The Dead of Winter- - Thieves World 07 (29 page)

... and suddenly there was someone there beside her, and old reflex took over. Tyr struggled to her feet, ready to run. But her nose countermanded her legs, and Tyr froze-then leaped up, whining madly, bouncing in a frenzy of relief, licking at the skinny figure that was crouched down next to her. The skinny one tasted better than usual. There was something else with her-a black bird of the kind Tyr usually liked to chase-but somehow the bird also smelled like the skinny one, so she let it be. She crowded into the skinny shape's arms, whimpering incredulous welcome, terror, reawakened hunger, sorrow and loss, the news of the world turned upside down ...

"I know, I know," Mriga said, and though the words meant nothing to Tyr, the dog was comforted. Mriga knew exactly how she felt, without omniscience being involved. Her own retarded mind, before the onslaught of divinity, had been the same nounless void, full of inexplicable presences and influences. Now the dog nosed at her, both vastly relieved and freshly wounded by the reminder of what was wrong with the world. She whimpered, and her stomach growled.

"Oh, poor child," Mriga said, and reached sideways into timelessness for the rib bones she'd been working on. Tyr leaped at the half-rack of ribs almost before they were entirely into time, and fell to gnawing on them.

"She thinks she's in hell," Mriga said to Siveni. The raven laughed, one harsh bitter caw. "Would that she were, for he's certainly there. She could lead us to him...."

Mriga looked at the raven in swift admiration. "That lost wisdom's coming back to you, sister. So she might. Of course, we would have to find a way to get into hell ourselves."

"Then think of one," Siveni said, sounding both pleased and annoyed. Mriga thought. Her omniscience stirred, though not precisely in the direction required. "I don't know how just yet," she said. "But there are experts in this town ... people who know the way. They've sent so many others down that road. And they bring them back again."

Tyr looked up and yipped. She had been bolting the meat and already looked somewhat better-not just from having eaten after a long fast. The food and drink of the gods work strangely in mortals. Tyr's eyes were already brighter and deeper than Mriga ever remembered having seen them; and the dog had abruptly stopped smelling like a garbage-heap.

"Yes," Mriga said. "It might just work. Finish that, little one. Then we'll go down by the White Foal ... and go to hell."

Tyr yipped again and went at the ribs with dispatch. The raven looked sidewise at Mriga. "What if she won't help us?" she said. Omniscience spoke up again, and Mriga frowned, for it was no comfort. "She will," she said. "Always assuming that between here and there, we can figure out the right things to say...."

Even necromants need to sleep occasionally, and in the last few days Ischade had gotten less sleep than usual. Now, in this bright chill winter afternoon she had evidently counted Sanctuary deep enough in shock at its troubles that she might rest a little while. The shutters of the house by the White Foal were all closed. What black birds sat in the trees did so with heads under wing, mirroring their mistress. There was no sound there but the rattling of dry leaves and withered rose-hips in the thorny hedge.

"This place smells like death," said the raven perched on the shoulder of the skinny, ragged girl who stood by the little wicket gate.

"It should," said Mriga, and reached out sorrowfully to something that wasn't wholly there. At least her mortal senses refused to acknowledge it. Her godsight clearly showed her a big bay steed, still saddled, its reins hanging loose, standing forlornly by the gate and gazing at the rundown house. As Mriga reached out to it the bay rolled eye-whites at her and put its ears back, but the gesture was half-hearted. After a second it relented, whuffling, and put its nose in her hand, then swung its great head around to breathe of her breath by way of greeting.

"Poor, poor ..." Mriga said, stroking the shivering place just under the bay's jaw. Tyr looked on suspiciously, eyeing the horse's hooves. Siveni in her raven shape cocked a bright black eye. She was fond of horses: she had after all invented them, thereby winning a contest.

"One more ghost," she said. "And recent. The woman breeds them."

"Recently, yes." And the door at the top of the steps opened, and there was another ghost, more or less. At least the man was dead. Outwardly he merely looked scarred. One eye was covered with a patch and his face was a wealed ruin in which an old handsomeness lurked as sad and near-unseen as the ghost-bay. His carriage had ruin about it too. Mriga saw the ghost of it, straight and tall, under the present reality-a hunched posture, the stance of someone cowering under the lash of a fear that never went away.

The man stared at them, more with the patched eye than with the whole one, Mriga thought. "Stilcho," she said, "where's your mistress? Bring us to her." He stared harder, then laughed. "Who shall I say is calling? Some guttersnipe, and her mangy cur, and ..." He noticed the black bird and grew more reserved.

"Look ... get out of here," he said. "Who are you? Some Nisi witchling, one she missed last night? Get out. You're crazy to come here. You're just a kid, you're no match for her, whoever you think you are!"

"Not Nisi, at least," Mriga said, mildly nettled. Siveni looked up at Stilcho from Mriga's shoulder and said, "Man, we are the goddess Siveni. And if you don't bring us to your mistress, and that speedily, you'll be spoiled meat in a minute. Now get out of our way, or show us in to her." The scorn was very audible.

Tyr growled.

"Stilcho you fool, shut that, the wind's like knives," said another voice from beyond the door. And there came a smaller, slimmer man, who wore a cold composure exactly the opposite of Stilcho's desolation; but under it, ghost to its solidity, dwelt the same impression of unrelenting fear. The man looked out and down at them, and his face went from surprise to amused contempt to uncertainty to shocked realization in the time it took him to take a breath and let it out in cloud.

"You at least have some idea what you're looking at, Haught," Mriga said, waving the wicket gate out of existence and walking through where it had been. Haught stared, as well he might have, for the deadly wards laid inside that gate unravelled themselves and died without so much as a whimper. "If I were you, I'd announce us."

With some difficulty Haught reassumed his look of threat and contempt. "My mistress is unavailable," he said.

Mriga looked at the raven. "Slugging abed again." The raven snapped its beak in annoyance and napped away from Mriga's shoulder. Abruptly a helmeted woman in an oversized tunic stood there, a spear in her hand, and rapped with its butt on the ground. With a roar, the dry hedge and the barren trees all burst forth in foliage of green fire. Screeching, the black birds went whirling up out of the tree like scorched papers on the wind, leaving little trails of smoke and a smell of burnt feathers behind them.

"She's up now," said Siveni.

One last man came hurriedly to the door, swearing, a tall, fair, and broad man and Tyr launched herself at him, stiff-legged, snarling. "No, Tyr!" Mriga said hurriedly, and grabbed at the dog, just catching her by the scruff of the neck

... a good thing, for a knife had appeared as if by magic in the man's hand, and was a fraction of a second from being first airborne and then in Tyr's throat. Tyr stood on her hind legs and growled and fought to get loose, but Mriga held on to her tight. "This is no time to indulge in personalities," she hissed.

"We've got business." The dog quieted: Mriga let her stand, but watched her carefully. "Straton, is the lady decent?"

He stared at them, as dumbfounded by the outrageous question as by the simple sight of them-the armed and radiant woman, fierce-eyed and divinely tall: the ragged skinny beggar girl who somehow shone through her grime: and the delicate, deer-slim, bitter-eyed brown dog wearing a look such as he had seen on Stepsons about to avenge a lost partner. "Haught," he said, "go inquire."

"No need," said a fourth voice behind him in the doorway's darkness: a voice soft and sleepy and dangerous. "Haught, Stilcho, where are your manners? Let the ladies in. Then be off for a while. Straton, perhaps you'll excuse us. They're only goddesses, I can handle them."

The men cleared out of the doorway one by one as the three climbed the stair. First came the dog with her lip curled, showing a fang or two; then the gray eyed spear-bearer, looking around her with the cool unnoticing scorn of a great lady preparing to do some weighty business in a sty. Last came the beggar, at whom Straton looked with relaxed contempt. "Curb that," he said, glancing at Tyr, then back at Mriga, in calmest threat.

Mriga eyed him. "The bay misses you," she said, low-voiced, and went on past, into the dark.

She ignored the hating look he threw into her back like a knife as he turned away. If her plan worked, vengeance would not be necessary. And she was generally not going to be a vengeful goddess. But in Straton's case, just this once, she would make an exception.

Ischade's downstairs living room was much bigger than it should have been, considering the outside dimensions of the house. It was a mad scattering of rich stuffs in a hundred colors, silks and furs thrown carelessly over furniture, piled in corners. Here were man's clothes, a worn campaigning cloak, muddy boots, sitting on ivory silk to keep them off the hardwood floor; over there was a sumptuous cloak of night-red velvet scorching gently where it lay half in the hearth, half out of it, wholly unnoticed by the hostess. Ischade was courteous. She poured wine for her guests, and set down a bowl of water and another of neatly chopped meat for Tyr. Once they were settled, she looked at them out of those dark eyes of hers and waited. To mortal eyes she would have seemed deadly enough, even without the flush of interrupted lovemaking in her face. But Mriga looked at her and simply said, "We need your help."

"Destroying my property, and my wards, and upsetting my servants," said Ischade,

"strikes me as a poor way to go about getting it." Siveni laid her spear aside. "Your wards and your gate are back," she said, "and as for your servants ... they're a bit slow. One would think that a person of your ... talents ... might be better served."

Ischade smiled, that look that Mriga knew was dreaded upwind and down, in high houses and alleys and gutters. "Flattery?" she said. "Do goddesses stoop to such? Then you need me indeed. Well enough." She sipped from her own goblet, regarding them over the edge; a long look of dark eyes with a glint of firelight in them, and a glint of something else: mockery, interest, calculation. Siveni scowled and began to reach for her spear again. Mriga stopped her with a glance.

"Now is it goddesses, truly?" Ischade said, lowering the cup. "Or 'goddess' in the singular? Gray-Eyes, if I remember rightly, was never a twofold deity."

"Until now," Mriga said. "Madam, you had some small part in what happened. May I remind you? A night not too long ago, about midnight, you came across a man digging mandrake-"

"Harran the barber. Indeed."

"I got caught in the spelling. It bound all three of us together in divinity for a while. But one of the three is missing. Harran is dead." Those dark eyes looked over the edge of the cup again. "I had thought he escaped the ... unpleasantness ... at the barracks. At least there was no sign of him among the slain."

"Last night," Siveni said, and the look she turned on Ischade was cruel. "Your lover did it."

Tyr growled.

"My apologies," said Ischade. "But how cross fate is ... that your business, whatever it is, brings you to deal with me ... and precludes your vengeance against anyone under my roof." She sipped her wine for a moment. "Frustration is such a mortal sort of problem, though. I must say you're handling it well." Mriga frowned. The woman was unbearable ... but had to be borne, and knew it. There was no way to force her to help them. "I have some experience with mortality," Mriga said. "Let's to business, madam. I want to see what kind of payment you would require for a certain service." One of those dark brows lifted in gentle scorn. "The highest possible, always. But the service has to be one I wish to render ... and the coin of payment must be such as will please me. I have my own priorities, you see. But you haven't told me clearly what the service is."

"We want to go to hell," Siveni said.

Ischade smiled, tastefully restraining herself from the several obvious replies.

"It's easily enough done," she said. "Those gates stand open night and day, to one who knows their secrets. But retracing your steps, finding your way to the light again ... there's work, there's a job indeed. And more of a job than usual for you two." She looked over at Siveni. "You've never been mortal at all; you can't die. And though you've had experience at being mortal, you apparently haven't died yet. And only the dead walk in hell." Mriga's omniscience spoke in her mind's ear. "Gods have gone there before," she said. "It's not as if it's never been done."

"Some gods," Siveni said, "have gone and not come back." She looked at Mriga in warning, silently reminding her of the daughter of Dene Blackrobe, merry Sostreia: once maiden goddess of the spring, and now the queen and bride of hell, awful and nameless.

"Yes," Ischade said, "there is always some uncertainty about the travels of gods in those regions." Yet her eyes were inward-turned, musing; and a tick of time later, when they focused on Mriga again, the goddess knew she had won. There was interest there, and the hope that something would happen to relieve the terrible tedium that assails the powerful. The interest hid behind Ischade's languid pose the way Stilcho's old handsomeness haunted his scars.