The Dead of Winter- - Thieves World 07 (14 page)

"I have affairs in the city which require my presence, Milady Wife," he answered her, not bothering to be polite. "I cannot stand idle each morning while you diddle through your wardrobe."

"You have more important affairs right here. Danlis informs me that no preparations have been made for our Mid-Winter Festival-which, need I remind you, is a mere ten days from now. None of the bitterwood I sent to Ranke for has arrived. Sabellia's sacred hearth will be unpurified and there won't be enough embers for the women to take back to their home-hearths. Now, I know it's too much to think that snake-smitten puppy of a Prince would take his position as Savankala's Flamen seriously enough to attend to these matters, but I would think that you, the ranking Hierarch in Sanctuary, would see that our gods receive proper respect.

"The Flamens of Ils have set their altars up, the Snake-Chanters have theirs. Rashan struggles to honor all the gods without any aid-" Molin spun the empty goblet between his fingers. "I have no god. Milady Wife, and precious little interest whether anyone scatters scented ashes this winter. Did you feel the ground quiver during the storm-"

"The glass in our bedroom, which you choose to ignore, is on the floor instead of in the windows. You'll have to get that horrid little metal-worker to fix it I won't spend a night with the sea air ruining my complexion." He paused, thought better of commenting on her complexion, then continued in a softly modulated tone that signaled the end of his patience. "I'll send Hoxa. Now-I have more important matters-"

"Impotent coward. You have no god because you let Tempus Thales and his catamites usurp you. Torch-holder's a True Son of Vashanka,' they told my father. True son of the Wrigglie whore that whelped you-" The rage Molin had repressed when he looked at Isambard's face burst out. The goblet stem broke with a tiny snap; the only sound or movement in the room. He forced himself to move slowly, knowing he would kill her if she did not get out of his sight and knowing, in a still-sane corner of his mind, that he would regret it if he did. Rosanda edged backward toward the door as her husband pushed himself up from the table on whitened knuckles. She was through the antechamber and barricaded in the bedroom before he said a word.

"Gather my possessions, Hoxa. Move them downstairs while I speak with Shupansea."

Mid-Winter drew closer in a series of dreary days remarkable only for their raw unpleasantness. Gyskouras, still chastened by the death of Aldwist, was almost as reserved as his foster-brother, giving Molin the opportunity to realize that, even without supernatural meddling, the weather of Sanctuary left much to be desired. Not even a blizzard along Wizardwall was as bone-numbing cold as the harbor mists, and no amount of perfume could disguise the fact that the city was filling its braziers with offal and dung.

There were still too many residents in the Palace, Beysib and otherwise, despite reclamation of a dozen or more estates beyond the city walls. Molin, having refused any reconciliation with his wife, lived in a barren room not far from the dungeon cells it resembled. He'd delegated all responsibility for the Rankan state cults to Rashan who, it seemed, was eager to insinuate himself in Lowan Vigeles's good graces. The Eye of Savankala promptly moved his entire disaffected coterie out to his estate at Land's End in hopes that not only could the Rankan upper class maintain itself there, untainted by the Beysib presence, but that they could somehow promulgate the ultimate miracle and propel Prince Kadakithis successfully back to the Imperial Throne.

Molin, in turn, spent all his time studying the reports his underlings and informants brought him, searching for the clues that would tell him which of Sanctuary's numerous factions was most powerful or most volatile. He ceased to care about anything Rankan and thought only of the fate of Sanctuary as it revealed itself through his informants. He left his room only to visit the children and practice with Walegrin each morning before dawn.

"Supper, My Lord Torchholder?" Hoxa inquired.

"Later, Hoxa."

"It is later. Lord Torchholder. Only you and the torturers are still awake. Your old quarters are empty now. I've taken the liberty of scrounging a new mattress. Lord Torchholder, whatever you're looking for, you won't find it if you don't get some sleep."

He felt his tiredness; the cramps in his legs and shoulders from too little movement and too much dampness; and remembered, with a nicker of shame, that he hadn't bathed in days and stank like a common workman. Limping, he followed his scrivener up to the sanctum where Hoxa had laid out fresh linen, a basin of faintly warm water and the somewhat soggy remnants of dinner. His glass windows, he noted, had been replaced with dirty parchment; his gilt goblets with wooden mugs and his Mygdonian carpet was gone. But she hadn't dared to touch his work table.

"Drink wine with me, Hoxa, and tell me how it feels to work with a disgraced priest."

Hoxa was a Sanctuary merchant's son, without pedigree or pretensions. He accepted the beaker, sniffing it cautiously. "The ladies and the other priests they were the ones to leave the Palace. It seems to me that you're not the one in disgrace-"

He would have said more, but there was a screeching outside the window. His mug bounced across the floor as the black bird sliced through the parchment with a beak and steel-shod talons that were more than equal to the task. "It's back," the young man gasped.

The raven-Molin felt it had begun its life as a raven, at least-carried messages between the Palace and a ramshackle dwelling by the White Foal. It had made its first journey long before the Beysib fleet set sail, offering the priest a precious artifact: the Necklace of Harmony hot off the god Ils's neck. Since then he had trained other ravens, but none was like this bird with its malevolent eyes and a glowing band around one leg to make it proof against all kinds of meddling and magic.

"Get the wine," Molin told Hoxa. "It has a message it would just as soon be rid of."

The scrivener retrieved his mug and refilled it for the bird, but he would go no closer to it than the far side of the work-table and shrank back to the corner while Molin lured the beast onto his arm. Unlike his other winged messengers who carried tiny caskets, this one spoke its message in a language only the proper receiver could understand: another property of the spelled ring. Molin whispered a reply and let it take flight again.

"The Lady of the White Foal wishes to see me, Hoxa."

"The Nisi witch?"

"No-the Other One."

"Will you go?"

"Yes. Find me the best cloak she left behind."

"Now? I'll send for Walegrin-"

"No, Hoxa. The invitation was clearly for one. I hadn't expected this-but I'm not surprised, all the same. If anything happens, you can tell Walegrin when he comes looking for me in the morning. Not before." He shook out the cloak Hoxa offered him. It was black, lined with crimson-dyed fur, and appropriate for visiting Ischade.

Winter's night in Sanctuary belonged to the warring partisans, the forces of magic and, especially, the dead-none of which challenged Molin as he rode by. He felt eerie sensations as he neared her home: the eyes of her minions, their silent movements around him, her dark-woven wards lifting when he touched the flimsy iron gate.

"Leave the horse here. They don't like it closer." Molin looked down into the ruined face of a man he had once known-a man long dead and yet very much alert and waiting. He hid his revulsion behind a benign, priestly demeanor, dismounted and let what remained of Stilcho lead the gelding away. When he looked back to the house the door was open.

"I have often wished to meet you," he greeted her, lifting her tiny hand to his lips after the custom of Rankan gentlemen.

"That is a lie."

"I have wished for many things I never truly wanted to have. My Lady." She laughed, a rich sound that surrounded and enlarged her, and led him into her home.

Molin had prepared himself for many things since clasping the cloak around his shoulders. He had met Stilcho's one eye without flinching, but he swallowed when he entered her seraglio. In candlelight the cacophony of color and texture was shocking. Sunlight, if it ever reached this forsaken chamber, would have blinded a fish-eyed Beysib. Ischade shoved aside a ransom's worth of velvet, silk and embroidery to reveal an unremarkable chair.

"You had something to tell me, in person?" Molin began, sitting uneasily.

"Perhaps I wished to meet you, as well?" she teased. Then, seeing that he did not share her light-heartedness, spoke more seriously: "You have been seeking the Stepson Mage, Randal."

"He vanished more than a month ago. Stolen out of the Mageguild-as I suspect you know."

"Roxane holds him in thrall until he delivers her lover to her. He will die at Mid-Winter if he fails."

"What else-if he fails? One mage, or lover, more or less, could hardly matter to you."

"Let us say that regardless of who might fail-it is not to my interest that Roxane succeed. Let us say that it is not to my interest that you should fail, and fail you would if Roxane has her way."

"And it is certainly not to your interest that you, yourself, fail. So you think that we should, together, protect the mage, the lover and our own interests from the Nisibisi witch?" Molin said, striving to match her tone. Ischade spun down to sit among her pillows. The hood of her cloak fell back to reveal a face that was beautiful, and human, in the candlelight. "Not together, no. In our separate ways-so none of us fail and Roxane does not succeed. You can understand the dangers of the preternatural around us, the danger to the children you shelter? The ways of magicians do not mix well with the ways of the god-choosers. Sanctuary grows bloated with power."

"And the powerful? If I am to protect those children, I'd be best without any magicians. You, Randal, or Roxane."

She laughed again. Molin saw that it was her eyes that laughed with death madness. "It is not my power that we're talking about. My power is born in Sanctuary itself-in life and death."

"Especially death."

"Priests! God-chooser, you think that because you have a ready buyer for your soul you are somehow better than those who must sell theirs piecemeal." She was angry and her inky eyes threatened to engulf him. Molin rose unsteadily from the chair but faced her without blinking.

"Madame, I am not any persuasion of soul-selling magician: witch, necromancer, or whatever. You speak of interests and failures as if you knew mine. I served Vashanka and the Rankan Empire; now I serve His sons ..." He hesitated, unwilling to speak aloud the concluding phrase that had formed in his head. Ischade softened. "And Sanctuary?" she concluded. "You see, we are not so different after all: I did not choose Sanctuary; my self-interest chose it for me. My life is complicated by enemies and allies alike. Every step my self interest dictates forces me further down a path I would not willingly travel."

"Then you will help me bring order to Sanctuary?"

"Order brings light into all the comers and shadows. No, Torchholder, Bearer of Light, I will not help bring your order to Sanctuary. I find that snakes, be they Roxane's or Shupansea's, are not to my interests."

"My Lady, we both use black birds. Does this make you a priest or me a wizard?

Does it mean we are like Roxane, who favors a black eagle, or like the Beysib, who revere a white bird almost as much as they revere their snakes? Has not our shared, unwilling, concern for this cesspool of a town made us allies?"

"We could be more than allies," she smiled, moving closer to him until he could smell the sweet musk that surrounded her. Molin's dread mastered him. He bolted from the otherworldly house, her laughter and parting words ringing in his ears:

"When you meet Randal, ask him about Shamshi and witch-blood." Stilcho was gone. The gelding's eyes were ringed with white; flickering witch fire clung to its saddle. Molin had scarcely set his feet into the stirrups before it bounded away from the misty clearing. The gelding wanted the warmth and familiarity of its stall within the Palace walls; Molin fought it the length of the Wideway, past the curious fishermen waiting for the tide and the enticements of the few whores not yet taken for the night. They approached Vashanka's abandoned temple, passing behind the arrays of wood and stone which were now being appropriated for the reconstruction of the old Ilsig villas ringing Sanctuary.

One stone, a vast black boulder set deep into the soil and fractured by Vashanka's annihilation, would never be moved again. Molin approached it on foot. He could not make himself form the words to the Vashankan invocations he'd known from childhood, nor could he bring himself to pray, like an ordinary worshiper, to another god. His anxiety, despair and helplessness fled naked toward whatever power might be disposed to hear them.

"OPEN YOUR EYES, MORTAL. GAZE UPON STORMBRINGER AND BOW DOWN!" Whatever Ischade believed, priests did not often look upon their gods. Molin had seen Vashanka only once: in the chaotic moments before the god's destruction. Vashanka had been swollen with rage and defeat, but his visage had been that of a man. The apparition which flickered above the stone had erupted from the bowels of hell. Molin's quivering knees guided him quickly to the ground.

"Vashanka?"

"DEPARTED. / HAVE HEARD YOUR PRAYERS. I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU." Priests shaped the prayers of the faithful to a form acceptable to the god. Each priesthood evolved a liturgy to keep god and worshiper at a proper distance, one from the other. Private prayer was universally discouraged lest it disrupt that delicate balance. Molin had been caught in prayer so private that his conscious mind did not know what longings had drawn the swirling entity from its esoteric plane. Nor did he have any idea how to dispel or appease it if, indeed, either could be accomplished.