't take people to One-Thumb's uninvited... not unless you wanted to end up dog meat.

The waitress was one of Zip's people; two hand signals he could only hope Sync didn't see brought him his answer: One-Thumb was in his office upstairs.

Since other things went on upstairs-a bit of whoring and drug-dealing-it was no problem for Zip to go on up, but the man beside him was attracting attention: Sync's sword was too service-scarred, his well-chosen and nondescript garb a little too well-chosen and nondescript for the Unicorn denizens not to mark him as somebody trying not to look like a soldier.

So there were too many eyes on them and the place went too quiet when they settled down in a comer. That was another problem with the meres: they couldn't stand having their backs exposed; if Sync could have handled a table in the middle of the room, the break in pattern would have relaxed the crowd and Zip wouldn't have felt like he was on display.

But it was like asking a horse to fly. So they sat in a comer, vacated warily by a couple of slitpurses who gave Zip dirty looks for consorting with the enemy, and pretended nonchalance until the girl came back with their ales and a message: One-Thumb would meet them around the back.

Just as they were finishing their draughts and checking their purses, Vashanka's own hell seemed to break loose outside.

The crowd surged toward the door, beyond which the sky was sheeting colored light, then back again as the dreaded Harka Bey-the Beysib mercenary women, assassins in full dress with their damn snakes on their arms-shouldered their way inside, men-at-arms behind them, and backed everyone up against the walls.

"What the frog?" Zip breathed to Sync as the women, who could kill you by spitting on you, if rumor could be believed, starting disarming everyone methodically, then binding their thumbs together behind their backs.

There were ten Bey with crossbows in the middle of the room; Zip kept watch on them under his arms, which were spread above his head like everyone else's.

When Sync didn't respond, Zip whispered, "Well, Ranger, what now? If this is a result of Randal's little 'introduction,' we're standing in an execution coffle: Bey-sibs don't go after guilty parties, they just round up a bunch of folks at random and slaughter them in the morning. And they don't make it pretty."

Sync shrugged as well as a man can with his hands propped on the wall above his head and his feet spread-eagled: "I'm armed and dangerous; how about you?"

"Close enough, friend. I sure don't want my people to see me led like a bull to the sacrificial slaughter. And if a woman kills you, your soul never finds its eternal rest."

"I didn't know that," Sync quipped.

"You know it now. Ready? Let's die with our privates intact-it ain't that much to ask."

"Ready," Sync breathed. "On the count of three, we break for the back door." He inclined his head to the right. "To make this work, we'll have to have a couple of those Beysib bitches, so I'm going to start counting when they come to you: as soon as they touch you, grab an arm, jerk it in and grab the bitch, get a choke hold on-"

"Silence!" pealed a deep but assuredly female voice, and the whole place froze.

Zip thought, at first, that it was a Beysib voice, but in its wake came no venomous bite, no snake's fangs, no crossbow bolt through his spine. And in the entire room, nothing so much as moved.

Ducking his head. Zip verified what his ears told him: there was a familiar tread on the stairs-the tap, tap, tap of Roxane's heels. And there was the rustling of One-Thumb's muscular thighs as he descended the staircase beside her, his heavy breathing, and her soft low laugh.

These things could be heard so clearly because, throughout the Vulgar Unicorn, everything else was motionless: the Beysibs stood with mouths agape and weapons at ready, but their eyes were glazed.

Customers in mid-cower were entranced between blinks; tears glittered unshed in serving wenches' eyes.

Only Sync and Zip, of the entire ground-floor crowd, were unaffected by Roxane's spell.

And Sync was already pushing away from the wall, his sword drawn and a half dozen Bandaran throwing-stars in his left hand. "Pork-all! What's going on here? Who the pork is she? What's happening?"

Zip straightened up. "Thanks, Roxane. That could have been dicey." Her beauty didn't affect him as it once had- her sanguine skin and drowning-pool eyes couldn't tempt him; but he couldn't let Sync see that fear had replaced the lust he'd once felt for Roxane. Summoning all his bravado, he continued: "This here's Sync; he wanted to meet you, and One-Thumb too. He wants to join the Revolution. Isn't that right. Sync?"

"Right, right as rain." Sync was just a little bit intimidated, Zip thought. But he'd seen Roxane spellbind a man before, and he knew that Sync wasn't immune: the ranger's eyes never left hers.

Well, Zip thought, he asked for it. Maybe we will be allies, after all.

Then Roxane came up, taking both their hands, saying: "Come, gentlemen. I don't want to hold this rabble entranced forever. One-Thumb and I will take you upstairs, and we'll let this slaughter recommence." She licked her lips: she lived on fear, death, and suffering; she was probably having a feast on some psychic plane, just observing the Beysib about their vicious work.

For Sync and Zip, it was a lucky break: she wouldn't feel like teaching them any of her more difficult lessons, Zip was willing-to bet-not tonight.

"Zip, my dear little monster, you've outdone yourself this evening." She caressed his face; above her shoulder One-Thumb's eyes met his with what might have been sympathy.

"This?" Zip gestured around, to the Bey and their hapless prey. "I didn't cause this. He did." Zip gestured to Sync. "He's got a mage on staff, and they worked up a little surprise for the Bey hierarchy, across town. This, I'll bet, is the Beysib reaction-or maybe just the beginning of it."

"It is, it is, indeed, just the beginning." Roxane was inebriated with whatever carnage her soul-sucking talents had been treated to this evening. "A half dozen, no less, of the high-ranking Bey bitches are dead, turned to waxen statues in a Tysian mage's museum." She smiled. "And these sheep," her hand encompassed the room, "soon will be dying the slow and horrible death of Beysib retribution."

She caressed Sync's hand, the one with the stars in it; he looked at her like a starving man at a laden feast-day table. "And," she continued, "since Zip assures me I've you and yours to thank, we'll have a long talk about our mutual future-I'm quite certain. Sync of the Rankan 3rd Commando, that we're going to have one. I may even give you Randal's life, a gesture of appreciation, an indication that we can and will work well together, an introductory gift from me to you."

As if from a dream. Sync roused: "Right. That's very good of you, my lady. I'm yours to command."

"I'm sure you are," Roxane agreed.

Zip knew Sync didn't realize how true what he'd said was likely to be. Not yet, he didn't.

"Would you mind," Sync asked Roxane as they moved among the frozen and the doomed, "if I slit these Beysibs' throats on our way out? It's as fair as the chance the Bey will give these innocents, if I don't." The big soldier's eyes sought Zip's.

Zip said, "It'll give the Revolution credibility."

Roxane paused, pouted, then brightened: "Be my guest. Fillet fish-folk to your heart's content."

Behind her, One-Thumb muttered something about "the right slime for the job."

It didn't take long to slay the unknowing Beysibs. Zip helped Sync while the witch and One-Thumb looked on.

When they were done, they wrote the initials of Zip's "Popular Front for the Liberation of Sanctuary" on the walls of the Vulgar Unicorn in Beysib blood.

By tomorrow, the PFLS's latest kill would be on everybody's lips.

Not bad. Zip thought to himself-not bad at all, for a start.

Then Roxane led the way up the Unicorn's stairs and through a door that had no right to open into the witching room of her Foalside hold, a lot farther than a few steps away from One-Thumb's bar in the Maze.

Three days had passed since the revolutionaries calling themselves the PFLS had slaughtered too many Beysibs in the Vulgar Unicorn.

Sanctuarites were just daring to go abroad again, pale and haggard from fear and disgust. First the cutthroats and the drunkards, then the vendors and the whores returned to the streets. Then, when it was clear that no Beysib squadrons were waiting to swoop down and scoop them up, others ventured forth, and the town returned to what had become normal: business as usual, with the occasional pitched battle on a streetcomer or sniper in some shanty's eaves.

Hakiem was down on Wideway, selling what tales he could on the dock. Pickings were slim because of his new apprentice, Kama, whose uncannily polished tale of the brave revolutionaries triumphing over the dreaded Harka Bey in the Unicorn drew endless crowds of thrill-seekers, while his own yams of giant crabs and purple spiders weren't dangerous enough, or newsworthy enough, to compete these days.

Hakiem told himself he didn't really have reason to be piqued: he'd been given money enough at the secret meeting beneath Marc's shop to cover twice what he might be losing.

And Kama, sensitive in her way, dutifully gave him half of all she made.

So Hakiem was watching, paring a bunion where he sat on a splintered keg, while Kama pleased her listeners, when a dark tall youth with a week-old beard and a black sweat-band tied around his head eased toward Kama through the crowd.

It was Zip, and Hakiem wasn't the only one who marked him: Gayle, a foul-mouthed mercenary who'd joined the Stepsons in the north, was lounging between two pilings, as some Stepson always did when Kama was on the streets.

Hakiem saw Kama pale as the scruffy, flat-faced Ilsig caught her eye. She lost her train of thought, polished phrases turned to incoherent clauses, and she skipped to her story's ending so abruptly her gathered clients muttered among themselves.

"That's all, townsfolk-all for today. I've got to leave you-nature calls. And since you haven't had your money's worth, this telling's on the house." Kama jumped down from the crates on which she'd sat, ignoring the rebel leader and heading straight for Hakiem, her hand nervously pulling hair back from her brow.

The youth followed. And so, at professional stalking distance, did the Stepson, Gayle.

"Hakiem," Kama whispered, "is he still there? Is he coming?"

"He? They're both coming, girl. And what of it? That's no way to build a reputation, cutting half your story out and giving refunds before anybody's asked...."

"You don't understand... Sync's gone missing. The last we saw of him, he was with that gutterslime, the one from the meeting-Zip." As she spoke, Kama was tearing open her gearbag, in which metal clanked: this woman never went far from her squadron without her cache of arms.

And up behind her, as she bent over her sack, came Zip, who grabbed her with a crooked elbow around her throat and pulled her back against some bales of cloth before Hakiem could shout a warning or the Stepson, lurking at an appropriate distance, could intercede in her behalf.

"Don't move, lady," Zip said harshly through gritted teeth. "Just call your watchdog off."

Kama gagged and struggled.

Gayle took a half-dozen running strides, then halted, frowning, sword drawn but fists upon his hips.

Zip did something to Kama that made her writhe, then stand up very straight. "Tell him," he said, "to back off. I just want to give your bedmates a message. Tell him!"

"Gayle!" Kama's voice was thick, gutteral; her chin, in the crook of Zip's muscular arm, quivered. "You heard him. Stand down."

The Stepson, uttering a stream of profanity built around a single word, hunkered down, his sword across his knees.

"That's better," Zip whispered. "Now, listen close. You too, tale-spinner: Roxane's got Sync. He asked me to set up a meeting, and I did that. But what happened after- that's no fault of mine. It might not be too late to save his soul, if any of you care."

"Where?" Kama croaked. "Where has she got him?"

"Down by the White Foal-she's got a place there, south of Ischade's. The vets will know where it is. But you tell 'em I told you-that it's not my fault. And that if they don't get to him fast, it'll be too late. Hit the place in the daytime-there's no undeads around then, just some watchmen and a few snakes. Understand, lady?"

Again, he tightened his arm and Kama's head snapped back. Then he pushed her from him and jumped high, grabbed the rope on the bales behind him, swung up and over, and was gone, as far as Hakiem could tell.

Hakiem reached Kama first, coughing and trembling on the dockside. He was trying to get her up, while she shrugged off his aid and tried to catch her breath, when he realized that the Stepson, Gayle, wasn't helping him.

Hakiem looked around just in time to see Gayle vault the bales after Zip, throwing-stars in hand, and let fly.

Kama saw it too, and screamed brokenly: "No! Gayle, no! He's trying to help us...!"

"Pork help!" Gayle called back, just before he disappeared. "I hit him. He won't get far-and if he does, the porker's done for, anyhow." Then Gayle too disappeared.

"Done for?" Hakiem repeated dumbly. "What does he mean, Kama?"

"The stars." Kama got to her knees, her lips puffy, her expression unreadable. When she saw that Hakiem didn't understand, she added: "Those stars are what the Bandarans call 'blossoms.' They're painted with poison." And, hands on her knees, bent over, she retched.

Hakiem was still digesting all of that when Kama straightened up, took a handful of sharp-edged metal from her bag, and started climbing the bales.

"Where are you going, woman? What about the message?"

"Message?" Kama looked down at him from atop the bales. "Right. Message. You take it-tell Strat. He'll know what to do."

"But-"

"Don't 'but' me, old man. That boy's dead if I can't rein Gayle in and get to him in time. We don't kill those who help us."

Like a doused flame, she was gone.

Strat would rather have been anywhere else than in the brush surrounding Roxane's Foalside haunt. He'd had experience with the Nisibisi witch before.

If he hadn't known that Hakiem was trustworthy, that Kama had disappeared, chasing after the street tough who'd brought the message, and that the success of the Stepson/3rd Commando mission into Sanctuary hinged on proving that Roxane couldn't send them running with their tails between their legs, he'd have passed on this particular frontal assault.

As it was, he had no choice.

And he had a good chance of succeeding: he'd asked Ischade to come alone-she had her own bones to pick with Roxane; he'd requisitioned enough incendiaries from Marc's illicit store to send all of Sanctuary up in flames. And his men knew how to use them. The trick was getting Sync out of there before firing up the witchy-roast.

Randal, their Tysian wizard, was sneaking around in mongoose form, right now, taking care of Roxane's snakes and reconnoitering the premises.

When they saw a hawk fly over, right to left, they'd light the horseshoe-shaped fire they'd prepared and rush the place: twenty mounted fighters ought to be able to do the job.

The horses were hooded, their blinders soaked with soda water. The men had bladders of it on their saddles, to wet bandanas if the smoke got too thick.

Ischade was still beside him, in a meditative pose, whatever magic she was going to field unrevealed.

She just waited, tiny and delicate and too pale in the light of day, her claret robe pulled tight about her like a child in her mother's clothes.

"You can still walk away from this," Strat assured her with a gallantry he didn't really feel. "It's not your fight."

"Is it not? It's yours, then?" Up rose Ischade, and suddenly she was terrifying, not small any longer, not the petite, sensual creature he'd brought here.

Her eyes were hellish and growing so large he thought he might be sucked inside them; he recalled their first encounter, long ago, on a dark slum street, when he'd been with Crit and they'd seen those eyes floating over a teenage corpse.

He found he couldn't answer; he just shook his head.

The power that was Ischade bared its teeth at him, the kill-fervor there as sharp as any Stepson's-or any night-mad wolf's. "I'll bring you your man. All of this"-Ischade spread a robed arm, and it was as if night split the day- "that you do is unnecessary. She owes me a person, and more. Wait here, you, and soon you'll see."

"Sure thing, Ischade." Strat found himself squatting down, digging in the sod with his brush-cutting knife. "I'll be right here."

He must have blinked, or looked away, or something- the next he knew, she was gone, and a hawk's baby-cry resounded overhead, and men set their fires and ran for their horses.

Vaulting up on his bay, he wondered if Ischade was right-if he didn't need to risk all this manpower, if magic- hers and Randal's-alone could win the day.

He didn't like to think that way; he was used to letting Crit do his tactical thinking for him; in times like this, a man who was half a Sacred Band pair sorely missed his partner.

And so, thinking more about who was absent than who was present, he urged his horse into a lope and sought the firegate, not realizing until a shape hovered in midair beside him that Randal, on a cloud-effigy of a horse, had drawn alongside.

"In her witching room, he is!" Randal shouted, his face white beneath its blanket of freckles. "And he's yet salvageable, if we can get him out. But it won't be easy- he's totally entranced. I couldn't rouse him in my mongoose form. I'll seek my power globe now and do my best. Fare well, Straton! May the Writ protect us all!"

And his nonhorse thundered away on unhooves.

Craziest damn way to run a war! Strat had come back to Sanctuary to get away from just this sort of thing.

The firewall, around him hot and snapping, gave matters the immediacy of battle, the plain-and-simple truth of life and death.

The fire was just a little out of control, and his horse had to leap hot flames. Within, sod was beginning to smoke and combust, sparks flew, men yelled and squirted water on themselves and their mounts as they let fly with flaming arrows and urged skittish horses toward Roxane's front door.

Strat's plan was to ride roughshod right into Roxane's house, snatch Sync, and get out before she could bewitch them.

It wasn't a plan such as his partner might have made, and he was aware that he might rescue one soldier only to lose another-or others-to Roxane, but he had to do something.

Just as he'd finally convinced his horse of this, and was ready to lead his reformed group up her smoking stairs, an apparition appeared in the doorway: Ischade stood there, with Sync, his arm over her shoulder, and they walked calmly out onto the veranda and down the steps, onto a lawn spurting sparks and young flames.

Men whooped and raced toward her. Sync, beside her, looked around calmly, his brow knitted as if a slightly amusing problem had him distracted.

Strat, wondering if he was dreaming-if it could really be this easy-got there fast, and with Ischade's help pulled Sync up behind him on the horse.

The fire was loud, and hot, and the horses and men milling around them made talk nearly impossible. But Strat bellowed to the man next to him: "Put her up before you. Let's get out of here!"

The Stepson's mouth formed the word: "Who?"

Strat looked back down, and Ischade was gone. So he gave the signal to end the sack, and with Sync holding tight to his waist, aimed his sweating horse at a narrowing portal in the flames.

In the thick of Downwind, it was nearly dusk, but the flames from the southeast made a second sunset which wouldn't die.

Zip was in a twilight all his own, stumbling from sewer to alley to dungheap, one hand against his bleeding side, nearly doubled over from the pain.

He'd been stabbed before, beaten often, starved and fevered in the course of life, but never so close to death as this.

He'd pulled the barbed missile out; he didn't understand why it hurt worse now, not less.

He was sick to his stomach and only intermittently did he recall his determination to get home. Home to his own safe haven, or home to Mama Becho's, where someone would tend him, home to... anywhere where he could lie down, where the Beysibs or the Stepsons or the 3rd Commando or the army wouldn't find him.

He was sweating and he was thirsty and he was nauseated. There was a red film before his eyes that made it hard to tell which comer he was on.

If he was lost in Downwind, he was nearly dead: he knew those streets like he knew the tunnels, the sewers... the sewers. If he could find a rat-hole, he could curl up in one; he didn't want to die in public. That thought, and that alone, kept him on his feet just long enough for him to stumble into Ratfall, where people knew him.

He heard his name called, but he was down on his knees by then, with his head between them. The only thing he could do was curl up before he passed out.

When he woke he was under blankets; there was a cool cloth on his head.

When he could he reached up and grabbed the hand there, held tight to someone's wrist.

He opened his eyes, and a face swam, unrecognizable above him. A voice from that direction said, "Don't try to talk. The worst is over. You'll be all right if you just drink this."

Something was pushed between his lips-hard like clay or metal; it grated on his teeth. Then his head was raised by another's will and liquid spilled down his throat.

He choked, sputtered, then remembered how to swallow. When he couldn't swallow more, someone wiped his lips and then his chin.

"Good, good boy," he heard. Then he slept a sleep in which his side burned and flamed and he kept trying to put the fire out, but it kept starting up from ashes, and his body walked away from him, leaving him invisible and lonely on a deserted Downwind street.

When he woke again, he smelled something: chicken.

He opened his eyes, and the room didn't spin. He tried to sit up, and then it did.

Voices mumbled just beyond earshot, and then a form bent over him. Long black hair brushed his cheek.

"That's a good one; here you go, drink this," said a blurry face.

He did, and well-being surged through him. Then his vision cleared, and he saw whose face it was: the lady fighter, Kama of the 3rd Commando, was tending him. Behind her, the soldier-mage Randal craned his swanlike neck and rubbed his hands.

"Better, you're right, Kama," said the mage judiciously, and then: "I'll leave you. If you need me, I'll be right outside."

As the door closed and he was alone with his enemy, Zip tried to push himself up on his arms. He didn't have the strength. He wanted to run, but he couldn't even raise his head. He'd heard all about Straton's skill at interrogation. He'd have been better off dead in the street than being alive and at the mercy of such as these.

She sat on the bed next to him and took his hand.

He tensed, thinking: Now it will begin. Torture. Drugs. They've saved me one death to offer me another.

She said, "I've wanted to do this ever since I first saw you." Leaning close, she kissed him on the lips.

When she sat up straight, she smiled.

He didn't have the energy to ask her what she had in mind for him, or what the kiss was meant to mean; he couldn't find his voice.

But she said: "It was a mistake. Gayle didn't understand what you were trying to do. We're all sorry. You just relax and get better. We'll take care of you. I'll take care of you. If you can hear me, blink."

He blinked. If Kama of the 3rd Commando wanted to take care of him, he wasn't in any condition to argue.