Changer’s Moon

III. The Spiral Dance-Moving Toward The Meeting

Kingfisher

The light bounded along before them through the winding wormhole in the mountain, leading them once more to the Mirror. The way to the mirror-chamber changed each time they went there as if the room they slept in were a bubble drifting through the stone. Or perhaps it was the mirror chamber that moved about. Or did everything here move, bubbles blown before the Changer’s whims? However many times Serroi followed their will o’ the wisp guide to meals, to meet Coyote in one of his many guises, to walk beside the oval lake in the ancient volcano’s crater, she never managed to gain any sense of the ordering of Coyote-Changer’s home. If it had rules, they were written according to a logic too strange or complex for her to understand.

After a dozen more twists and turns they stepped into the huge domed chamber that held the mirror.

Coyote’s Mirror. An oval bubble like a gossamer egg balanced on its large end, large enough to hold a four-master under full sail. Color flickered through the glimmer, a web of light threading through its eerie nothingness. A long low divan was pulled up about three bodylengths from it, absurdly bright and jaunty with its black velvet cover embroidered with spangles and gold thread, its piles of silken pillows, the gaudiest of greens, reds, blues, yellows and purples. In that vast gloom with its naked stone, sweating damp, its shifting shadows and creeping drafts, the divan was a giggle that briefly lifted Serroi’s spirits each time she came into that chamber and warmed her briefly toward Coyote.

He wasn’t there. That rather surprised her. She’d expected him to be titupping about, hair on end, his impatience red in his long narrow eyes, tossing an ultimatum at Hern. She began to relax.

Hern looked about, shrugged and walked to the divan. He settled himself among the pillows, leaned forward, hands planted on his knees, waiting for the show to begin. Serroi hesitated, then perched beside him, her hands clasped loosely in her lap, her feet supported by an extravagantly purple pillow. The Mirror whispered at them, shapeless sounds to match the unsteady shapes flowing through it.

“Begin.” It was a staccato bark, loud enough to reverberate through the great chamber. As it died in pieces about them, Serroi twisted around, trying to locate the speaker, but it was as if the rock itself had spoken, aping and magnifying Coyote’s squeak.

When she turned back to the Mirror, there were excited voices coming from it, a great green dragon leaped at them, mouth wide, fire whooshing at them, then the dragon went round the curve of the Mirror and vanished-but not before she saw the dark-clad rider perched between the delicate powerful wings. More of the dragons whipped past, all of them ridden, all of them spouting gouts of fire at something Serroi couldn’t see. They were intensely serious about what they were doing, those riders and the beasts they rode, but Serroi couldn’t make out what it was they fought. She looked at Hern.

He was frowning thoughtfully at the beasts, but when he felt her eyes on him, he smiled at her and shook his head. “No,” he told the Mirror. To Serroi he said, “Think about those infesting our skies. The sky is one place the mijlockers don’t need to watch for death. We’ve got nothing here that would keep beasts that size from breeding until they ate the world bare.”

Serroi sighed. “But they were such marvelous creatures. I wish…”

“I know.”

The gossamer egg turned to black glass with a sprinkle of glitterdust thrown in a shining trail through it. Silvery splinters darted about in eerie silence eerily quick, spitting fire at each other. They were odd and rather interesting, but so tiny she couldn’t see why the Mirror or Coyote had bothered with them-until the image changed and she saw a world turning under them, a moon swimming past, then one of the slivers, riding emptiness like a sailing ship rode ocean water, came toward them, came closer and closer until only a piece of it was visible in the oval and she knew that the thing was huge; through dozens of glassy blisters on the thing’s side she saw men and women sitting or moving about like parasites in its gut. As she watched, it sailed on, began spitting fire at the world below, charring whole cities, turning the oceans to steam. Power beyond any conception of power she’d had before. She looked at Herm

“No,” he said. “Ay-maiden, no.”

The Mirror flickered, the black turned green and blue, a green velvet field, a blue and cloudless sky. Small pavilions in bright primary stripes, triangular pennants fluttering at each end of a long low barrier woven with silken streamers running parallel to the churned brown dirt. Beneath the pennants, gleaming metal figures mounted on noble beasts with long elegant heads, flaring nostrils, short alert ears with a single curve on the outside, a double curve on the inside, a twisty horn long as a man’s forearm between large liquid eyes, long slender legs that seemed too delicate to carry their weight and that on their backs. A horn blared a short tantara. The metal riders spurred their mounts into a ponderous gallop, lowering the unwieldy poles they’d been holding erect, and charged toward each other, each on his own side of the barrier. Loud thumps of the digging hooves, cries from unseen spectators, huffing from the beasts, creaks and rattles from the riders, a general background hum. They charged at each other, feather plumes on the headpieces fluttering, the long poles held with impossible dexterity, tips wavering in very small circles. Pole crashed against shield. One pole shattered. One pole slipped off the shield. One rider was swaying precariously though still in the saddle, the other had been pushed off his beast and lay invisible until the viewpoint changed and they saw him on his back, rocking and flinging arms and legs about as he struggled to get back on his feet.

“No,” Hern said, though his gaze lingered on the riding beast fidgeting a short distance off, neck bent in a graceful arc, snorting and dancing from foot to foot with an impossible lightness as attendants dived for the dangling reins. “No,” he said and sighed.

The Mirror flickered. A forest. Gigantic trees with skirts of fragile air-root lace arching out near the ground. A woman standing among and towering above brown glass figures that danced around her, crooning something exquisitely lovely and compelling; Serroi could feel the pull of it as she watched. A woman, bright hair hanging loose about a frowning face, a face alive with something better than beauty, a powerful leonine female, visibly dangerous. She lifted a hand. Fire gathered about the hand, a gout of gold flame that flowed like ropy syrup about it. She pointed. Fire leaped out in a long lance from her finger. She swept her arm in a short arc, the lance moving with it to slash deep into the side of a tree. The forest groaned. The hypnotic chant broke. One of the glass figures cried out, agony in the rising shriek, a deep burn slanting across its delicate torso. “I want my friend,” the woman cried. “Give me back my friend; bring her out from where you’ve hid her.” She cut at another tree. A spun gold crown appeared on her head, a band woven from gold wire, flowers like flattened lilies on the band, the petals made of multiple lines of wire until the petal space was filled in. The centers of the blooms were singing crystals whose pure sweet chimes sounded over the moaning and screaming from the little ones, the hooshing of the trees. “I want my friend or I’ll burn your forest about your ears.” She took a step forward, the fury in her face a terrible thing. Once again she slashed at a tree.

“No,” Hern said. Hastily but definitely.

“Why?” Serroi turned from the fading image to examine his face.

“I’ve got enough trouble coping with the women in my life.” He chuckled. “You, Yael-mri, Floarin, even the Maiden. Fortune deliver me from another. Remember my number two, Lybor?” When she nodded, he jerked his thumb at the Mirror. “A Lybor with brains. Give that one a year and she’d own the world.”

“If she wanted it.”

He shrugged. “Why take the chance?”

The Mirror flickered. The gloom about the trees changed, deepened. The giants shrank to trees that were still great, but great on a more human scale. The ground tilted to a steeper slope. The view shifted until it seemed they hovered over a red dirt trail. A line of men came trotting along it-no, not all men, about half were women. Serroi counted twenty, all of them lean and fit, moving steadily down the mountainside, making no sound but the soft beat of their feet and the softer slide of their clothing. Dark clothing. Trousers of some tough but finely woven cloth more like leather than the homespun cloth she knew. Some of them wore dark shirts that buttoned down the front, heavy blousy shirts with a number of buttoned-down pockets, others had short sleeved, round-necked tunics that clung like fine silk to torsos male and female. Some had wide belts looped across their bodies, others had pouches that bounced softly and heavily against their hips. They all carried complicated wood and metal objects, rather like crossbows without the bowstaves. Well-kept weapons, handled with the ease of long use. Down and down they went, moving in and out of moonlight that was beginning to dim as clouds blew across the sky. They reached a dirt road, only a little wider than the trail but with deeper ruts in it. Without hesitation they turned onto it and loped along it, still going down.

A purring like that of a giant sicamar grew slowly louder, died. A blatting honk. The band split in half and vanished into the brush and trees on both sides of the road. The throaty purr began again, again grew louder. Again it stopped. Serroi heard a sharp whistle. Three bursts, then two. The purr again-coming on until Serroi at last saw the thing that made it. A large squarish van rather like the caravans of the players. This one had no team pulling it, yet it came steadily on, its fat, soft-looking wheels turning with a speed that started Hern tapping his fingers. The purring muted to a mutter as the van slowed and stopped; the man inside the glassed-in front leaned out an opening by his side and repeated the whistle signal. His face was strained, gaunt, shadow emphasizing the hollows around his eyes, the heavy lines slashing down his cheeks and disappearing under his chin.

An answering whistle came from the trees on his left.

He opened the side of the van, jumped down and trotted around to the back, put a key into a tiny keyhole, turned it, then pulled down the two handles and opened out the doors. The viewpoint shifted so she could see inside, but it was a disappointment; nothing there but thin quilted padding on the floor.

The men and women came swiftly and silently from the trees and began climbing inside, fitting themselves with quick ease into the limited space. The driver and the leader of the band, a stocky blond man, stood talking by the front door.

“Rumor says they’re close to finishing new spy satellites and shooting them up.” The driver’s voice was soft, unassertive, a hoarse but pleasant baritone that blended well with the soughing of the wind through the conifers, the brighter rustling of the other trees. “When they do, they’ll be going over the mountains inch by inch until they find you.” He passed a hand across his brow, stirring the lank thin hair hanging into his eyes. “Unless you can take them out again.”

“Through a fuckin army? Hunh! Well, we won a year. They took their time.” The stocky man rubbed a fist across his chin. “We can hold out.” A quick swoop of his arm included the fighters. “But the rest, the old folks and the kids…” Hand fisted again, he jabbed at the unseen enemy, eyes narrowed, cheekbones suddenly prominent, catching what was left of the moonlight. “Shit, man, what else we fighting for?”

The driver smiled, a nervous twitch of his lips. “All of us, we’ll have to go deeper underground or cross the border and raid from there. Tell you, Georgia, I’ve about gone my limit in town. Getting so I grovel to shadows. Had a couple blackshirts go through my store records a week ago, they came back yesterday, didn’t do anything but stand around. Still, I was sweating rivers.”

“You suspect?”

“I don’t think so. Not for this.” He patted the side of the van, “It’s what I sell, electronic games, the minicomputers, the rest of it, all that second-hand gear. And I was a wargamer before they got that outlawed. Devil’s work, you know.” He shrugged, swiped again at the hair falling in his eyes. “Be really ironic if they pull me in because whatever they’ve got instead of brains is twitching at shadows like that. It’s getting so it’s anybody any time, all the cops need is a funny feeling. Hunh! The Dommers, they located a collection of drop-outs a couple hundred miles south of here. What I hear, all they were doing was scratching a few patches of vegetables out of the mountainside, living on what they could catch or kill. Dommers rounded them up, the ones left alive, brought them in for trial. Was on TV last night, showing us the horrible examples. Rumor says trial’s rigged, they’re going to shoot them first of the week.” He shrugged again. “They’re starting to ration gas. Guess you’ll have to lift a few cans so I can fill up again. I damn sure don’t want them coming down on me asking questions I can’t answer. Constitution suspended till the emergency’s over. Over!” The last word was a barking snarl. He thrust his hands in the pockets of his jacket and scowled into the night. “It’ll be over when the fat cats get themselves dug in so deep we’ll never root them out; little man can wave good-bye to any rights he thinks he’s got.”

Georgia said nothing, put his hand on the driver’s shoulder, squeezed. Still silent, he moved to the back of the van and looked inside, nodded with satisfaction, and closed the doors. He pulled at the handles to make sure the latches had caught, took the key from the lock without turning it (Hern nods, good sense not to trap the fighters inside should something happen to the van) and went to the front, climbed up beside the driver and settled back so his face and torso were lost in deep shadow. The driver busied himself with small, quick movements Serroi found puzzling until she heard the purr grow louder. The man backed and turned the van in the narrow space with a skill both Hern and Serroi approved, then started down the winding road.

The viewpoint lifted so she could see out over the land, over the wild rugged mountains with their heavy covering of trees and many small streams, mountains much like the Earth’s Teeth on the western rim of the mijloc.

The Mirror blinked. The van was out of the mountains and moving along a paved road through intensively cultivated farmlands, past clumps of houses and outbuildings (more vehicles in many shapes sitting in driveways or open sheds, some farms have several varieties), herds of beasts vaguely like hauhaus in some fields, in others a smaller number of beasts somewhat like the majilarni rambuts or the mounts of the metal men, minus the horn between the eyes. The van went through many small villages, huddles of glass-fronted buildings plopped down beside the larger roads, most of these brightly lit by globes that neither smoked nor seemed to need refueling. A prosperous fertile land that apparently had never known war. There were fences but only to keep the beasts from straying. No walls about the farmhouses, no walls about the villages, no place to store food against siege or famine-yet, from what the men had said, there was much wrong here. She frowned at the tranquil night pictures before them and thought about that conversation. A good deal of it was simply incomprehensible though she understood the words; apparently the Mirror gifted them with the ability to understand all the languages spoken within its boundaries. However, she did not have the basic knowledge to comprehend things like spy satellites, electronic gear, mini-computers. They were blurs in her mind about a vague notion of communications. What she did understand was the similarity between the situation there and the one in the mijloc, folk being driven off their land and into the mountains to escape persecution by another more powerful group that had seized control of the government. And the feel she got of the usurpers was very much like that of the Followers, repression, denial of pleasure, demands for submission. And there was something else. A sense of impending doom. Not so very different from the mijloc with Floarin’s army gathering, getting ready to march.

The Mirror blinked. A glow spread across the sky, a steady shine that turned the clouds yellow and sickened the face of the single moon. They flew above a vast city, a sleeping city. Glass everywhere, lights everywhere, those cold-fire globes that burned as brilliantly as the sun, turning night into day on the empty streets. Countless houses and communal dwellings, all sizes and shapes, from the ragged crowded slums to sprawling elegance spread on beautifully landscaped grounds. Toward the center of the city there were rows and rows of great square towers, their hundreds and hundreds of windows dark and empty, made mirrors by the perfection of the plate glass, and among the towers were shorter structures, stores heaped with goods of all kinds, some recognizable, most incomprehensible, such a heaping up and overflowing of things that Serroi felt dizzy with it all.

Then they were back with the van, watching it turn and twist through the silent streets until it reached a blocky black building surrounded by a high fence of knitted metal wire. The van moved slowly past it then went around behind some other buildings and stopped. Georgia was at the back doors almost before the vehicle was completely stopped, turning the handles, dragging the doors open. A tall thin woman, her skin a warm rich brown with red-amber highlights, her hair a ragged bramble, was the first out, looking sharply around, then beginning a rapid series of bends and stretches. The rest of the fighters came out with equal silence and followed her example, then Georgia held up a hand. The others snapped straight, eyes on him. He pointed to the dark woman. She waved a casual salute, gave him a broad glowing smile, brought up a hand and waved it at the van, a fast gesture.

The fighters split into two unequal parts, fifteen staying with Georgia, five climbing back into the box. Georgia closed the doors, thumped on the side. A moment later it rolled away, moving slowly, the purr kept to a minimum.

The others followed Georgia along the street, bunched in groups of two or three spaced at varying intervals. To a casual glance they were night shift going home and not too anxious to get there-an illusion that would vanish if anyone took a long look at them, but Hern nodded and smiled his appreciation at the intelligent subtlety of the move; there was little about the band to attract such close scrutiny.

They rounded a corner, crossed the street and went along the knitted fence until they came to a brightly lit gate flanked by thick pillars of red brick. There was a small guardhouse inside the gate but it was dark and silent, its shuttered window locked tight. The largest of the fighters took a clippers longer than his forearm from his belt, unsnapped a leather cover, set the cutting edges against the chain that held the two parts of the metal gate together. Others were busy at the pillars taking down metal plates and doing things that had no meaning to Serroi but much meaning to them if she judged by their intentness, the tension evident in workers and waiters. The wait was short; in less than a minute the gate was open, and the small band was inside.

Running on the grass, they reached the building a moment later and went round it to a small door at one side.

More intense working, intense waiting, then the door was open and they were inside, fading into shadows along the walls of the storehouse. Piles of boxes, rows of vehicles and other large objects angled out from the walls, the place was filled and overflowing. Silent and hard to see in the darkness, the fighters moved in and out of alcoves, a dance of shadows in shadow.

Voices. The shadows stilled, then began converging on a door whose bottom half was solid wood, top half opaque glass.

The watchers’ viewpoint shifted. They hovered in the room on the other side of the door, saw four armed men in sloppy gray-green shirts and trousers, heavy laced boots, broad belts each with a metal object where a sword would hang-a weapon of some sort-a small cousin of the larger weapons the raiders carried. These men were playing a card game of some sort, sucking on white cylinders that glowed on the end, breathing out streams of gray-white smoke. One man took the cylinder from his mouth, plucked a bottle filled with amber fluid from a bowl of cracked ice, twisted the top off, threw his head back and drank with noisy gulps, put the bottle down beside him, two-thirds emptied, and picked up his cards.

The door slammed open. One of the invaders was inside. A woman. Small, wiry. Her face was hidden in a black stocking with holes for her eyes. She stood tense, balanced for quick movement, silently begging the guards to move.

The four men had started to roll away and bring their weapons up, but froze before the threat of that eagerly quivering weapon. Only their eyes moved-shifting from the woman to the other raiders, the stocky man, masked like the woman, another, taller man, a fourth raider just visible behind him. The stocky man pointed a gloved finger at one of the guards. “Stand,” the woman said, her voice like cracking ice.

The guard got slowly to his feet. The fourth raider came quickly and silently into the room, a stubby man with muscles on muscles, arms, neck and chest straining the thin knit shirt he wore. His hands were gloved, supple leather gloves he wore like a second skin. He pulled a coil of wire from his pocket, jerked the guards’ arms behind him, wound a bit of wire round his thumbs, snipped it off the coil, twisted the ends together. He came round in front of the man, pushed him in the chest with a deceptively gentle shove that sent him staggering against the wall then down onto the floor. He squatted and wired the man’s ankles together.

One by one the others were immobilized, quickly, efficiently, with no unnecessary moves or sounds. The raiders didn’t bother with gags. Apparently they didn’t care how much noise the guards might make once they were gone. The woman who’d given all the orders was last from the room. At the door, she turned. “Yell and I’ll be back. You won’t like that.” She vanished after the others, pulling the door neatly and quietly to behind her.

She joined two of the smaller women who were standing guard. The rest of the raiders were moving back and forth between a large vehicle-like the van but broader, bulkier, a brutal mass to it, a canvas top stretched over ribs. They were packing boxes and metal containers into it, filling it with supplies of all sorts, breaking open the larger boxes and distributing the contents in the cracks and crannies between the smaller boxes. One man was working over a number of two-wheeled vehicles, installing bits and pieces, pouring something that sloshed from a can into the small tank on each of the vehicles. The work went on and on, silent and quick and impressively efficient. No questions, no fumbling about, no hesitation over what to take.

When they were finished loading, they pulled uniforms like those of the guards over their own clothing, took off their masks and put on shiny black helmets whose smoked visors hid almost as much of their faces. Georgia looked around, made a soft hissing sound. “Almost forgot,” he said. “Fill a couple cans for our friend. Put them up front, that’s the only space left.”

The short, powerful fighter brought back two large metal containers painted the color of the uniforms. While he stowed these in the front, the others wheeled the small vehicles into place around the large one, six in front, six behind; they mounted them, feet on the floor holding their metal mounts erect. The guarding women swung the great double doors open, then ran back to the big brute, scrambled inside the cab, two sitting in view, one crouching behind the seats. The riders on the two-wheelers stamped down, the warehouse filled with a coughing throbbing roar much louder than the purr of the van. Moving with ponderous majesty, the procession edged out of the building. The last two riders closed the doors and after they were through the gates, closed those, replaced the sheared padlock with another lifted from the warehouse, then they rolled on, leaving the place looking much as they’d found it.

They went unchallenged through the silent streets. A few drunks stumbling along muttered curses after them, several night-shifters looked curiously after them, but no one seemed to question their activities, no one tried to stop them; what was visible of their faces was disciplined, their bodies were alert but relaxed; they were soldiers about an everyday task, nothing to fuss about.

The Mirror blinked.

There was a glow of pink low down in the eastern sky and the convoy was rumbling along a broad empty highway, moving in and out of patchy fog without slackening speed. The ocean was close, a few hundred yards on the far side of a line of scraggly sandhills high enough to block the view of the water. A little later they came round a broad shallow bend and into a clear patch of road, then slowed abruptly enough to startle Serroi.

On one of the higher and weedier sandhills a rider sat his beast like a statue carved from the darkest cantha wood, his hands crossed on the saddle in front of him, his long black hair lifting on the wind. He waited until the convoy turned onto a drifted, broken side road that slanted off from the highway a short distance past his knoll, then he brought his mount around, galloped recklessly down the slope and clattered ahead of the machines onto the main street of a deserted and half-destroyed coast village. More clatter of hooves-half a dozen others came riding down the street to meet him, short dark youths, long black hair held out of their faces by beaded leather bands or strips of bright cloth. They wore black trousers, skimpy knitted tops with no sleeves and scuffed, high-heeled boots, and rode like demons, as if they were sewed to their mounts; they came swooping around him waving their weapons, but maintaining a disciplined silence all the more impressive when taken with their exuberantly grinning young faces. They slowed to a calmer pace and rode ahead of the convoy along the shattered street.

Many of the houses and stores were smashed into weathered splinters, a deep layer of dried muck cracked into abstract shapes, graying every surface to a uniform dullness, drifts of sand piled against every semi-vertical wall, sand dunes creeping slowly over the wreckage, beginning to cover what was left of the town. Here and there, by accident of fate and the caprice of the storm that had wrecked the town, a building stood more or less whole. The riders dismounted in front of the open loading door of one of these, an abandoned warehouse, and led their beasts inside.

Georgia held up his hand, stopped the convoy, dismounted and wheeled his machine after the dismounted riders. In a few minutes the street was empty, the big machine and the little ones tucked neatly away into the empty interior of the building.

Georgia walked over to the lounging youths, tapped the leader on the shoulder. “Angel.” He raised thick blond brows. “Run into trouble? Where’s the other half?”

“Heading home with a new cavvy. We lifta buncha good horses from ol’ Jurgeet’s; don’ worry, boss, they scatter and go way round. Nobody going to follow ’em through the brush. Us here, we each got a spare horse; seven of us c’n haul as much stuff as the dozen, yeah.” He grinned suddenly, his pitted face lighting into a fugitive comeliness. “And boss, we leave his prizes alone; don’t want his goons on our tails, besides they too delicate, not worth shit except running.”

Georgia chuckled, shook his head. “Long as you’re loose and considering it’s Jurgeet. Take your horse thieves and brush out the tire marks from where we turned off the highway to here. I want to get this place neated up before the sun’s out and they maybe send choppers after us.”

“Uh. We go.” Another flashing grin. Whistling his companions to him, Angel trotted out of the large room.

Georgia wiped his smile away, turned to frown at his raiders. Several were working together to peel the canvas off the ribs, the rest were stripping off the uniforms, folding them neatly and putting them aside against future use. “Liz,” he called.

The small intense woman who’d done all the talking at the armory ran a bony hand through her mop of coarse black hair, came over to him with short quick steps. “What is it?”

“Pick up a pair of binoculars and head back to the highway; find a place where you can get a clear view down the road. Dettinger should be along fairly soon. If he’s got lice on his tail, I want to know it.”

She gave a quick assenting jerk of her head, rummaged through a stack of supplies and snatched up black tubes with a neck strap (Binoculars? Serroi wonders), slung her weapon over her shoulder by its webbing strap and went quickly out of the warehouse and along the street. She climbed the sandhill and settled on her belly in the weeds, brought the binoculars to her eyes, fiddled with them a while, then settled to her tedious watch.

Inside the building the raiders continued unloading the big vehicle, strapping packets on the back of the two-wheelers. As soon as one was ready, a raider mounted it and roared off into the foggy dawn. Before the sun was fully up, all twelve two-wheelers were gone, Angel and his band were gone, spread out on separate routes so they could be sure at least some of their captured supplies would get through to their base.

Silence settled back over the ruins and the dunes. Liz lay quietly among her weeds, Georgia and the strongman strolled along the street, using an ancient broom and some brush to scratch out wheel and hoof marks, apparently relaxed but keeping a close eye on the sky. Dawn was fading, the fog was fading, there were few clouds in the sky, it promised to be a warm pleasant day. The two men went back inside the warehouse, muscled the sliding door along its rusted track, leaving a crack wide enough for a man to walk through.

The Mirror blinked.

The sun leaped toward zenith, settled at about an hour from noon. A loud whopping sound. A speck in the sky grew rapidly larger. Two men sitting in a bulging glass bubble in a lattice of metal, rotors whirling overhead. The thing swept low over the wrecked village, slowed until it was almost hovering, moved in a tight circle and swung away, moving south along the highway until it vanished into the blue.

The Mirror blinked.

The sun flashed past noon, slowed to its usual pace. Liz thrust her head through the crack. “Van’s coming. Far as I can tell, he’s loose. No copters.”

A short while later, a familiar muted purring-the van came down the street, stopped while Georgia shoved on the sliding door, then drove in beside the military vehicle and stopped.

The dark woman came out the back, one arm hanging useless, a wide patch of drying blood on the shoulder of her tailored shirt. As the rest piled out after her, she lifted the dangling arm with her other hand and hooked her thumb over her belt so the arm had some support. Walking slowly so she wouldn’t jar her shoulder, she crossed to stand beside Georgia.

“We had to fight loose,” she said. “We got Aguillar and Connelly out. Catlin’s dead. He couldn’t make it, too far gone, asked me to shoot him. Did. Ram’s got a bullet in him, a crease on his leg, bled a little but he could run and did. Rest of us, well, we’re mobile. As you see, we picked up a couple other prisoners. Connelly says he knows them both not just from the introg center, vouches for them. Woman’s a doctor. Orthopedic surgeon. Man’s a history professor at Loomis. Asked about Julia, says he knows her. Feisty dude for an academic type, saved my life just about. Hauled me up when the bullet knocked me off my feet, half-carried me till we reached the transport.” She grinned. “We jacked ourself a copcar. Bit of luck, got us in smooth enough. It was getting out the shit started flying. Took us awhile to get loose enough to connect with Det. Doc there did get the worst of the bleeding stopped with stuff in the copcar, but she didn’t have much to work with.”

“Liz says you’re clean.”

“Yeah, or I wouldn’t be standing here flapping my mouth.” There was sweat on her forehead and her rich brown had gone a dull mud-gray, but the spirit in her was a wine-glow in her light eyes.

Georgia touched her cheek, his stolid face deeply serious. “You go sit down before you fall down.” Then he grinned at her. “Picking up a medical doctor.” He looked over her shoulder at the battered, middle-aged woman bending over a wounded man, a medipac already open beside her. “Anoike’s luck.”

“Ain’ it de trut’.” Refusing Georgia’s arm, she went over to the military vehicle, sat down on the flat ledge that ran between the wheels, resting her head against its metal side, waiting her turn for treatment.

The Mirror blinked.

Night. Fog or low-hanging clouds. Trees swam in and out of the fog as the Mirror’s eye swept along. A creek cut through a small clearing. Condensation dripped off needles and leaves, off rocky overhangs. A man came from under the trees, another, two more, carrying a third on a stretcher-Ram, the doctor walking beside him. Another two, another stretcher, Anoike on it. A man in his fifties with thick unruly gray hair. Liz. More of the raiders, the strongman, finally Georgia. A soft whistle came from somewhere among the trees; he answered it without breaking stride.

As they moved into the trees again Serroi began seeing small camouflaged gardens, the plants growing haphazard in the grass and brush, then some lean-tos and crude pole corrals with horses in them, more shelters, tents huddled close in to trees, more and more of them, heavy canvas tops with walls and floors of rock or wattle and daub. Faces looked out of some, some men and women came out and watched the raiders pass, called softly to one or the other, getting soft answers. A whole little village under the trees, hidden from above, a portable community able to pick, up and move itself given a few hours warning, leaving only depressions and debris behind. Thick netting stretched overhead, open enough to let in some moonlight and certainly any rain. The Mirror’s eye swept up through the web and circled over it, showing her, showing them both, the hillside below them, empty except for vegetation and trees, the tent village wiped away as if it had been a dream, nothing more.

The Mirror blinked.

The sun shone with a pale watery light through a thinning layer of clouds. The Mirror’s eye roamed about the village, showing them children playing, laughing, chasing each, other among the trees and tents, others gathered around a young man, listening as he talked to them, writing in notebooks they held on their knees. Some women and men were washing clothing in the stream, others were cooking, working in the gardens, talking and laughing, some stretched out on mats, sleeping. There were sentries keeping a desultory watch on the approaches to the camp, young men and women, mostly in their teens, perched in trees or stretched out under brush. They weren’t exactly alert, but there were enough of them to make it very hard for any large group of men to catch the villagers off-guard.

A whup-whupping sound. Serroi remembered it and wasn’t surprised when the Mirror’s eye swept above the camouflage netting and focused on the sky. Huge and metallic, twice the size of the searcher she’d seen before (copter, Georgia had called it, she remembered that after a moment; copter, she said to herself as if by naming the thing she could draw some of the terror out of it), it slowed in the air, hovered over a slope some distance from the camp. Fire bloomed under it, it spat out darts so swift she guessed at them more than saw them until they hit the hillside and exploded, blew a hole in the rock with a loud crunch, a fountain of stone and shattered trees.

The copter hovered over its destruction until the reverberations of the explosion had died, then a loud voice boomed from it, a man’s voice, many times magnified. “Terrorists,” it trumpeted, metallic overtones and echoes close to defeating the effect of the volume, turning the words into barely understandable mush. “Surrender. Save your miserable necks. We coming after you, gonna burn these hills down around you. Defoliants, you scum, remember those? Napalm. Rockets. We gonna scrub these hills bare. Ever seen third-degree burns? Want your kids torched? Surrender, scum. You got no running room left.”

Before the last echoes died out, the copter was moving on along the range. Serroi held her breath as it passed over the village, but the men in the machine were blasting slopes at random intervals without any real hope of hitting anyone. They blew a chunk out of the next mountain over, repeated the message with a few added descriptions, and flew on, the whump-crump of their assault on stone and dirt and living wood fading gradually to silence.

The Mirror’s eye dipped back under the webbing. Shaken, angry, excited, afraid, the folk from the tents converged on the largest of the camouflaged clearings. Some were silent, turned inward in their struggle to cope with this new threat. Others came in small groups, talking urgently, voices held to whispers as if they feared something would overhear what they were saying. At first it was a confusion of dazed and worried people, but gradually the villagers sorted themselves out and settled on the dirt and grass while three men and two women took stools to the far edge of the clearing, set them in a row and climbed up on them so they could see and be seen. The low buzzing of the talk grew louder for a short while, then died to an expectant silence as one of the five, a lean tall man with thick glasses he kept pushing up a rather short nose, came to his feet and walked a few steps toward the gathered people. “We got a little problem,” he said. His voice was unexpectedly deep and carried through the clearing without difficulty.

Laughter, nervous, short-lived, rippled across the assembly.

“We also got no answers.” He clasped his hands behind him and ran milky blue eyes over the very miscellaneous group before him. “Seems like some of you should have some questions. Don’t want to drag this out too long, but…” he smiled suddenly, a wide boyish grin that took years off his age, “… your elected councilors need to do a bit of polling before we make our recommendations.” He glanced at the timepiece strapped to his wrist. “You know the rules. Say your name, say your question or comment, keep it, short and to the point. You want to argue, save it for later. You stand, I point, you talk.” There was a surge as a number of the listeners jumped up. He got his stool, climbed up on it, looked them over and snapped a long forefinger out. “You. Tildi.”

The dumpy gray-haired woman took a deep breath, then spoke, “Tildi Chon. Any chance they’re bluffing?”

The finger snapped out again. “Georgia, you know them better than most.”

The chunky blond man got to his feet, looked around at the expectant faces. His own face was stolidly grim. “Georgia Myers,” he said. “No. Not this time. For one thing, they’ve already hit a camp south of here, got that from one of our friends in the city. For another, same friend says they’re just about ready to put up new spy satellites.”

“Any chance we could ride it out?”

“Always a chance. Most of us beat the odds getting here. You know that. Almost no chance if we stay together. Have to scatter, groups of two or three, no more.”

Tildi Chon nodded and sat down, shifting her square body with an uneasy ease, settling with her hands clasped in her lap, her face calm.

“You, next, Arve.”

The pudgy little man wiped his hands down his sides. “Arve Wahls,” he said in an uncertain tenor. “Something not for me, but anyone who needs to know and don’t like to ask. What happens to anyone wanting to surrender? Who can’t take the pounding any more?”

One of the rescued prisoners; the history professor, jumped to his feet. “Don’t,” he burst out. He smoothed a long handsome hand over a rebellious cowlick, looked around, made a graceful gesture of apology. “Simon Zagouris. Sorry. New here.”

“Samuel Braddock, professor. From what I hear, you’re one to know well as any what would happen. Finish what you got to say and keep it short.”

Zagouris looked down at his hands, then took a few steps out from the others and turned to face them. “If you’re lucky, you’ll be shot.” He waited for the shocked murmurs to die, then went on. “Look at me. Tenured professor, fat cat in a fat seat, doing what I enjoyed, no worries about eating or rent, fighting off a bit of back-stabbing, office politics, nothing serious. When they leaned on me, told me what I had to teach and how I had to teach it, I sputtered a bit, they leaned harder, I caved in. But they didn’t trust me even then. My classes had watchers with tape recorders. My lectures had to be cleared through someone in the Chancellor’s office. And a blackshirt truth squad searched my office, my house, clearing out anything they thought subversive or immoral. My books…” His mouth snapped shut as he fought to control his anger and distress. “Came back again and again. Stealing whatever they fancied, daring me to say boo. Time and time again I was called in to listen to some airhead rant. I remind you, I didn’t fight them, I didn’t do more than protest very mildly at the beginning. Kept my mouth shut after, did what I was told like a good boy. And still they kept after me, never trusting me a minute, just looking for an excuse to haul me in for interrogation. And when they pulled me in, my god, you wouldn’t believe the shit they tried on me. Until you have to listen to them, you can’t imagine the stupidity of those men. Twice I was taken out of the University and held in a room somewhere-I don’t have the faintest idea where it was-just put there and left, not knowing what was going to happen. I started looking about me for some way to fight them that wouldn’t get me killed. I say that for my self-respect, but I’m not going to talk about it more than that. The ones that questioned me never got near anything that was really happening, it was what was in my head that bothered them. This last time, though, it wasn’t questions and a few slaps, it was cattle prods and purges, and wanting to know about friends of mine, what they were doing, where they were. Again I remind you, I didn’t challenge them, I didn’t reject their claims on me or work against them, not in the beginning. If any of you think about surrendering, consider how much more they’ve got against you. Say they use you for propaganda to get other holdouts to come in, let you live awhile. As soon as you’re beginning to feel safe, they come to your house and question you, then they take you away and question you. They’ll question you about things so crazy you can’t believe they’re serious, until you start thinking there has to be something more behind what’s happening. But there’s nothing there. They’ll come back at you again and again until you’re crazy or dead. No matter what happens here, I’m not going back alive.” He returned to where he’d been sitting, settled himself, waiting with a calm that didn’t extend to his hands, long fingers nervously tapping at his thighs.

Braddock pushed his glasses up. “Right,” he said. “Connelly.”

“Francis Connelly. Anoike just busted me out of an introg. What Zagouris said ain’t the half of it. But he’s got the right idea. Go back down as a corpse or not at all.”

Half a dozen tried to speak at once. Braddock came back onto his feet. ‘‘Siddown and shaddup,” he yelled at them. Into the ensuing quiet he said, “You talk, Tom. Rest of you keep still and listen or I’ll have Ombele sort you out.” He flashed one of his sudden grins at another of the council, a man three times as wide as he was, half a head taller; even standing still the muscles visible in arms and neck were defined and shining like polished walnut in the shifting light.

He, chuckled, his laughter as rich and dark as the rest of him. “Yeah,” he said. “Papa Sammy’s muscle.” The assembly laughed with him but there was no more disorder. “Like the man said, Prioc; you’re up next.”

“Tom Prioc. We can’t stay here. Can’t go down either. Seems to me there’s three choices left. We can do like Georgia says and scatter. We do that, I see most of us starving or getting picked up one by one and put in the labor camps they’ve set up down south, or some of us, the ones without families, we can keep moving, living outta garbage cans, picking up shitwork now and then from scum too greedy to pay the legal wage. We die and don’t get nothing to show for it. Me, I want the bastards to know I was here before they wipe me.” He folded his arms, nodded his head, his wispy brown hair blowing out from his face. “Or we head north tonight with as much as we can haul, split up in small groups so we can run round the roadblocks and copter traps they’ll have waiting for us. Cross the border how we can. The Condies’ll try shoving us back, don’t want our trouble, they got troubles enough with the death squads coming across to hunt down what they call enemies of the UD. Won’t be that easy, getting in and getting set up. Have to watch out for Condie feds, but we can stay together, that’s worth something.” He chuckled, looked about the crowd, eyes lingering on a face here and there. “That’s one hard border to close. Me and some of you, we did our bit in trade across it. Tempts me. I know those mountains and the trails.” He paused, rubbed at his nose. “But I’d kinda like to take me out a copter or two. Georgia and his bunch, they got us a good supply of rockets and launchers. There’ll be gunships, but a single man’s a hard target when he knows how to be. Third choice. I’d really like to take me out a copter.” He sat.

Braddock’s long finger flicked to a comfortably round middle-aged woman with short blond hair and a peeling nose. “Cordelia Gudon. Tom’s just about set it out. I can’t see anything else, maybe some of you can: All I got to say, whatever the rest of us do, the kids gotta get out.” She sat.

“Blue.”

“Blue Fir Alendayo. I know the trails and the border well as Tom. Same reason. I say we go as soft as we can far as we can, shoot our way through if we have to, probably will, get the lot of us over the border, then those who want to come back and make as much hell as we can for these…” She paused, searching for a word that would adequately characterize their foes, gave it up and went on. “Well, they can.” She sat, bounced up immediately, eyes shining. “And anyone who wants to stay now and shoot him a copter or two, why not.” She sat again.

The meeting went on its orderly way. Doubters and grumblers, quibblers and fussers, minor spats and a couple of yelling matches. Hern watched them, fascinated by a kind of governing he’d never seen before, even in the few taromate convocations he’d looked in on. He took his eyes away when the meeting was winding toward some sort of consensus. “Coyote,” he called.

The scruffy little man came out of nowhere, his eyes darting from the image in the Mirror to Hern to Serroi, back to the Mirror. “Yes?” he said, pointed ears spreading out from his head, pointed nose twitching.

“I want those. If they’re willing. Those people, their weapons and transport.”

“Willing? What willing? You want them, I bring them through.”

“No point, if they won’t fight. Are you going to bring them through here or can you transfer them directly to the Biserica?”

“Will I, not can I, Dom. Will I? Yes. No. Maybe. You go there.” His ears went flat against his head, then his grin was back, mockery and anticipation mixed in it. He giggled. “Hern the happy salesman. Death and glory, you tell ’em. They buy you or they don’t. Come through where I want if they buy. Not Biserica. Maybe Southport. I think about it.”

Serroi straightened. “Ser Coyote.”

Coyote rocked on his heels, his head tilted, long narrow eyes filled with a sly laughter that she didn’t particularly like. “Little green person.”

“If they refuse, then Hern chooses again because your debt isn’t paid.”

Coyote squirmed, went fuzzy around the edges as if he vibrated between shapes, then he wilted, even his stiff gray hair. He sighed. “Yesss.”

“That being so,” she said more calmly than she felt, “put us through.”

Poet-Warrior

Julia set about the reams of paperwork, the miles of red tape that should eventually land her in the public ward of some hospital and pay her surgeon’s fees.

You know the route, you’ve helped a thousand others along it. Faces pass before you, good people, petty tyrants, both sorts overworked until anything extra is an irritation not to be borne, both sorts harried by their superiors and the local politicians who found attacking them a cheap window to public favor. You’re unemployed? Haven’t you tried to get work? What do you mean too old? At forty-seven? They say no one’s hiring untrained forty-seven-year-old women? You say you’re a writer. What books? Oh, those. You own nothing? Not even a car? Estimated income for the year. Oh, really, you expect me to believe that? I’ve seen your name, you’re won prizes. Or-hi, Jule, haven’t seen you for years, what you been doing? Oh, god, I’m sorry. Cancer? All that high life catching up with you, no I’m just joking, I know it isn’t funny. I hate to tell you what funding’s like this year. Look, let me send you over to Gerda. And don’t be such a stranger after this. On and on. Keep your temper. They’re really trying to help you, most of them, if they get snappish it’s because they hate having to tell you they can’t do anything. Answer patiently. Show the doctor’s report. Explain you couldn’t afford insurance, you can’t afford anything, you’re just getting by. Say over and over what you’ve said before as you’re shunted from person to person, watch them hunt about for cracks to ease you through. Be patient. Experience should tell you that you can outwit the system if you keep at it. Try to wash off the stain of failure that is ground deeper and deeper into you. And try to forget the fear that is ground deeper and deeper into you as the days pass. You know the lumps are growing. You can’t even feel them yet, but you know they’re there, you have nightmares about them. Treacherous flesh feeding on flesh.

Yet more aggravation. The landlords raise the rents to pay for a sort of sentry box they’ve built into the side of the foyer, equipped with bulletproof glass, a speaker system and controls for the automatic bolts on the inner and outer foyer doors and the steel grill outside. An armed guard sits in the box day and night, no strangers are allowed in without prior notice. The landlords also save money by doing no repairs no matter how much the tenants complain. And as the chaos increases in Julia’s flesh, the disruption increases in society around her. There are food riots and job riots. In the suburbs, vigilante groups are beginning to patrol the streets armed with rifles and shotguns. There are a number of accidents, spooked patrols shoot some night-shifters going home, but are merely told to be more careful. Police are jumpy, shoot to kill at the slightest provocation, even imagined provocation. At first there is some outcry against this, but the protesters are drowned in a roar of outrage from those in power. The powerless everywhere begin to organize to protect themselves since no one else seems willing to. No one can stand alone in the world that is coming into being here.

Except Julia. Stubbornly alone she plods through the increasingly resistant bureaucracy. More and more of the people she has worked with are being fired or laid off or are walking away from impossible conditions; funding is decreasing rapidly as the fist of power squeezes tighter about the powerless. It is becoming a question of whether she can break through the last of the barriers before the forces eating at the system devour it completely. She is growing more and more afraid, but bolsters herself by ignoring everything but the present moment. The economy is staggering. More and more are out of work, thrown out of homes, apartments, housing projects, more and more, live in the streets until they are driven from the city. Tension builds by day, by night. Prices for food are shooting upward as supply systems begin to break down. Underground markets dealing in food and medicines begin to appear. Hijacking of produce and meat trucks becomes commonplace, organized by the people running the illegal markets, by bands of the homeless and unemployed desperate to feed their families. The UD overgovernment organizes convoys protected by the national guard. It is clumsy and inefficient but food fills the shelves again. Prices go up some more. The first minister of Domain Pacifica declares martial law. The constitution is suspended for the duration of the emergency. The homeless, the jobless, the rebellious are arrested and sent to-labor camps. The city begins to quiet, the streets empty at night, night shifters are rarer and generally go home in groups. Knots of angry folk begin to form in the mountains, people driven from the city by the labor laws, local vigilantes or GLAM enforcers-bands of men generally in their twenties and fanatically loyal to GLAM principles. Because these men wear black semi-uniforms on their outings, they’re given the name blackshirts by those likely to be their victims.

Julia gets her novel manuscript back without comment; the next day a letter comes requesting the return of the advance. She immediately withdraws the last of her money from her savings account, leaves just enough in her checking account to cover current bills, writes the publishers that she is taking their request under advisement, wishing she could tell them they could whistle for their money. She sighs over the royalties they’d withhold, but with the courts in their present mood, there isn’t much she can do but be glad for once that these are reduced to a trickle, since most of the books are vanishing from stores and libraries into the fires of the righteous. She cannot understand what is so offensive about her books. There’s a bit of sex, but nothing really raunchy-it wasn’t necessary-some misery, for after all she is writing mostly about the poor, about the odd characters she’d grown up with. She likes her people, even the most flawed and evil of them, writing of them with sympathy and understanding of the forces that shaped them. She grows depressed when she thinks about them vanishing in black smoke, can only hope that moderation and intelligence will make themselves felt before the country tears apart.

She sleeps badly; things are closing in about her She has enough money to keep her going another few months if prices don’t rise too drastically, or the city itself doesn’t shut down. By then she should be in a hospital somewhere. She has stopped watching the news or reading newspapers, notices events only when they impact directly on her life…

Until the day she comes home worn out, sick, beginning finally to admit she could fail, dispiritedly wondering if she could somehow pry the money out of Hrald.

She pressed the bellbutton, stood with weary impatience while the guard looked her over. She was too tired to feel any more anger at the obstacle between her and the bath she wanted so much, even though the water would be cold and she’d have to heat pots of it on the stove, feeling absurdly like the pioneer women who helped settle this region more than five centuries before. When she was still writing, she rather enjoyed the process, working on her novel while the water heated, the tub was filled, pot by slow pot. How good it was going to feel, sliding into water almost too hot to bear, hot soapy water spreading over her body, a last pot set aside to wash her hair. The locks buzzed and she pushed inside.

As she trudged up the stairs to the fourth floor, she ignored the irritating echoes, the ugly smears on the walls, the dead smell in the air. These were once the firestairs, meant for emergency use only. The metal steps were worn and dangerously slippery especially during the hot rains of summer when the walls oozed moisture and drips fell six floors, bouncing off the steps and spattering on the heads of those that had to use them. She plodded up and around, cursing the landlords who wouldn’t fix her heater though the law said they were responsible for it. And she couldn’t bring in an outside repairman without permission and she couldn’t get permission because they wouldn’t answer her calls or her letters, leaving her more than half convinced they wanted her out of there. If she wanted hot water, she could move.

Halfway up she stopped, laughed, seeing as silly the gloom she was indulging, knowing she’d almost regret getting the heater fixed. Once she was inside her apartment, she’d relax into the pleasures of anticipation. The making of her bath was one of the many small rituals she found herself adopting lately, rituals that gave a kind of surety and continuity to her life as things around her degenerated into chaos. She straightened her shoulders, chuckled when a single warm drop of water bounced off her nose, then started up again. It wasn’t that late, not even two yet. Three of the people she had to see left word they’d be out of town until the end of the week. She glanced at her watch, nodded. She could start looking through her manuscripts and her notebooks, seeing if there was something that could be salvaged, something she could get to her foreign publishers that might bring her in a little money. She knew what those messages meant; one of them was from an old acquaintance who liked her well enough to be uncomfortable about giving her a bad answer; she suspected he’d seized the opportunity to send a nonverbal message he knew she’d understand. She stepped onto the fourth floor landing, shoved at the press-bar with her hip, nudged the door open and started down the hall.

She dealt automatically with the three locks, pushed the door open, kicked her shoes off, dropped her purse on a small table and swung around.

And stopped, her heart thudding.

Five men stood at the far end of the room watching her.

Young men. Not boys. Mid to late twenties. Short clipped hair. Clean shaven. Black shirts. Button-down collars. Neat black ties. Tailored black trousers. Black boots, trouser cuffs falling with clean precision exactly at the instep. Black leather gloves, supple as second skins. They looked like dress-up sp), dolls, vaguely plastic, with less expression than any doll.

“Who are you?” She was pleased her voice was steady though the question was stupid, she knew well enough what they were, who didn’t matter.

“Julia Dukstra?”

Anger began to outshine fear. “Get the hell out of here,” she said. “You have no right. This is my home.” She scowled, remembering the locks she’d had to open, silently cursed the landlords-who else could get them past the guard and hand them whatever keys they wanted? She started for the phone. “I don’t care who you are, get out of here. I’m calling the police.” One of the plastic dolls stepped in front of the phone. She wheeled, started for the door. A second blackshirt got there before her. She swung back around to face the one who’d spoken. “What is this?”

“Julia Dukstra?” he repeated. He had a high, light tenor that rose to a squeak at times. He didn’t wait for her to answer but went into what was obviously a set speech. “There are those who corrupt the morals of all who touch them; there are those who spread filth and corruption everywhere, who mean to destroy goodness and innocence in women and children, who advocate adultery and unnatural acts, who incite the poor to rebellion instead of blessing God for letting them born into the United Domains where hard work and steady faith will reward them with all they need or want. There are those who are intent on destroying this nation which is the greatest on God’s green earth. These purveyors of filth must be warned and if they persist in their treachery they must be punished…” He went on speaking with the spontaneity of a tape recorder. I bet he says that to all us purveyors of filth, she thought and wanted to giggle. They were so solemn, so ridiculous… Good god, what a tin ear he’s got, him or whoever wrote that spiel.

But as the man went on, the stench of violence grew thicker and heavier in the room, as if this pack of wolves smelled her growing terror and grew excited by the smell.

“… must be disciplined, taught to fear the wrath of the Lord, the anger of the righteous man. Your filth will no longer be permitted to pollute the minds of the young and the weak in spirit. Temptation will be removed from them.” He stepped aside and pointed.

One of her bedsheets was spread out in the corner of the room, the mint green one with the teastain at one end. On it was heaped most of her books, the ones she’d written, the others she bought for reference and pleasure, books she’d kept because they meant something to her. Beside the tumbled towers of the books, all her manuscripts, the old ones, her copies, the novel and story just returned, both copies, her notebooks. Fifteen years work. They were going to wipe it out, They were going to take all that away. Her books, her manuscripts, her bedsheet. Take them away and burn them. “No,” she said. “No.” She started for the pile.

The blackshirt caught hold of her arm, jerked her around. Without stopping to think, she slapped him, hard.

He slapped her back, swung her around and threw her at the blackshirt beside him.

Who punched her in the stomach, slapped her, laughed in her face and threw her to the next man.

Violence was a conflagration in the room. Around and around, slapping her, punching her, not too hard, not hard enough to spoil her, around the circle then around again. They began tearing her clothes off, calling her all the names men had dreamed up to get back at women who made them feel weak and uncertain, the vomit of fear and hate and rage. She tried to break away, got to the bathroom, couldn’t get the door shut in time, tried to get into the hall, but they pulled her away; she kicked at them, hit out, clawed at them, sobbing with the futility of it and the anger at, herself for letting them see her cry, struggling on and on, fighting them with every ounce of strength in her, even after they got her on the floor, twisting and writhing, biting and struggling until one of them cursed and kicked her in the head.

When she opened her eyes, they were gone-leaving the door open behind them, a last expression of their contempt. She stood up, moaned as her head throbbed; she touched the knot and wondered if she had a concussion. At least she wasn’t seeing double. She stared at the door for what seemed an eternity, the locks intact, their promise of security a lie now, must have always been a lie. She wanted to die. Filthy, soiled, never clean again, oh god. Then rage swept through her, she ground her teeth together, swayed back and forth, then stopped that as she felt the grind of bone against bone, a stabbing pain that shut off her breathing. Broken rib. At least one. Slowly, carefully, she got to her feet. The room swam in front of her. She crashed back onto her knees, moaned with pain, fought off the dizziness. She crawled to a chair and used it to pull herself back onto her feet, stood holding the chair’s back until the room was steady about her. Moving like a sick old woman, she scuffed to the door, pushed it shut and fumbled the chain into place, then stood with her back pressed against the door, looking vaguely about the room. I can’t stay here, she thought. Not alone. Not tonight.

The books were gone, the manuscripts. “Choke on the smoke,” she said and pushed away from the door. She shuffled to the bathroom, stood looking at the tub. A hot bath. No chance of that now. She would not have strength enough to haul the pot from the stove. Clutching at a tap handle, bending with exaggerated care, she fumbled the plug in place. A cold bath was better than nothing, she had to scrub away the leavings of those wolves. She started the water running, stood there listening to the soothing splash and tried to think. She looked at her watch. Three. Out over an hour. She stripped the watch off and laid it on the sink, looked into the tub. There were several inches of water in it. She stepped over the side, clutched at the tap handles and lowered herself slowly into the water, the cold sending a shock up through her. She sat quietly for a while, watching a red mist move out into the water from between her legs. One thing about cold water, it wouldn’t make her bleed more than she already had. She pumped some soap from a soap bottle and began scrubbing at herself, her final admission to herself that she wasn’t going to the police. In the best of worlds it would be difficult talking about what had happened and this was far from the best of worlds. Besides, stories were common enough among the folk she’d been with recently about how the police always turned a blind eye to what the blackshirts did. I’ve been drifting in a dream too long, she thought, too involved in my own troubles. Suddenly dizzy, she pressed her head back over the rim of the large old tub. After a minute she realized she was crying, salt tears sliding off her cheeks into hair. Irritated, she pulled herself up again, splashed water onto her face, then used the towel rack to lever herself onto her feet.

Dizzy again with the effort it took to get out of the tub, she began drying herself, dabbing very cautiously at her body with the clean bathtowel she’d hung there that morning. It would have been easier on her if she hadn’t fought so hard, but she wasn’t sorry she’d refused to give in. It seemed to her if she gave up in any way, if she stopped trying, she would die. Which was funny in its macabre way because she was dying, or would be dying if she didn’t somehow finance the operation. She looked at the towel. Still bleeding. Shit. She slipped the watch back onto her wrist, went into the kitchen, found a clean dishtowel, then into the bedroom where she found a pair of safety pins. She pinned the folded towel into her underpants. Holding onto the back of a chair, she stepped into the pants, grunting as the movements shifted the cracked rib and pulled at sore muscles. She had to stop several times because of the pain, but she wouldn’t give up. You can always find a way to do what you have to do, she told herself. You only get lax and lazy when there’s someone around to do for you.

Moving with patient care, she got dressed, flat sandals, a skirt and blouse because a woman in pants was unnecessary provocation these days. She stood holding onto the chair back for a short while, gathering her strength, then went into the living room, her mouth set in a grim line, her eyes half closed. She reached for the phone, intending to call Jim, let him know she was coming and why, pulled her hand back, knowing with sudden dreadful certainty that she was marked now, typhoid Mary for all her friends and anyone who might help her. The phone might not be tapped or bugged or whatever they were calling it these days, but she was in no mood for taking chances. Money, she thought, I’ll need money. For a panic-filled moment she wondered if they’d found her stash, but they hadn’t been looking for money and they hadn’t torn the place apart. She went slowly into the bedroom, a wry smile for her shambling progress, tortoise, old, old tortoise, slow and steady wins the race. We’ll beat you yet, you shitbags. That was a favorite word of the old woman she’d sat next to one whole afternoon a couple weeks ago. Good word for them, expressive. She stretched up, grunting with pain, unscrewed the end of the curtain rod, thrust her fingers inside. And went limp with relief as she touched the rolled up bills. She took enough to pay for a cab, tried not to think about how fast the stash was dwindling.

She phoned for a cab, not caring about listeners, arranged for him to pick her up in a half-hour, promising to be waiting outside-not that she wanted to, but drivers wouldn’t leave their armored enclosures for anything. She eased herself onto the edge of a chair, wondering if she could make it down the stairs without passing out. She looked at her watch. Quarter to four. Time to start down, might take a while. She got slowly to her feet, pushed the purse’s strap over her shoulder and shuffled across to the door, stood looking at the locks, wanting to laugh, wanting to cry. She did neither, just pulled the door shut, twisted the key in the landlord’s flimsy lock and didn’t bother with the others.

She started down the hall, moving a little easier with each step; going somewhere seemed to loosen her up and ease the pain, so that could manage the stairs.

The door to the apartment nearest the stairs was open partway. She started past it, stopped when she heard a low sound filled with pain. She wanted to go on, to ignore that moan, but she knew only too well what that open door meant. I won’t give in, she thought; I won’t let them make me a stone. She reached into her purse, got her dark glasses, put them on to cover the swelling around her eyes, and went into the room.

He was on his knees beside the sprawled body of his lover, the boy who’d come to help her some months before, who’d grinned at her after that if they chanced to meet on the stairs, who’d helped her tote her packages up the stairs. His friend’s head was turned so his profile was crisp against the dark blue of the rug, his head tilted, at an impossible angle against his shoulder. He looked as if some giant had picked him up, snapped his neck and thrown him carelessly aside. The youth, whose name she still didn’t know, was crying very quietly, rocking forward and back, his arms closed tight over his chest, his mouth swollen, bleeding, his nose swollen, perhaps broken.

“Hello,” she said. It seemed absurd, but what else could she say?

The boy jerked around, somehow propelled himself away from her and onto his feet, reminding her of a wild cat she’d seen late one night when she was supposed to be in bed but couldn’t sleep because the moon was so bright it made her want things she couldn’t name. She’d come on the cat while it was tearing at a rabbit’s carcass. It had leaped up like the boy, put distance between them, then waited to see what she would do, unwilling to abandon the rabbit unless it had to.

The boy’s face changed when he recognized her and saw her injuries. “They got you too?” His voice was mushy, lisping, his arms up tight against his ribs again, an automatic movement dictated by pain.

“Little over an hour ago.” She walked slowly to the man’s body, stood looking down at it, then lifted her head and looked at the boy. “What are you going to do?”

He turned his head, with a farouche look, but he said nothing.

She glanced at her watch. The cab wouldn’t wait, she had to get downstairs. She dug into her purse, brought out her spare keys, held them out, said, “Look, I don’t know you, nor you me, and I’ve got no right to tell you what to do and maybe you already know what to do, but I suggest you get the hell out of here. Leave your friend. You can’t do anything for him now. Those shitbags who did this, they’ll call the police on you. This isn’t a time when you could get anything like a fair trial. You probably wouldn’t even survive long enough to have a trial.” She jangled her keys. “Take these. If you want, you can go to ground a little while in my apartment. Think things out. Be out of the way if the police do come. I’ll be back… um… in a couple of hours probably, going to see my doctor.” She smiled, winced as the cut in her lip pulled. “Look, I’ve got to go. Make up your mind.”

He gazed at her a moment longer. “You sure you want to do this? Could make trouble for you. More trouble.”

“Hnh! More trouble than I got already? You notice they had keys? The police come down on me, you won’t make more hassle for me. I’ve got a feeling…” She touched her ribs then her cut lip. “I wouldn’t last longer than you.” He gaped at her. “Purveyor of filth,” she said. “I’m a writer.” She looked at her watch. “Last time-you want the keys or not. I’m going.”

His face went drawn and bleak, gaining ten years in that moment, and he came to her, taking the keys. “Thanks. Mind if I pack some things and shift them over?”

She started for the door. “Whatever you want. Better keep it light, but you know better than I do how much you can shift and keep easy on your feet. And remember the guard downstairs; you’ll have to get past him.”

She heard a soft clearing of his throat, smiled a little and went out to tackle the stairs.

The sun was brilliant, the sky cloudless. She blinked as she stepped outside. She’d known it was still early, she’d looked at her watch again and again, yet the brightness and calm of the afternoon startled her. The street was empty. Perhaps the blackshirts hadn’t called the police about the dead man, perhaps they were expecting the boy to do himself in by trying to rid himself of the body, perhaps they were just making sure of alibis before they acted.

The cab was a few minutes late, giving her time to catch her breath. The boxy blue vehicle stopped in the middle of the street. The driver thumbed a button and the passenger door hummed open, then he sat drumming his fingers on the steering wheel as she walked slowly across and with some difficulty climbed into the back.

“Where to?” The driver’s voice, tinny and harsh, crackled through the cheap speaker.

She opened her mouth, shut it again. As bad as phoning. She ran her tongue over her lips, tasted the slight saltiness of blood. The cut had opened when she was talking to the boy. She tried to think. “Evenger building,” she said finally.

“Right.”

As the cab ground off, she pressed her hand hard against her mouth as some of the strain left her. She was on her way to help at last. Evenger building was across the square from the Medical Center where Dr. James Alexander Norris had his office. Her friend, her doctor. He’d spent time and patience on her, filling in and signing the interminable forms that the office snowed on her and had looked into private charities for her. This was the end of all that struggle. She probably shouldn’t be going to see him now, but she had no real choice. She pushed the dark glasses back up her nose. I’d better phone from the Evenger, she thought. Let him know what to expect. She sighed. Let him decide if he wants to see me.

She lowered herself into the chair as the nurse went briskly out. Her head was swimming; she felt nauseated and worn to a thread.

A hand touched her shoulder. “Julia?”

She lifted her head. For a moment she couldn’t speak, then she grunted with pain as the cracked rib shifted and bruised muscles protested. She reached up, pulled off the dark glasses.

He came round in front of her, a slight dark man, grave now, his usual quick nervous smile suppressed, his dark eyes troubled. He leaned closer, his fingers gentle on the swellings under her eyes. “Blackshirts did this?”

“That and a lot more. Five of them. They came for my books and manuscripts. I made the mistake of slapping one of them.” She spoke wearily, dropped her head against the back of the chair, closed her eyes. “They raped me. Anything that’s started I want stopped. Off the pill. You know. No lover. Me over forty. You warned me. God, I couldn’t stand… couldn’t stand it. Pregnant by one of those… those neanderthals.” She sighed, opened her eyes. “Jim, I’m poison. Guilt by association. That the way their minds work, those lumps of gristle they call minds. I’m afraid I’ve already made trouble for you. Your name on all those papers…”

“Let’s get you on the table.” He took her hand and helped her to stand. “Technically the nurse should be here but I thought you’d rather not. How long ago did all this happen?”

“You’re right as usual.” She grunted as she eased onto the slick white paper. “I got home a little before two. By the way, I didn’t tell you. One of them kicked me in the head and I was out until just about three. No double vision but one hell of a throb.”

His hands moved quickly over her, producing assorted grunts, gasps and groans that he listened to with a combination of detached interest and anxiety. “And how are you feeling right now?”

“Sore. She tried to laugh but couldn’t. “Angry. Frightened. But you don’t want to hear that. Nauseated. But not to the point of having to vomit. Kind of sick all over. There was some dizziness but that hasn’t come back for a while now, aaah-unh! One of the boots must’ve got me there. Most of all tired. So tired, it takes all I have to move, you know, like trying to run against water.”

“Mmm. X-ray first, then some more tests. I’ve got things set up so they’ll take you now, no questions.”

“I… I can’t pay for them.”

“Don’t worry about that, Julia. Forget about everything and let me take care of you.”

When tests and treatment were done, he walked with her down to the basement carpark, meaning to take her home before he went out to the safer suburbs and the family he kept resolutely separate from his practice. They walked down the gritty oily metal ramp, their footsteps booming and scraping, the sounds broken into incoherence, echoing and re-echoing until there seemed an army marching heavy-footed down into the cavernous basement. He dipped his head close to hers. “I can’t live with what’s happening here, Julia,” he said. “Police and others have been at me for weeks to open my records. I won’t do that, burn them first. I’ve been making arrangements to go north. There’s a medical group in Caledron willing to take me in.” He hesitated. She felt his uncertainty, felt the resolution grow in him. “You can’t stay here. Come up with us.”

She glanced at him, surprised yet not surprised after all. She appreciated the invitation all the more because of the reluctance with which it was given. It wasn’t easy for him, he’d be a lot happier if she refused, but the offer was genuine. In a lot of ways he was a very nice man. A nice man with a sweet bitch for a wife who owned his baffled loyalty. He’d stopped loving her years ago but to this day wouldn’t admit to himself that he didn’t even like her. Julia didn’t know the woman but some years back when she’d met Jim over the tangled lives of several of his charity patients, she’d heard more than she wanted about her. He was going through a phase where he was unable to stop talking about her whenever he could find a receptive ear. Her name was Elaine. She was a slim dark woman with a natural elegance and much charm when she chose to exercise it. He never spoke of intimate things, that was a matter of taste for him, bad taste to take such things outside the home, but she gathered there was a wall between him and his wife he couldn’t penetrate. Because he was wholly uninterested in anything beyond the diseases and disabilities in the bodies he examined, yet had a sensitivity to nuance he couldn’t quite suppress, Elaine had him in a ferment of misery and guilt which she seemed to take a certain satisfaction in creating. Julia had sufficient good sense not to tell him what his wife was doing to him, sufficient perception to see that being shut off from nine-tenths of his life had driven her to this, and not enough sense to avoid comforting him as much as she could. While they worked out the tangles of the cases, they worked themselves into a brief affair. He clung to Julia with an urgency that troubled her; she wasn’t in love with him, or so she thought, but she liked him very well indeed. And she was grateful for the need that brought him to her. The casework was getting to her more and more, eroding the hope and humanity out of her, sucking her dry of all feeling but a generalized impatience with the self-defeated souls she was trying to help. Even the ones with the capacity to break out of the morass had so many defeats ahead of them, so many leeches battening on them, that after a while they ran out of energy, they simply had no strength left to climb over the next barrier that folly, greed and prejudice raised before them. In those last days before she quit, it was a kind of race to see if she could manage to leave before she was fired. She began working as her clients’ advocate rather than as an impersonal conduit for services; she bent the rules more and more savagely as they (the anonymous gray they in offices she never visited, never wanted to visit) threw the worst cases at her, then reprimands for sidestepping regulations. She tended the chinks in the system and did her best to help her people through them; she brought her work home with her. She couldn’t write. She began to feel brittle, dry, as if the least blow would shatter her to powder. She lost her laughter and the thing she’d never thought to lose, her rush of delight in the sudden beauty of small things. Somehow, by loving her and needing her, Jim breathed life back into her. Only a handful of meetings, yet they triggered in her a healing flow that she couldn’t tell him about because he would never understand the only words she could find to express what had happened to her. She did manage, by tact and indirection, to give him ways of dealing with his wife and earned his profound gratitude by easing the sex out of their relationship as soon as she realized how unhappy and uneasy he was about what they were doing; he had no idea how to stop without hurting her and he was unwilling to hurt her. Though the change was rather more painful for her than she’d expected, nonetheless she was happy enough with the affectionate committed friendship they’d shared afterward. She owed him something else too, a debt she hoped he’d never discover. He and his troubles with his wife had formed the basis of the one novel she’d come close to getting on the best seller list, the novel that had won a fairly prestigious award, that had brought her enough money to quit the job, enough recognition to make her next two novels sell almost as well and to get the first into paperback.

She reached over, touched his face with reminiscent tenderness, shook her head. “They wouldn’t let me out, Jim. They need their objects of scorn. Though I thank you for the offer.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. Go somewhere. Fight them somehow. As long as I can.”

He ran a hand through fine, thinning hair. “Suicide, Julia. And it’s unnecessary.”

“By whose terms?” She shrugged, the tape around her ribs tugging at her. “These days there’s only one solution to the problems of poverty. Can’t make it? Too bad. Go curl up and die, preferably at the city dump so no time or money has to be wasted carting you away. I’d rather make them shoot me. At least that’s over fast. And no, I won’t kill myself. I don’t think I could, anyway that’s giving in to them. I’ll never give in to them.”

“You oughtn’t to be alone, Julia.” He looked at her, worried. “I don’t like the way you’re talking. “It’s not…”

“Not healthy? I know. The times are out of joint, my friend, and there’s nothing I can do to set them right. Did I tell you? No, I’m sure not. Publisher rejected my last book, wants his advance back. No, don’t worry about me, I won’t be alone. A boy from down the hall is there waiting for me. My little band of brothers visited him after they left me. Broke his friend’s neck. An excess of zeal, no doubt. Kicked him about too, but seems a corpse made them nervous so they were a trifle half-hearted in the beating. He can still move.” She got into the car as he held the door open for her, sat with her head against the rest, her eyes closed. When she felt the seat shift, heard the other door close, she said, “Don’t mind me, Jim. Gloom and doom’s all I have in me right now. I’ll be back to my usual bounce and glow given a night’s rest. I’m just tired. That’s all. Just tired.”

Suicide. She brooded on that during the struggle up the stairs. The lumps had started showing up on x-ray plates though she still couldn’t feel them. Bigger but operable. She did have a bit of hope again. If she could get across the border and up to Caledron, if she could manage to get some sort of papers, Jim had promised to ease her into a hospital there. Money. It was going to take a lot of money. If I have to rob a bank, she thought and grinned into the turgid light about the stairs. She leaned for a moment on the rail and rested, then started up again. It might take something like that. Been honest all my life, she thought. Proud of it. She sighed. I’m going to make a lousy criminal. Have to use my connections. She giggled, caught her breath as she clung to the rail. A drop of water plonked on her head, another hit her shoulder. Oh hell. She started on again. Scattered among the beaten-down, the frantic, the wistfully hopeful, the ignorant, greedy, despairing, lazy, energetic, damaged and ambitious mixture that made up her files were a few whose sons, husbands, boyfriends or girlfriends she’d met on home visits when they’d learned to trust her enough to show up-burglars, pimps, whores, conmen and women, a bankrobber or two and a charming forger who took an artist’s pride in his work. He’d be useful if he was still out of prison-or out again, as the case might be. And there was old Magic Man. He knew everything about everybody. If he hadn’t been rounded-up and shoved into a labor camp. Probably hadn’t, he looked too decrepit to do anything but breathe. He loved ripe apricots; she always took him some, even when she couldn’t afford it, she enjoyed so much watching him enjoy them. Sometimes he helped her with her books; more often than not she just went to hear his stories. He had a thousand stories of places he’d been, things he’d done and he never told them the same twice. He’d worked for her father a couple summers, helping with the haying, milking the cows, disappeared as quietly as he’d come until he’d showed up one day on her client list. He hadn’t forgotten her, recognized the girl in the woman without any prompting, talked to her a lot about her father after that, something she’d been needing for a long time. Thinking about him she forgot about her body and went round and round the stairs until she almost blundered past her floor. She stopped, put out her hand to the wall to steady herself, a little dizzy with her exertions and her sudden return to the unpleasant here and now. She pushed the bar in, grunting as the effort caught her in muscles that were getting stiffer and more painful as the hours passed. The door thumped to behind her as she started down the hall, the sound making her jump, reminding her just how nervous she really was. The hall was empty. The worn drugget was full of holes and so filthy she couldn’t see what color it was, couldn’t remember either. I stopped noticing things, she thought. When I stopped being a writer. She looked at her watch. Almost eight. Weariness descended on her. She stood, resting against the wall a moment, then made off toward her apartment.

The one lock was engaged as she’d left it, but when she pushed on the door, it caught. For an instant she didn’t realize what was wrong, just stood there staring at the door that wouldn’t open, then she saw that the chain was on. And remembered-the boy from down the hall.

“Just a minute.” It was a whisper from inside. The door pushed almost closed, she heard the greased slide of metal against metal, then the door was open, though the boy was canny enough to stand behind it so no one outside could see him. She shuffled in, irritated that the boy was there because she didn’t have the energy to cope with company, to bestir herself and put on her company face. She dropped onto the couch with a sigh and a groan, pulled off the dark glasses that had begun to be too small to conceal the bruises round her eyes.

The boy stood hesitantly in the middle of the small shabby room, then went out into the kitchen. He came back almost immediately with a tray. Her teapot and a cup of tea poured out. He set the tray on the couch beside her and stepped back. “There wasn’t any coffee so I figured you wouldn’t want that, but I don’t know if you use sugar or lemon or milk or what. If you’re like Hank… was… you drink it straight. You use loose tea like him and there wasn’t any of the other things.” He looked down at his hands. “I hope you don’t mind. I’ve made a casserole out of the chicken in your refrigerator. Something I could reheat without ruining it.” He knew he was chattering but he looked as uneasy as she felt.

She smiled, took up the cup, sipped at the hot liquid, holding each mouthful a second then letting it flood down her throat. The heat spread through her, washing away some of her tension and uncertainty. She sighed, held the cup with both hands curled about it. “Feels marvelous,” she said and watched the boy relax even though she winced at the phoniness she heard in her voice. “And I’m half-starved.” That was true, she hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast. “Smells good.” At least that was real, the truth of her sudden enjoyment firm in her voice. She sniffed again and smiled.

“It should be done in another fifteen minutes.” He moved to a straight-backed chair next to the phone. The lamp beside him, picking out fine lines about his eyes and mouth. He’s older than I thought, maybe even late twenties. He looked gravely at her. “You were right,” he said. “Police came about a half hour after you left, took him away, started pounding on doors. Most everybody was out working, I suppose, so they didn’t get many answers.”

“Half hour. Long enough for the blackshirts to fix up their respectable alibis.” She poured more tea, gulped at it. “I didn’t see anyone hanging about.” She lifted the cup and held it against her cheek, her eyes closed. “But I wasn’t in any shape to notice much.”

His long mobile mouth curled up in an ugly grin. “If one pervert kills another,” he said in the round mellifluous tones of a TV preacher, “that is God’s judgment on them for their evil, sinful ways, God’s way to protect the righteous from their corruption.” His face looked drawn and miserable, the effect exaggerated by the light shining down on him.

“What are you going to do? Do you have family you can get back to?”

That painful travesty of a smile again. “I grew up in a small town a few hundred miles east and south of here. If they’ve got a local branch of the blackshirts, my dad’s more likely than not the head man.”

“Ah. Sorry.”

“Been living with it more than long enough to be used to it. He kicked me out when I was sixteen. That’s a while back.”

She sat up, sore still all over. “I forgot. They were in here. The blackshirts.”

“Uh-huh.” This time he showed his teeth in the familiar broad grin. “I swept the place. Not to worry. They left a passive bug in the phone. No imagination. It’s down the garbage chute. That’s all.”

“You’re sure?”

“Uh-huh. Been playing with gadgets, games, computers long as I can remember. I’m good, if I can brag a bit. And I work in this hobby shop that’s more than half a comp-security source, so I keep up. Besides, you know from what you said, the kind of shit I get rained on me, so I like to keep my nose sharp. And it’s not like these batbrains are government, not yet anyway; they get their stuff from shops like Dettingers.”

She refilled her cup, sat back holding it, the warmth in her middle spreading outward, loosening up stiffness, making the soreness more bearable. “I’m not used to all this ducking and swerving.”

“Better get used.” He shrugged. “There was a time.” He lifted his head, sniffed. “I better check. You want to eat in here or in the kitchen, or what?”

“Kitchen,” she said. “Give me a hand.”

She looked down at her plate. “You could make a living at this, young Michael.

He shook his head. “Hank was a lot better, but he taught me a few useful tricks. What about you? You going to stay here or what?”

“Not here. I’m going to see about getting myself across the border. Pain’s no turn-on for me-that I can swear to-and those vultures will be around when they get their nerve back.” She arranged the fork and knife in neat diagonals across the plate. “Besides, I’m going broke too fast. She watched as he put what was left of the casserole in a small bowl and topped it with foil, then began filling the kettle with water. She was amused as she watched him run cold water in the sink and frown at it, then set the pots and plates in it. He was so much more domesticated than she’d ever been.

He looked over his shoulder. “You don’t have any hot water. Cold baths all the time?”

“No. Just lots of hauling.”

“Stinking landlords. Won’t fix it or let you?”

“Not a hope.” She rubbed at her eyes. “I tried.” She put her hands flat on the table and stared at them. “Happens I need a mastectomy in the next few months and I haven’t a hope of money for that either which worries me a trifle more than a niggling little inconvenience like a hot water heater that won’t heat water. Sorry, didn’t mean to dump that on you, it’s just… hell.”

“Hey, Julia, no sweat, hey. I thought I had problems.” He tried to smile but his mouth quivered helplessly before he could control it and he turned hastily away, began scrubbing hard at one of the plates.

“Forget it,” she said briskly. Her parents had died within six months of each other not long after she married Hrald. She remembered how her mother kept looking about her for that six months, almost as if she expected to see the old man walking in or standing about, then breaking down when she realized he was gone; it was the same now, Michael suddenly remembering that his lover was dead. “Look,” she said. “You have to get out of here sometime. Try going out any window and you’ll have alarms going off, the police here before you could sneeze. Well, you know that.” She watched the taut slim back, muscles bunching and shifting about under the skin-tight tee-shirt as he used the scrubber on the casserole dish; he said nothing, making no response to her words. “Garbage truck isn’t due till the end of the week, so the chute’s out. You’ll have to get past the guard and he knows you.” She chuckled. “I wrote a thriller once, so I’ve got the patter down and can pull a plot together with the best.” He looked over his shoulder at her as he rinsed the dish, a slight but genuine smile denting his cheek. He said nothing, just started on the frying pan. She chuckled again, feeling infinitely better for no reason she could think of. “There’s a gaggle of secretaries on the second floor who usually leave in a bunch, seven-thirty most mornings. I’ve seen them several times since I gave up being a nightowl and sleeping through the mornings. So-you’re small-boned and about my height, a little shorter maybe but not enough to hurt. I’ve got clothes left over from the days of my servitude. And a rather nice wig I haven’t worn since… well, never mind that. Shoes could be a problem, but if you’ve got a pair of boots, they might do. What you can’t carry out in a shoulderbag, I could smuggle out if you’ll give me somewhere to send it. If our landlords keep on form, I’ll be getting an eviction notice before the week is over. That will give me excuse enough for taking boxes out. No need to leave your things for the vultures to inherit. Me, I’d take the paint off the walls if I could.” She looked around, sighed again. “Dammit, Michael, I earned this place. I’ve lived here ten years, It’s been home.”

He made an attractive woman in the blond wig that one of her more absurd miscalculations had bought for her, a spare pair of dark glasses, a close shave and makeup. Add to that a long brown skirt, a loose russet blouse, a wide soft black belt to match the soft black leather of his boots, black leather gloves of his own. She shuddered when she saw those. A black leather shoulderbag. Some basic instruction in sitting, standing and walking.

She followed him down, though he wanted her to keep well away in case he was stopped, afraid that she’d be connected with him and pulled into his danger. He didn’t stop arguing with her until he stepped into the hall, then he sighed and started away toward the stairs. He had a swimmer’s sleek body, a resurgent vitality powering the tiger-walk that looked female enough to pass. In many ways he was far more graceful than she’d ever been even when she had the energy and transient charm of youth. Watching him vanish into the stairwell, she felt an odd combination of chagrin, nostalgia and amusement as she started after him.

She went slowly down the steps, listening for the brisk clatter of his bootheels on the metal treads. The tape around her torso was beginning to itch. She was sweating too much. Below her, young women were talking, their words too distorted by the echoes to make sense. A burst of laughter. The hiss and clank of the exit door. The boots still clattering. She groaned. Catch up closer, Michael, closer so you’ll seem to be one of them, closer so he won’t look too hard at you. She turned the last corner and saw the flicker of the full brown skirt as he went out. She closed her eyes, held tight to the rail, then took one step down, another…

He was already out on the street and sauntering away when she came through the grill and passed onto the sidewalk. She glanced after him, making the look as casual as she could. He wasn’t hurrying and he’d forgotten what she’d told him about carrying his hips. Maybe I should have stuffed his feet into heels, she thought. She sighed and went the other way, heading for a breakfast she was really beginning to want.

She sat at her writing table, the typewriter pushed to one side, the credit cards and ident cards in neat lines before her. Five different idents, a scratched worn image that might be her likeness on each of them, three credit cards for each ident. She looked at them without moving; sighed. Once she started there was no turning back. Bash the Kite following with the van, Julia into the store because her face wasn’t known. It will be, after this, she thought. Can’t be helped. Hit the stores quick. Know what you want. Don’t hurry when you’re inside but don’t waste time either. Large stores, you can touch several departments. As long as you got good numbers and names no one’s going to question you. Quit before you think you should. That’s important. Bash’s rules. She smiled when she thought of the round-faced brown man who could vanish in a crowd of two. With a half-angry sweep of her hands, she collected the cards in a heap before her. “I hate this,” she said aloud; the words fell dead and meaningless into the silence.

That silence began to oppress her. She took the five leather folders from the wire basket and began fitting the idents and the credit cards into the slots inside the folders, working slowly and neatly though she wanted to throw them in anyhow and get them out of sight. She rose from the table, put her hand on the phone, took it away, swore softly, went into the bedroom, got her coat, some change for the public phone, bills for the cab, her teargas cylinder and the keys. It was foolish to the point of insanity to be going out now, but she couldn’t stay here any longer, not tonight.

She went down the stairs too fast, had to catch the siderail to keep from plunging headfirst, but didn’t modify her reckless flight until her hand touched the pressbar of the ground floor exitdoor, pausing to consider the situation before pressing the button for the outer-doors to be opened. “Ma’am,” the speaker said suddenly.

“What?” She turned, startled. The guard was looking at her oddly, she thought. She was frightened, but kept her face quiet.

“It’s after nine, Ma’am. Don’t leave much time. The curfew, remember. Or maybe you didn’t hear. You get back after twelve, I hafta report you.”

It was a minute before she could speak. “Thank you,” she said. “If I’m not back before then I will be staying with friends.”

“Just so you remember, Ma’am. Don’t want no fuss.”

“No,” she said. “Better no fuss.” She went, out the door a bit surprised that he’d bothered and cheered by the unexpected touch of caring.

She swung into the all-nite drugstore, saw the new sign, crudely lettered, CLOSE AT TWELVE, sighed and edged her way through the cluttered aisles to the public phone at the back of the store.

“Simon? Julia. Look, I need to talk. You free tonight?”

“Jule.” A hesitation, then a heartiness nothing like his usual dry tones. “Why not. Come over. But… um… be discreet, will you? Always a lot of attention on a bachelor professor.” He hung up before she could respond.

She wondered if it was worth the trouble. If she went now, she’d have to spend the night there. Irritated and miserable, but unable to stay alone this particular night, she dropped a coin in the phone and called a cab.

She left the cab at the edge of the faculty housing and walked briskly through the open gate, half expecting a guard to step out of the shadows and stop her. Not yet. But she could see the time coming. She walked along the curving street with its snug neat houses, neatly clipped lawns, strains of music drifting into the perfumed night air. Lilacs bloomed in some front yards, roses in others, a spindly jacaranda dropped purple petals that looked black in the sodium light and lay like drops of ink on grass and sidewalk. I’m too old to relish paranoia, she thought. Passwords and eavesdroppers, bugs in the phone, bugs in the mattress, censorship and thought police in the end, I suppose. She looked around. How absurd in this serenity, this remnant of a saner age.

There were cars dotted here and there along the streets as she wound her way deeper into the maze of curves, most with men sitting in them. One or two smoking cigarettes, all with small earphones and wires coiling away from them. Well, that’s it, she thought. The sickness is here too, my mistake. She recollected the phonecall and nodded. Nothing strange about the way he spoke, not now.

When she reached Simon’s house, she went round to the side door, and knocked there, hoping that this was what he meant, a gesture toward propriety meant more to mislead the watchers than any attempt to hide her presence from them. Watchers and listeners. He had to be at least a little frightened by the listeners like fleas infesting the streets.

The door opened before she had time to bring her hand down. Simon pulled her inside into a passionate embrace that made her grind her teeth as her not-quite-healed rib protested with a stabbing ache like cold air on a sore tooth. His hand went down her back, cupped a buttock, then reached out and pulled the door shut. “Hope the bastard got an eyeful,” he said with the dry burr more akin to his usual tones than the prissy caution over the phone. “What the hell, Jule, you look like something you find stretched out on a freeway.”

“So kind of you to notice. I need a drink, Simon.”

He led her through the kitchen and into the living room. “What’s it been? Six months? I tried calling a couple times but you were either not in or not answering your phone.” He slid open the door to the liquor cabinet. “Gin or what?”

“Gin’ll do,” she said absently, staring around her with blank dismay. Vast holes gaped on the shelves that covered the walls. “You’ve had…” Her eyes swept over the phone sitting with silent innocence on the table beside the TV and his sleek, expensive entertainment center. She swallowed and stopped talking. Passive receptor, pick up a whisper and pass it out over the phone line. Michael’s voice calm and competent. The one they use, loud noises scramble it like an egg so if you can’t stomp it or flush it, turn the radio on. “I see you’ve still got your records. I’m down tonight, feel like hearing the Bolero loud. Would your neighbors howl?” Paranoia, she thought. Do the futile little tricks, jump through hoops for the bastards.

He brought her the drink, the ice cubes clinking, his bare feet whispering over the plush of the rug, the intractable cowlick a pewter gray comma in the lamplight. “What…” he began, but went quiet as she laid her finger across her lips. “Let them complain. Not that they will.”

Once the driving rhythms of the music were filling the room, she relaxed a little. Simon settled on the couch beside her. “What’s all that about?”

“You’ve had visitors.” She waved a hand at the bookshelves. “They leave droppings behind.” In quick spare language she told him about the visit of the blackshirts, about the dead man down the hall, about the bug in her phone, about the men sitting in the cars outside. “We don’t know how to deal with a police state, our kind,” she finished. “We can’t take it quite seriously. I’ve got a cracked rib, my books are being burned, my publishers won’t touch me any longer, that’s real, all of it, but when I hear them talking on the TV, when I stand in the middle of my own living room and listen to that vulture rant, I just can’t believe in him or any of them. This kind of thing belongs in a bad thriller, don’t you think?” She looked around at the plundered room, shook her head. “When did they clean out your books?”

“A month ago.”

“How bad is it getting? Are they burning professors yet?”

“Not funny, Jule. The apes are in charge of the men. No. That’s insulting apes.” He looked at the phone, passed his hand over his hair, ruffling the cowlick further. “I’ve been told I have to revise my texts. Correct them, if you will. Some of the things I said happened didn’t, at least in the new official version of history.”

“Ah. I always thought some of ours envied some of theirs their control over what gets printed or put out on the air.” She laughed unhappily, raised her glass. “Here’s to one world. Their bastards and ours, brothers under the skin.”

He made a grumpy throat-clearing sound, half a protest, half a reluctant agreement, flicked a fingernail against his glass, watched the pale liquid shiver. “I’m too comfortable, Jule. I’m going to do what they tell me and try to ride this thing out. You’re right, it’s absurd. People will see that, they have to. This country, we’re too stubborn, too… well, I don’t know… too sane I think, to let this go on much longer. We wobble from one side of the center to the other, but the wobble always straightens and makes most people just a little wiser than before. History and time, Julia, they’re on our side; when this is over they’re going to need people like you and me to write it down and put it in perspective.”

She watched him with a familiar detached interest, her writer’s eye. In spite of his optimistic tone he was uneasy with his position, felt diminished by it but hadn’t the energy or will to drive himself the way he knew he ought to go. This was a man struggling with his ideals-no, struggling with his will to surrender those ideals, or if not surrender, set them on the shelf for the moment because they are inconvenient. At this moment, he seemed collapsed rather than convoluted, his humor banished by the inner and outer pressures that were combining to drive him toward those extremes he both feared and despised. She got up, changed the record and came back, the melting ice still musical in the remnants of her drink.

“Maybe you’re right,” she said. “Time. I’ve come to the end of my time, there’s none left, no time nohow.” She held the glass against her face and thought dispiritedly about her own disintegration, here she was analyzing the poor man down to his back teeth, judging him, when she couldn’t keep her own mouth shut, had to dump her own worries on him, worries that were none of his concern, nothing he should have to deal with. The drink was mostly melted ice and tasted foul, the ice clicked against her teeth and made her shiver.

“Jule, I get the feeling you’re telling me something but I don’t hear it.”

“Just getting maudlin, Simon my love. I came to say good-bye. I’m broke. Flat. Giving up my honest ways and starting on a life of crime. Tomorrow morning, as a matter of fact. Going to work a credit card swindle with the help of an old acquaintance and when I’ve got money enough, I’m going to buy me a smuggler and head for the north countree. “

“Jule, you shouldn’t be telling me all that. What if I…”

“Sold me? Poor Simon. They’re going to push you too far one of these days, my dear, and where’ll your comfort be then? If they do, go see the Magic Man, he’ll put you onto something to save your soul. Before I go, remind me to tell you how to find him.”

He took her hand, his own was trembling a little, sweaty and hot. “Look Jule, if you need money…”

“No. No. Let me do this my own way. I’m poison, Simon. Guilt by contagion, you know what that is.” She sat up, laughed aloud. “If you could see your face, poor dear. Ah well, it’s all material for the next book. I think I’ll try another thriller. Once I’m in another country. Mind putting me up for the night? Damn curfew complicates things. I don’t want anyone asking me questions right now, might prove a bit embarrassing with five different idents in my purse.” She gave him a rueful grin. “I know, my love, but I couldn’t leave them home, god knows who gets in my place when I’m not there. I’m rather off men right now, so the couch will do. I feel like a leech, but things were coming out the walls at me. That’s enough about me. More than enough. What are the peabrains getting after now? Who they planning to banish from the lists of history?”

The Priestess

The sun was clear of the horizon, a watery pale circle covered with haze, when she slid wearily off the macai, slapped him on the rump and sent him off to wander back to the tar. She stumbled on cold-numbed feet along behind Cymbank’s houss and stores, empty gardens and empty corrals, to the deserted silent grove behind the Maiden Shrine. She was giddy with fatigue and the need for sleep that pulled more heavily on her than the bucket or the overloaded satchel. She forced herself on; it couldn’t be long before the Agli or his minions came after her. She was breathing through her mouth, sucking in great gulps of air, shuddering with the cold, the heavy white robe sodden past her knees, slapping against her legs, making it increasingly difficult to walk.

But she went on, step by slow step, vaguely rejoicing in the, difficulty and discomfort. She said it would be hard enough and it seemed that was so. The hitching posts were black fingers thrusting up through the snow. She passed them, circled round to the side of the living quarters and found the door. She pulled at the latch. The door wouldn’t move. She turned her back on it, set the bucket down, shrugged the satchel and the quiltroll off her shoulder. Then she got down on her knees and began scraping the snow away from the door with bare hands that were soon numb and blue and beginning to bleed. She worked without stopping or paying attention to the pain, worked until she had cleared a fan of stone before the door. Then she forced herself up and stood on trembling legs before it, for a moment unable to move; no strength left to pull it open and go inside.

Scent of herbs and flowers.

Warmth spread through her. She stepped away from the door. It swung open before she could reach for the latch again. She lifted the bucket and the satchel and the quiltroll and stumbled inside.

It was dark and no warmer in there, but wood was stacked on the foyer hearth. She laid a small fire and turned aside, meaning to get the firestriker from the satchel.

Scent of herbs and flowers.

The fire was burning before she completed the turn. She froze, straightened and looked around.

To her left were the public rooms of the sanctuary, to her right the living quarters of the Keeper. She got to her feet, bent her weary body, caught up her burdens and shuffled toward the right-hand door. She set her hand on it, marking it with a bloody handprint though she didn’t know that till later. It opened before her and she went inside.

The room inside was sparely furnished: a worktable, a backless chair pushed under it, a cobwebbed bedstead in one corner with a dusty pad on the rope webbing that crossed and recrossed the space between the posts and sideboards. There was a window over the bed, the glass rounds intact in their binding strips of lead; no light came through them as the window had been boarded over outside. As Nilis stood gazing dully at the glass, she heard a creaking, then a clatter, then dull thumps as the boards fell away and light came in, painting bright rounds of color on the wall and floor, ruby and garnet, emerald and aquamarine, topaz and citrine. She smiled, tears coming into her eyes at the unexpected beauty. She put her burdens on the worktable, hung her cloak on a peg, turned to the fireplace built in the inner wall. Wood was laid on the firedogs, ready for lighting; a wrought-iron basket held more wood for replenishing the fire when it burned low. She took the striker from the bucket and a paring knife and knelt on the stone hearth, her knees fitting into hollows worn there by generations of shrine keepers. She cut slivers of dry wood from one of the split logs, got the pile of splinters burning and eventually had herself a slowly brightening fire. She stood, pulled her forearm across her face, shoved the hair out of her eyes, warmth beginning to glow within her, the smells of spring blowing round her with the sharp clean scent of the burning wood. For the first time in many passages, she bowed her head and sang the praises of the Maiden, the words coming back as clear as they’d been when she learned them as a child.

With some reluctance, she left the warmth of the bedroom and went back into the small foyer. She pulled the outer door shut, slid the bar through its hooks, stood a moment enjoying the quiet and the dark, the flickering red light from the fire, then she went back into the bedroom, crossed it and moved through a doorless arch into the small narrow kitchen.

The end walls were mostly doors, two at each end. There was a heavy table, a backless chair, several porcelain sinks with drains leading outside into a ditch that went past the hitching posts into the grove behind the shrine, a bronze pump whose long curved lever looked frozen in place, whose lip had a dry smear of algae grown there and died in place since the Keeper had been taken away. Above the sink, there was a row of small windows, boarded up, the boards shutting out the light except for a few stray beams that came lancing in, lighting up the dust motes that danced thick in the air. Again, as she stood watching, the boards dropped away and rounds of jewel colors played over and about her.

She smiled, opened one of the nearer doors. A storage place, a few bowls and pans left, a glass or two, milky with dust, some lumps that weren’t immediately identifiable. The door beside it opened on another shallow closet-brooms, the straws worn to a slant and curling on the ends; another bucket, its staves separating at the corners, dried out, needing a good soak and the bands tightened; a large crock half full of harsh lye soap women made in the fall at the winter cull from rendered fats and potash, taking turns to stir the mess with long-handled paddles, trying to avoid the coiling fumes of the mixture, adding the potash by handfuls, watched over by an aged soapmaker who knew just when she should stop that and wash the soap out with brine. Hard stinking work, a whole week of it each fall, but well worth the time and effort-a year of clean for a week of stench. The Keeper worked with the tie-women, stirring and rendering and boiling and reboiling, earning her portion of what was produced. The women didn’t ask it of her, they would have given her the soap as gift, but they felt happier with her there blessing their work by being part of it. Nilis wrinkled her nose. It wasn’t something she looked forward to, in fact she’d kept well away from the soap grounds as had most of her family, but she looked down at the soap now and knew she’d keep the Keeper’s tradition. The soap ladle had a leather loop tied through a hole in the handle and hung on a peg beside the crock. There was a tangle of dusty rags, some worn bits of pumice stone and a few other odds and ends useful for cleaning small bits.

She crossed to the far side of the kitchen. The first room there held split logs packed in from floor to ceiling, filling the whole of the space. Depending on how deep the room was it could be enough to last till spring, Maiden grant there’d be a spring. She shut that door, opened the next. A pantry of sorts. A flour barrel that proved to be half full when she took the lid off. A few crocks of preserved vegetables she was a little doubtful about but not enough to throw them out; they’d stretch her supplies a few days longer. A root bin, half full of several sorts of tubers, rather withered and wrinkled but mostly still edible. The vandals for some reason seemed to have left the Keeper’s quarters intact when they’d vented their spite on the sacred rooms.

She went back into the bedroom for the satchel and the bucket, hauled them into the kitchen, piled them on the table. She dusted off the shelves in the storage closet, sneezing now and then, eyes watering, then emptied the satchel of the kitchen things, the food and utensils she’d brought with her and set them on the shelves, item by item, sighing at the meagerness of her supplies. In a few days she’d have to do something about food, but that could wait. She set the clothing and other things on the table to be put away later, except for the sleeping smock. She shook it out and carried it into the other room, hung it on a peg beside her cloak, untied her sandals and stepped out of them, dragged the wet cold robe over her head, hung it on one of the pegs, pulled on the smock. Taking the quiltroll from the worktable, she pulled off the cords without trying to untie the knots. She could deal with them later when she wasn’t so tired. She spread the quilts on the bed, not bothering with the dust. That was something else for later. The fire was already warming the room, turning it into a bare but cheerful play of light and shadow, of color and coziness. And the warmth was multiplying her weariness until she was almost asleep on her feet. She added some more wood to the fire, then stumbled blindly to the bed, stretched out, pulled the second quilt over her and was asleep before she murmured more than the first words of the sleep blessing.

When she woke, the fire was out but warmth lingered in the room. She sat up, the rope webbing sagging under her, the mattress pad rustling. She expected pain and stiffness but felt neither. She touched her shoulder, the one that should have been bruised and painful. She felt nothing, pulled loose the neckstring, pushed aside the heavy cloth, looked at her shoulder. It was smooth, firm and pale, no sign of bruising, not even a reddening or depression in the skin. She jabbed her thumb into the muscle. Nothing. She smiled.

The light coming in the uncovered window was so dim it barely woke the colors in the glass. She got up off the bed and went to look at the robe; it was still damp about the hem and streaked with mud. She thought of washing it, then shook her head. Too much work to do, might as well finish cleaning the Keeper’s quarters, the sanctuary and the schoolroom. I can wash both of us when that’s done, my robe and me.

She put on the robe, tied the cord and bloused the top over it until the damp hem was hiked almost to her knees. She went into the bare foyer. The fire there was long out but a remnant of warmth lingered in the stone. She took down the bar and tried to open the door. It wouldn’t budge. She set her shoulder against the planks and shoved. It scraped reluctantly open just enough to let her put her head out.

The snow was smooth and new in the narrow court. It must have snowed while she slept, covering her traces. If they’re looking for me now, luck to them. She rubbed at her nose, giggled, a little lightheaded with hunger and the long sleep. New flakes were beginning to dust down, settling onto her hair and eyelashes. It was cold and still out there, a stillness so thick she could feel and smell it. She pulled the door shut, slipped the bar back and went into the kitchen.

She worked the pump handle until her arms were shaking, but brought nothing up. She drew the back of her hand across her sweaty face, closed her eyes and tried to remember what the ties had done to start a pump. Priming, she thought suddenly, water to fetch water.

A melted pot of snow later and the icy flow from the shrine well was gushing out to fill her bucket, then one of the pots. There was a bread oven in one corner and a brick hearth raised about waist high with an open grate and a grill over a firebox. She put some sticks of wood on the hearth, carved off some curls from the chunk of resinwood and put them in the box and snapped the firelighter. A few sparks, a few puffs and the curls were crackling. She added sticks of wood, watched until they caught, added a few more, then set the pot of water to boil. All too aware of the hollow in her middle, she cut a slice from the loaf, smeared a spoonful of jam on the bread and set it aside, cut a hunk of cheese, put it beside the bread, dropped a pinch of cha in a mug. While the water heated, she went briskly through the bedroom, into the foyer and opened the left-hand door.

For a long, numinous moment, she stood with her hand on the latch, looking into the dark room, feeling as if she was only now entering into her tenure as Keeper.

She wandered through the sacred rooms-the Maiden Chamber, the vestiary, the vessel room, scowling at the disfiguring smears of black paint everywhere, floor, walls, ceiling, at the broken vessels, the dried scum of oil and unguents, the books that were tatters and black ash, the tapestries turned to rags and thread, half burned. There were deep scratches everywhere and other muck as if the hate and rage in the Followers who did the damage wouldn’t leave anything alone, wanted to pull down the walls and soil what they couldn’t destroy. The worst of the damage was lost to the shadows but she saw enough to disturb and discourage her. So much to do. She shook off her malaise and went back to the kitchen.

After washing down bread, jam and cheese with cha almost too hot to drink, her dejection vanishing as her hunger abated, she went rummaging for something to hold the candles she’d found in the pantry. The gloom was thickening outside and in as the day grew later and the snow fell harder. The quiet was gone, the wind screeching past the windows, an eerie lonesome sound she hated. As she poked into the corners and crannies of the kitchen, the fire hissing and popping in the firehole, she was nervous for a while out of old habit, then was startled by the realization that she rather liked the wind’s howl. It was as if the wind wrapped her in its arms and protected her from everything that would harm her. She rubbed at her cheek, shook her head and went, back to her search, relaxed and easy in a way she couldn’t define or comprehend. She located several wooden candlesticks and a glass candlelamp with a tarnished silver reflector behind it. She carried it out and set it on the kitchen table. After she wiped the reflector with a soft cloth, buffed it as clean as she could, she rinsed off the glass, polished away dust, spider webs and insect droppings, then she pushed one of her candles onto the base and lit it at the firehole, let it burn a moment before she set the chimney back over it. It put out a soft yellow glow that pushed back the shadows and gave a golden life to the kitchen that warmed her heart as well as her body.

She took the lamp into the bedroom where she laid a new fire and used the sparker to get it started. The ash was beginning to build up beneath the dogs. She should have cleared it away before starting a new fire, but the room was growing too chill for comfort. Tomorrow morning, she told herself. I’ll clear the grate tomorrow morning. She watched the fire start to glow and snap and thought about going to bed, getting an early start on the cleaning in the morning, but she wasn’t sleepy and there was such a lot of work to do.

She went back in the kitchen, scooped up a dollop of soap and dumped it into the bucket, following that with the last of the hot water, set another pot to heat for later, tucked one of the worn brooms under her arm, picked up the bucket and the lamp and went around through the bedroom, the foyer, stood a moment in the vestiary wondering where to start, then went through into the great chamber, the Maiden Chamber.

She set the lamp against the wall under the window. Floor first, she thought. An icy draft coiled round her ankles. No. Fire first.

When the fire began to crackle and add its light to the candle lamp’s, she stood in the center of the room and looked around at the sorry desolation where once there’d been dignity and beauty. She went to her knees, knelt without moving, sick with memory and with the sudden realization that the anger she was feeling now at the vandals was only another face of the anger that had driven her to turn against her own blood. Forgive yourself, She said. It’s easier to forgive them. She sighed and opened her eyes, got stiffly to her feet.

Humming the chants she could remember so she wouldn’t remember more troubling things, she began sweeping up the debris that cluttered the floor, leaves, fragments of stone, bottle shards, the ruins of the tapestries, a year’s worth of dust and dead bugs.

She fetched the rags and pumice stones she’d forgotten and began cleaning the floor, slopping soapy water onto the tiles, using rags to wash away old urine and feces, the clotted dust, not trying to deal yet with the paint. Handspan by handspan she removed the filth from the mosaic tiles, changing the water several times before she finished. Then, with pumice and scraper she attacked the thick paint, the smears and splatters, the glyphs of obscene words, humming to herself as she worked, the humming just a pleasure now, no longer a barrier to thought. She wasn’t angry any longer. She was too busy to be angry, attacking a tiny patch of floor at a time, trying not to harm the glaze on the tiles, in no hurry at all, happy-when she got a single tile cleaned off, contented at spending hours, days, perhaps a full passage on a task she’d have screamed at a while before. She took little note of the passing of time until the growing chill and darkness in the room reminded her that there were other things she had to do and many days to finish the work.

She sat on her heels and stretched, working her back and shoulders, wriggling her fingers. The fire was a faint red glow nearly smothered in gray ash. The candle was a stub hardly a finger-width high. It was totally dark outside, the colored rounds of window glass turned to different shades of black. She looked at the cleaned tiles with satisfaction, their bright colors winking at her in the dying light. She’d cleared off a space as long and as wide as she was tall. Setting the worn pumice stone against the wall, the scraper beside it, she got to her feet, plucking at the skirt of her robe which was damp and heavy against her legs.

Taking the lamp and firestriker with her, she left the Maiden Chamber. The foyer was an icebox, but the bedroom was toasty warm though the fire had burned low. She put on a few sticks of wood, waited until they caught, added more wood and left a cheerful crackle behind as she went into the kitchen. After blowing the coals to life in the firebox, she set water to heat for cha, cut several slices of bread, laid thin slices from the posser haunch on them, topped the whole with slivers of cheese, set these concoctions on the bricks to melt, washed the dust off one of the Keeper’s plates and put a new candle in the lamp. When the cheese had melted into the bread and meat and the water was boiling, she assembled her meal, sat at the kitchen table, almost purring with contentment, sang the blessings and began her solitary supper.

When she woke, early the next morning, her lye-burnt, abraded hands had healed as her bruises and chilblains had before. She sang the praises of the Maiden, made a hasty breakfast and went back to work on the Maiden Chamber.

The days that followed were much the same. Hard monotonous physical labor all day, meager monotonous meals morning and night. By the end of the first tenday the cheese was a pile of wax and cloth rinds, the jam was getting low, the posser haunch was close to the bone and she was eating water-flour cakes baked on the bricks, the withered tubers with the rotted spots cut away and slow-baked all day at the hearth of her bedroom fire. At night she slept hard and dreamlessly. When she wasn’t scrubbing, she struggled to reconstruct from memory what she knew of the Keeper Songs and the Order of the Year. How little she did know troubled her at times but mostly she was too busy to fuss.

By the end of that tenday the Great Clean was all but finished. All the sacred rooms were in order and shining with her efforts. But the unguent vessels and oil vessels were broken, the oils and unguents missing; the tapestries were destroyed, the formal robes of the Keeper were gone. The Maiden Chamber was bare. The face carved into the Eastwall was so plowed with gouges and battered it gave her a pain in her heart to look at it, but on the eleventh day she did just that. She stood in the middle of the room, hands on hips, and gazed at the ruined face. “Could I?”

Scent of herbs and flowers.

“Oh, you think so, mmmm? Then I’d better try.” She went up to the stone, touched the face, ran her fingers over the few unmarred bits, trying to get the feel of the stone into her hands. “At least I can smooth this out so it isn’t quite so dreadful a scar and I can learn something about the tools and the stone while I’m at it. After that, well, we’ll see.”

She left the room, frowning and walking slowly, trying to remember what tools she’d seen stacked up on shelves at the far end of the pantry. A mallet she was sure of, an axe, but that wouldn’t be much help until she needed firewood, chisels? She stepped into the foyer, pulled the door shut behind her.

A heavy knock on the outer door caught her in mid-stride. She stared at it open-mouthed, shocked and frightened. A second knock. She stood with her hands crossed above her breasts, her arms pressing hard against her torso. In a way she’d forgotten that there was a world outside the Shrine. All her life, as long as she could remember, she’d been surrounded by people. Surrounded by family and ties and bitter with loneliness. From the moment she’d crossed the threshold here, she’d been utterly alone and for the first time was not lonely at all. She felt a flash of resentment at the person who was shattering this calming, comforting solitude, recognized the feeling and shoved desperately at it. She didn’t want to feel like that anymore, she was furious at herself for entertaining the feeling. She was falling apart, falling back into the tense, angry, resentful Nilis she was trying to escape. Escape? There was none. Forgive yourself. Forgive myself. Forgive. Forgive. No new starts, no changes, the same soul. Live with it. Forgive yourself for being who and what, you are. It was a litany, a prayer. The thudding of her heart slowed, her hands unclenched, her breathing slowed, steadied. She looked down at herself, smiled tremulously, tugged the filthy hem down so it hid her dirty bare feet. Walking on the sides of her feet, toes curled up from the icy flags, she crossed the room, took the bar down and shoved the door open.

It moved more easily than she’d expected and she stumbled farther out than she’d intended, putting one bare foot into the snowbank. She jerked back, rubbed her freezing foot against the back of her calf, stood one-legged, holding the edge of the door, looking around.

There was no one in sight, though a trampled track led around behind the sanctuary. I didn’t fuss that long, she thought, they must have raced away. She switched feet, rubbed the other along her calf. “Maiden bless,” she called. The wind’s howl was the only answer. She frowned at the track. It led behind the door. She pulled the door toward her and looked around it.

A bulging rep-cloth bag; two bowls with folded clothes covering what lay inside, a tall covered crock, a lumpy bag. Hopping from foot to freezing foot, she carried these leavings inside, pulled the door shut, dropped the bar in place, then started transferring the goods to the kitchen.

When she had the whole load on the kitchen table, she unfolded the cloth laid on top of one of the bowls. It was another robe, a clean robe. She touched it, smiled, dropped it onto a chair. The bowl held a dozen eggs, a small cheese, a chunk of butter wrapped in tazur husks. The second bowl was covered by a pair of soft clean dishtowels; it held two roasted oadats and two cleaned and dressed but uncooked carcasses. The small lumpy bag held a sac filled with salt, several packets of dried herbs and spices and a small bottle of slayt-flower essence, some woman’s cherished luxury, a gift almost worth more than the food in the things it spoke to Nilis. The crock held fresh milk. The rep sack held tubers, dried vegetables, dried fruit, a packet of cillix whose white grains poured like hail through her fingers. Her unknown benefactors had risked a lot to bring this. Briefly she wondered how they knew anyone was in the shrine, then she saw the glass in the kitchen windows glittering with the light of the late afternoon sun and laughed at herself. She’d been proclaiming her presence since the first fire she’d lit. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t here to hide. A sign, She said. A sign of a Presence. A sign that had to be seen to fulfill its purpose.

She put the supplies away in the pantry and on the shelves of the closet, then went back to the Maiden Chamber with the tools she’d started to fetch. She built up the fire, stood before it a moment, warming her feet. I’m going to have to contrive a bath of some sort, she thought. Now that I’m apt to have visitors. I wonder what the other Keepers did. She hadn’t yet found anything like a laundry tub, but she hadn’t been searching that hard and there was a lot of junk piled at the back of the pantry under a heavy film of spiderwebs, dust and mold. She turned her back to the fire and stood gazing at the broken face. First thing is cutting that off and leveling the stone inside the circle. Plenty of stone left in the wall, enough to work with. The face will just be set deeper in, that’s all. She shivered with a sudden exaltation. A paradigm. The Maiden driven deeper than before into the life of the mijloc. She put her hands over her face for a few shuddering breaths, then pulled them away, laughing. How easy it was, after all, this shift from nothing to nothing to everything. Maiden before was fкte and chant. Nothing. Soдreh was sourness and spite, triumph quickly burned out. Nothing. Now. Oh now…

Dragging the kitchen chair up to the wall, she stood on the broad seat, set chisel and mallet to work cutting away the remnants of the old face, learning the feel and cleavage of the stone as she did so, working very carefully, perhaps too cautiously, removing the stone with a stone’s patience, feeling a growing satisfaction as her hands slowly but surely acquired the skills she’d need to recarve the face.

All her life she’d drawn things, creating embroidery designs for her mother and sisters, for anybody who asked, though she was too nervous and impatient to complete any but the simplest patterns for herself. She hated weaving and sewing and the household arts that took up so much of any woman’s time; that was one of the reasons she resented Tuli-the girl continuously contrived to escape the limitations of women’s work and slip away from a large part of their world’s censure for such escapades. It wasn’t fair. Jealousy she refused to acknowledge had made her scold and pick at her sister because she herself lacked strength of will or imagination to make her own escape from a life that stifled her almost beyond enduring. Behind her passivity lay a profound ignorance. She didn’t know what she wanted, she didn’t know any other sort of life. The Biserica loomed more as threat than sanctuary. The thought of thousands of girls like Tuli was enough to make it no place she wanted to be, for it seemed to her that all the meien who came by and stayed with them were only older versions of Tuli. Even if they weren’t, that was how she saw them. She chipped patiently at the stone, her hands learning its essence, feeling more and more the angles of cut, the amount of force required to chip away various amounts of stone. And her mind drifted along roads taken too many times before, all the hurts, the bitterness, the long struggle she fought against herself, the sense she had of being locked within her skin, of living in the wrong place, in the wrong way. When all the wrongness was taken away, how easy it was to step outside herself, how easy it was to be easy with herself. And how hard it had been once-and might be again, she thought suddenly-how hard to want and want all those things people said you ought to want-a home, a husband, piles of woven cloth, embroidered linens, children, a pantry stocked and overflowing with jams and jellies, smoked meats, cheeses and all the rest of it, suitably humble and happy tie-families-how terrible it was to hunger for what no effort of your own could achieve, the things that came as gifts or not at all, things like charm and a happy nature.

Behind her the fire burned low and began to die. The light coming through the windows dimmed, turned red, then gray. When she finally noticed the darkness and the ache in her arms, she rested her forehead against the stone and felt all the weight of her weariness come suddenly down on her.

Scent of herbs and flowers. A brief flush of energy.

She stepped down from the chair, laid the mallet and chisel on the floor beside it, and stood rubbing at her shoulders as she peered through the growing dark at what she’d done. Almost all the face was gone and the background was an odd pocking as if some hard-beaked passar had been banging at it. She yawned. As she moved to pick up the candlelamp she hadn’t bothered lighting, the fatigue was pushed away, but she was surprised by a hunger that bit deeper into her than the chisel had into the stone. She glanced at the fire, thought of banking it to preserve the coals, but didn’t feel like making the effort. She could think only of that roast oadat waiting for her, of the, chewy golden rounds of dried chays, the cheese and fresh bread and hot cha to wash it all down. She hefted the chair and took it with her to the kitchen.

She ate and ate until she was ashamed of her greed, ate until there was no possibility of forcing down another bite. Heavy with food, aching with weariness, half asleep, she stretched out in the chair, her back against the wall, her buttocks caught at the edge of the seat, her legs spread a little, stretched out straight before her, giving her a good view of the filthy skirts of the robe and her equally filthy feet, the dirt ground into flesh that looked like pinkish gray dough. She wiggled her toes, sighed. “Bath,” she said, tasting the word and nodding her head. “Tired or not, I want a bath.”

She set water to boil, took the lamp into the pantry and rummaged through the pile at the back, finding a big wooden tub under a heap of broken odds and ends. It needed soaking, might leak some, but it would do well enough for tonight. She took it into the bedroom, set it before the fire. Then she built up the fire until it threatened to leap into the room, knelt a moment on the hearth, sweating, letting the heat soothe some of the soreness, in her arms and shoulders.

By the light of that fire, she scrubbed at the heavy robe, scrubbed until her hands were blistered and abraded, the lye soap like fire on them, but she got most of the dirt out of the coarse material and dumped it into the scrub bucket. She took the sleeping smock down from its peg and sloshed it in the soapy water left over from the robe; its stains came from her unwashed body and the warm soapy water dealt easily with those. She dumped the sodden smock on top the robe, took them both into the kitchen and upended the bucket over a sink full of cold water, sloshed them about a bit, let the water out, pumped more in and left them to soak while she washed herself.

She carried more buckets of hot water to the tub, poured them into the soapy residue until she could almost not bear the heat, added a little cold, then squatted in the tub to scrub at herself. When she finished, she dried herself, then scooped the dirty water from the tub, bucket by bucket until it was light enough for her to manage, hauled it into the kitchen and emptied the rest down the drain. She finished rinsing out the clothing, then used an old rag to wash the soap off herself. More hot water, in the sink this time, laced with cold. She washed her hair, sighing for the mild, scented shampoo her father bought from traveling peddlers, but at least she was clean.

She wiped herself as dry as she could, squeezed excess water out of her hair, then stood a moment breathing deeply, surrounded by the warmth and smells of the kitchen, the burning wood, soap, bread, roast oadat, cheese, chays, damp stone and others too faint and blended to identify. Then she forced herself to move, hung the smock and the robe on drying racks from the pantry, set up on either side of the bedroom fire. She stretched out on the bed, the ropes squealing under her weight, the mattress rustling. She lay a moment on both quilts, staring up at the ceiling and seeing for the first time the mosaic of wood chips, an image of the mijloc being held in the arms of the Maiden, constructed from a dozen different natural wood shades, a subtle image that only developed out of the woodchips as she stared at them. She sighed with pleasure, closed her eyes, murmured the night chant and began drifting off. After a moment, she eased the top quilt from under her and pulled it up to her chin, then fell into sleep as if someone had clubbed her.

The mallet tucked under her arm, the chisel held point out, handle pressed against her thumb, she was moving both sets of fingers carefully across the cut-away stone, searching for any spikes of stone that had escaped her, this fitful fussing a last attempt to convince herself she ought to postpone the re-carving of the face. She felt uncertain and rather frightened. She touched and touched the stone, the smooth roughness under her fingers slowly seducing her into beginning, the stone calling to her to give it shape.

She faced the stone, holding mallet and chisel, breathing lightly, quickly, searching for the courage to begin.

“Nilis.” Her brother’s voice, angry and afraid.

She turned with slow deliberation and stepped down from the chair. “Dris,” she said. She ignored the Agli scowling behind the boy. She felt his eyes on her, hot angry eyes, but all fear had fled somehow, she felt serene.

The Agli closed his hand tight over the boy’s shoulder. He said nothing, but Dris’s face went pale and stiff. Nilis was sorry to see that but knew there was little she could do about it. Dris’s tongue traveled across his bottom lip. “Nilis Gradindaughter,” he said, his voice breaking on the words as if he were older and in the throes of puberty. “Sister, your place is in Gradintar. Gradintar needs a mistress to see to the women’s work. The Great Whore is finished in the mijloc. I am Tarom. I order you to come home. You must obey me. Or… or be cursed.” His tongue moved once again along his lip, his hands were closed into fists, his eyes shone as if he were going to cry at any moment. “You got to come back, Nilis, I NEED you. Please…” He broke off, wincing as the Agli’s fingers dug into his shoulder. The frightened child vanished as Dris’s face went blank. “Disobey,” he said dully, “and the curse of Soдreh will land on your head.” He changed again. “Come on, Nilis, huh?” Little brother now too scared to play his role. “Nilis, please, I don’t want to curse you.” His face contorted as he struggled not to cry.

“Ah, Drishha-mi,” she murmured. She set the mallet and chisel on the floor and settled herself on the chair. “Do what you must, but don’t worry about it. I can’t go back with you. Gradintar isn’t my home anymore. You’re still my brother, dearest, you’re always welcome here whenever you are free to come. Curse me if you must.” She found herself laughing, a low warm chuckle that utterly surprised her, so much so that she lost track of what she was saying. She blinked, hesitated, finished, “I won’t take any notice of it.”

A soft hissing from the Agli. She ignored it, a little afraid now, but not as afraid as she’d expected to be. And glad her robe was clean and fresh, her hair and body were clean and fresh. It gave her a confidence she felt she could trust more than the mysterious sureness she felt in herself, a sureness that was a gift of the Maiden and because of this might vanish as inexplicably as it had come.

Dris’s face twisted again. She could see the silent pressure the Agli was putting on him, a pressure he was trying to put on her now. She sat quietly as the boy began stammering out his lesson, watching him and listening with sadness and a little impatience.

“O thou follower of vileness,” Dris shrilled at her. “Thou whore and betrayer. Thou apostate. May thy nights be given to torment, the demons of the lower worlds torment thee in body and mind. May thy days be given to torment, desires that fill thee and whimper in thee; and may no man be tempted to fulfill thee. May worms dwell within thee and eat at thee until thou art rotten and oozing with rot, until thou are corruption itself. May all this be done to thee unless thou renounce the Hag, renounce this rebellion against thy proper role, against those created to be thy guides and protectors. Renounce the Hag and return to thy proper place, Nilis Gradindaughter.” Dris finished his memorized speech, gave a little sigh of relief that he’d got it right. She read in his eyes horror at what he was saying and at the same time a certain satisfaction at his daring to talk like that to her.

The Agli was looking smug. She saw in him what she’d never seen before. He hated and feared women. All women, but especially those he couldn’t dominate or control. They were alien creatures who nonetheless could wake feelings in him he was helpless to resist. It was strange to see so clearly, having looked into her own real face, strange and painful because it meant she no longer had the option of pursuing her own goals without fully understanding the pain and distress her acts caused those around her; yet there were things she had to do, so she must take on her shoulders the responsibility for that pain. And with that came the first real understanding of what She had meant when She said the task was hard enough. Not the physical labor, that was easy. Forgive yourself. Yes. She saw the greed and fear and uncertainty and unlovely triumph and need and silly sad stupid blindness in the man standing before her and a part of her-the part that was sustained by the Maiden’s Gift-understood and loved all these unlovely things while the other part of her was angry at Dris and the Agli for disturbing her serenity, for blocking off the thing she felt burgeoning in her, angry at the Agli for driving that baby into pronouncing that curse, a little afraid, but not much, of the curse itself. And even as she sat musing over these things, considering her answer, that other part of her cleared into laughter, laughter that bubbled through her and out of her before she could stop it. She saw the Agli’s face pinch together and laughed yet more, but stopped laughing when she saw it troubled Dris too much.

“You did well, Drishha brother,” she said. “You learned your lesson well. Clever boy. Not to worry, though, you’ve done no harm.” She turned to the Agli, all desire to laugh draining from her. Words came to her. She spoke through her. “Agli, you act on the assumption that yours will win this encounter and you will not be called to account for the damage you do to those in your care. But I tell you this, you will be called to account for all the hate and all the destruction and all the upheaval you and yours have visited upon the people of the mijloc and the children of the mijloc. I look on you and see that you are sure of your power, sure of your victory, sure that you possess the only truth there is and must win because of this. And I say to you that you should think well what you are doing. If you cannot even shift an unfledged Keeper from her shrine, how will yours shift me from where I dwell?” Nilis blinked but added nothing of her own to what had spoken through her. She sat with her hands folded in her lap, waiting for what must come next.

The Agli’s face twisted, went hot and red. He pushed Dris roughly aside, not meaning the roughness but in too much haste to do otherwise. Muttering a warding rite, he grabbed at her arm, meaning to jerk her off the chair and drag her out the door. With a shriek that echoed eerily about the room, he wrenched his hand away as if her flesh had seared his. Staring at her, he began backing toward the door, Dris forgotten, everything forgotten except the pain in his withered hand and arm.

“Your body lives,” she said and could not be sure who spoke. “All things that live lie in the Maiden’s hand and reach.” There was a touch too much satisfaction for her comfort in those words, she hoped it wasn’t dredged up out of her but put that aside for later thought and sat watching him.

He continued to back away, crouched and sidling sideways like a crab, his dark eyes bulging and madder than anything she’d seen before.

“Remember, Oh man, you will be called to account for what you do.”

He turned and ran, vanishing in a step, black robe fluttering about his heels.

Dris stood forlorn and afraid in the middle of the room, trying not to cry, his world crumbled about him.

“Drishha,” she said, putting all the patience and gentleness she could find within herself into the words she spoke. “Go home, little brother. Do the best you can to be a good boy so Father will be proud of you when he comes home.” She watched the contradictory emotions play across his half-formed face. He wouldn’t like giving up his autonomy, his power, his sense of bigness, but he did love Tesc and Annic and Tuli and Teras and missed them very much, especially in the middle of the night; she knew that well enough, having tried to comfort him more than once when his loneliness grew too much for him. Now he’d have no one at all except an Agli he’d just seen humiliated. And he knew, without being able to put it in words or even images, that the Agli would be angry at him for being a witness to that humiliation and would punish him for it even though he hadn’t wanted to be there, had whined and wheedled and tried his best to be left behind. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right, but that was the way with adults sometimes, they made you do things and when the things went wrong blamed you for doing them and there was no use calling on right or fair. “I hate you,” he shouted at Nilis, then burst into tears and ran out of the room.

She sat there for some time, too tired to move, too tired even to think, just sat there, hands folded in her lap, staring at the open empty door.

After a while she thought about the door being open, about the gate to the court of columns being off its hinges. Anyone can walk in on me any time. She twisted her hands together and her mind ran on wheels as she tried to think of a way to bar the door; the hooks had been torn from the wall when the rest of the damage was done; the bar had vanished. Then she remembered the Agli’s face as he touched her, as he tore his hand away. This is Her place, she’ll protect it, protect me. She rubbed at her thighs. But the first Agli, mine, the clown doll-he got the other Keeper out and no one’s seen her since. She didn’t protect her. She was afraid again-and found herself on her feet, glaring across the room. Then she thought, I’ll wedge the bedroom door so I’ll be able to sleep without starting awake at every sound in the night. If anyone tries to break in, that will give me warning enough to put on a robe and comb my hair. She smiled. Face the world clothed and neat.

Nervous, she wandered through the sacred rooms, looking about, remembering the place as it once was-and would be again if she had any say. She lingered in the meditation room, a small cubicle, bare and cold now. Tapestries worked by tardaughters and Keepers in warm, bright wools used to hang from the walls, scenes from the chants, lively with flower and beast. The flags had been covered with rush matting, thick and resilient, woven in the Cymbank pattern, complicated but beautiful. Her memory added the faded gold of the dried rushes, catching the light and changing hue as the pattern of the weave changed direction, as the sun changed position outside the small round window set with clear though wavery glass. Scented berrywax candles had filled the room with tart green sweetness. Like village girls and tie-girls, she’d made vigil here when her menses started and here crossed the line from girl to maid. Here she might have made her marriage vigil too, that was a dream as empty now as then, though for other reasons. Looking at the room with remembering eyes she acknowledged her love of it as it was, sighed for the familiar beauty now ashes enriching the earth of the grove.

She drifted back to the Maiden Chamber, stood looking at the oval emptiness, remembering with a clarity almost painful the face of Her she’d seen in the tower. She closed her eyes and began exploring her own face with her fingers, trying to feel how eye was set beneath the brow, how cheek was flat and curved at once, how it made a sudden turn on a line slanting down from the outer corner of her eye past the corner of her mouth. She explored the complex curves of nose and mouth, touched herself and tried to visualize what touch told her about plane and curve and distance and groped toward a slow comprehension of the bites she was going to make in the stone.

She picked up the mallet and chisel, balanced them uncertainly in deeply uncertain hands, then got heavily up on the chair seat. She stared at the stone, then ran the fingers of the hand holding the chisel back and forth across the hollow she’d smoothed as best she could. She was afraid. She couldn’t do it. She’d only make a mess of it like the mess she’d made of her life. She tried to fix in her mind the face she remembered. For a shaky moment she remembered nothing, not even her own face. Then the image came back, strong as the feel of the stone under her fingers. She set the chisel against the stone; trembling until she didn’t know if she could control it, she lifted the mallet. Steadying into a kind of desperation, she struck the first blow.

The light was gone and she was trembling with fatigue when she surfaced. She felt dizzy and uncertain as if every movement had to be made slo-ow-ly, slo-ow-ly, or she would shatter. She shivered. The Maiden Chamber was very cold, the fire was gray ash, the last tints of red had left the little bit of light coming through the tinted glass rounds. She stepped very carefully down from the chair, her hand pressed hard against the wall to give her some sense of balance. She sat heavily, staring down at the mallet and chisel in her lap. After a moment she uncramped her fingers, wincing as the chisel rang musically against the tiles of the mosaic. It was no way to treat tools but she couldn’t think much now, just react. After a minute, she gathered herself and grunted up onto her feet and went slowly back into her living quarters.

Morning light poured with lively vigor through the stained-glass window, the lead strips holding the glass rounds painting a lacy tracery on the stone. She knelt by the fireplace and scraped the ashes into one of the gift bowls then laid wood across the dogs and used the striker to start a new fire. It was very early and very cold in the room, her breath bloomed before her and took a long time to fade. The cold struck up from the mosaic floor, up through her knees, her thighs, her soft and quivering insides. Without looking at what she’d done the past day, she went back into the kitchen for hot cha then shoved her feet in the old slippers she’d brought with her, entirely disreputable but warm.

Cha mug clasped between her hands, she went back to the Maiden Chamber, walking with her eyes fixed determinedly on the floor until she stood before the chair, then she forced herself to look up.

Five hours of hard cautious work, much of it done blindly, trusting the feel in her fingers and what the stone told her hands as its vibrations came up the chisel at her. Five hours’ work gazed back at her. The face she’d seen in the tower, blocked into the stone, carved simply but with great power, all the fussy little touches melded into strong simple lines. A woman’s face with an inhuman beauty, slightly smiling. It wasn’t finished, there was a need here and there to take away a jarring bit of roughness, the hair to be shaped out of the rough mass she’d left for that, the last polishing and oiling to bring out the grain and beauty of the stone. She looked at what she’d done and almost burst with joy. Gulping at the cha, she tried to calm herself but could not. She strode away from the face, paced back and forth across the room taking large mouthfuls of the cha until there was no more left, set the mug down, scooped up the chisel, impatient to get started on the finishing.

But when she looked at the battered blunt end of the chisel, she swore and nearly threw it at the wall. She tried to pull herself together. She was shaking, driven, but she forced herself to calm enough to set the chisel on the chair and walk away from it, going out of the room to fetch the hone from the pantry.

She sat on the floor in front of the fire, her robe hiked up to mid-thigh, and began the tedious process of repointing the chisel, working slowly and carefully, not stopping until she had perfection greater than she started with, knowing she must have the discipline this took or any touch she gave the face would be the start of ruin; slowly she began to take pleasure in the stroking of the stone across the metal. Stone over the steel, caressing it, wearing it away. Stroke and stroke and stroke, touches of loving care. As she worked, she sang softly a Maiden Chant, the calm on the face she’d carved growing within her.

Late in the afternoon, when she was putting the last touches on the flaring waves of hair framing the serene face like ripples of running water, she heard the tramp of boots, the clatter of metal against metal. Another visitation. She sighed, put her tools on the floor, then seated herself on the chair, knees together, robe pulled decorously down to hide her scruffy slippers. Her hands folded, she waited, tense and frightened though she hoped she didn’t show it.

The Decsel marched in, his men following and fanning into an arc on either side of him as if she were some unpredictable and thus very dangerous beast. She waited until he stopped in the middle of the room, his face uninterested, indifferent. She’d never seen that face change much, not when he’d taken her mother and sisters and Teras to the House of Repentance, not when he’d overseen the cleansing of Gradintar of all Maiden symbols, not when he’d handled the culling of the ties or read the proclamation of Floarin declaring Tesc Gradin anathema and outlaw. He obeyed his orders punctiliously and stamped on nothing, finding his pride in doing well whatever he attempted though she’d never thought him especially devoted to Soдreh.

“Nilis Gradindaughter,” he said.

“Nilis Keeper,” she said. “She has left the tar and severed her connections with Gradintar and Gradinblood.”

“Nilis Gradindaughter. The Agli Brell and the Center of Cymbank demand you leave this place and return to the House of Gradintar. If you fail to heed this most serious demand we are required to remove you by force and confine you in the House of Repentance.” His speech finished, the formal words gabbled with as little expression as if he were calling the roll at payday, he stood at ease in his leather and metal, a big blocky man, worn and scarred and so closed in the limits of his profession that he was inaccessible to her or anything outside it, or so she thought as she listened to him speak.

When he finished, she answered him with as much formality. “No, I will not come.” This was ritual, not conversation.

The Decsel accepted her words, nodded his bony head as if this were a thing he’d expected, as if he were used to this sort of lack of reason from those who did not have his clearly drawn map of possible actions. He took a step toward her, a look of astonishment on his leathery face, a clown’s gape almost, ludicrous almost, in contrast with the strength and hard-worn look of the rest of him. He shifted back a little, felt at the air in front of him with large knuckled hands. It was as if he swept them over a sheet of, glass. He backed off farther, sent one of his men forward with a brief quick turn of his hand. The guard charged at Nilis, rebounded from the barrier, hitting it hard enough to knock himself off his feet. Another sharp-edged, economical gesture. The man unclipped his sword, saluted his decsel, dropped into a crouch and drove the sword’s point against the barrier with all the strength of his body. There was no sound but the point struck the barrier and went skating up it as if he’d jammed it against a slightly curved wall of greased glass. The guard stumbled and would have fallen, but the decsel caught the shoulderstrap of his leather cuirass, dragged him onto his feet and shoved him back at the rest of the men.

Long spatulate thumb pressed against his lips, fisted fingers tight beneath his chin, the decsel stood contemplating her. He dropped his hand. “There is no way we can reach you, Nilis Keeper?”

“I don’t know. I suspect not.” She was as astonished as he was by the events just past.

He gazed at her a moment longer, his face as impassive as before, then he raised his hand in an abrupt, unexpected salute, wheeled and strode out. His men saluted her, each in his turn, and followed him out.

When the rhythmic stumping of their feet had died away, she began shaking. Her mouth flooded with bile. She swallowed, swallowed again, pushed herself onto her feet, hitched up the robe so it didn’t drag along the floor or trip her. She started shaking again, not from reaction or cold (an icy blast was pouring through the open door), but from a sudden consuming anger. She stared up at the face, unable to speak for a moment, then she gathered herself. “Why?” she shouted at the face. “Why?” she repeated more calmly. “Why let me go through all… Why let me betray…” She stumbled over the word, but bitterly acknowledged the justice of it. “Betray my own blood. If you can do that,” she waved a hand behind her, sketching out the wall that had protected her, “if you can come to me and show me what you did, if you can chase off the Agli and the guards, why why why is all this necessary, this death and misery, the battle that’s coming, more death, more useless, wasteful… Why? You could have stopped it. Why did you let it happen?’

There was no answer. The face in the stone was a stone face, the chisel marks still harsh on the planes and curves of it. She quieted, the futility of what she was doing like a lump of ice in her stomach. Her own hands had shaped the face. Shaped it well. An intense satisfaction warmed her, smothered for the moment the other emotions. It was good, that carving. She knew it. And knew then, above and beyond whatever being Keeper required of her, she’d found her proper work. With a little laugh, a rueful grimace, she pushed sweaty strands of fine brown hair off her thin face, then went to fix herself some lunch.

For the rest of the afternoon, she puttered about, unable to settle at anything. Her first joy, her contentment-these were shattered. Her relationship with Her of the tower was so much more limited than she’d hoped; like everything else she touched, this too crumbled away and left nothing. For the first time she realized just how much she’d been hoping for… for love… for a felt love, and instead of that she was a tool in the hands of Her, as much as the chisel was a tool in her own hands.

The old poisons came seeping into her blood again, the anger, frustration, resentment, envy, self-hate, rancor, outrage. She recognized them all, old friends they were, they’d sung her to sleep many a night. Now and then she felt herself welcoming them, cursing the forces that had driven her from the comfortable sense of righteousness that had spread through her and sustained her in the first days of Soдreh’s ascendancy. At the same time she couldn’t avoid seeing the ugliness of what she’d been and of what she’d helped to create. Anything was better than that, even the desolation that filled her when she thought of the years ahead of her, the unending empty years.

Late in the afternoon she went back into the Maiden Chamber and stood looking at the carving. The lowering sun painted new shadows on Her face and it seemed to Nilis that She looked at her and smiled, but she soon dismissed that as more dreaming. She gazed at the face a long time, then looked down at her hands. The quiet came back into her, her own quiet. The years might be long, but they wouldn’t be empty. She had a lot to do, a lot to learn. It wasn’t what she’d hoped, but it was a lot more than nothing.

As the days turned on the spindle, offerings began to appear beneath the Face. More robes. Sandals. Food. Candles. Flasks of scented oil. A beautiful Book of Hours, something someone had saved at great risk from Soдreh’s Purge. Reed mats. Bedding. Tapestry canvas. Packets of colored wools. Wool needles. And what delighted her most because it answered her greatest need, another book saved from the Purge-The Order of the Year that named the passages and the fкtes, the meditations and the rites proper to each fкte.

In the evenings she sat in the kitchen sipping cha and studying the Order. Her days she began to organize about the Hours of Praise. She needed the order this ritual gave to her life, especially since the long drive to clean the shrine had come to an end. Between the chants and meditation she did what she could in the Court of Columns, but it was too cold to stay out long. She scraped at the paint she could reach, what was under the snow would have to wait for spring. When she couldn’t stay out any longer, she sat in the Maiden Chamber and worked over the tapestry canvas, sketching the design she wanted, then beginning to fill in the areas with the wools, no longer impatient and fretting, working until she was tired of it, moving into the kitchen and trying again to bake a successful loaf of bread, spending some time in the schoolroom, cleaning out the thick layer of muck and rotting leaves, the drifts of snow. The door was off its hinges, thrown into the room. She struggled with that, got it outside, managed to rehang it, though it dragged against the floor and had to be lifted and muscled about before the latch would catch. She put the room in order, piled the broken furniture neatly after looking it over to see if she could somehow repair it. She shut the door and left that too for the coming of spring.

A girl came one night. For her bridal vigil. She smiled shyly at Nilis, then went into the room, still bare except for a maiden face and the mats on the floor, lit a candle she’d brought with her and settled herself comfortably crosslegged on the mats. Much later, when Nilis came to bring her a cup of cha, the girl had a happy dreamy look on her face. Nilis left, wrestled a little with envy, then went to sleep, content with herself and what was happening.

On the last day of the Decadra Passage the Decsel marched into the Maiden Chamber, his belongings in a shoulder roll, a large sack of food under one arm. He set the sack down, drew his sword and laid it at Nilis’s feet. “I wish to serve Her,” he said.

He took the schoolroom as his quarters, rehung the door, cleared out the old furniture, cobbled a bed for himself and turned the bare room into a comfortable place, being experienced at doing for himself, neat-handed, and skillful at all sorts of work. He took over the work in the Court of Columns, scraping the paint from the columns and Maiden faces, digging the snow and debris from the choked fountain, clearing the paint from that. He worried over what he could do with the painted pavement until Nilis told him she could paint it again once he’d got the smears off.

They worked alone, saw each other seldom, sometimes shared meals, sometimes a day or two would pass before they met again, settled into a peace with each other that never completely left them.

Shimar began. The Cymbankers grew bolder. Girls and maids came for vigils, young men trickled in for meditation and for their own vigils. A furtive group came into the Maiden Chamber for a minor rite, the Ciderblessing, defying the Agli and the new Decsel. Villagers, ties and even tarfamilies came more openly as each day passed. There were more floggings, more folk dragged to the House of Repentance, more muttering against Floarin because of this, more folk coming to the Shrine. And Nilis began preparing for the Turnfest, her first major fкte as Keeper.

The Magic Child

Rane, on Sel-ma-Carth: Nearly fifty years back the governing elders of Sel-ma-Carth hired a stone-working norit to punch new drains through the granite not far below the soil the city was built on; the old drains had been adequate for the old city, but they’d just finished a new wall enclosing a much greater area. (A chuckle and a quick aside to Tuli: You’ve never lived in a city, Moth. Drains may make dull conversation but they’re more important than bread for health and comfort. And this does have a point to it besides general information, so get that look off your face and listen.) The city sits at the meeting of two rivers. The intake of the sewer is upstream and just enough uphill to ensure a strong flow to carry away the refuse and sewage. By the way, you don’t want to drink out of the river for some distance below the city. The old drains were abandoned and more or less forgotten. Even the cuts in the wall are forgotten. That’s how we’re going to get into the city. Don’t make faces, Moth, the stink’s dried by now. Maiden bless the Followers with boils on their butts. Tuli, Sel-ma-Carth never closed its gates, you could ride in and out as you pleased whenever you pleased and no one cared or was afraid you’d do him something. That’s all changed now. If we showed up at the gates, they’d shove us into the nearest House of Repentance. Maybe I ought to leave you outside. I have to see someone, find out the state of things inside the walls, no need for you to walk into that mess. Oh, all right, come if you want. Be glad of your company.

At sundown on the sixth day of riding they topped a slight rise and saw Sel-ma-Carth, its gate towers losing their caps in the low clouds, a walled city nestling in the foothills where the Vachhorns met the Bones (a barren stony range of mountains rich in iron, gold, silver, opal, jade, a thousand other gemstones), at the border between the mijloc and the pehiiri uplands. The mines made the city rich, but were only one of its assets. It also sat on the main caravan route joining the east coast with the west.

Carthise were contentious and untrustworthy, automatically joining to cheat outsiders though they were scrupulously honest with their own. It was said of them you could leave a pile of gold in a street, come back a year later and find it where you left it. It was said of them that they took more pleasure in putting over a sharp deal for a copper uncset than they would in an honest deal that netted them thousands. It was said of them a man could come and live among them for fifty years and die a stranger and an outsider and his son after him, but his grandson would be Carthise.

They were the finest stonemasons and sculptors known, hired away from their city for years at a time, they were famous artisans and metalsmiths, gem cutters and polishers. One family had a secret of making a very fine steel, tough and springy, taking an edge that could split a hair lengthwise. The family made few swords but those were always named blades and famous-and exorbitantly expensive. The Biserica bought knives from them, as did the Sleykynin, until a daughter of the House eloped to the Biserica before she was married to a cousin she despised, bringing the family secret with her. Carthise were leather-workers, weavers, dyers, merchants, thieves and smugglers. But no woodworkers. The hills close by were brown and barren and wood brought premium prices. A well-shaped wooden bowl could fetch a higher price than a silver goblet.

“Hern always had a twisty struggle collecting the city-tithe,” Rane said. “Once he even had to threaten to close the Mouth and turn the trade caravans north to the Kuzepo Pass before they discovered they had the money after all.”

“Then they’re not going to take very well to Floarin’s ordering them about or to the Aglis.”

“That’s the trouble, Moth. No one’s got in or out recently enough to say what it’s like in there. Even Hal didn’t know much. However…” She started away from the road into the low hills. When they were hidden from the watchtowers, she went on. “However, I think you’re probably right.”

When the shifting colors of the dying day touched the low rolling hillocks of snow on snow, they rode across a rising wind that blew short streamers of snow from the tops of the hillocks, snow that sang against them, stinging faces and hands and crawling into any crevice available. Tuli glanced back and was pleased to see the greater part of their trace blown over. By morning the broken trail would be built back into a uniform blanket. That was one problem about spying after a snowstorm, a blind idiot could follow where you’d been. She stared thoughtfully at the bobbing head of her macai. Three days, no wind at all. But the moment wind was needed to kick snow into their backtrail-she laughed at herself for imagining things.

Rane wound through the hillocks moving gradually behind the city, then left the city behind and started up into the hills toward the pehiiri uplands.

A smallish hut stood backed into the steep slope of a hillside, its stone beautifully dressed, the posts and lintel of the doorway delicately carved with vine and leaf. To one side was a stone corral with the eaves of a stable also dug into the slope visible over the top. The whole neat little steading was hidden in a thick stand of stunted trees, canthas still heavy with nuts, spikulim and a solitary zubyadin, its thorns glittering like glass.

Rane stopped her macai in the center of the small cleared space before the door. She waited without dismounting or saying anything until the door opened and a large chini stood there, broad-shouldered, blunt-muzzled, ears like triangles of jet above a russet head, a black mask about dark amber eyes, alert but not yet ready to attack.

Tuli dipped into a pocket, found a stone and settled it into the pouch of her sling. She might not have time at the chini’s first charge to whirl the sling, but she trusted Rane to hold the beast off long enough to let her get set.

“Ajjin Turriy,” Rane yelled, her deep voice singing the words over the whine of the wind. “Friends call.”

The beast withdrew into the room and a broad squat old woman appeared in the doorway a moment later, not smiling but not sour either. She wore a heavy jacket and enough skirts to make her wide as the door. “Who is you said?”

“Rane.”

“Ah.” She stepped back. “Be welcome, friend.”

Rane turned to Tuli. “Wait,” she said. She dismounted, tramped through the snow to the doorway, and stood outlined by light as the dog had been. Whatever she said, the wind carried away her words before they reached Tuli. After a few moments, Rane nodded briskly, came wading back to the macain. She mounted and rode toward the corral.

Tuli slipped the stone and sling back in her pocket, feeling foolish and a bit angry. She was as tired and hungry as the macain were and too irritable to want to ask the questions whirling through her head. And she knew if she made any fuss Rane would leave her behind, was more than half inclined to do so anyway.

With Tuli silently helping her Rane stripped the macain, spread straw in two of the smallish stalls, put out the last of the grain. The gear and the packs they piled in a corner of the stable. Rane took two pairs of snowshoes from those pegged up on one wall. “We can’t take the beasts into the city,” she said. “We’ll have to walk back.”

“We aren’t staying here?”

“Not tonight. Ever used snowshoes?”

Tuli nodded.

“Good.” She handed one set to Tuli and knelt to lace the crude webbed ovals onto her low-heeled riding boots with the fur linings that Hal had provided.

To take her mind off the ache in her legs and the empty ache in her belly, Tuli hurried up and got closer to Rane. “Why couldn’t we take the macain into Sel-ma-Carth?”

Rane slowed her swinging stride a little, held up a gloved finger. “One,” she said. “The grain levy hit them extra hard. There are no riding beasts of any sort left in the city.” She held up another finger. “Two. Ever tried to be inconspicuous on a beast that big and noisy?” Another finger. “Three. They wouldn’t fit through the old sewer outfall.”

Tuli was silent after that, concentrating on maintaining the looping lope that kept her from kicking herself in her ankle or falling on her face. Rane’s long legs seemed tireless, eating up the distance smoothly. Tuli took two strides to her one and still had trouble keeping up. She began gulping air in through her mouth until both mouth and lungs were burning.

She stumbled, the front of the shoe catching against a hummock. Rane caught her, clucked her tongue. “You’re sweating.”

Tuli panted, unable to speak for the moment.

“You should have said something.”

“Huh?”

“It’s cold, Moth.”

“I… uh… noticed… uh…” She began breathing more easily. The black spots that swam like watersprites before her eyes were drifting off. Her head still ached, her legs still shook, but she could talk again.

“Damn,” Rane said. The city was partially visible-the tops of some buildings, the gate towers. The wind blew snow streamers about them, the ice particles scouring their faces. With a shiver, Rane said, “We can’t stay here. But don’t play the fool again, Moth. If I go too fast, yell. Sweat will chill you worse than just about anything. Chill you, kill you. Don’t forget. Let’s go.”

The remainder of the trip to the city walls was a cold, dark struggle, a nightmare Tuli knew she’d never quite forget. Rane was grim and steel-hard, with a harsh patience that grated against Tuli, but prodded her into going on. Once again Rane circled away from the Gate, then angled toward the place where the bulge of the wall blocked the view of the Gate tower.

There was a low arched opening in the wall over a ditch that might have been a dry creekbed, just a hint of the arch showing over the glowing white snow. Rane unlashed her snowshoes, tucked them under her arm, went cautiously down the bank. At her touch, or so it seemed to Tuli, the grate that covered the opening swung inward, a whisper of metallic rattle, a gentle scraping as it shoved aside a smallish drift of snow. Rane stooped and disappeared inside, legs first, head ducking down and vanishing.

Tuli followed. Inside the low tunnel she saw Rane’s snowshoes leaning against the bricks, their shapes picked out by the starlight reflecting off the snow. She set her snowshoes beside them, pushed the grate back in place, and stood, the top of her knitted cap just brushing against the bricks at the center of the arch. About a half a body-length in, the damp smelly darkness was so thick she couldn’t see a thing.

Rane’s, voice came back to her. “Make sure the latch has caught.”

Tuli turned, shook the grate. “It’s caught.”

“Come on, then.”

After a few turns it was almost warm in the abandoned sewer. The round topped hole moved in what felt like a gentle arc, though it was hard to tell direction down here. After what seemed a small eternity she bumped into Rane, stepped hastily back with a muttered apology. A whisper came to her. “Wait.” She waited, heard a soft scraping and saw a smallish square of pale gray light bloom in the brick roof of the tunnel. She heard the rasp of Rane’s breathing, saw her body wriggle up through the opening, heard soft shufflings and some dull hollow thumps. A moment later Rane’s head came back through the opening, absurdly reversed. “Come.”

Tuli pulled herself up. When she was on her feet again, she was standing in a closet hardly large enough to contain the two of them.

“Don’t talk,” Rane whispered. “And follow close.” She hauled on a lever. Pressed up against her Tuli could feel her tension. The wall moved finally, with a squeal of rusted metal that was shockingly loud in the hush. Rane cursed under her breath. Tuli heard the staccato hisses, but couldn’t make out the words. She grinned into the darkness. Though her father would be profoundly shocked, maybe Rane too, she had a very good notion of what the words were and what they meant, having listened on her night rambles to tie-men working with the stock when they didn’t know she was around. Rane eased through the narrow opening. Tuli slid out after her.

They emerged into an empty stable, her nose as well as her eyes testifying to its long disuse, the floor swept clean, not a wisp of straw, the stalls empty; there wasn’t a nubble of grain about nor any water in the trough.

As Tuli was inspecting the stable, Rane was pushing the hidden door shut and having trouble with the latch. It wasn’t catching. Finally, with a snort of disgust, she stepped back and slammed the flat heel of her boot on the outside of the door just above the latch, hissed with satisfaction as it stayed shut.

Tuli chuckled.

Rane shook her head. “Imp,” she murmured, then she touched Tuli’s arm, led her to a door beside one of the stalls. “I haven’t had to use this way before,” she said. She wasn’t whispering, but kept her voice so soft Tuli could barely hear what she said. “Nor has anyone else, from the look of it.” She stopped before the door, frowned at Tuli. “In those bulky clothes you’ll pass easy enough for a boy, Moth, but keep your mouth shut or you’ll have us neck down in soup. We’ll be going to the third floor of this building. No problem about who we are until I knock on a door, then it’s yes or no, the knocking and the name are enough to sink me if something’s wrong. You keep back by the stairhead. Roveda Gesda is the name of the man we’re going to see. If I call him Gesda, you can come and join us, but if I call him Roveda, you go and go fast, get the macain and go back to the Biserica, tell them what we’ve learned so far and tell them our friend in Sel-ma-Carth has gone sour. That’s so much more important than anything you could do for me that there is no comparison I can make.” She reached out and touched Tuli’s cheek, very briefly, a curiously restrained gesture of affection. “I mean it, Moth. Do you understand?”

Reluctantly Tuli nodded.

They went up a flight of stairs, down a long and echoing hall, up the flight at the far end of the hall, back down another hall, up a third flight. The building seemed empty, the doors to the living spaces so firmly shut they might have been rusted in place; the air in the halls and in the enclosed stairways between them was stale and had a secretive smell to it, a reflection more of Tuli’s state of mind than any effect of nature. The third floor. Tuli waited behind a partially opened door while Rane walked alone down this corridor and knocked at another.

After a tense, moment the door opened, swung out. Impossible to see who or what stood there, impossible to guess whether it was good fortune or bad for them. Rane spoke. Tuli saw her lips move, but the words came down the hall as muffled broken sounds, nothing more. Rane canted her head to one side, a habit she had when listening. She spoke again, more loudly. “Gesda, I’ve got a young friend with me.” Tuli heard the key name, pushed the door open and stepped into the hall. Rane saw her hesitate, grinned and beckoned to her.

Roveda Gesda was a wiry little man, smaller than Tuli, his age indeterminate. His wrinkled face was constantly in motion, his eyes restless, seldom looking directly at the person he was speaking to, his mouth was never still, the wrinkles about it shifting in a play of light and shadow. A face impossible to read. It seemed never the same for two consecutive moments. His hands, small even for him, were always touching things, lifting small objects, caressing them, setting them down. Sometimes the objects seemed to flicker, vanish momentarily, appearing again as he set them down.

Tuli settled herself on a cushion by Rane’s feet and endured the sly assessment of the little man’s glittering black eyes. She said nothing, only listened as Rane questioned him about the conditions in the city.

“Grain especially, but all food is controlled by the Aglis of each district and the garrison settled on us. We got to line up each day at distribution points and some…” the tip of his tongue flickered out, flicked from corner to corner of his wide mobile mouth, “some pinch-head fool of a Follower measures out our day’s rations.” He snorted. “Stand in line for hours. And we got to pay for the privilege. No handouts. Fifteen tersets a day. You don’t got the coin or its equivalent in metal, too bad. Unless you wearing Follower black and stick a token from the right Agli under the airhead’s nose.”

“Carthise put up with that?”

“What can we do? Supplies was low anyway.” He glared down at his hands. “What with storms and Floarin sending half the Guard, Malenx himself heading ’em, to strip the city and the tars north of here-grain, fruit, hauhaus, you name it, she scooped it up. Needs meat for her army, she does. Once a tenday we get meat now, soon enough won’t have any. Stinkin’ Followers butchered all the macain and oadats and even pets, anything that ate manfood or could make manfood. Smoked it or salted it down. Sent a lot out in the tithe wagons. With the snow now that will stop but folk won’t be able to get out and hunt in the hills, a pain in the butt even getting out to fish and having to give half what you catch as a thank offering. What I mean, this city’s lower’n a snake’s navel.” After a minute his wrinkles shifted and he looked fraudulently wise and sincerely sly. “Some ha’ been getting out, those that know how. Awhile back we had us a nice little underground market going. Snow shut down on that some, but some a the miner families are out there trapping vachhai and karhursin; better we pay them than those foreigners and sucking twits. Tell you something too, not a day passes but some Follower he goes floating out face down in shit. Even the aglis, they beginning to twitch and look over their shoulders. Trying to keep a tight hand on us, they are, but I tell you, Rane good friend, the tighter they squeeze the slippier we get.” He grinned, his eyes almost disappearing in webs of wrinkles, then he shook his head, suddenly sobered. “Folk getting restless. I can feel the pressure building. Going to be an explosion one a these days and blood in the streets. One thing you say about Hern, you pay your tithes, keep quiet, he let you go your way and don’t wring you dry. Where is he, you know? What’s he doing? He weren’t much but he keep the lice off our backs. Rumor says no Sesshel Fair come spring. That happen, this city burns.”

He shifted around in his chair, sat with his elbow on the chairarm, his hand masking his mouth. “Always been folk here who want to stick fingers in other folks’ lives, tell ’em how to think, how to talk, tell ’em how to hold mouth, wiggle little finger, you know; they the ones that got the say now, and by-damn do they say.” He shifted again. “What’s the Biserica doing? Do we get any kind a help? Say a few meien to kick out the Guards. Maybe a few swords and crossbows. The Followers, they aren’t much as fighters, no better armed than we used to be. Course we had to turn in our arms. ’Nother damn edict. I wouldn’t say there aren’t a few little knives and you name it cached here and there, owners forgetting the hell out of ’em. Still, some bows and a good supply of bolts wouldn’t hurt. Wouldn’t have to get them inside the walls, me and my friends could see to that.

“Got five norits in the Citadel, they sticking noses everywhere. Maiden knows what they looking for, how much they see. One thing, they caught Naum peddling black-market meat. Whipped him bloody in the market square, took him to the House of Repentance. Lot of folk smirking like they something, watching all that. Well, he not easy to be around, but they don’t need to enjoy it that much. I ain’t seen him since. Me, I been lucky, you might say.” He fidgeted nervously, One foot tapping at the reed mat on the floor, the shallow animal eyes turning and turning as if he sought the cobwebs of Nor longsight in the corners of the room. “It’s hoping they won’t sniff you out.”

Rane shifted in her chair, her leg rubbing against Tuli’s arm. Tuli glanced up but could read nothing in the ex-meie’s face. “Any chance of that?” Rane held up a hand, pinched thumb and forefinger together, then widened the gap between them, raised an eyebrow.

Fingers smoothing along his thigh, Gesda shrugged. “Don’t know how their longsight works. Can’t judge the odds they light on us. Here. Now.”

“A lottery?”

“Might say.”

“The artisans’ guilds?”

“Disbanded. Plotting and stirring up trouble, the pontifex, he say. Head Agli here, what he calls himself. Me, I’m a silversmith. We don’t think we disbanded, not at all. No. Followers like lice in guild halls but we keep the signs and the rules, we do. Friend of mine, Munah the weaver, he… hmmm… had some doings with me last passage. From things he say, weavers same as silversmiths. Guilds be here before the Heslins, yeah, even before the Biserica, ain’t no pinchhead twit going to break ’em. They went secret before, can be secret again.”

“Followers in the guild halls, how bad is that? Do they report on you to the Aglim?”

Tuli listened to the voices droning on and on. The raspy, husky whisper of Gesda, the quicker, flatter voice of Rane with its questions like fingers probing the wounds in Sel-ma-Carth. Talk and talk, that was all this adventure was. That and riding cold and hungry from camp to camp. Especially hungry. She stopped listening, leaned against the chair and dozed off, the voices still droning in her ears.

Some time later Rane shook her awake. Gesda was nowhere in sight and Rane had a rep-sack filled with food that plumped its sides and made the muscles in her neck go stringy as she slid the strap onto her shoulder. Tuli blinked, then got stiffly to her feet. “We going? What time is it?”

“Late.” Rane crossed the room to the door. “Shake yourself together, Moth.” She put her hand on the latch, hesitated. “You have your sling with you?”

Tuli rubbed at her eyes, wiggled her shoulders and arms. “Yah,” she said. “And some stones.” She pushed her hand into her jacket pocket, pulled out the sling. “Didn’t know what might be waiting for us.”

“Good. Keep it handy. Let me go first. You keep a turn behind me on the stairs, watch me down the halls. Hear?” Tuli nodded. As Rane opened the door and stepped out, she found a good pebble, pinched it into the pocket of the sling. She peered past the edge of the door. Rane was vanishing into the stairwell. Tuli went down the hall, head turning, eyes wide, nervous as a lappet on a bright night.

At the foot of the stairs she opened the second-floor door a crack and looked out. Rane was moving quickly along the hall, her feet silent on the flags in spite of the burden she carried.

A door opened. A black-robed figure stepped into the hall in front of Rane. “Stand quiet, meie.” There was taut triumph in the soft harsh voice. “Or I’ll fry your ears.”

Tuli hugged the wall, hardly breathing as she gathered herself. She caught the sling thongs with her right hand, held the stone pinched in the leather pocket with her left, wishing as she did so that she knew how to throw a knife. The sling took long seconds to get up to speed and though she was accurate to her own satisfaction, there was that gap between attack and delivery that seemed like a chasm to her in that moment. She used her elbow to ease the door open farther, moving it slowly until she could slip through the crack.

“Not meie, Norit.” Rane’s voice was cool and scornful as she swung the sack off her shoulder and dropped it by her foot. Tuli crept farther along the hallway, willing Rane to move a little, just a little and give her a shot.

“Spy then,” the norit said. “What difference does the word make? Come here, woman.” The last word was a curse in his mouth.

Tuli started the sling whirring, round and round over her head, her eyes fixed on the bit of black she could see past Rane’s arm. Come on, Rane, move! Damn damn damn. “Rane,” she yelled, hearing her voice as a breaking squeak.

Rane dropped as if they’d rehearsed the move. With a swift measuring of distance and direction, a sharp explosion of breath, Tuli loosed the stone.

Rane rose and lunged at the norit. As he flung himself down and back, the stone striking and rebounding from the wall above him, Rane was on him, taking him out with a snake strike of her bladed hand to his throat. Then he was writhing on the cold stone, mouth opening and closing without a sound as he fought to breathe, fought to scream, then he was dead. When he went limp, Rane was up on her feet, sack in hand, thrusting her head into the living space he’d come from. She vanished inside, came out without the sack and hurried back to the norit.

Breathing hard, almost dizzy with the sudden release from tension, Tuli ran down the hall. Rane dropped to her knees by the nor’s body. She looked around. “Thanks, Moth.” She began going through the man’s clothing, snapped a chain that circled his neck and pulled out a bit of polished, silver-backed crystal, a small mirror no larger than a macai’s eye. She threw it onto the flags, surged onto her feet and brought her boot heel down hard on it, grunting with satisfaction as she ground it to powder. Then she was down again, starting to reach for the fragments. She drew her hand back. “Moth.”

“Huh?”

“Get his knife. Cut me a square of cloth from his robe big enough to hold this. Hurry,” she said, her voice whisper-soft.

When Tuli handed her the cloth and the knife, she scraped the fragments onto the cloth without touching them, tied the corners into knots over them, still being careful not to touch them with her flesh. With a sigh of relief she dumped the small bundle on the nor’s chest. “Help me carry him.”

“Where?”

“In there.” She pointed to the half-open door. “No one lives there.”

After they laid him on the floor of the small bare room, Rane put her hand on Tuli’s shoulder. “Would you mind staying here with him a minute? I’ve got to warn Gesda.” Tuli swallowed, then nodded, unable to speak. “I won’t be a minute.” She hurried out.

Tuli wandered over to the shuttered window. Little light crept in between the boards. Unable to stop herself she glanced over her shoulder at the body, thought she saw it move. She blinked, looked away, looked quickly back at him. He had moved. His head was turned toward her now, white-ringed dead eyes staring at her. Tuli gulped, backed slowly to the door. Her shaking hands caught hold of the latch but she scolded herself into leaving the door shut and watching the corpse, ready to keep it from crawling out the room and betraying them. Her first shock of terror draining off, she began to be interested, feeling a bit smug. Anyone else would still be running, but not me, she thought, not realizing that a lot of her calm was due to her gift for seeing into shadow, nothing for her imagination to take hold of and run with; she’d automatically shifted into her nightsight, that sharp black and white vision that gave her details as clearly as any fine etching.

The body humped, the arms thumped clumsily over the uneven flags, the booted feet lurched about without direction or effect. She frowned. That weird, ragdoll twitching reminded her of something. “Yah. I see.” It was just as the Agli had moved when her father and Teras had hung his naked painted body like a clowndoll in front of Soдreh’s nest in Cymbank, just as he twitched when Teras jerked on the rope around his chest. “Gahh,” she whispered. “Creepy.” The mirror fragments on the corpse’s chest, they were doing that; the other norits, they were calling him. Maiden only knew how long before they came hunting. She started to sweat.

The latch moved under her hand. She yelped and jumped away, relaxed when she saw it was Rane. “Look,” she whispered, “they’re calling him.”

Rane frowned, flinched nervously when the body humped again, slapped a dead hand down near her foot. “Shayl!”

“What are we going to do?”

Rane skipped away as the hand started flopping about almost as if it felt for her ankles. She looked vaguely around. “Moth,” she whispered, “see if you can find a drain.”

“Huh? Oh,” Tuli looked about, saw a ragged drape, pushed it aside and went through the arch into the room beyond. Nothing there. Not even any furniture. A familiar smell, though, the stink of old urine. Another curtained arch, narrower than the first. Small closet with assorted holes in the floor, several worn blocks raised above the tiles, a ragged old bucket pushed under a spigot like the tap on a cider barrel. She turned the handle, jumped as a gush of rusty water spattered down, half of it missing the bucket. “Hey,” she murmured, “what city folk get up to.” When the bucket was filled, she managed to shut off the flow. Grinning and very proud of herself, she raced back to Rane. “Through here,” she said.

Rane carried the bundle with thumb and forefinger, holding it as far as she could from her body. She dropped it down the largest hole and Tuli dumped the bucket full of water after it. She filled the bucket and dumped it again. “That enough?”

“Should be.” Rane straightened her shoulders. “That’ll be on its way downriver before the other norits can get a fix on it, if what I’m told is accurate.” She spoke in her normal tones but Tuli could see the beads of sweat still popping out on her brow. “If we leave that body here, everyone in the building will suffer for it. We’ve got to move it.”

Tuli followed her back to the first room. “Where?”

Rane glared down at the body, put her toe into its side and shifted it slightly; Tuli watched, very glad the pseudo-life had gone out of it when they got rid of the mirror fragments. “Out of here. Somewhere. Damn. I’m not thinking.” She ran her fingers through her stiff blonde hair until it resembled a haystack caught in a windstorm. “Have to get him completely out of the city and far enough away or they’ll animate him. No way to burn him. I’m afraid I jammed the panel we came through. Umm. There’s another entrance to the old sewerway a few streets down. Maiden bless, I hope we don’t have to take to the streets carrying a corpse. Keep your fingers crossed, Tuli; pray I can get the panel open. Let’s haul him down to the stable first, then we’ll see. Get his legs.” She stooped, heaved the sack onto her shoulder, got a grip on his and lifted.

Rane pushed and pried about with the norit’s knife, kicked it again, but the panel stayed stubbornly shut. She came back to the body and scowled at Tuli. With hands that shook a little, she dug into Tuli’s jacket pocket, pulled the knitted helmet out and dragged it down over Tuli’s head. Then she took a long time getting the stray locks tucked under the ribbing. She stepped back and sighed. “Moth, it’s dark out there.” She nodded at the windows rimed over with ice. “Might be snowing some, norits snooping, Followers, Maiden knows what you’ll find out there. I’d rather do this myself, but your eyes are made for the job, and you’ll stand out less. Take a look at the street. I’ll stand, back-up this time. See if anyone’s about, see if it stays clear. Anything looks funny, get back fast. You hear?”

Tuli raised her brows but said nothing. With a challenging grin and a flirt of her hand at Rane’s warning growl, she went out.

The big heavy door opened more easily than she expected and she almost fell down the front steps. Of course it’s cleared, she thought. Don’t be an idiot like Nilis. The norit came through, didn’t he? Pull yourself together, girl, and act like you know what you’re doing. She put her hands in her pockets and looked around as casually as she could.

The streets had been cleared of snow sometime during the day. The clouds hung low overhead and a few flakes were drifting down, caught for a moment in the fan of light coming from the hall behind her, enough snow to speckle the dark wet stone with points of ephemeral white, promise of a heavier fall to come. She waited there for several minutes, oppressed by the cold and the silence. There was no one about as far as she could see; not even her nightsight could find what wasn’t there. If there was danger, it was hidden behind the gloomy facades fronting the narrow street. I could use Teras’s gong, she thought. Maiden bless, I wish he was here. She looked around again and went back in.

Rane was waiting just inside the front door, tense and alert; she relaxed as soon as she saw Tuli, but shook her head when Tuli started to speak. When they were back in the stable beside that cumbersome body, she said, “Any vermin about?”

“None that I saw.” Tuli shrugged. “Late, cold, wet, starting to snow again, who else but us’d be idiots enough to leave a warm bed?”

“Good enough. Get his feet.”

Tuli went shuffling along, panting under the growing weight of the dead norit’s legs. She would have sworn that they’d gained a dozen pounds since they’d started. Conscious always of what they carried, she tensed at every corner and that tired her more. The cold crept into the toes of her boots and stabbed needles into her feet; the flakes blown against her face and down her neck melted and trickled into the crevices of her body, the icy water burning like fire. The wind was a squealing blast, sometimes battering at her, sometimes circling round her like a sniffing sicamar when the buildings protected them from its full force. She wondered why the streets were clear of snow, then remembered her own wretched time in the Cymbank House of Repentance where they tried to wear her spirit away by making her scrub and rescrub a section of hallway (until she threw the dirty water over the matron in charge after she’d made disparaging remarks about her mother). She grinned at the memory and felt a bit better. She decided the Followers didn’t seem to have much imagination; they probably worked those they wanted to punish in some lesser way than flogging, making them dig up and carry off the snow. She could see herds of sullen folk tromping through the streets filling barrows of the soggy white stuff and wheeling them out in an endless line to dump them in the river. Or somewhere. After a minute, she grinned again as she thought of the Carthise having enough of this endless and futile labor, turning on the Followers and dumping them instead of snow into the river, but the cold sucked away that brief glow and she was stumbling along, miserable again.

. Her feet slipped and nearly went out from under her if she didn’t set them down carefully; once the stiffening legs she held saved her from crashing. The snow was coming down faster; Rane was little more than a shadow before her. Tuli felt herself a shade, a being without substance, a conductor of the lower levels of Shayl, ferrying unblessed dead to their torment. She walked grimly on, half-blinded, concentrating most of her will on feet she could no longer feel. Then Rane turned into a narrow alley between two large buildings, solidly black, melting into the black of the strengthening storm. The sudden cessation of the wind’s howl, the withdrawal of its numbing pressure, made her footsteps boom in her ears and her face burn as if the skin was ready to peel off the bone. She started shaking, fought to control it, but could not; it was all she could do to keep her hold on the corpse’s legs.

Rane halted, shrugged off the sack, dropped the corpse’s shoulders, dragging the legs from Tuli’s grip, pulling her onto her knees. While the ex-meie knelt before a small heavy door and started work on the lock, Tuli crouched beside her listening to the faint clicks of the lockpicks. She wiped carefully at her nose, pulled off one of her gloves and used the knitted liner to wipe the wet from her face and neck, still shivering.

Rane stood, waved at the black gape. “Get in,” she said. “Ramp going down. Don’t fall off it.”

“What about him?”

“Never mind him. Here.” She pressed a firestriker into Tuli’s hand. “See if you can get a lamp lit.”

“Lamp?”

“On the wall by the door at the far end.”

The lamplight was a soft, rich amber, but there was only a fingerwidth of oil left in the reservoir. Tuli suspected they were lucky to find that much since this subterranean chamber looked as bare and deserted as the stables where they’d first come in. She watched Rane roll the corpse down the ramp, leave it sprawled at the bottom, dumping the sack beside it. Her nose was red and beginning to peel a little, her face was windburnt and strained. She came over to Tuli, cupped a hand under her chin and lifted her face to the light. “You’re a mess.”

Tuli moved her head away. “You’re not much better. I’m all right.”

Rane frowned at her. “I’ve got no business dragging you into this. Hal was right.” She pulled off her cap and shook the snow from it. “If I had the least sense in my head, I’d have sent you back the night we left.”

“I wouldn’t have gone,” Tuli said flatly.

“Dragged you then.”

Tuli glared at her. “I won’t melt,” she said. “Or blow away, I’ve seen winter before.”

“From a well-provisioned house with fires on every floor.” Rane touched her nose absently, quick little dabs, her eyes unfocused as if she was unaware of what she was doing. Then she shrugged. “It’s done.”

“Yah. What is this place?”

“Warehouse, part of a merchant’s home complex. Usually isn’t this empty, but I took a chance it would be. Not much trade the past few months.” She went quickly to the wall that fronted the street and began feeling along it. Tuli got to her feet and started walking about. It was appreciably warmer in this long narrow cellar, but the air had a used-up stale smell. She waved her arms about, wiggled her fingers, did a few twisting bends. Sitting down had been a mistake, she’d known it as soon as she was down, could feel her muscles seizing up as the minutes passed. She watched Rane fumbling about the wall, cursing under her breath as she sought the trigger that would let them back into the ancient dry sewerway.

Then Rane hissed with triumph and tore the panel open. She came striding back, thrust her arm through the strap of the sack, blew Tuli along before her to the corpse and swept on to haul his shoulders up and wait impatiently for Tuli to lift the feet.

Crawling on hands and knees they dragged the body through the long dark hole. In an odd way, Tuli found it easier hauling him where she couldn’t see him, not even with her special sight. Now there was only the stiff feel of wooden flesh wrapped in heavy wool. She could pretend it was something else she was helping to drag over the bricks. She had no idea where they were going, but plenty of confidence in Rane. Owl-eyes, Rane had called her once. Only a few months ago? So much had happened since, it seemed like several lifetimes. Moth, Rane called her now. She liked that, she liked the image, great-eyed winged creature swooping through the night, she liked the affection she heard in the way Rane said it.

There was no light at all, down here. Never in her life had she been in blackness so complete. She began tasting and sniffing at the thick black around her. Blacker than an agli’s heart, blacker than Nilis’ soul had to be. Black. Raven, ebony, obsidian, jet, sable, sooty, swart, pitchy.

In the blackness, sounds: scuffle of hands, knees, feet, sliding whisper of the norit’s black wool robe over the bricks, pounding of blood in ears, assorted rubbings of surface against surface, the rasp of breathings.

In the blackness, smells: wet wool and stone, wet leather, ancient dust, sour-sweet taint of something recently dead, not the corpse they pulled behind them, smell of cold over all like paint, the dead smell of the cold.

Then she saw bricks a short distance ahead. Then she saw Rane’s hand and side. The light crept up to them, shining back at them off the snow. They crawled around a bend and she could see the crossbars of the grating and the spray of snow drifted through them.

Rane dropped the nor’s arm and crawled up to the opening. She fished in her boot for the lockpick, reached a long arm through the grating and began working on the lock. Some fumbling and grimaces later, she got to her feet, stood hunched over, brushed off her knees and tugged at the grating. It squealed and hung up on the small drift but she jerked at it, muscling it a little farther open. She frowned at the opening, twisted half-around to look at the corpse. “I suppose we can kick him through.”

“Well, he’s getting a bit stiff.”

Rane leaned back, reached out, tapped Tuli on her nose. “That’s a norit for you; anything to make life difficult.”

After some awkward maneuvering, they got the body through the opening. Tuli shivered as the long sweep of the wind slammed into her as soon as she stepped out from the wall. Above the whine of the wind she could hear the tumble of the river close by, so close it startled her, She stomped freezing feet in the snow as Rane tugged the grating back into place and snapped the latch.

The river was not yet frozen over, though plates of ice were forming along the banks, breaking off and sweeping away with the hurrying water. Rane and Tuli swung the body back and forth, then launched it into an arc, out over the broad expanse of icy black snow-melt. It splashed down, sank, resurfaced; for a short while a stiff arm appeared and disappeared, the body rolling over and over as the current sucked it away.

Rane plucked at Tuli’s sleeve, leaned down to shout in her face. “Hook onto my belt. We’ll pick up the snowshoes and get back to the macain.”

“What about Gesda?”

“He can take care of himself.”

“Tell me about him.”

Rane chuckled, “Later, Moth. When I don’t have to yell every word.” She took Tuli’s gloved hand, hooked it over her jacket’s belt and started plowing forward through the deepening snow, the sack that Gesda had given her bumping rhythmically with the shift of her shoulders.

The stone hut was cold and stuffy at once, the windows shuttered, the heavy door shut tight. Inside, it smelled of old woman and chini in equal proportions (though the big black chini Tuli had seen before gave no sign of her presence) as if generations of both species had in some way oozed into the walls and stayed there to haunt the place with their odors. There were cured hides on the walls to break the drafts that somehow found their way through the thick stone walls and the tightly fitted shutters and the door. More hides were scattered about the floor, pelts piled on pelts so that walking across the room was an exercise in caution and balance. The old woman sat cross-legged before the fire, her face a pattern of black and red, glitters of eyeball from the drooping slits in the smudges about her eyes. Her hands were square and strong like her face, wrinkled like her face, the palms broad, the fingers so short they looked deformed, more like an animal’s paws than human hands. Tuli watched her and felt the last of the chill, physical and mental, begin to seep out of her. She glanced at Rane and saw something of the same relaxation in the ex-meie’s face. “Tell me about Roveda Gesda.”

Rane sighed. “He calls himself a silversmith, but he’d starve if he had to live by it. He’s a thief and smuggler and, well call him an organizer. He’s got connections in Oras with the man we’re going to see there, with a number of caravan masters and certain merchants on the east coast. He and some others like him give us a lot of information from all over the world.” She yawned, twisted her head about. “Shayl, I’m tired. Hal’s part of the net, so are the others we’ll be talking to.” She smiled at Tuli. “Maybe you’ll be a part of it one day.” She turned to the old woman. “Read for us if you will, Ajjin.”

The old woman flicked a hand at the fire. The pinch of herbs she tossed on the coals flared up, blue and green, a pungent, pleasant smell floating out into the room, trails of misty smoke drifting out to hover about them. The old woman breathed deeply three times then three times more. Her hands moved on her thighs, fingers curling to touch her thumbs. Her lips, dark, almost black, trembled, stilled, trembled again. “A changer’s moon is on us,” she said, her voice at once soft and harsh. “The land is stirring, a strange folk come with strange ways. What was will be lost in what will be. Follower and Keeper both will fade. Changer’s moon…”

The words echoed in Tuli’s head. Moon. Moon. Moon. Moon. Passages of change. Change. Clang-clang, chimes ringing, the world, the word, the clapper ting-tant-tang. War. War. Warooo. A howl. Churn the land. Waroo, oohwar, wrooo. Waroo. Churn the land. Destroy. Destruction. Death, rot, death and rot, the old gone, the new born from ashes, ashes and pain. Changer’s moon. New newborn thing… thing what will what will what will come? Who knows what it is, misborn or wellborn, mis or well?

The red light shifted across the black of the wood, forming into shapelier blobs, melting into anonymity, forming again. Each time closer to the shape of something-as if something agonized to be born out of the fire. Tuli watched that struggle with a growing tension and anxiety. Now and again, for relief as much as anything else, she shifted her gaze to Rane. Who sat silent, exhaustion registered in the map of faint lines etched across her pale skin, too tired to move, too comfortable with the warmth on her face to go to the sleep she needed, too tired to see the thing that was happening before her eyes. Tuli swung her head and stared at the old woman.

Ajjin was brooding over the fire. Whether she too saw nothing or saw the beast trotting about the coals, Tuli couldn’t tell. Beast. Small and sleek, as long as the distance between her elbow and the tip of her longest finger, translucent body with a sort of spun glass fur, red and gold. The beast leaped from the fire and went trotting about the room, pushing its nose against things, small black nose that twitched with an amazing energy in spite of the stuffy chill of the room. The old one sat staring at the coals, silent now, but Tuli thought she looked inward, not out. Her lips moved, the black hole of her mouth changed shape like a visual echo of the rhythm of the silent chant.

Gradually the walls around the room turned to mist, melted away entirely. At first Tuli was only peripherally aware of this, then suddenly-yet at the time so smoothly she felt no shock or surprise-she wasn’t in the room at all. Somehow she floated above the mijloc, could see the whole of it, see it from many directions at once, moving points of view. It was as if she was in a great round dance, fleeting from point to point, round and round the mijloc-and others danced with her, wraiths of folk she knew, wraiths of folk she’d never seen before, dancing the round dance of Primavera. She was euphoric, then later as the dance went on and on under the dance of the moons, through moon-shadow and moon glow, across the snow-stifled land, she was afraid and not afraid, the others lifting her, cradling her, singing soundless songs to her that she sang back to them; they sang together to the land slipping away below them, they sang to the life of the land, calling to it, comforting it, rousing it and the life it bore to slip the chains laid on it, to burst free of all but the round of life itself, the round dance of birth and death and rebirth.

The snow boiled and bubbled, white fire spitting out, birthing out animal shapes, more animals like the fire born in the old woman’s hut. The animal shapes, eyes glowing amber gold, ruby gold, sungold, dance the round dance, exuberant, elegant, elegiac, mute voices chanting soundless song, the earth replying with sonorous bell notes to the touches of the dancing feet.

One by one, as the spiral of the dance tightened, the animal shapes dropped away; the ghost dancers dropped away with them and sank into the land to wait. Yes, wait. That was the feel. A tension, an explosion of terrible patience. They were waiting…

Tuli blinked, dazed, wet her lips, stared at the dying fire, moved her shoulders, surprised at the ache in them, and looked down to see the fire born curled like a bit of shaped light in her lap. She moved again, her legs had gone to sleep and the biting aches and nips of twitching muscles made themselves known, moved without thinking of the beast lying in the hollow of her lap. It made no sound when she jarred it, but adjusted quietly to the new hollows it filled, lifted the pointed head and gazed at her from alert and eerily knowing gold-amber eyes.

“What are you?” she said.

“What?” Rane looked up. She scrubbed her hands hard across her face, straightened out her legs, drew her knees up again. “Time we were for bed.” She got to her feet, moving more laboriously than usual, stumbling as a foot caught on one of the layered pelts, catching herself with one hand pressed to the stone wall close beside her.

Tuli reached down to touch the shadow beast. For an instant only she felt a sort of resistance, then her hand passed through it to rest on her thigh. She jerked the hand up with a sharp exclamation, startled and rather frightened. The beast’s eyes seemed to twinkle at her, its mouth opened in a cat-grin. She felt a chuckle bubble in her blood, its laughter injected into her veins. She scratched delicately behind a glassy ear and laughed again, her own laughter this time.

Rane blinked at her. “You’re overtired, Moth, getting silly.”

“Not me,” Tuli said. She started prodding very carefully at the red-black outline. “Ajjin, what is this? Do you know?” It cocked its head, sharp ears pricking, and grinned that curling grin at her and she grinned back, feeling giddy and very happy. It was warm and heavy and alive, no matter if her hand slipped into it like a finger poking through the skin on hot milk.

The old woman stirred. She looked at Tuli’s lap and smiled. “Soredak,” she said, her husky voice soft and filled with wonder. “In your tongue, a fireborn. A channel of power.”

Rane frowned. “What are you talking about?”

Ajjin chuckled, but she said nothing more, only shook her head.

Rane thrust impatient fingers through her straw thatch. “We have to leave early,” she said. “With the norit vanishing like that, they’re like a wasps’ nest stirred up. If the weather’s right for them, they’ll have a dozen traxim up, the other norits, I mean. Ajjin, Gesda’s provisions should hold you till your son gets back from the hunt. Have you messages we can carry for you? Or is there aught else we can do for you? Favor for favor, my friend. To keep the balance.”

Tuli enjoyed the feel of the warm softness of the beast on her thighs and began to accept that Rane could not see it, would not believe it was there even if told of it. The ex-meie was excluded from almost all of what had happened here. She felt a sadness that this was so, and a touch of pity that the woman she admired so much must for some reason be excluded from this wonder. She looked down at the beast. “Ildas,” she whispered to it. “I’m going to call you Ildas.” She smoothed her hand over the curve of its side and back, slanted a glance at Ajjin, met her eyes and knew suddenly that there were going to be very few who could see her new companion and that his presence was part of the changes to come. Changer’s moon. She turned round to Rane and knew that their time together was coming to an end. She’d expected to cling to Rane long after this probe was finished, she knew that now, and knew also there was no hope of this, that she and Ildas would move in another direction to other goals that did not include Rane.

Ajjin rocked gently on her haunches. “Ah-huh, ah-huh,” she said, not the guttural double grunt of assent everybody used, but more like the drumbeats that opened a dance. “Oras,” she said. “Debrahn the midwife. My son’s wife’s elda-cousin. The feeling comes that Debrahn has troubles.”

“We won’t be there soon.” Rane sounded more than a little dubious. “It’s a tenday of hard riding if we were to go straight there from here, and we won’t do that, we can’t do that. It’ll be a passage at least before we get to Oras. At least, Ajjin.”

Ajjin nodded. “There is no pressing, only an uneasiness. Debrahn lives in the hanguol rookery. Not a place of power.”

“To say the least. Well, if she’s kept her head down…”

“There are calls she must answer.”

“Healwoman?”

“The training but not the name. She was one who left before the time was complete. Mother died and father called her home.”

“But she still keeps the covenants?”

“For her, that is not a matter of choice.”

“Then she won’t be willing to leave with us.”

“There will be something for you, so I feel.”

“What we can, we will.”

Ajjin smiled. “For you as her there is no choice.”

“Except to win the battle coming and hope such as she can stay alive.”

“You will have help. Hern comes.”

“You saw that?”

“Last night I looked for my son and found Hern. He brings strangers to the mijloc. Fighters with ways that clash with ours and weapons of great power; they carry with them the seeds of the change-it is they, not the Nearga Nor, that bring the end to us-I who walk on four legs and two, the child your friend who has magic of another sort. Our time is passing, not yours, Rane; you’ll find them much like you and fit well with them.”

“You’re full of portents and prophecies tonight, old friend, and I don’t understand a word of them.”

“You never did, that’s why you’ll fit so well into the new age, good friend. The magic fades, it fades, ah well-get you to your beds, both of you before sleep takes you here.”

They rode in silence over the white fields, a gray sky lowering over them, fat, oily clouds thick with snow that dropped a sprinkling of flakes on them and kept the traxim from spying on them. They followed the river a while until it began pushing them too far east, then risked riding onto a bridge road; a ford was far too risky in this cold and the watches at the bridges far more apt to be huddled over mulled cider and a warm fire than keeping an eye out for fools trying to travel in such weather.

The bridge was unsteady, moving to the push of the water in a way that so frightened the macain they wouldn’t budge from the bank. Ildas leaped down from Tuli’s thigh where he’d been perched with confident serenity since the ride began and ran a weave across the rickety structure, battered into a dangerous state by the violent storms of the Gather and the Scatter. Hern had kept norits employed to see that the bridges and the roads were maintained, but Floarin had other priorities. It was one more wrong to mark against her. But after Ildas had spun his invisible web, the span steadied and the stones knit together more firmly, their macain relaxed and crossed the bridge at an easy lope.

Rane lifted an eyebrow at Tuli, but said nothing.

The tar hedgerows began not far from the river, restricting their movement to the twisty country lanes, piled high now with snowdrifts-and more snow promised from the clouds overhead although they seemed reluctant to let down their burden and the fall held off day after day as they angled toward Oras, spending most nights either camped out of the wind in the thick groves that dotted the landscape or creeping into empty outbuildings of the winter-settled tars whenever they were reasonably sure of being unobserved. They visited a tar here and there, Rane collecting reports from men or women whose anger lay like slumbering geysers under a very thin skin of control. The farther north they got, the more depressing the tars were, the tie villages were more than half empty, always children crying somewhere, signs of hunger everywhere even among the more prosperous villagers in the scattered small settlements dotted among the tars. Rane grew tense and brittle, scolding Tuli about her delusion-which is what she called Ildas-telling her it wasn’t healthy to carry the tricks of her imagination so far. She could not see, feel or hear Ildas and was deeply troubled by Tuli’s persistence in playing with him, talking to and about him. But Tuli watched the little creature jig about, listened to him sing his soundless tunes, laughed as he ran on threads of air, turned serious when he mimed the presence ahead of traxim or patrols out on sweeps from the villages, guards and Followers after food thieves and vagrants. For three tendays they traveled across the mijloc without serious trouble, only the niggling little things, the cold, the meager unsatisfying meals, the depression from constant reminders of the misery of the mijlockers, the floggings they’d watched in villages, the hunger in men’s faces, the pinched look of the children. Twice more Rane left Tuli in empty outbuildings, hidden with the macain and instructions to wait for no more than three hours then get away fast and quiet if Rane had not returned. No noncombatants in this war, Rane told Hal while Tuli listened not understanding. She did now. She was Rane’s insurance. She was able to take care of herself so Rane wouldn’t have to worry about her and she wasn’t more urgently needed elsewhere, so she was available as backup. Rane liked her well enough, that she was sure of, didn’t have to fret about. But the ex-meie didn’t really want companionship, despite all her assertions to the contrary; if she hadn’t needed backup she’d never have brought Tuli with her no matter how much she liked her. Tuli found these thoughts cold comfort, cold like everything else these days, but comfort nonetheless, and she settled down to prove her competence and deserve the trust Rane was showing in her.

At the first of those tars Rane took her inside the House and they slept in relative comfort that night, with full bellies and a fire in the room, at the second Rane, came back looking grimmer than ever. Without saying anything, she took her macai’s reins and led him outside, walked beside him, alert and on edge, not relaxing until they were almost an hour away from the tar. Tuli asked no questions, walked beside her, keeping up as best she could. Finally Rane stopped and swung into the saddle. She waited until Tuli was up also, then said, “Norit.” She kneed her mount into a walk. “Sniffing about. Not really suspicious but looking to catch anything that stuck its head up. Keletty only had a moment to warn me there were noses in her household and tell me about the norit. Nothing else she could do. Mozzen was doing his catechism for the Agli who was nervous as he was with the norit listening in. Catch this.” She tossed a greasy packet to Tuli. “Some bread and dripping, a bit of cheese, that’s all she could spare.”

Tuli looked down at the packet. She was too tired to be hungry. She smiled down at Ildas, a blob of warmth cradled against her belly. “Think you could hang onto this for me?”

The fireborn grinned his cat-grin, held up his forepaws; she tucked the packet down between those tiny black hands, smiled again as Ildas curled round it. Melt my cheese, she thought. Nice. She looked up to see Rane scowling at her. “I’m too tired to eat,” she said.

“Take care, Tuli, don’t lose the food, it cost Keletty something, giving it to us.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t.”

They rode another hour, slipped into a broken-down herdsman’s hut, gave the macain some stolen grain and sat down for a quick cold meal. Tuli’s wasn’t cold. The bread was steaming, the cheese melted all through it She looked up to see Rane staring. “The fireborn who’s only my imagination,” she said, grinning in spite of her fatigue. “He’s got a hot little body.”

Rane shook her head. “Or you’re more talented than you think. Ajjin called you a magic child and, by damn, I think she’s right.” She stretched, groaned. “We’ll ride by night from now on. Could use the rest, both of us. I’ll take first watch. You crawl into your blankets and get some sleep. Barring accidents, we’ll spend the day here. Couple of nights’ ride to Appentar. Lembo Appen’s a man who likes his meals so at least the food should be good.”

The signal came when she was about to lead the macain out of the half-collapsed but in the grove’s center-long and breathy, the wail of a hunting kanka, one, then two, then one. But Ildas was as twitchy as the fire he was born from, darting about as if blown by a wind that didn’t exist except for him. The silent gray trees stood like old bones about her, not a rustle or a creak out of them, the snow shone an eerie gray-white in the pulsing moonlight as TheDom and the Dancers rode gibbous through the breaks in the clouds. She frowned at Ildas, looked over her shoulder at the macain. Working with furious speed so Rane wouldn’t be worried, she stripped the gear off the beasts, all but the halters, led them back inside and tied them where they could reach the snow if they needed water, dumped before each of them a small pile of grain. Ildas was too upset; even if Rane thought it was safe, Tuli wanted to take no chances. The fireborn ran before her, nervous and excited; he came back to circle so closely about her feet she was sure she was going to trip over him. She started to scold him, then saw that he was kicking up the snow and hiding all trace of her passage so she pressed her lips together and endured that along with the soundless yaps that were making her head hurt. She wasn’t feeling very well anyway, hadn’t been sleeping well for several days, her menses were due, she was overtired, underfed and ready to snarl at the least thing. He sensed that finally and went quiet as she reached the edge of the grove.

Rane was waiting in the shadow of a hedgerow. When she saw Tuli without the macain, she said nothing, only turned into the narrow curving lane, shortening her stride as she led Tuli along it toward the gates of a small tar, then over the wall of the House’s private garden.

Two girls like enough to be twins met them at the garden door. One had a small candlelamp muted by a darkglass, a child’s nightlight, used, Tuli supposed, to shield the girls from discovery. Eyes glistening with an excitement that Tuli found excessive, they spoke in whispering rushes Rane seemed to understand. Tuli didn’t feel like puzzling out what was said, so she didn’t bother listening. With furtive stealth, the girls took Rane and Tuli up into the attics, showed them into a cozy secret room with a small fire burning ready there, a table set with plates and cups, two bedrolls ready on straw pallets.

The fireborn didn’t like it at all; he ran his worry patterns over the walls and ceiling, but ran them in silence so at least Tuli’s headache didn’t worsen. She wanted to talk to Rane but those idiot girls wouldn’t leave them alone; while one was downstairs fetching the meal and gathering supplies for them to take when they left, the other stayed in the room, making conversation and asking questions. Tuli didn’t like the feel of this whole business, even without Ildas’s fidgets, but she wouldn’t say anything because if the girls were honest they were putting themselves in some danger so she couldn’t be actively rude. Rane was nervous too, but anyone who didn’t know her well would never guess it. The ex-meie was being very smooth and diplomatic, talking easily with the girl, answering her questions with apparent expansiveness and no hesitation, but Tuli noted with some surprise and a growing admiration just how little she was telling the girl. And she began to realize how much of that girl’s artless chatter was made up of questions, innocent until you added them together; if she’d got the answers she’d wanted, she’d have had a detailed account of their travels across the Cimpia Plain.

The other girl came up the stairs with a heavily laden tray that gave out remarkably enticing smells. A fresh crusty loaf, still hot from the oven, one probably meant for the workers’ breakfast. A pot of jam, two bowls of savory soup thick with cillix and chunks of oadat. A pot of spiced cha filled the room with its fragrance. Tuli sniffed and was willing to forgive the girls all their unfortunate dramatizing and nosiness. She looked about for Ildas. He was curled into a ball, sulking in one of the corners of the fireplace. She left him there and joined Rane at the table. The girls finally left them alone.

Eyes warily on that door, Tuli swallowed a mouthful of soup, whispered, “Do you know them?”

“Yes.” More loudly, “Looks like the weather’s breaking.”

The door was eased open and a girl was back with a crock of hot water. She smiled shyly, put it down and scurried out.

“Makes riding a bit sticky,” Tuli said. She spooned up more soup, glared at the door. “Don’t like them popping in and out like that,” she whispered. “Ildas is upset a lot. You sure you know them?” She nodded at the door, took a hefty gulp of the cha.

“Knew their father better.” Rane wrinkled her nose at Tuli, shook her head. “We’ll know better in the morning,” she said more loudly.

“If it’s snowing, we’d better find a place to hole up.” Lowering her voice, Tuli went on, “Well, where is he?”

“Visiting a neighbor, his daughters said.”

All through the meal one or the other of the girls was bringing something or popping her head in to see if they wanted anything. After the first whispered exchanges Rane and Tuli kept to safe subjects like speculations about when the snow would start. The food was good, the cha was hot and strong, the heat in the room enough to tranquilize an angry sicamar. By the time she emptied her cup for the last time Tuli could hardly keep her eyes open. She knew she should get out of the chair and go lie down on the pallet but she didn’t feel like moving. She didn’t even know if she could move; the longer she sat, the more pervasive her lassitude grew.

A harsh croak, a rattle of dishes, a table leg jolting against hers. She found enough energy to turn her head.

Rane was struggling to get onto her feet, the tendons in her neck standing out like cables. Her pale blue eyes were white-ringed,, her lip bleeding where she’d bitten it. She shoved clumsily at the table, pushing it over with a rebounding crash that nonetheless sounded muted and distant to Tuli. Rane managed to stagger a few steps, then her legs collapsed under her. She struggled to crawl through the mess of broken china and food toward the door. Tuli watched, vaguely puzzled, then the meaning of it seeped through the fog in her head. Drugged. They’d been drugged. This was a trap. That was what Ildas had been yammering about outside. Fools to come into this, fools to eat the food, drink that cha, must have been in the cha, the spicing would cover whatever else had been added. She tried pushing up, fell out of the chair, made a few tentative movements of her arms and legs to crawl after Rane, but before she could get anywhere or concentrate her forces, she plunged deep into a warm fuzzy blackness.

Tuli wakes alone in a small and noisome room. There is a patch of half-dried vomit in one corner, the stones are slimy with stale urine and other liquids, beetles skitter about on floor and walls, whirr into flight whenever she moves, one is crawling on her leg. She is naked and cold, lying on a splintery wooden bench scarcely wider than she is. Her head throbs. There is blood on her thighs. Along with everything else, her period has come down. She feels bloated and miserable. Usually she doesn’t even notice it except for the rags she uses to catch the blood and has to wash out herself, maybe the drug was affecting that too. She wants to vomit but won’t let herself, vaguely aware that the food she’d eaten will eventually give her strength, and she knows she’s going to need strength in the days to come. She is no longer just a rebellious child to these folk. Not like before. She is Tesc’s daughter, though she can hope they don’t know that. At least they shouldn’t know that. But there is Rane, she is Rane’s companion. When she thinks about Rane, bile floods her mouth. She swallows and swallows but it does no good, she spits it out onto the floor and forces herself to lie still, her knees drawn up to comfort her stomach. Ildas nestles against her; his warmth helps. Rane. Maybe she’s already dead. She might have made them kill her.

Tuli dozes awhile, wakes with a worse headache, forces herself to think. Got to get out of here. Get Rane out if she’s still alive, but get out anyway whatever has happened to Rane. She’s counting on me to get word back to the Biserica about how things are on the Plain. I should have listened more. Maiden bless, why didn’t I listen? Never mind that, Tuli, think: How do you get out of here? How do you survive without telling them anything until you can get out of here? After a moment’s blankness, she adds grimly, how do I kill myself if I can’t get out?

She forces herself to sit up, crosses her legs so she doesn’t have to put her feet down on the filthy floor. She is cold enough to shiver now and then. Again Ildas helps, warming away the chill of the stone. The shutters on the single small window are winter-sealed; the air is stuffy and stinking but the icy winds are kept out and the sense of smell tires rapidly so the stench is bearable. She keeps her eyes traveling about the room, deeply uncomfortable with her nudity, growing more stubbornly angry as the morning drags past. No one comes. There is no water. No food. Though she doesn’t know if she could force anything down in that noisome filth. Ildas paces the walls then comes and curls up in her lap.

Early in the afternoon they come for her.

The air in the dim round room is heavy with the smoke of the drugged incense, the sweet familiar smell she remembers from the night she and Teras sneaked round the old Granary and heard Nilis betraying their father. It makes her wary. She tries to ignore the way her nakedness makes her feel, the helplessness, the vulnerability, the absurd urge to chatter about anything, everything, so that they will look at her face and not at her body, those men staring at her, their eyes, those leering, ugly eyes. Then Ildas curls about her shoulders, a circle of warmth and comfort and she is able to relax a little, to let the heat of her anger burn away the worst of the shame and wretchedness. She lifts her head, meets the Agli’s eyes, sees the speculation in them and knows she’s made a mistake. She should have come in sobbing hysterically, flinging herself about like the child she wants to seem. Maybe rage will do instead. She crosses her arm over her too-tender breasts and glares at the Agli, at the acolytes waiting with him, snatches her arm from the guard’s hand, letting rage take possession of her, the old rage that carried her out of herself-funny how she couldn’t invoke it now when she needed it yet once it came so easily she frightened herself. Faking that rage and calling on all the arrogance she hadn’t known she possessed, the fire of the fireborn running through her, energizing her, she curses the two acolytes and the Agli, curses the guards silent behind her, demands to be given her clothes (lets her voice break here, only half-pretense). And as they watch, doing nothing, the rage turns real. Before they can stop her, she flies at the Agli, fingers clawed, feels a strong satisfaction when she feels his skin tearing under her nails, sees the lines of blood blooming on his skin. Caught by surprise, the guards and the acolytes take a second to pull her off the Agli. She will pay for this, she knows, even through the red haze of rage and fierce joy, the payment will be high, but it is a distraction and will put off her questioning. She doesn’t exactly think this out, it leaps whole into her head. She struggles with the guards, kicking, scratching, trying to bite until one of them loses his temper and uses his fist on her.

Shock. Pain. Blackness.

When she wakes it is an indefinite time later. She is in the same round room, but her hands are bound behind her, her ankles are in irons with a short chain between them. There is no one in the room with her. She still feels some satisfaction. She has forced them to put off their questions. But she regrets the leg irons, they are going to make escape difficult. Have to find Rane, she thinks. Her picklocks would take care of the irons. If she is alive, if she has her boots.

Ildas is titupping about, sniffing at things. He lifts a leg and urinates liquid fire into the incense bowl, flashing its contents to sterile ash. He knocks over the charcoal brazier, plays in the coals, drawing their heat into himself. Almost immediately the air around Tuli begins to clear. She realizes after a bit how dulled her reactions have been, how sluggish her body has been feeling. The drugs and fumes from the charcoal have been poisoning her, softening her up for the Agli. She snarls with fury, wrenches at the rope, but it is too strong, the knots too well tied. Ildas comes over to her, curls himself onto her shoulders; she can feel his heat flowing through her, burning those poisons out of her. She laughs and croons, to him, telling him what a beautiful creature he is, what a wonder. He preens, nuzzles at her face with his pointed nose, his laughter sings in her. Then he stiffens, his head comes up and the laughter turns to a hostile growling.

The Agli is returning.

Because she is warned, he finds her hunched over in a miserable lump, apparently drugged to the back teeth, dull and apathetic. The acolytes straighten her up, force her onto the hard bench, then go about cleaning up the mess she and Ildas have made of the room. When she dares sneak a look at the Agli, she almost betrays herself by a snigger of delight at the sight of his face, three raw furrows down one side of it, two more on the other side. Hope they poison you, she thinks, then understands she must banish that sort of thing from her mind, or the triumph and spite in her will seep through and spoil the picture she wants to present, There is a tie-girl in the Mountain Haven that she despises, even more than that creepy sneery Delpha. Susu Kernovna Deh. Who as far as Tuli can see has no redeeming virtues, who is sullen and stupid, who would rather pout than eat, who is lazy, giggly, spiteful and fawning. You hit her and she licks your feet and doesn’t even try to bite your toes. Why she isn’t one of the more avid Followers Tuli cannot understand, she seems made to be a follower. Susu is the image she wants to project, figuring she is such a nothing the Agli will get disgusted and toss Tuli-Susu out. She begins fitting herself into the role, looking out the corner of her eyes at the Agli, keeping her shoulders slumped, holding her knees together with a proper primness that seems to her only to emphasize her nakedness. She hates that, but thinks it is how Susu would act.

The acolytes settle themselves at the Agli’s feet. He sits in a high-backed elaborately carved chair. It is raised higher than an ordinary chair, his feet rest on a small round stool. The acolytes kneel like black bookends on either side of the stool, what light there is-from the flickering wall-lamps and the high window slits-shining off their shaved and oiled pates.

The Agli speaks. He has a deep musical voice that he keeps soft and caressing. Not yet time for torment, it was the hour of seduction. “Who are you, child?”

She licks her lips, opens her eyes wide, looks at him, looks quickly away, hangs her head. “Susu Kernovna Deh.”

The Agli taps fingers impatiently on the chair arm, raises a brow. She wants to laugh, but forces herself to pout instead. Briefly she wonders why the drugged smoke which is again billowing up from the brazier does not affect the agli and the acolytes, then dismisses that as unimportant. After all, an Agli is a norid and can most likely do such small bits of magic as keeping the air clear about himself and whomever he wants to protect. After a minute, he speaks again. “You are not tie, child. Who are you?”

“Susu. I’m Susu Kernovna Deh.”

“Mmm. Who is your father?”

“Balbo Deh. He says.”

“And what does that mean?”

“Hansit Kern took me into his house and had me taught.” She makes herself smile a prim, soapy little smile. “Many say it is he and not Balbo who fathered me, that I’ve got a look of his oldest girl.” She lets a touch of boasting enter her voice.

The Agli settles into the chair. “What is your tar?”

“Kerntar. It’s out on the edge of the plain, near the pehiiri uplands.” She shrugs. “I don’t know exactly. It’s a long way from here.” More discontent, in her voice. “Eldest daughter threw me out, Soдreh wither her miserable…” She sneaks another sly look at the Agli, lets him catch her at it, looks away in confusion and fear. She is tempted to elaborate on her tale, but has just sense enough not to. Ildas on her lap is warm and supporting, and more important, he is keeping her head and body clear of the drugs from the smoke-especially her head, giving her strength and energy to maintain her efforts at deception. She can’t afford to become too complacent, though, there is always Rane who knows nothing about this story or about the names, nothing about the original Susu. Rane, if she says anything at all, if she is still alive, will tell an entirely different story. Tuli chews on her lip, her unease not wholly pretended.

“Who is the woman?”

“Woman?”

“Who is the woman?”

“Oh her. Just some wandering player. Well, you couldn’t expect me to travel about alone. She was going to take me to a cousin in Oras. Stupid Delanni paid her to. I didn’t want to leave the tar, don’t blame me for it. But when he got sick, Kern I mean, Delanni took over running things and I was the first thing she run off.”

“Who is the woman?”

“Look, I told you, aren’t you listening? Player or something. You want her name? Ask her. I forget, I mean, who cares what’s the name of someone like that.”

“What were you doing at Appentar?”

“Me? I wasn’t doing nothing. Eating, getting out of the cold. What do you think I was doing? Watching those two snippy twits sucking up to her.” She puts a world of venom in the last word.

On and on it goes-simple questions repeated over and over, questions that fold back on themselves, trying to trap her. She clings to Susu with a faint spark of hope growing in her when the questions change nearly imperceptibly until they are centering on Rane. On and on, until she is mumbling and drifting in a haze in spite of Ildas’s efforts, a haze that is far too real for her comfort. She no longer knows exactly what she is saying, can only hide herself in the persona of Susu, answering as best she can in Susu’s voice and Susu’s life.

The questions are thrown more quickly at her, they blur in her mind until none of them make sense. After a while she just stops answering them and drifts into herself, no longer trusting mind and body, drawing in until she is closed up in a tight knot, no ends left out for them to pull. Again Ildas helps her, running round and round her, spinning threads from himself, weaving her into a cocoon of warmth and darkness that no one but her could break through. She lets herself fall away, protected, into her cocoon and fades back into darkness.

She comes out of the haze and confusion back in the cold and stinking cell, stretched out on the plank bed, Ildas a warm spot on her ribs. She sits up. Her hands are untied. It seems odd to notice that so belatedly, but that nonetheless is the order of things. She looks at her legs, grimaces at the crusts of blood on her thighs. What a luxury a hot bath could be. When we get out of this, she thinks, when we get to Oras, I’m going to live in a bathtub. The irons are off her legs. She smiles, flushed with a sudden optimism. It looks like Susu has won the day for her, like the Agli isn’t taking her seriously any more, Maiden be blessed. She rubs at her ankles where the irons had been, then at her wrists. “Ildas,” she says, drawing the word out as she thinks. “Ildas, go see if you can find Rane. Let me know if she’s here. Please?”

The fireborn scampers uneasily around the room; he doesn’t want to leave her, but he recognizes her urgency. After some vacillation, he melts through the door. For some time after he vanishes, she can still feel his grumbling like a shiver in her bones; it makes her teeth ache and she is annoyed with the little beast, but finally has to smile:

They come for her again before he returns. Because she can feel the drugs in the smoke sapping her will, she withdraws into herself, says nothing, answers nothing, tries to not-hear them, doing the best she can to show a degree of sullen petulance, clinging desperately to Susu to help her withstand the drugs and the hammering of the persistent questions. The questions are thrown at her by acolyte and Agli alike, taking turns, coming at her from the right, from the left, from the throne chair, beating at her: who are you/ why are you here/ what are you doing/ who is your father/ where is your tar/ why are you spying/ what do you hope to find/ tell us about the outlaws in the mountains/ where are they/ who are they/ what are they going to hit next/ where are you going from here/ who is the woman with you/ she’s a meie isn’t she/ who is she/ what is she doing/ what information have you gathered/ are you lovers/ is she planning to assassinate the regent Floarin or the son/ who are you going to see in Oras/ who have you seen so far/ who are the spies and traitors in our fabric/ tell us the names/ where have you been/ tell us the name…

And on and on and on. Sometimes prurient questions of what activities passed between Tuli and Rane, a spate of these coming unexpectedly in the middle of the other hammering questions, almost startling her out of her silence. But she tightens her grip and fights the deadening pull of the drugs. She finds her mouth loosening to babble and catches herself again and again and begins to fear she will give in. The drug is making her sick, her concentration breaks more and more frequently. Her will is eroding all the faster as her fear grows, as her sense of helplessness grows. She opens further and further from reality like the spiral dance when she found Ildas, but spiraling out this time, not in, out and out and out until nothing seems to matter, until she is sick of herself, sick of them, sick of Rane and the mijloc and everything that has happened and is going to happen, until she is at the point when nothing matters anymore.

For a while she knows nothing that is happening, drifts in and out of grayness, repulsive, stinking grayness, only dimly aware of herself as self, clinging only to one idea and not sure what she knows. Silence. Say nothing. Whatever happens, don’t answer, don’t even listen, say nothing, nothing, nothing…

Warmth nudges against her hip, crawls into her lap; the haze begins warming out of her, the room firms around her again. She is sitting hunched over, staring sullenly at her dirty feet, at the rough stone floor, the muscles of her face hurting, her head throbbing dully. She stares resolutely at the floor, wanting to know if she’d let the Agli cozen her into answering his questions while she was in that floating state, wanting to know if Ildas had found Rane, frantic because she can think of no way to ask him without betraying herself to them. THEM. The word writes itself with major glyphs on the air above her feet. She can see them wavering over her toes. Ildas nudges her and the word pops like soapbubbles, even with the same tiny noise a soapbubble makes when it pops. She nearly giggles, then reverts to a sullen scowl. She sneaks a look about her. The acolytes are gone somewhere but the Agli is still in his throne chair, frowning at her. Sometime in her haze the questions have stopped. That frightens her a little, she doesn’t know why he stopped. Does he have all he wants or is he momentarily baffled by her silence. If he starts going at her again, at least that will mean she hasn’t done anything too awful. Her feet begin to itch, her knees burn. She has to move. But she doesn’t. Even moving her foot seems like a breaking down. Ildas coos to her, his silent chortles vibrating in her head. He is acting very chirpy. She tries to take comfort in that. Rane has to be about somewhere. Alive.

The silence is thick in the room. She can feel the Agli trying to push his will at her. She wishes he would say something, anything. She wishes she could move, could scratch the thousand itches that are tormenting her, wishes she were out of here, anywhere but here, even back at Gradintar with Nilis carping at her, no, mustn’t think of Gradintar, I might say something I don’t want to. No. Think of Susu. Susu Kernovna Deh of Kerntar out by the pehiiri uplands. She sneaks a glance at the path of the lightbeam coming in one of the high slit windows, and nearly betrays herself. It hasn’t been long, only a half hour of unknowing, if the slide of the light on the far wall meant anything. A half hour since she could remember questions coming at her. It feels an age. Her mouth is so dry she doubts she could speak even if she wanted to.

“What is your name?” The Agli speaks with unchanged patience.

Then the acolytes are back. One brings her a battered tankard filled with warm beer mixed with something else she can just taste over the musty staleness of the liquid. She drinks it avidly enough, though the taste makes her queasy. He takes the tankard away when she is finished and jerks her onto her feet, giving an exclamation of disgust when he sees the bloodstain she leaves behind on the wood. So give me some water to wash in, she thinks, and bring me my pants and rags. He handles her as if she is a bag full of slime after that, holding her at arm’s length. She could jerk away from him any time, but what is the point, where could she go? He holds her arm up and the other acolyte uses a bit of rope to tie her wrist to a ring set in the stone. When they have dealt with the other arm, she stands with her face pressed against the stone, unable to put her heels down. She flinches inwardly at the thought of the pain to come, expecting it to come any moment from a whip or something similar. But nothing happens. Behind her she can hear dragging sounds, something metal pulled across the flags, footsteps, quick and busy about the room, some heavy breathing, more clangs, a rattle, the snap of a firestriker, some breathy cursing, a little crackling, then an increasing feel of heat fans across her back. The charcoal brazier, she thinks, what… She wrenches her mind to thoughts of the ordeal ahead and tries to decide how she will handle it. If she follows her instincts, she will grit her teeth and not make a sound, not give the creatures the satisfaction of hearing her cry out. Besides, once she starts yelping she isn’t too sure she can stop. Or she can still keep in Susu’s skin, though they don’t seem to be believing her too much. Trouble is, Susu would never be on this kind of cross-country trek, even if what she said was true and she was kicked out of her tar by a jealous half-sister. She would have whined and balked and made such a nuisance of herself any guide and guard no matter how well paid would have pushed her into a river two days out of the tar. Or at least dumped her somewhere and taken off. And there is Rane. If they know anything about her at all, they know she’d be the least likely person to take on such a task. The holes in her story get bigger by the moment as she strains upward, her nose pressed against the stone.

“What is your name, girl?” The Agli’s voice comes with a deadly patience.

“Susu Kernovna Deh,” she says and whimpers.

“I think we’ll leave that lie now, girl,” he says. “Have you ever seen a branding?”

Tuli’s whimper is all too real. Maiden bless, he’s going to burn me. She presses her face against the stone so she won’t cry out. All right, she thinks, we leave Susu now. My mouth is shut and its going to stay that way. I hope. Help me, help me, let me say nothing, if I scream, so be it, but help me say nothing.

“Heating the irons takes a while, so you have a little free space, girl. Think about branding, think about the irons, smell them. Hot irons have a distinctive odor like nothing else in the world. I could hurry the heating if I wanted, girl, but I don’t think that’s necessary. We have all the time in the world. There’ll be another smell in the room soon enough, so savor the irons while they’re heating. Think of all the places we are going to use them on you, girl, think of your tendermost places. We’ll save your face for the last. It’s that disfiguring that breaks the stubbornest woman, and you’re not a woman, are you, child. It isn’t you we want, think of that. We want what the meie knows. Oh yes, we know her well enough here. Rane.” He chuckles at the start she can’t help. “So foolish with your silly little story; I imagine you thought you were clever, so clever to fool us. We’ll break you first, child, then her. She’s a stubborn one, she’ll last a long time. Make it easier on her, girl. Tell us what you’ve seen and heard. Name us the traitors who’ve been supplying you with food and information. Then maybe we’ll just put you to work until the war is over. Find you a husband then and let you live out your life in peace. I won’t promise the same for the meie, you wouldn’t believe me if I did. But she can have an easier death. Think about the irons, child. As long as they’re still heating you’re safe from them. You’ve got a little while to wait. Use it.” The soft coaxing voice dies away and she hears his footsteps retreating from her, leaving the room, leaving her to her thoughts.

Maiden! What a… I can’t… Shayl, how can I face… whip’s bad enough… my face… I can’t…

She must and she knows it. Get it over with, she thinks, clamps her tongue in her teeth so she won’t cry out, the anticipation almost worse than the burning, but it won’t be once the burning starts, she knows that too. The silence behind her stretches on and on, an eternity. She starts shaking. She is going to tell, she knows it, tears gather in her eyes and run down her face. I can’t… I can’t… Her bladder gives way and hot-liquid runs down her thighs, splatters on the floor. She goes rigid with shame, then she is shaking again, moaning. She tries to dredge up anger but can think of nothing but the irons burning her…

The Agli’s voice comes genially behind her. “What is your name, girl?”

She wants to tell him, she is going to tell him but she sees Rane’s face Hal’s face Her father’s face Teras Sanani and her silly oadats… And she cannot do it. Cannot. But she has to tell, what else can she do? What does it mean anyway, it is just postponing for a little what must happen anyway, they are bound to be taken, all of them, Hal and Gesda and the angry taroms and her father and Teras, and all of them. But there is something in her that will not let her do what logic tells her to do. She bites on her tongue till blood comes and says nothing.

The Agli makes a soft clucking sound of gentle disapproval. Tuli is almost startled into giggling, it is so like the sound old Auntee Cook makes when she catches her or Teras in the jam pots. Tears run down her face. Blood is salty on her tongue.

One of the acolytes-she thinks it is the one who curled his lip at her menstrual blood-brings the hot iron. He holds it close to her buttocks. She cringes away from the heat, tries to press into the stone. He sniggers, puts the iron between her legs and brings it up hard.

For just an instant the pain is something she can’t realize, it is so greatly beyond anything she has experienced or even expected, she cannot breathe, cannot make a sound, can only sob, a high whining sound like an animal cry-then the pain is gone, the heat is gone, and all she feels is an uncomfortable pressure and a gentle warmth throughout the whole of her body. And she hears Ildas’s angry chitter in her head.

The ropes burn off her hands, though no fire touches her skin. The warmth flows out of her. The acolyte behind her shrieks, the pressure drops away from her. The Agli screams in an agony equal to hers a moment before. She turns.

He writhes on the floor and as she watches, flashes to a twisted blackened mummy. The acolytes burn with him. The three of them are suddenly and utterly dead. The smell of roasted meat is nauseating in the room. She walks from the wall, stops by the hideous corpse of the Agli. “You said there’d be another smell in this room, but you didn’t know you’d provide it. If I told you anything, it has vanished into your present silence.” She touches the body with her toe. It is hard and brittle and stirs with a small crackling sound that wrenches at her stomach.

Hand pressed hard over her mouth she runs from the room.

She looked down at Ildas prancing beside her, smiled at his complacent strut, the glowing whiskers sleek and content. “Take me to Rane.”

They wound through the dark and twisty halls of the Center, dodging an occasional guard or flitting female form. It seemed absurdly easy to Tuli, like dreaming of walking naked and unobserved through crowds of strangers. And there did seem to be very few folk of any sort about. Maybe Floarin’s taken them all to Oras, she thought. Near the back she came to a row of cells like the one she’d waked in but too far on the side for hers. There was a drowsy guard leaning half asleep against one of the barred doors. Tuli chewed her lip. She didn’t even have her sling, she didn’t have anything. Except Ildas, and she didn’t exactly have him, he did his own will and hers only when the two wills coincided or he felt like doing her a favor. He looked like a beast, he acted like a beast most times, she called him a beast when she thought about him, but she knew it was not the right word, he had more mind than any beast, more will, more… something. She knelt in shadow and touched him, drew her hand along the smooth curve of his back. “Will you help me, companion and friend?” she whispered.

The fireborn wriggled under her hand, then was away, a flash of light streaking along the worn stone flags, then a rope of light coiling like a hot snake up and up, around and around the man who wasn’t aware of anything happening until the rope whipped round his neck and pulled itself tight. He clawed at the nothing that was strangling him, tried to cry out, could not, staggered about, finally collapsed to the floor. The light rope held an instant longer, than unwound and was Ildas again, sitting on his hind legs, preening his long whiskers, more satisfaction in his pose, reeking with self-approval.

Chuckling, Tuli came walking down the hall. She scratched him behind his ears, felt his head move against her palm, felt his chitter echoing in her, head. “Yes, sweeting, you did good.” She straightened, unbarred the door.

Rane was stretched out on a plank cot like the one Tuli’d waked on. She sat up when she saw Tuli, her eyes opening wide, the irons clashing, on legs and arms. She was naked and there were bruises and a few small cuts on her body. She looked strained and unhappy, but otherwise not too badly off.

Tuli looked at the irons, then looked uncertainly about the cell as if she expected to find help in the filthy stones.

“The guard,” Rane said. “He has the keys on his belt.”

Tuli came back with the keys a second later. She took the wrist irons off first. “You have any idea where they put our clothes?” She bent over the leg irons, scowling as the key creaked slowly over in the stiff lock. The irons finally fell away with a slinky clanking.

Rane worked her ankles, rubbed at them. “No, but I know how to find out.” She swung off the cot and went out to squat beside the guard. She touched the charred circles about his neck, pressed her fingers under the angle of his jaw. “Good. He’s still alive, just out cold.”

Tuli smiled, felt a distant relief. “There’s enough dead already.”

“The Agli?”

“And the acolytes.”

“How soon before someone finds them?”

“Can’t say.” She rubbed at the nape of her neck. “A while, I expect. They were getting ready to use hot irons on me, wouldn’t want to be interrupted at their pleasures.”

Rane shivered; once again she touched the blackened rings about the guard’s neck. “How did you do this?”

“I didn’t. It was Ildas.” Tuli’s mouth twitched into a brief, mirthless smile. “The fireborn you say doesn’t exist.”

“Seems I was wrong.” Rane wrapped her hands about the straps of the guard’s cuirass and surged onto her feet. “Help me get him inside.”

They dragged the guard into the room, fitted the irons on his wrists and ankles. He was a smallish man so they could just close the cuffs, though Rane wasn’t worried too much about his comfort. She used his knife to slash the tail off his tunic and a second strip long enough to tie around his head. She dropped these on his chest and stood looking down at him; without turning her head she said, “Shut the door, Moth, this could get noisy.”

The guard was beginning to wake, shifting his head about, moaning a little as he began to feel the pain in his neck. Rane set the knife at his throat, the point pricking one of the charred rings. “Where did you put our clothes,” she said softly. “No, don’t try yelling, you won’t get a sound out, I promise you. I’d prefer leaving you alive, man, but that’s your choice. Where did you put our clothes?”

He blinked up at her, his neck moved under the knife point; he gave a small cry as it cut deeper into the burned flesh. “Storeroom,” he gasped out.

“Where is it?”

“Go down hall…” he cleared his throat, “first turn, go left, three doors down. Everything there.”

“Good.” She snatched up the hacked off bits of cloth, held them out to Tuli. “Gag him. You,” she shifted the knife point a little, drawing a grunt from him, “open your mouth.”

With Ildas scampering ahead of them, they loped down the long corridor, made the turn and dived into the storeroom.

Their clothing was thrown in a heap in the corner; no one had bothered going through them, Tuli’s sling and stones were still in her pocket and Rane’s boots had kept their secrets intact. Instead of dressing, Tuli started poking about the storeroom, seeking anything she could use as a pad. Now that the worst fears were behind her, along with all urgencies but the final urgency of escape, the little niggling irritations had taken over. She wanted water desperately, even more desperately than clothes to cover herself.

Rane’s hand came down on her shoulder, making her start. “What is it, Moth?”

Tuli blushed scarlet. “Menses,” she muttered. “I got to wash.”

“That all? All right. Wait here, I’ll see what I can find.”

The ex-meie came back a short time later with a pitcher of water and a pair of clean towels. “Hurry it, Moth. No one around right now, but Maiden knows when the guard’s due for changing.”

Tactfully, she turned away and began looking through the things on the shelves, taking a tunic here, a pair of trousers, two black dresses, exclaiming as she came across her own knife, her grace knife whose hilt she’d carved and fitted to her hand a long time ago. Tuli scrubbed at herself, sighed with relief as she washed away the crusted blood and found that where the iron had burned her there was no sign of burning. She looked down at Ildas and smiled tightly. Should stop being surprised at what you can do, she thought. He seemed to hear what she was thinking and rubbed his head against her leg. She tore a strip off the towel, folded it and pinned it into her trousers with a pair of rusty pins she found thrust into a crack between a shelf and one of its uprights. It was uncomfortable and was going to make riding a messy misery but it was better than nothing. She climbed into her clothes and felt much more like herself when she stamped her feet into her boots. “Ready,” she said.

“Good. Help me with this.” Rane was whipping a bit of cord about the bundle of clothing and other things she’d taken from the shelves. “Maiden bless, I wish I dared hunt out their food stores, but we’d better get away.” She straightened. “Set your Ildas to scouting for us, Moth. Toward the back. That’s best, I think. I wouldn’t mind a bit of snow either.”

“What about mounts? Can we hit the stables? It’s some distance to Appentar. I put out grain for our macain and there’s snow for water, but they’re tied, Rane. We can’t leave them like that.”

“Yah, I know. We’ll see when we get out. Tuli, if there are guards in the stable, we head out on foot. No argument please.”

“No argument.” She bent and scooped up Ildas. “Stables will be colder’n these halls. You notice we haven’t seen more’n two or three guards even in here. I think most of them, they’re sitting around a barrel of hot cider and a nice crackling fire.” She rubbed Ildas under his pointed chin, smiled as his contented song vibrated in her. “Ildas is used to scouting, he found you for me. He’ll let me know if there’s anyone coming at us.” She scratched a last time, set him down and watched him pop through the door. “He’s off.”

Rane shook her head. “If I hadn’t seen that guard’s throat,” she murmured.

Ildas’ head came through the door; he sang emptiness to Tuli. She laughed and said, “Right. We come.” To Rane, she said, “All clear.”

“Let’s go then.”

As they loped through the maze of corridors at the back of Center, Tuli mused over the difference in the guards as they moved closer to Oras. Down by Sadnaji most of them seemed as committed as the Followers. But here they were a rag-tag lot, as if Floarin had dumped all her misfits and doubtfuls close to Oras where they couldn’t make trouble for her, where their slackness would mean little since the shadow of Oras weighed heavy on the Plain here in the north. For the past tenday, the patrols she’d seen out in the snow and cold were mostly Followers with a guard or two but no more. The ones here were probably drunk and comfortable and not about to take much notice of what was going on around them unless there was someone to prod them to it. Thanks to Ildas the Agli was beyond prodding anyone. She looked at the narrow back swaying ahead of her and smiled. And it’ll be snowing, she thought, betchya anything. A nice dusty snow to powder in our tracks.

She smiled again as they eased through the narrow door and stepped into the stableyard. The yard was deserted and dark and a feathery mist of snow was drifting onto the trampled earth.

They reclaimed their own mounts and discarded those taken from the Center stables-poor beasts, bad-tempered and sluggish. Their own macain were uncomfortable and complaining in low hoots but Ildas soon had them snuffling happily at the grain, wrapping himself like living wire about them, warming the chill out of them. Another scoop of grain apiece, some melted water, and they were ready to go on; Rane and Tuli stripped the gear off the sad specimens from Center and turned them loose, hoping they weren’t too stupid to smell out the nearest food and shelter.

“What about those two twits?” Tuli scowled into the snow toward Appentar. “They’ll do the same to anyone that shows up.”

“You’ll see.” Rane swung into the saddle and rode toward the edge of the grove, Tuli following, Ildas perched on the saddle in front of her.

At the gate of the tar the ex-meie dismounted and used her grace knife to cut an inconspicuous mark in the gate-post, then she was in the saddle again riding swiftly away. It was some time before she slowed and let Tuli move up to ride beside her. “That was a warn-off mark,” she said. “Players, tinkers and peddlers have a series of marks they use to leave messages for each other. The warn-off says keep away, there’s trouble waiting for you here. Anyone on the run who knows Lembo and doesn’t know the signs will have to take his chances. Or hers. Lembo…” She shrugged. “I don’t know about him. Maybe he was away like his daughters said and we just came at the wrong time. Maybe he’s dead. Maybe he’s turned. It doesn’t matter that much right now, we’ve got more important things to get busy on.”

“What next?”

“Oras. Fast and straight as we can. One good come out of this, we’ve got grain enough to keep the macain going on long marches.” She reached back and patted the fat sack tied behind the saddle.

Tuli nodded. “At least there’s that.” They’d been sparing in what they’d taken from tars, but there was no such moderation required when they were taking from the Agli.

They rode north and west and soon passed beyond the edge of the plain into down country, a region of low rocky hills. There were occasional flurries of snow; when it wasn’t snowing, the clouds hung low and mornings were often obscured by swirling fog. Roofed stone circles alongside small huts swam at them out of that fog as they wound among the hills. Now and then, a young boy with a chunky, broad-browed chini pressed into his leg stood in the hut’s doorway and watched them ride past. Sometimes the boy would lift a hand to salute them, more often he watched, silent and unmoving. The stone circles were filled with huddled linadyx, some of them wandering out into rambling pole corrals to chew on wads of hay and scratch down to the winter grass below the snow, their corkscrew fleeces smudges of black and gray and yellow-white against the blue-white of snow. Every fifth circle was empty.

Tuli waved back to one of the boys, then kicked her macain into a slightly faster lope until she was riding beside Rane. “How they going to feed those beasts if it keeps snowing?”

“You saw the empty circles.”

“Yeah. So?”

“The Kulaan have winter steads in the riverbottom. Women and children work the fields there in the summer while the men and older boys are in the downs with the linas; come first snowfall they start bringing the herds down.” She wiped at her thin face, scowled at the slick of condensed fog on her palm. “I’d rather it was snowing instead of this infernal drip. Other years all the flocks would be down by now.”

Tuli shivered as she heard a distant barking and the high coughing whine of one of the small mountain sicamars. It seemed to come from all over, impossible to tell the direction of sounds in this fog. She thrust a gloved hand in her jacket pocket and closed clumsy fingers about the sling. “So. Why not this year?” Her voice sounded thin and lost and she shivered again.

Rane rubbed at her chin. “Well, the Kulaan treat their linas like members of the family. They don’t kill them for meat ever, even if their own children are starving; when they’re so old they can’t get around any more and don’t produce fleeces, they’re very gently smothered and burned on a funeral pyre and the ashes are collected and kept till spring, then scattered over the Downs with drum and song and dance, whole clans going to celebrate the passing of their friends. You can see how they’d feel when Floarin sent her tithe gatherers to the winter steads and claimed whole herds of linas to feed her army. Those that hadn’t brought the linas down yet are waiting until the army leaves Oras, hoping the beasts won’t starve or freeze before then. Kalaan might put on Follower black for policy’s sake, but even before the raids there’d be few convinced among them. Now, there’s no question of that. Floarin has made herself an enemy for her back when she marches south. They’re a dour, proud people, the Kulaan, they don’t forget injuries and they never leave them unpunished.”

“Are we going to stay at a stead?”

Rane shook her head. “I have acquaintances among them, but I wouldn’t be welcome now. Besides, there’s no point in it. Yael-mri knows all she needs to about their state of mind.” Again she passed her hand across her face. “Shayl, how I’d love to be dry. Just a little, even an hour.”

As the day oozed toward its end, Rane angled more directly westward until they were riding almost directly into the veiled red blob of the setting sun. Tuli began to feel a strain in her thighs and back, realizing after a while that they were riding downslope considerably more often than up, leaving the hills and aiming for the Bottomland. When she asked, Rane nodded. “We’re due to hit the river about a day’s ride east of Oras.”

“Why not closer?”

“Traxim. The army. Floarin’s norits. Any one’s a good enough excuse to stay far away from the place.” She slanted a tired grin at Tuli. “And that’s our chance, Moth. Who would figure we’d be so crazy as to sneak into the jaws of a sicamar?”

The punishing ride went on, and on, three days, five, seven. The grain sacks were almost empty and the macain were almost at the end of their strength. On the eighth day the snowfall stopped. On the ninth day they were making their way through the thickly timbered bottomlands, able to hear the sigh of the river they couldn’t yet see, a sort of pervasive brushing that got lost among the creaks and cracks of the denuded trees. They rode through trees stripped bare of leaves, silent, brown-gray-black forms harsh against the blanket of snow. Here and there the snow was marked by the calligraphy of wild oadats, lappets and other small rodents, chorainin and limbagiax and other predators small enough to run on the crust. They saw nothing alive, not even kankas sitting like wrinkled brown balloons in the empty trees.

Near the river, the ground under the trees was a thorny tangle, a mix of saplings, many split open by the sudden cold, suckerlings, hornvines like coils of black wire stark against the white of the snow. Rane got as close to the river as she could, rode west along it for some time. About mid-afternoon, she called a halt. “Give the macain some grain, Moth.” She slid from the saddle, worked her fingers, tugged her cap down farther over her ears. “I’m going to climb me a tree, have to check on some landmarks before it gets dark.”

She went up an aged brellim with an agility that surprised Tuli. While Tuli flattened a sack on the snow and dumped a meager ration of grain on it, Rane sat in a high fork, her head turning as she scanned the river and the bank across from her. After about a dozen minutes she swung out of the fork and came dropping down the trunk, landing beside Tuli with a soft grunt as her boots punched through the snow.

“Find what you want?”

“Uh-huh.” Rane moved to her macai, stroked her gloved hand down over the beast’s shoulder, watched him lick his rough tongue over the sacking, searching for the last bits of grain.

“Well?”

Rane looked round at her, laughed, “A place to sleep and leave the macain while we’re in Oras.”

“A kual stead?”

“No, none of them this close to Oras. Bakuur. Charcoal burners. This time of the year they usually have a camp not too far from here.”

Tuli retrieved the sacking and began rolling it into a tight cylinder. “You seem to know everyone.”

“I’ve been drifting about the mijloc for a lot of years, doing this and that for the Biserica.” She watched as Tuli tied the sacking to the saddle. “Never had a real ward after the first time, Merralis and I.” She swung into the saddle, waited for Tuli to mount. “Getting a little old for all this rambling though.” She started her macai walking. “Biserica’s going to be needing someone familiar with the round, might be you if you choose that way, Moth.”

Tuli looked at her, startled. “Me?”

Rane smiled at her again, wearily, affectionately. “Who better?”

The camp was set up inside a palisade of poles pushed into the ground long enough to have taken root and sprouted new branches, branches that wove together in a complicated bramble along the top of the fence. The poles were set about the length of a forearm apart with hornvine woven through the uprights, hornvine rooted and alive with withered black fruits dangling like tiny jetballs from the fruiting nodes, the thorns long and shiny and threatening enough to keep out the most persistent predator. Inside this formidable living wall more poles had been pushed into the soil, set in parallel lines and their tops bent together to form the arched ribs that supported sewn hides; five of these structures were spread around a stone firecircle like the spokes of a wheel.

The Bakuur were a small dark shy people. They welcomed Rane and Tuli with chuckling cordiality, a spate of words in a language Rane understood but Tuli found as incomprehensible as the murmur of wind through leaves. They stabled the macain with their eseks in one of the longhouses, set out straw and grain for them with a lavishness that oppressed Tuli; she felt she was somehow going to have to repay the favor and at the moment she didn’t see how.

Later, after a meal of baked fish, fried tubers and a hot, pungent drink cooked up in kettles that produced a mild euphoria in Tuli, Rane took out her flute and began playing. They were in one of the longhouses seated before a smoking fire, all the Bakuur crowded in around them to listen to the music. After a short while Ildas leapt off Tuli’s lap and went to dance on the fire, weaving in and out of threads of smoke, dancing joy on threads of air. Tuli watched dreamily, the drink working in her, opening her out until she felt one with the one the Bakuur had become, men, women and children alike. One. Breathing together, swaying together with the dance of the fireborn, with the music of Rane’s flute. A while after that a slender woman neither young nor old, with bracelets, anklets and necklace of elaborately carved wooden beads came up out of the Bakuur meld to dance her counterpoint to the fire and the fireborn, twisting and swaying without moving her feet, curving flowing movements of arms, hands, body, that painted on the air the things the music was saying to her and her people. Tuli felt warm and alive and welcomed as a part of a whole far greater than the mere sum of its units. Gradually she relaxed until she drifted into a sleep, a deep sleep filled with bright flitting dreams that left her with a sense of joyful acceptance though she remembered none of them when she woke sometime after midnight.

Her boots were off, blankets were tucked about her. The longhouse was empty except for three ancient Bakuur, two men and one woman, sitting with. Rane beside the dying fire, talking in low voices. She heard a little of it, snatches of tales about the state of feeling in Oras. They spoke in concrete terms, no abstract summaries like those Hal and Gesda and some of the angry taroms had given Kane: Toma Hlasa cursed a guard and was dragged off; the jofem Katyan complained of the taxes, eyes darting about to see she was unheard, and bought only two uncsets of charcoal where once she’d have bought ten; a hungry-looking man whom they didn’t know tried to steal from them and almost killed Chio’ni before Per’no and Das’ka drove him off. As far as they could see, there was no unity anywhere, man against man, each bent on preserving his own life and possessions, no zo’hava’ta…

Tuli blinked. They were speaking in the rippling murmuring Bakuur tongue, something she only realized when she came up hard against that word zo’hava’ta that on its surface meant life-tie, but that carried on its back wide-ranging implications that permeated all of Bakuur life, the bond that tied mother to child, tied all Bakuur to the trees they burned for their living, bound friend and enemy against all that was non-Bakuur, bound present generations to the dead and to the as-yet unborn, that affected everything every Bakru did from the first breath he drew until he was returned as ash to the breast of the Mother. Ildas, she thought, he danced the words into me. She reached down to the warm spot curled against her side and stroked her hand along the curve of his back, smiled at the coo vibrating in her head, then settled to listen carefully to what was being said, mindful of the resolution she’d made at the Center when she knew she might have to take word back without Rane.

An hour before dawn the Bakuur hustled about harnessing eseks in teams of four to a pair of wattle-sided carts. Rane handed Tuli a large, coarsely woven sack. “Get into this, Moth,” she said. “We’re going into Oras as sacks of charcoal.”

Tuli looked at Rane and giggled. The ex-meie raised an eyebrow but said nothing. She climbed into one of the carts and began easing her long body into a sack.

Tuli hopped into the other cart, stepped into her sack and pulled it up around her, then crouched in one corner while the Bakuur piled bags of charcoal around her. They were light enough that they didn’t overburden her, but drifts of char-dust came filtering through her sack, getting into eves, nose, mouth, every crevice of her body. Even after both carts were loaded, the Bakuur seemed to take forever to get started, each of those going with the carts taking elaborate leave over and over with every other Bakru not going on the expedition to Oras. Finally though, the carts creaked forward and passed from the palisade into the snow under the trees. The eseks labored and brayed their discontent; a Bakru walked beside each of the leaders singing to him, clucking to him, urging him on. Other Bakuur followed behind and put their shoulders to the wheels and the backs of the carts whenever they threatened to get stuck, all of them laughing and talking in that murmurous language that sounded much like a summer wind among the leaves. The three-toed feet of the eseks crunched down through the crust, the carts lurched and complained, the beautifully carved wheels squealed and groaned, the trees around them creaked to the light wind and above Tuli the charcoal sticks chunked together, rattled dully and showered more dust on her. And through it all the Bakuur went on their leisurely way, in no hurry at all, content to proceed as circumstances allowed.

It was still dark out when they left the trees and started up the rolling hills to the high plateau where Oras sat. The road wound up and up, curving back on itself when the slope was too steep, straightening out now and then, almost flat, only to pitch upward after the eseks managed to catch their breath. The extra weight of Rane and Tuli made things more difficult for the shaggy little beasts, but the Bakuur coped with more laughter, a lot of shoving and joking; the tough little eseks dug their claws in and the carts lumbered on. By the time they reached the flat again, Tuli felt a lightening in the dark, saw bits of red-tinted light coming through the coarse weave of her sack.

The Bakuur circled wide about the army encampment. Tuli could hear noises from the herds of riding and draft stock, and sentries calling to one another, but it was all very distant and placid and she couldn’t get excited by any of it. She was sneaking into a city that was the heart of the enemy’s territory and what she mainly felt was discomfort. The commonplace presence of the Bakuur wove such a protection about her, she almost fell asleep.

The sounds from the army dropped behind, the cart tilted up, then the wheels hummed smoothly over the resilient pavement of the Highroad. She waited for the challenge of the guards at the gate, but the carts went on without a pause, the sound of the wheels changing as they moved from the Highroad onto the rougher cobbles of the city street. The gates were already open. If there were guards, they were so accustomed to the coming and going of the charcoal sellers that they didn’t bother challenging them. The carts wound on and on until she was so tense she felt like exploding, when were they going to get out? how? where? what was going on? Not that she was afraid or anything like that, she just wanted to get out of that damn sack. Only the soothing coo of Ildas in her head kept her crouched in her corner.

The cart turned and turned again, winding deeper and deeper into the back streets of Oras, then shuddered to a stop. Tuli lay still forcing herself to wait, forcing herself to trust the Bakuur and let them release her when they were ready.

She heard the backgates being taken off, felt the sacks of charcoal being swiftly unloaded. When she pushed the sack down, small hands fluttered about her, helped her up, urged her out of the cart. They were in the deep shadow at the far end of a blind alley, the carts and the shadow hiding them from anyone passing the alley’s mouth. While she worked her arms and legs, did a few deep bends, following Rane’s example, the Bakuur were piling the sacks back in the carts, working swiftly but taking moments to grin broadly at Tuli and Rane, savoring their part in this tricking of Floarin and her guards. Before Tuli managed to get all the kinks out of her limbs, the Bakuur were clucking the eseks into motion, heading out of the alley.

“Where they going?” she whispered.

“Market. Middle of the city. Rane’s voice was harsh, abrupt.

Tuli was thirsty, there was char-dust packed in her nose, clogging her throat, more than anything she wanted a glass of water, but she looked at Rane’s taut face, streaked like hers with black dust, and kept her peace. Rane leaned against one of the building walls and waited until the squealing of the cart wheels had died to a faint scratching, then she went to the mouth of the alley and looked into the street.

There was no snow falling. The streets were cleared here as they’d been in Sel-ma-Carth. Dawnlight was reddening the roofs high over them. Rane beckoned and began moving along the street at a fast walk; Tuli had to trot to keep up with her. With Ildas scampering before them, they wound swiftly deeper into Oras, through narrow alleys that smelled of rotten fish and urine and cheap wine, over all that the indescribable but pervasive stench of poverty. The gloom was thick in these winding ways in between houses that leaned together and seemed too rotten and worn to stand on their own. Rane never hesitated as she turned from one noisome street into another, stepping over ragged bodies of sleeping men and a few women, or loping around the piles where they’d huddled together against the cold in the meager shelter of a doorway. In some places they were thick on the ground as paving stones, gaunt, groaning men, sleep coming as sparely to them as the scraps they ate. Hunger and destitution in the city seemed more devastating than in the country, perhaps because there the hungry and the failures were more scattered and hidden from view and because it was easier to get food of a sort and shelter of a sort in the groves and outlying herders’ huts.

They came to a rickety structure several stories high. It was backed onto the great curtain wall and stretched out its upper stories close to the building on either side as if fearing a moment’s weakness when it could stagger to one side or the other and need help to keep standing-or so it seemed to Tuli as Rane loped across the street and plunged into a narrow alley along one side of the building.

The ex-meie stopped before a door with corroded hinges and a covering of muck dried on it so thick it seemed the door hadn’t been opened in years. She reached into a hole in the wall beside the door, groped about a minute, then jerked hard on some invisible cord. She pulled her hand out, stepped back and waited, the tension draining from her lanky form, the weariness suddenly increasing as if she’d suddenly gone slack.

A moment later the door swung open, slowly, carefully, but with no suggestion of furtiveness. Doesn’t want to disturb the camouflage, Tuli thought. The smallish man who stood in the doorway scowled at her, then turned to Rane. “You bleeding-heart meien, always shoving children on me; well, get in before the traxim fly and spot you.”