The Dead of Winter- - Thieves World 07 (30 page)

"A pretty problem," she said, musing out loud now. "Mortal souls I could simply send there-a knife would be sorcery enough for that-and then recall. Though the bodies would still be dead. But that won't work for you two; your structure's the problem. Gods' souls enclose and include the body, instead of the other way around. Killing the bodies won't work. Killing a soul ... is a contradiction in terms: impossible." She sighed a little. "A pity, sometimes; this place has been getting crowded of late."

Then firelight stirred and glittered in Ischade's eyes as for a moment they became wider. "Yet I might reduce that crowding, at least temporarily ..." Siveni's eyes glittered too. "You're going to use the ghosts," she said. "You're going to borrow their mortality."

"Why, you're a quick pupil indeed," Ischade said, all velvet mockery. "Not their mortality exactly. But their fatality ... their deadness. One need not die to go to hell. One need only have died. I can think of ways to borrow that. And then hell will have two more inmates for the night."

"Three," said Mriga.

"Four," said Siveni.

They looked at each other, then at Ischade.

Ischade raised her eyebrows. "What, the dog too?" Tyr yipped.

"And who else, then?"

"Madam," Siveni said, "the best way to be sure we come back from this venture is to have with us the guide who opens the way. Especially if the way back is as difficult as you claim."

Ischade held quite still for a moment, then began to laugh, and laughed long and loud. A terrible sound it was. "These are hard times," she said, "when even gods are so suspicious."

"Treachery is everywhere," said Mriga, wondering swiftly how the thought had escaped her before.

"Oh indeed," Ischade said, and laughed again, softly, until she lost her breath.

"Very well. But what coin do you plan to use to pay the ones below? Even I only borrow souls, then send them back; and believe me, there's a price. To get your barber back in the flesh and living, the payment to those below will have to be considerable. And there's the problem of where you'll put him-"

"That will be handled," Mriga said, "by the time the deed's done. Meanwhile we shouldn't waste time, madam. Even in hell time flows, and souls forget how to stay in bodies."

Ischade looked lazily at Mriga, and once again there was interest behind the look, and calculation. "You haven't yet told me what you'll do with your barber once you've got him," she said. "Besides the predictable divine swiving."

"You haven't yet told us what payment you'll require," said Mriga. "But I'll say this. Last time you met my lord, you told him that if he brought Siveni back among the living, you'd find the proceedings merry to watch. And did you not?" Ischade smiled, small and secret. "I watched them take away the temple doors that she smashed down into the street," she said softly, "and I saw the look on Molin Torchholder's face while they carted them off. He was most distressed at the sudden activity of Ilsig gods. So he began to pull what strings he could to deal with that problem ... and one of the strings he pulled was attached to Tempus and his Stepsons, and the Third Commando."

"And to you," Mriga said. "So that the barracks burned, and then the city burned, and Harran and a thousand others died. All so that the town will keep on being too divided against itself to care that you go about in it, manipulating the living and doing your pleasure on the dead ... to alleviate your boredom."

"The gods are wise," Ischade said, quietly.

"Sometimes not very. But I don't care. My business is to see what I love brought somewhere safe. After that-this town needs its own gods. Not Rankan, or Beysib, or even Ilsigi. I'm one of the new ones. There are others, as you know. Once the

'divine swiving' is out of the way. I intend to see those new young gods settled, for this place's good, and its people's good. That may take mortal years, but while it's going on, there'll be 'merry times' enough for even you without you having to engineer them. There'll be war in heaven ... which is always mirrored on earth."

"Or the other way around," Ischade said.

"Either way, you'll find it very interesting. Which is what you desire. Isn't it?"

Ischade looked at Mriga. "Very well. This business is apparently in my interests. We'll discuss payment after-ward; it will be high. And I shall go with you ... to watch the 'merry times' begin." She smiled. Mriga smiled too. Ischade's velvet, matter-of-fact malice was wide awake, hoping disaster would strike and make things even more 'interesting,' perhaps even considering how to help it strike. The woman was shameless, insufferable-and so much herself that Mriga suddenly found herself liking Ischade intensely.

"Excellent," Mriga said. "What needs to be done?"

"If you haven't buried him already," Ischade said, "do so. Otherwise we would find him on the wrong side of the frontier ... and matters would become even more complicated than they are at the moment."

"Very well. When will we be leaving?"

"Midnight, of course: from a place where three roads meet. Ideally, there should be dogs howling-"

Tyr gave Ischade an ironic look, tilted up her head and let out a single long note, wavering down through halftones into silence.

"So that's handled," Siveni said, reaching for her spear. "And as for three roads meeting, what about the north side of that park by the Governor's Walk and the Avenue of Temples? The 'Promise of Heaven,' I think it's called." Ischade chuckled, and they all rose. "How apt. Till midnight, then. I will provide the equipment."

"That's gracious of you, madam. Till midnight, or a touch before."

"That will do very well. Mind the second step. And the hedge: it has thorns." Mriga walked through the open gate with satisfaction, patted the bay's neck, and stepped sidewise toward midnight. Siveni came after her, her spear shouldered and sizzling merrily, and went the same way. Only Tyr delayed for a moment, staring at the bay-then nipped it neatly in the left rear fetlock, scrambled sideways to avoid the kick, and dove past Mriga into night. Ischade also looked at the bay; then, more wryly, at her yard's trees and bushes, still full of green fire that burned but did not consume. She waved the godfire out of existence and shut the door, thinking of old stories about hell.

"Haught," she called toward one of the back rooms. "Stilcho." They were there in a hurry: It never did to keep Ischade waiting. "Jobs for you both," she said, shutting the door. "Stilcho, I need a message taken to the uptown house. And on your way back, pick me up a corpse." Dead as he was, Stilcho blanched. Haught watched him out of the corner of his eye, looking slightly amused.

"And for you," she said to Haught, watching amused in turn as he stiffened slightly, "something to exercise those talents you've been so busy improving to please me. Fetch me a spare ghost. A soldier, I think, and one without any alliances. Be off, now."

She watched them go, both of them hurrying, both of them trying to look as if they weren't. Ischade smiled and went off to look for Straton. All it took was the sight of a slender woman-shape, cloaked in black and strolling sedately down the Avenue of Temples, to clear the midnight street to a windscoured pavement desert. Behind her followed a bizarre little parade. First came a dead man, hauling a bleating black ram and black ewe along behind him on ropes: then a live man, small and scared-looking, leading a cowed donkey with a long awkward bundle strapped across its back. He stank of wine, Mor-am did: anyone but the donkey would have been revolted. Behind him and the beast came a slight-built man whose Nisi heritage showed in his face, a man bearing a small narrow silk-wrapped package and another bulkier one, and looking as if he would rather have been elsewhere. Last of all, more or less transparent from moment to moment, came a ghost dressed in Hell-Hounds' harness. It was Razkuli, dead a long time, stealing wistful glances at the old, living Hell-Hound haunts. The Promise of Heaven was even falser to its name than usual tonight. Word of the procession had run up the street half an hour before, and the panic-stricken ladies of the night had abandoned their usual territory in favor of one more deserving of the title. Ischade strolled in past the stone pillar-gates of the park, looking with cool amusement at the convenient bowers and bushes scattered about for those who wished to begin their huggermuggering as soon as their agreements with the park ladies were struck. The cover, copses of cypress and downhanging willow, suited Ischade well. So did the little empty altar to Eshi in the middle of the park. Once there had been a statue of her there, but naturally the statue and its pediment had been stolen, leaving only a long boxlike slab of marble much carved with PFLS graffiti and inscriptions such as Petronius Loves Sulla.

She paused by the stone and ran gentle fingers along it. A dog's howl went wavering up into the cloudy night. Ischade looked up and smiled.

"You're prompt," she said. "It's well. Haught, bring me what you carry. Stilcho, fasten them here."

Standing by the altar, Mriga and Siveni looked around them-Mriga with interest, Siveni with wry distaste, for she was after all a maiden goddess. Ischade put her hood back and gazed at the goddesses with her beautiful oblique eyes full of silent laughter as the frightened Stilcho tethered the ram and ewe by the altar. Haught held out one of his silken bundles. Ischade put the wrappings aside and drew forth a long curved knife of bronze, half sword and half sickle, with an edge that even in the little, dim light from the torches of the Governor's Palace still glittered wickedly keen. The flat of the blade was stained dark.

"Blood sacrifice, then," Siveni said.

"There's always sacrifice where the ones below are concerned." Ischade reached absently down to caress the ram's head. It held still in terror. "But first other business. Stilcho, I will need your service tonight, and Razku-li's. I go on a journey."

"Mistress-"

"To hell. You are going to lend me your death, and Razkuli will lend his to this warrior-lady, and this poor creature-" she reached out to touch the wrapped bundle on the shying donkey "-as soon as I fetch him back, will lend his to the lady who limps. But you understand that while we're using those parts of your life-or death, rather-you will have to be elsewhere." Mriga bit her lip and turned away from the sight of a dead man going pale.

"Souls need containers ... so I'll provide some till dawn; we'll be back then, and you'll find yourselves back to normal. Haught and Mor-am will stand guard till then." She stepped away from the altar, gliding past Haught and throwing him a cool look.

"Mistress-"

"Guard them well, Haught," Ischade said, not looking back at him. "I will take a dim view of any 'accidents.' I'm not done with them yet." She paced away, turning after a few seconds and beginning to walk a circle, setting wards. There was no outward sign, no fire, no sound. But Mriga felt the air grow tight, and when Ischade came about at last and gestured the circle closed, the mortals in it looked at each other in still terror, like beasts in a new-snapped trap.

"No god or man will cross that line," she said. "Goddesses, your last word. Will you do this?"

"Get on with it," Siveni said. Her spear sizzled. Mriga nodded and looked down at Tyr. The dog put her head up and howled again, softly, an eager sound.

"Very well," Ischade said, and paused by the altar, and looked over her shoulder at the donkey. There was a wheeze, the terrible sound a corpse makes when it's rolled over and the last breath leaves its lungs-only this breath went in. The tethered donkey plunged and screamed as its burden abruptly began to move, a slow underwater struggling. Ischade reached out leisurely and stripped the covering from around the body. It crumpled toward the ground, collapsing to its knees, then slowly, slowly stood. It was a young woman, terribly wounded about the breast and neck; her tunic and flounced skirts were blood-blackened and her head had a tendency to slew to one side, trying to come undone from the half severed neck.

"Well, well," Ischade said, calm-voiced, "not 'he,' but 'she.' Some poor nightwalker caught in the Stepsons' barracks, where she shouldn't have been. Pity. Haught, uncover the lantern."

The Nisi lifted up a lantern from the ground and unshuttered it. There seemed no light in it at all; yet when Mriga looked from it to Ischade and the corpse, and the altar, they all were throwing shadows that showed impossibly blacker against the ground than the midnight they all stood in. "This won't hurt, child," said Ischade. She lifted up the sickle, and swung it at the ground. A scream followed that Mriga thought would have frozen any mortal's brain. She was irrationally satisfied to glance sideways and see Siveni's knuckles going white on the haft of her spear as the corpse fell down again.

"Well, maybe it will hurt," Ischade said, not sounding particularly moved. She straightened, holding in her free hand what looked like a wavering, silken scrap of night. It was the shadow she had cut loose. Delicately, with one hand, she crumpled it till nothing of it showed but a fistful of darkness. Ischade held out her hand to Mriga. "Take it," she said. Mriga did. "When I tell you, swallow it. Now, then ..."

She moved to Razkuli, who stood leaning on the ghost of a sword, and watched her without eyes, and without a face, looking taut and afraid. "That one is nothing to me," said Ischade. "Her soul can go where it pleases. But yours might have some use. So ... something alive ..." She looked around her. "That tree will do nicely. Hold still, Razkuli."

The second scream was harder, not easier, to bear. Ischade straightened, shook the severed shadow out, eyed it clinically, and sliced it neatly about midway down its writhing length. One of the halves she stuffed into the rotting bole of a nearby willow, and even as she turned away toward Siveni, the willow's long bare branches put out numberless leaves of thin, trembling darkness. "Here," Ischade said. Siveni put out her hand and took the crumpled half-shadow as if she were being handed a scorpion.