The fleeing King ran towards the Gate, the strained lines of his back and arms, and the bunched muscles of his thighs, eloquent of desperation. His face was shadowed and his crown rolled in the dust; behind him lay a confusion of arms and weapons, and the bloodied sword of his conqueror raised against a sunset sky.
"And here we have the last King of Ilsig, pursued by Ataraxis the Great... ." Crimson damask rustled stiffly as Coricidius the Vizier motioned towards the mural that glowed on the ancient wall. He bowed to the Prince and his companions. The other guests at the reception stood in a respectful half-circle on the chequered marble of the floor.
Lalo the Limner, trailing self-consciously a few steps behind, squinted at the painting and wondered if he had made the sky too lurid after all. What would they think, these great lords of Ranke who had been sent by the Emperor to evaluate Sanctuary's preparations for the war?
Prince Kadakithis flushed with pleasure and peered more closely at the figure of his ancestor. Coricidius fixed Lalo with an eye like a moulting eagle's, summoning him. His aged skin was pallid above the vehemence of his gown.
He should not wear that color, thought Lalo, suppressing an impulse to duck behind one of the gilded pillars. Coricidius always affected him that way, and he had almost refused the task of refurbishing the Presence Hall for this visit because of it. But however discredited the Vizier might be in Ranke, in Sanctuary his power was second only to that of the Prince-Governor (indeed, some said that his influence counted for more).
"Remarkable-such freshness of line, such originality!" One of the Imperial Commissioners bent to examine the brushwork, chins quivering with enthusiasm.
"My Lord Raximander, thank you. May I present the artist! Master Lalo is a native of Sanctuary ..."
Lalo hid his paint-stained hands behind his back as they all looked at him, curious as if he had been in Meyne's Menagerie. It must be only too obvious that he lived in the city-the battered buildings through which the painted King was fleeing belonged to the Maze.
Exuding attar of roses and geniality, Lord Raximander turned to Lalo.
"You have great talent, but why do you stay here? You are like a pearl on the neck of a whore!"
Lalo stared at him, then realized that the man was not mocking him-neither the Prince nor the Vizier had ever ventured west of the Processional, and the Maze had not been included on the Commissioners' sight-seeing tour. He stifled a grin, thinking of these popinjays at the mercy of some of his old friends from the Vulgar Unicorn-like alley-cats with some Lady's pet love-bird, they would be.
The other Commissioners were looking at the painting now-the General, the Archpriest Arbalest, Zanderei the Provisioner and an undistinguished relative of the Emperor. Lalo listened to them commenting on its naive charm and primitive vigor and sighed.
"Indeed-" came a soft voice close to his ear. "What recognition can you expect in this city of thieves? In Ranke they would know how to appreciate you. ..."
Lalo jumped, hearing his own thoughts vocalized, and saw a slight man with clipped greying hair and a skin weathered brown, draped in dove-grey silk. Zanderei... after a moment his memory supplied the name, and for a moment he imagined he recognized amused understanding in the Commissioner's eyes. Then blandness masked them, and as Lalo opened his mouth to reply, Zanderei turned away.
A meek nonenity, Lalo had thought him when the Prince introduced the Commissioners to them all, and now Zanderei was a mouse once more. Lalo frowned, trying to understand.
A youthful eunuch, somewhat overaware of the splendor of his new purple satin and fringe, approached with a tray of pewter goblets. It was wine of Caronne, the whisper ran, cooled by snow that had been packed in sawdust all the way from the northern mountains whose possession was now being disputed so bitterly. The Commissioners took new goblets, and Coricidius motioned the slave away.
Lalo, whose cup was almost empty, looked after him longingly, but did not quite have the confidence to call him back again. I should have used myself as a mode] for the cowardly Ilsig King, he thought bitterly. Too many people here remember when I was drinking myself to death and Gilla took in laundry from the merchants' wives, and I am afraid they will laugh at me. ...
And yet he had painted the walls of the Temple of the Rankan gods, he had decorated this hall, and the Prince himself had complimented him. Why could he not be satisfied? Once my dream was to paint the truth beneath the skin, he thought then. What do I want now?
The air pulsed with polite conversation as rich merchants of Sanctuary pretended they were accustomed to such affairs, the Rankans tried to look as if they were enjoying this one, and the Prince and his officers uneasily enjoyed the Empire's belated recognition while wondering whether it was to their advantage.
Except for Coricidius-Lalo reminded himself. Rumor had it that the Vizier would stop at nothing to spend what remained of his old age back in the capital.
A wave of scent set Lalo to coughing, and he turned to confront Lord Raximander's beaming face.
"Why not return to the Capital with me?" the Commissioner said expansively. "A new talent! My wife would be so pleased."
Lalo smiled back, his vision expanding in images of marble columns and pavements of porphyry that far outshone the face-lifted splendors of Prince Kittycat's hall. Would Gilla like to live in a palace?
"But we need not waste the few weeks I have to spend here-"
Lalo's skin chilled as Lord Raximander went on.
"A picture of me, for instance-you could do that here in the palace as a small demonstration of your skill."
Before Raximander had finished, Lalo was shaking his head. "Someone must have misinformed you-I never do portraits!"
Some of the others, attention attracted by the raised voices, had drifted toward the mural again. Zanderei was watching with a faint smile.
Coricidius motioned towards the wall with a bony finger. "Who poses for all your pictures, then?"
Lalo twitched like a nervous horse, trying to find an answer that would not alienate them... Anything but the truth, which was that a sorcerer's spell had enabled-nay, compelled him, to portray the true nature of his sitters' souls. After a few disastrous attempts to paint Sanctuary's wealthy, Lalo had learned to choose his models from those among the poor who were still uncorrupted.
"My lord, that one was done from imagination," he said truthfully, for the Ilsig King had been inspired by his memories of fleeing through the Maze just ahead of local bullies when he was a boy. He did not tell them that he had got the Hell Hound Quag to boast of his feats on campaign while he posed for the figure of the Rankan Emperor.
One of the eunuch pages scurried towards them and Coricidius bent to hear his message. Released from his gaze, Lalo stepped backward with a sigh.
"You are too sensitive, Master Limner," Zan-derei said softly. "You must learn to accept what each day brings. In these times, ideals are an expensive luxury."
"Do you want a portrait too?" Lalo asked bitterly.
"Oh, I would not be worth the trouble-" Zan-derei smiled. "Besides, I know how I appear to the world."
Cymbals crashed, and as Lalo's startled pulse began to slow he realized that the other end of the room was flaring with the colored silks of the dancing girls. He should have expected it, having watched them rehearse almost every afternoon while he worked on the paintings here.
Such a commotion, he thought, for a few strangers who will make notes on Sanctuary as most artists make portraits-recording only the surface of reality and then will be gone.
Happily abandoning their conversations, the Commissioners let the purple-clad pages usher them to couches below the dais on which the Prince was already enthroned. The dancers, chosen from among the more talented of Kadakithis' lesser concubines, moved sinuously through the ornate topography of their dance, pausing only from time to time to detach a veil.
Trembling with reaction, Lalo drifted towards the row of pillars that supported the vaulted and domed ceiling. Someone had left a goblet on the marble bench, nearly full. Lalo took a long swallow, then made himself put it down again. His heart was pounding as loudly as the drums.
Why am I so afraid? he wondered, and then wondered how he could be anything else, in a town where footpads dogged your steps by day, and if you heard a scream after dark you ran not to help but to bar your door. It must be better in the Capital... there must be somewhere Gilla and I could live in safety.
He lifted the goblet once more, but the wine tasted sour and he set it back half-full. Coricidius would not care if he left the celebration now that he had exhibited both the pictures and their creator. Lalo wanted to go home.
He got to his feet and stepped around the pillar, then halted, startled as something in front of him seemed to move. After a moment he laughed, realizing that it was only his reflection in the polished marble that faced the wall. Dimly he could see the glitter of embroidery on his festival jerkin, and the sheen on his full breeches, but they could not disguise the stoop of his narrow shoulders or the way his belly had begun to round. Even the thinning of his ginger hair was somehow mirrored there. But through some quality of the dark marble or some trick of the light, Lalo's face was as shadowed as that of the Ilsig King.
Lalo worked his way around the outside of the Presence Hall to the side door. The corridor seemed quiet after the clamor of music and the wine-fueled babble of conversation, and the government offices that occupied the spaces between the Hall and the outside of the Palace were empty and dark. As he had expected, the side-door leading to the courtyard was bolted tight. With a sigh he went the other way, passed through the Hall of Justice that fronted the Palace as quickly as he could, and out through one of the great double doors that led onto the porch and broad stair.
Torches had been fixed in the pillars at the top and bottom of the stair, and their fitful light gleamed on the armour of the guards who stood at attention on each of the four wide steps, and glowed on the purple pennon tied to each spear, then rayed out across the inner courtyard in uneven ribbons of brightness and shadow, as if the soldiers had become part of the Palace architecture.
Lalo paused for a moment, noting the effect. Then he saw that the first guard was Quag, nodded, and received in answer the flicker of an eyelid in the wooden patience of the Hell-Hound's face.
Lalo's sandals crunched on grit as he crossed the flagstones of the inner courtyard, punctuating the patter of applause that drifted from the Palace, at this distance as faint as the sound of wavelets on a shore. He supposed that the concubines had stripped off their final veils. He must remember not to show Gilla the sketches he had made of them practicing.
One of Honald's many nephews was on duty in the guardbox set into the massive archway of the Palace Gate. Tonight the double doors were opened wide, and Lalo passed through unquestioned, though he remembered a time when all he owned would not have been enough to bribe the Gatekeeper to let him enter here. He felt dizzy, although he had hardly had any wine.
Why can't I be satisfied with what I have? he wondered. What is wrong with me?
He crossed the expanse of Vashanka's Square more quickly, heading diagonally towards the West Gate and the Governor's Walk. For a moment the east wind brought him the rank, fuggy smell of the Zoo Gardens, then it shifted and he felt on his face the cool breath of the sea.
He halted just outside the Gate and with a sigh reversed his cloak so that its dull inner lining concealed his festival clothes. It was well known in the appropriate places that Lalo never carried money-in the old days he had never had any, and now Gilla controlled the family treasury- but he would not want anyone to make a mistake in the dark.
A waxing moon was already brightening the heavens, and the rooftops of the city made a jagged silhouette against the stars. Not since he was a boy, slipping from his pallet behind his father's workbench to join his friends' adventur-ing, had Lalo seen Sanctuary at this hour with sober eyes. Just now, with all its sordidness obscured by shadow, it seemed to him to be possessed of a kind of haphazard but enduring integrity.
His feet had carried him almost to Shadow Lane without his attention when they encountered something soft. He leaped awkwardly aside to avoid stepping into the contents of a honeypot which someone had emptied into the street to stink and steam, until the rain washed it into the city's underground maze of sewers and it was carried off by the tide. He had been into those tunnels once, on a dare, through an entry shaft near the Vulgar Unicorn. He wondered if it were still there....
What am I doing, getting sentimental about Sanctuary/ thought Lalo as he inspected the sole of his sandal to see if any ordure remained. I must have had more wine than I thought! He had heard that in Ranke, armies of street cleaners scoured the streets every night to rid the city of the refuse of the day. ...
He remembered the flatteries of Lord Raxi-mander and that strange man, Zanderei, and he remembered the days when his one desire had been to get out of Sanctuary. It seemed to him that his life had consisted of cycles in which he dreamed of escape, found new hope for life in Sanctuary, discovered that his hope was unjustified, and began to plan flight once more.
This last time, when he had found that if he stuck to mythological subjects and chose his models carefully he could turn Enas Yorl's gift to a blessing, he had been sure that his troubles were over. But now here he was, bewailing his fate again.
I should have learned better by now ... he thought morosely, but what is there to Jearn? Wii] anything but death stop this wheel or make it take a different path?
Houses leaned close together above him now, cutting off the sky. In some of the windows lamplight glowed, though most of them were tightly shuttered, edged and chinked with light that dappled the worn cobbles below. Lalo winced as a murmur of voices exploded into abuse. A mangy dog that had been nosing at something in the gutters looked up at the noise, then went back to its meal.
Lalo shuddered, visualizing death as a starving jackal-hound waiting to spring. There must be some other way-he told himself, for however much he hated his life, he feared death more.
Human shadows slid from the shadows behind him, and he forced himself to walk steadily, knowing that at this hour, in this part of Sanctuary, it was indeed death to be visibly afraid. By daylight the area shared in the quasi respectability of the Bazaar, but by night it belonged to the Maze.
From ahead came the sound of drunken song and a burst of laughter. Torchlight danced around the corner followed by the singers, a group of mercenaries emboldened by numbers to make the pilgrimage to the ale casks of the Vulgar Unicorn.
As the light reached them, the shapes that had followed Lalo slipped back into alleys and doorways, and Lalo himself edged beneath the overhang of a tenement until the soldiers had gone by. He had almost reached Slippery Street now, and the cul-de-sac which for twenty years had been his home.
Now, at last, Lalo allowed himself to hasten, for in all the ups and downs of his fortunes there had been one constant, and that was the knowledge that he had a home, and that Gilla waited for him there.
The third step of the staircase squeaked, as did the seventh and the eighth. When Lalo had become fashionable and had, for the first time in his life, had money, he and Gilla had bought the building in which they lived and repaired, among other things, the staircase. But the stairs still squeaked, and Lalo, hearing the lullaby Gilla was singing to their youngest child halt a moment, knew that she had heard him coming home.
Breathing a little faster than he would have liked after the climb, he opened the door.
"You're home early!" The floor quivered beneath her steps as Gilla came through the door of what had once been the adjoining apartment. Lalo saw beyond her the curly head of their youngest, whom they still called the baby even though he was now nearly two years old, and the outstretched arm of an older child.
"Is everything all right?" Lalo unfastened his cloak and hung it on the peg.
"It was only a nightmare-" softly she closed the door. "And what about you? I was sure you would be at the Palace all night, imbibing the wine of paradise with all the great ones and their gilded ladies." The carved chair groaned faintly as she sat down and lifted her massive arms to pat the elaborate curls and coils of her hair.
"There weren't any ladies-" tactfully he passed over the dancing girls, "just an unlikely mixture of military and priests and government men, like a stew from the Bazaar!"
She set her elbow on the table and rested her head on her hand. "If it was such a bore why did you stay so long? Don't tell me they wouldn't let you go?" Her eyes narrowed and he flushed a little beneath the acuity of her gaze. Deliberately he began to unhook his vest, waiting for her to speak again.
"Something happened-" she said then. "Something's troubling you."
He draped his vest across another chair and sat down in it with a sigh.
"Gilla, what would you say to the idea of leaving Sanctuary?" Beyond her he could see his first study for the picture of Sabellia which graced the great Temple now. Gilla had been his model, and for a moment he saw a double image of woman and Goddess, and her bulk took on a monumental dignity.
She put down her arm and sat up straight. "Now, when we are secure at last?"
"How secure can anyone be, here?" He hunched forward, running stubby craftsman's fingers through his thinning hair. Then he told her how they had praised his picture, and what the future Lord Raximander had offered him.
"Ranke!" she exclaimed when he had finished. "Clean streets and quiet nights! But what would I do there? All the fine ladies would laugh at me...." For a moment she looked curiously vulnerable, despite her size. Then her eyes met his. "But you said he wanted a portrait-Lalo, you can't do that-you'll end up in the Imperial dungeons, not the court!"
"Even there? Surely there must be some honest men and virtuous women at the heart of the Empire!" Lalo said wistfully.
"Will you never grow up? We are doing very well as we are-you have a position, people like what you do, and the children will be well-apprenticed and married when the time comes. And now you want to go chase some other dream? Why can't you make up your mind?"
He put his hands over his aching eyes and shook his head. If only he knew-there was something missing in him, something that he sought in each new thing he tried to do ... What use has it been to have my heart's desire? he thought, if I myself am still the same?
After a little he heard the chair scrape and felt her coming to him, and sighed again, more deeply, as the strength and softness of her arms enclosed him. She had scented her skin with oil of sandalwood, and he could feel the opulence of her body through the thin silk of the night-robe she wore.
It changed nothing, but in her arms he could forget his perplexities for at least a little while. Gilla kissed him on his bald spot and drew away, and with a sense of having made a truce with fate he followed her into the other room.
"Thieves!"
Lalo jerked upright, shocked from sleep by Gilla's scream and the crash that had shaken the room. Was it morning? But everything was still dark! He rubbed his eyes, still half-drugged by dreams of marble terraces and applause.
Shadows moved and feet that no longer troubled to be stealthy thudded on the floor... hard hands grasped Lalo's shoulders and he cried out. Then something hit the side of his head and he sagged against the hard hands that prisoned him.
"Murderers! Assassins!"
His head still ringing, Lalo recognized Gilla in the voice, and in the dark bulk that heaved upward from the bed to fling another assailant against the wall. Water spattered his cheek and he smelt roses as the vase that had stood on the bedside table flew past him and shattered against someone's skull. Men caromed into each other swearing as Gilla groped forward. There was no sound from their neighbors-he had not really expected it-they would ask their questions when morning came.
"In Vashanka's name, somebody silence the sow!" In the half-light a drawn sword gleamed dimly.
"No!" he croaked, gasped in air and cried out, "Gilla, stop fighting-there are too many-Gilla, please!"
There was a final convulsion, then silence. Flint rasped steel and a little light sparked into life. Gilla lay sprawled like a fallen monument. For a moment Lalo felt as if a great hand had closed on his chest. Then there was movement in the tangle of limbs. Gilla rolled over and levered herself to her feet without spending a glance on the man who had cushioned her fall.
"Savankala save me, she's squashed me flat . . . Sir, help me-don't leave me here...."
Sir? But the man on the floor was a Hell-Hound-Lalo recognized him now.
"I don't understand..."he said aloud, and as he turned the light was quenched and he blinked at darkness again.
"Carry him," said a deep voice. "And you, woman, be still if you want to see him whole again."
Sick from the blow and aching from rough handling, Lalo did not resist as they shoved his sandals onto his feet and thrust an old smock over his head and marched him along the empty streets back to the Palace. But instead of rounding the outer wall to the dungeons, as Lalo had dismally expected, they hustled him through the Palace Gate and along the side of the building and down a little staircase to the basement.
Then, still without a word of explanation, he was thrust into a dank hole smelling of dry rot and full of things to stumble over to shiver, and wonder why they had brought him here, and gnaw his paint-stained fingers while he waited for dawn ...
"Wake up, you Wrigglie scum? The Lord wants to talk to you-"
Lalo surfaced, groaning, from a dream in which he had been taken prisoner and dragged through the night until... Something hit him hard in the ribs and he opened his eyes.
It was morning, and it had not been a dream. He saw flaking white-washed walls, and splintered crates and furniture heaped on the bare earth of the floor. It was not a prison then. A little pallid light filtered down to him through one barred window set high in the wall.
He forced himself to sit up and face his tormentors.
"Quag!"
At Lalo's exclamation, the Hell-Hound's pitted-leather face became, if possible, a richer shade of terra cotta, and his eyes slid away from the painter's gaze. Lalo followed the look to the doorway, and suddenly began to understand what power had brought him here, though he was as far as ever from comprehending why.
Coricidius hunched in the doorway like a sick eagle, with his cloak clutched around him against the early morning chill, and a face like curdled milk. He eyed Lalo sourly, hawked and spat, and then stepped stiffly into the room.
"My Lord, am I under arrest? I've done nothing-why have you brought me here?" babbled Lalo.
"I want to commission some portraits ..." The lined face twitched with the faintest of malicious smiles.
"What?"
Coricidius snorted in disgust and motioned to one of the guards to set a folding camp-stool in the middle of the room. Joint by joint, the old man lowered himself until he settled fully upon it with a sigh.
"I have no time to argue with you, dauber. You say you don't do portraits, but you will do them for me."
Lalo shook his head. "My lord, I can't do pictures of real people... they hate them... I'm no good at it."
"You're too good at it." Coricidius corrected him. "I know your secret, you see. I've had your models followed, and talked to them. I could kill you, but if you refuse me, I have only to tell a few of your former patrons and they will save me the toil."
Lalo clutched at the folds of his smock to hide the trembling of his hands. "Then I am doomed-if I do portraits for you, my secret will be known as soon as they are seen."
"Ah, but these pictures are not for public display." Coricidius hunched forward. "I want you to make a likeness of each of the Commissioners who have come fron Ranke. I shall tell them that it is a surprise for the Emperor-that no one must see it until it is done ... and before that happens, some accident to the painting is certain to occur. . . ."The Vizier was shaking with subtle tremors that ran along each limb to end in a grimace which Lalo took minutes to recognize as laughter.
"But not before I have seen it," the old man went on, "and learned the weaknesses these peacocks hide from men ... They have come to power in the Court since my time, but once I know their souls I can constrain them to help me return to favor again!"
Lalo shivered. The proposal had a certain superficial logic, but there were so many things that could go wrong.
"But perhaps I have simply not yet found the right stick to make the donkey go ..." Coricidius went on. "They say you love your wife-" he peered at Lalo disbelievingly. "Shall we blind her and send her to the Street of the Red Lanterns while we keep you prisoner?"
I should have gone away ... thought Lalo. I should have taken Gilla and the children out of here as soon as I had the money to go... Once he had seen a rabbit transfixed by the shadow of a stooping hawk. I am that rabbit, and I am lost ... he thought.
And after all, the internal dialogue went on, what are all these plots and counterplots to me? If 1 can help this Rankan buzzard return to his own foul nest then at least Sanctuary will be free of him!
"All right ... I will do what you say..." Lalo said aloud.
* * *
Lalo, brow furrowed and an extra brush held between his teeth, leaned closer to the canvas, concentrating on the line the soft brush made. When he was painting, his hand and eye became a single organ in which visual impressions were transmitted to the fingers and to the brush which was their extension without mediation by the consciousness. Line, mass, shape and color, all were factors in a pattern which must be replicated on the canvas. The eye checked the work of the hand and automatically corrected it without either interpretation or reaction from the brain.
"... and then I was promoted to be under-warden of the great Temple of Savankala in Ranke." The Archpriest Arbalest settled a little more comfortably in his chair, and Lalo's sensitive fingers, responding, adjusted a line.
"An excellent position, really, right at the heart of things. Everybody who is anybody pays homage there eventually, and whoever transmits their petitions to the god can gather quite a lot of useful information in time." Smiling complacently, the Archpriest smoothed the brocaded saffron folds of his gown.
"Mmnn-very true-" murmured Lalo with the fraction of his mind that was not mesmerized by his work.
"I wish you would let me look at what you are doing!" the priest said petulantly. "It is my face you are immortalizing, after all!"
Shocked into awareness, Lalo stepped back from the easel and looked at him.
"Oh no, my Lord, you must not! It has been strictly ordered that this picture shall be a surprise. None of the sitters is to see it until the entire painting is revealed to the Emperor. If you try to look I will have to call the guard. Indeed, it is as much as my life is worth to let anyone see the picture before its time!"
And that, at least, was perfectly true, thought Lalo, daring to look at the canvas with conscious eyes at last. Against the crude backdrop of a pillared hall had been sketched the rough outlines of five figures. The one on the far left had been filled in yesterday with the picture of Lord Raximander, the first of the Commissioners to serve as model here. He looked like a pig- complacently self-indulgent, with just a hint of stubborn ferocity in the little eyes.
Lalo wondered that the Commissioners had consented to it. Since they came they had been busy with inspections and meetings, and listening to interminable reports. Perhaps they were glad of a chance to sit still. Or perhaps they feared the consequences of refusing to contribute to a gift for their Emperor, or possibly they really were eager to have their visit to this outpost of Empire immortalized. Raximander, at least, had appeared to take the sitting as tacit agreement from Lalo to paint another portrait which the Commissioner would be allowed to see.
Now the picture of the Archpriest was almost complete beside Lord Raximander's. If the thing had been meant seriously, Lalo would have wanted several hours more to work on the finishing of the gown and hair, but it was already sufficient for the Vizier's purposes. Lalo looked at it with normal vision for the first time and repressed a sigh.
Why had he dared to hope that just because the man was a priest he would be virtuous? But Arbalest was not a pig-more of a weasel, Lalo thought, noting the covert cunning of his gaze.
"If you are tired we can end the sitting now." He bowed to the priest. "I will not need your presence for what remains."
When the priest had gone Lalo refilled his mug from the pitcher of beer provided by Coricidius. Aside from the infamous manner of the commission, the Vizier had not treated him badly. Having blackmailed him into painting, the old man was at least allowing him to do so in comfort. They had set aside a pleasant room on the second floor of the Palace for his use-at the front next to the roof garden so that windows on three sides gave him light-working conditions, at least, were ideal.
But the painting was an abomination. Lalo forced himself to look at it again. He had sketched in columns and a carven ceiling just in case someone should catch a glimpse of the canvas from far away. But the faces with which he was filling the foreground made the rich surroundings seem a travesty.
Everyone at the Palace appeared to believe the tale that the painting was a bribe to the Emperor, and some, believing that this must give Lalo some influence, were already toadying to him. Even to Gilla, Lalo had had to pretend that the midnight arrest was a mistake and the commission real. But if she did not believe him, for once she had the sense to let the subject alone.
Would others do the same? What if the project became so famous that people insisted on seeing the picture? What if one of his sitters proved nimble enough to get a good look before Lalo could call the guard?
Lalo sighed again, drained his mug, and told the Hell-Hound currently on duty to bring the third subject in.
Lalo sat oh a low stool next to the table where he had laid out his painting things, waiting, like them, for the fourth of the Commissioners to arrive for his sitting. He supposed that he had been lucky to get in Arbalest and the royal relative yesterday-he glanced at the third picture with distaste. "Something oxis," the man's name was, but already he had trouble remembering. Not surprising-his portrait revealed a bovine complacence that avoided evil mainly through lack of energy.
And these are the pride of Ranke? thought Lalo. He found himself almost grateful to Coricidius. I would never have known-he grimaced at the painting again-I would have uprooted my family to seek my fortune in the capital, innocently certain it must be superior to Sanctuary. But there, the evil is only better disguised....
From the courtyard below he could hear the even tramp of bullhide sandals-the Prince's Guard was drilling again. These days, even the City garrison marched and polished their armor, but whether it was in hopes of being sent to the war or the opposite, he did not know. Nor, at this moment, did he care. He found it hard to believe that any new invader could make things any better, or worse, in Sanctuary.
Still, the incessant marching made him nervous, as if his former certainties were illusions, and just around the corner lay some new threat that he could not see. Restlessly he paced to the window, and was just turning back when the guard brought the fourth sitter in.
"My Lord Zanderei!" Lalo bowed to the man to whom he had spoken at the reception. "Please be seated-" he indicated the sitter's chair.
"I am sorry to have kept you waiting. Master Limner," the man said plaintively, settling himself. "I was detained at the warehouses. There seems to be some confusion regarding the grain supplies set aside for the war ..."
Lalo busied himself with his paints to hide a grin. He could well imagine that the web of bribes, kickbacks, substitutions and out-and-out shortchanging characteristic of business in Sanctuary would make "confusion" an understatement. Why had they sent such a clerkly little mouse to deal with the situation here? Glancing at him again, Lalo realized that Zanderei had one of the least remarkable faces he had ever seen.
I suppose it comes of a life-time of deference, he thought. The man displayed no individuality at all. But for the first time in this project Lalo found himself eager to set brush to canvas, knowing that once he did, no dissimulation could hide the truth of the man from him.
"Am I posed correctly? I can turn my head the other way if you like, or fold my hands ..."
"Yes, clasp your hands-your head is very well as it is. You must relax, sir, and think how near your business is to its conclusion..."Lalo poured thinner into the cup and dipped his brush.
"Yes," Zanderei echoed softly. "I am almost done. A week or less will show me if I have accomplished all I was sent to do. The conflict draws very close to us now." His thin lips curved in the faintest of smiles.
Lalo's eyes narrowed. He drew his brush through the light ochre and began.
A half hour went by, and an hour. Lalo worked steadily without really being conscious either of the passage of time or of what he was doing. Zanderei was light and shadow, color and texture and line-a problem in interpretation. The artist adjusted to the changing light and even gave his model permission to move from time to time without emerging from the trance which was his art and his spell.
Then, from the Hall of Justice below, the gong for the fourth watch began to toll. Zanderei got to his feet, grey robes shifting like shadow around him. Lalo, fighting his way back to awareness like a man awakening from sleep, saw that dusk was beginning to gather in the corners of the room.
"I am sorry. I must go now." Zanderei took a few steps forward, more smoothly than Lalo would have expected, considering how long the man had been sitting still.
"Oh, of course-forgive me for keeping you so long."
"Are you finished? Will you want me to come to you again?"
Lalo looked at the picture, wondering if he had captured the reality of this man. For a moment he did not understand what he saw. He glanced quickly at the other portraits, but they had not changed, and paint still glistened wetly where he had given a last touch to Zanderei's hair. But he had never been unable to recognize the model in one of his portraits before...
He saw a face like stone, like steel, a face with no life but in the eyes, and there only an ancient pain. And in the hands of this image, a bloodied knife was gripped fast.
Coricidius wanted to see these men's weaknesses-but I see death here!
And like the canvas, Lalo's face must have revealed the tumult in his soul, for now Zanderei was blurring towards him in a swordsman's swift rush that brought him past Lalo to comprehend the picture in one searching stare and still in the same motion to whirl and flick into the throat of the oncoming guardsman a knife that had been hidden in his sleeve.
"Sorcery!" exclaimed Zanderei, and then, more slowly, "Is that what I look like to you?"
Lalo jerked his appalled gaze from the ruby rivulet that was snaking its way from the throat of the guard across the floor. Now Zanderei stood with a predator's poise, and his face and the face in the picture were the same.
"Did they set you to trap me? Have my masters' plans been betrayed?" Softly he moved towards Lalo, who stood shaking his head and shivering. "Ah, of course-it was Coricidius, setting traps for everyone. I doubt that he expected to catch me!" he added more softly.
"Who are you? Why are you pretending to be a clerk?" Lalo stared at Zanderei, seeing something flicker behind the still eyes as if the mask he had penetrated only covered a veil that hid another truth deeper within.
"I am fate ... or I am nothing ... It all depends. My masters wish the Prince to do his part in the war, but it would not be well for him to do it too effectively. 'Watch him, but do not let him become a hero, Zanderei...' Until that happens, I will serve him." His voice ran smoothly as an undammed stream, but Lalo knew that what he was hearing doomed him more surely than what he had seen.
"You're going to kill the Prince ..." Lalo stepped backwards until he bumped into the table on which his paints lay.
"Perhaps-" Zanderei shrugged.
"You're going to kill me?"
The other man sighed, and from the other sleeve a second knife flickered into his hand. "Do I have a choice?" he said regretfully. "I am a professional. No one will deplore the work of the vandal who kills you and destroys the painting more than I. . .or perhaps it will have been you who suffered a revulsion of feeling and did it yourself-for I am sure that Coricidius forced you to this work. But one way or another, the painting must be destroyed-" Zanderei looked at the other portraits and for the first time amusement flickered in his eyes. "You are far too accurate!
"Reckon up your life, Master Limner-" he said more gently, "for once the painting is gone the painter must disappear as well."
Lalo swallowed, afraid that his churning stomach would deny him dignity even in his death. And what had his life been worth to anyone, after all? Zanderei took flint and steel from a pouch beneath his robe, and in a moment light flared in the dimness of the room. Then the assassin set a stained paint rag aflame and held it to the canvas.
Lalo groped for support and his hand closed on the smooth side of a paintpot. His throat ached, holding back the urge to beg the man to stop. He hated the painting-he wished it had never been done-and yet, why did he feel the same pain as he had when the Hell-Hound struck Gilla to the floor? His eyes stung with unuttered grief for his work, for himself, for his family left fatherless.
The canvas had caught fire and was beginning to crackle merrily now. Bright flame fattened on the paint-soaked cloth and cast demon-flickers on the face of Zanderei.
"No!" The cry burst from Lalo's lips, and as Zanderei straightened, Lalo's hand closed on the paint pot and he flung it at the other man.
It struck Zanderei's shoulder, and red paint splashed like blood across the grey robe.
The assassin exploded towards him and Lalo scrambled frantically around the table, snatching up more paint pots, brushes, anything he could throw. One of them hit Zanderei's forehead, and as paint sprayed across his face he hesitated for just a moment to mop his eyes.
And in that moment Lalo kicked over the table and ran.
Lalo hugged his chest as if he could muffle the drumming of his heart and stared around him.
He had confused memories of having fled down the corridor that edged the upper half of the Presence Hall, towards the back of the Palace, down the stairs by the dais, and then still farther, into a part of the Palace he did not know. Though the floor was still marble, the slabs were cracked and discolored, and plaster was chipping from the wall. Then he heard crockery clattering nearby and realized he must be hard by the kitchens.
At least, he thought gratefully, Zanderei the Commissioner would be even more out of place here than he. Cautiously he turned into another passageway and moved forward. But as he eased open the door at the end of it, he heard once more a faint pattering behind him-the steps of one who from long training ran so lightly his footfalls were only a whisper of fine leather on polished stone.
Stifling a moan, Lalo burst through the door, dashed across the wooden floor and the platform that opened out onto the kitchen courtyard, and flung himself into the first concealment he found.
It had looked like a cart, and as Lalo sank into its contents he realized what it was. Not the honey-wagon, thank the gods, but the cart into which they had collected the garbage from several days' worth of princely meals. Gagging, Lalo wriggled deeper into the mass of turnip peelings and sour curds, soggy rice and pastry crusts and meat trimmings and bones.
He thought grimly, As long as I can retch, I'm stil] alive...
The cart moved beneath him and he heard the stamp of a hoof on stone. He realized then that not only was he alive, he might even escape, for if the horse was hitched, it must be time for the garbage to be taken away. He waited, breathing shallowly, for the endless minutes until he heard voices and the wagon lurched with the weight of somebody climbing onto the driver's bench. Then they began to move.
Faster... Faster! Lalo prayed as he was jounced deeper into the reeking mass. The clatter of wooden wheels on stone was deafening, then there was a pause, a moment's conversation with Honald at the Gate, and the duller vibration as the wagon trundled across the pounded earth of Vashanka's Square.
Then the cart shuddered to a halt. Lalo strained his ears for the night-noises of Sanctuary, but heard instead shouting and the clamor of an alarm.
"Is that smoke? Theba's paps, it's the Palace! Leave the wagon, Tarn, we can give the beasts their slops in the morning!" The wagon heaved again and Lalo heard two sets of footsteps pounding back the way they had come.
He settled back down, realizing with wonder that for the moment at least, he was saved.
And what will I do now? Zanderei would tell everyone that Lalo had killed the guard and started the fire. If caught, he would be cast into the dungeons, if they did not kill him out of hand. And if he offered to demonstrate his skill in his defense, he might wish that they had...
He could not return to the Palace to accuse the 'Commissioner', but if he could reach the Maze he could hide indefinitely-there were still a few who owed him favors there.
And then . . . Zanderei would either assassinate Prince Kadakithis, or go peacefully home. The former seemed more likely, for one does not return a honed blade to the sheath without blooding it, and in that case Coricidius would fall as well.
And what would become of Sanctuary? The thought troubled his satisfaction. What kind of tyrant would the Empire send to avenge its son? For all his clumsiness, at least Prince Kittycat meant well, and if they must be ruled by foreigners, surely the ones they were accustomed to would be best.
And it's all in my hands... Trying to control laughter, Lalo unwisely took too deep a breath, and began to cough again. Here I wallow in the Prince's garbage, deciding what his fate shall be? Power bubbled in his veins like wine of Caronne. I could send word to Coricidius-he started this, he might believe me ... or-he remembered rumors he had heard about Shadowspawn-I might be able to get word to the Prince himself...
But first I have to get out of here?
Cautiously Lalo poked his head over the rim of the cart. There was a whiff of smoke in the air, and above the wall he could see torches winking like glowworms in the upper windows of the Palace, but he saw no glare of fire-perhaps they had put it out in time. The cart in which he was sitting was parked just outside the Zoo Gardens, a few feet from the Processional Gate.
Sighing with relief, Lalo clambered over the side and began to strip off his smock and brush away the worst of the filth that coated him-
-And stopped, feeling a gaze that was not the dispassionate stare of the mangy lions beyond the barrier. He turned then, and looked across the square to the Palace Gate from which a familiar grey-robed figure had just emerged. For a moment fear froze him again, but he was still glowing with the inebriation of power. He let his smock fall to the ground.
Zanderei's robe was of rich silk, while his own worn shirt and stained breeches would attract no attention. If he could entice the Rankan into the town, Lalo would be on his own ground, and the City itself might rid him and the Prince of their enemy.
Grinning nervously, Lalo walked into plain view, and then urged his stiff limbs into an awkward dash through the Gate as Zanderei and half a dozen Hell-Hounds leaped into motion across the Square after him.
Looking back over his shoulder at every other step, Lalo pressed his cramped limbs to greater speed along the Processional Way. Hearing the guards close behind him, he dodged among the merchants' houses to Westgate Street and down Tanner's Row, heading for the Serpentine. And as he ran, the blood began to course freely through his limbs once more, and he shed middle-age and awkwardness as he had shed his ruined smock, and his fear.
Lalo leaped over a handcart that had been abandoned in the road and paused to send it spinning broadsides. That would not long delay them, but he could hear mercenaries laying bets on a dogfight in the next street. Laughing like the boy who had raced through these streets so long ago, he let his pursuers follow him around the corner, slid eel-like through the crowd, and laughed again as the tinny clash of weapons told him that the Hell-Hounds and the mercenaries had met.
But what about Zanderei? Lalo waited in the shadow of a quiet doorway and watched the gap at the entrance to the street. Night had fallen, and the moon, now almost at the full, was drawing free of the distorting smoke of the City and transforming the shape and shadows of the street with its own deceptive dappling. How could he tell which one-
Ah, there, a shadow moved of itself, and Lalo knew that his enemy was here.
So soon! Shock tingled through his veins and set every hair on end. I must run ... the man moves too subtly-before those who would attack him for the silk he wears can note him, he is away. I am a dead man if I cannot trap him somehow. The glory he had tasted seemed now as inconstant as the moon. In a moment Zanderei would reach his hiding place.
And yet it was almost as if he had done all this before-he remembered a time in his boyhood, when he had come with his mates into the Maze in search of excitement and been set upon there. He had escaped by-he looked up and saw that this house too had an external stair. Without allowing himself time to think of failure, Lalo launched himself upward.
The wooden structure swayed alarmingly. Lalo clutched at a railing and nearly fell when it gave way beneath his hand. He could hear loud voices inside-a window opened and then slammed shut as he was seen, and for a moment the quarreling was stilled. Then he was on the roof, leaping over trays of drying fruit and ducking under clotheslines. He saw the dark shape behind him and jerked one end of the line free so that the hanging clothes clung damply to the man who was following him.
Something flashed by his cheek in the moonlight like a line of white fire. Lalo threw himself across the gap between two buildings, clutched at the ledge of a parapet and lay across it, gasping, staring at the quivering blade that matched the one he had seen in the throat of the slain guard. He hauled himself the rest of the way into the dubious protection of the gable end.
Two Hell-Hounds trotted down the street below, paused momentarily at the corner and gave a whistle which was answered from two streets away. Lalo wondered what had happened to the mercenaries. Then a shadow rose from the opposite rooftop, glimmering like silver as it came into the full light of the moon.
"Limner!" Zanderei called, "The soldiers will kill you if they catch you before I do-give yourself up to me now!"
Lalo thought of the blade which he had wedged uncomfortably into his sash and gritted his teeth. They call us Wrigglies, he remembered, Well, I had better do some quick wriggling now? Cautiously he squirmed across the tiles. A quiver beneath him told him that Zanderei had also crossed the gap, and he scrambled for the opposite stair.
But there was none. Unable to stop, Lalo leaped to the balcony in a crash of
breaking crockery, and swung himself from the railing to the street below. The upper way would not save him, but as he had lain gasping he had remembered an alternative, darker and more dangerous both to the pursuer and the pursued.
Shards of terra cotta smashed and rattled in the street behind him as the owner of the balcony glimpsed Zanderei and pelted him with his broken wares. Lalo sped down the street and past a group wavering along from the direction of the Vulgar Unicorn.
I wanted to be a hero-he thought, forcing his legs to more speed, but how do you tell the difference between a dead hero and a dead fool? The singing behind him faltered and someone screamed. Zanderei-for a moment Lalo saw the assassin clearly in the moonlight-he had shed his grey silk and his shirt was torn-he looked as if he had been bred to the streets of Sanctuary. And as if he had felt Lalo's gaze, he turned, and his teeth flashed in a brief smile.
Lalo took a deep breath and stared around him-he dared not move too quickly now lest he miss the spot, though every sense was clamoring to him to flee. There, at the end of the alley-a wooden cover that capped a circle of crumbling stones. Lalo pulled it free-the covers were usually left unbolted in hopes that people would throw refuse directly in-then, gritting his teeth, he lowered himself down the shaft.
It was not so deep as a well. Lalo landed with a splash in a sluggish stream slippery with things he would rather not try to name. Fighting his stomach, he realized that the Prince's garbage had been fragrant compared to the sewers which were his last hope against his enemy.
He slogged grimly forward, counting his steps and putting out a reluctant hand to the slimy walls to guide his passage, listening behind him for the small sounds that would tell him that Zanderei had followed him even here. Catching his breath, he felt for the knife, but in all his scrambling it had been lost.
Just as well-he told himself, I would not have known how to use it anyway/
"You-Limner, you've done well, but what made you think you could win this game against me?" The voice echoed dankly from water-scoured stone walls. "I'll catch up with you soon-wouldn't you have preferred to have died cleanly?"
Lalo shook his head, though the other man could not see. He had reckoned his achievements and found them wanting, but if he died now at least he had tried to act like a man. He forced his way onward, fingers questing for the next break in the stone. What if he was wrong? Had he misremembered, or had the tunnels changed in thirty years?
"You will die, you know. This is the last bolthole. Your end is here."
An end for both of us then, Lalo thought numbly. I will not mind-Then his trembling fingers found the crack. He moved his hand along the wall, lips whispering the numbers that had become a litany-sixty-six, sixty-seven steps... Please, Lord Ils, Jet it be here... sixty-eight... Shalpa help me, sixty nine, seventy?
His fingers closed on a rusting semicircle of iron, and stifling a gasp of relief he hauled himself upward, though his fingers slipped on the rungs. The splashing behind him slowed as if his enemy had paused to listen, then became a tumult as Zanderei began to run.
Lalo gained the top, shoved the wooden cover aside, and heart bursting, rolled over the edge into the clean air. But he could not rest now, not yet, not until the trap was sprung. Summoning strength where he had thought there could be no more, he hauled the cover over the shaft and drove home the wooden bar. And without waiting to see if it would hold, he staggered back to the first shaft and did the same thing there.
Then he sank to the cobbles beside it, pulse hammering, knowing that this last, god-given strength was gone and he could do not more. This was the only place in the network of sewers where two shafts entered the conduits so close together. Zanderei was trapped there now.
How sweet the air was to his lungs. From some upper room Lalo heard the tinkle of a gittem and a woman's low laughter. A soft wind comforted his burning cheeks-a sea wind. And then Lalo remembered with mingled satisfaction and horror that Zanderei was doubly doomed. With the sea wind would come a rush of dark water from the Swamp of Night Secrets, propelled by the tidal bore.
"You-Assassin-you've done well-but what made you think you could win this game with me?" Lalo whispered through cracked lips. Laughter rasped his throat, and he sat shaking by the locked well-mouth while the slime of the tunnel dried on his skin. A stray pickpocket, passing by, made the sign against madness and scuttled away. He heard a whistle and then the clink of a sword as a Hell-Hound passed the mouth of the alley, but he supposed he looked like nothing human, crouching there.
"Limner, are you there?"
Lalo jumped, hearing the voice so close to him. The wood of the shaft-top shuddered as it was struck from below, and Lalo leaned on the bar. Hanging from the rungs by one hand, there was no way Zanderei could gain enough leverage to break free. That was what Lalo had heard in dark tales whispered by childhood friends, and later, overwinecups in the Vulgar Unicorn. If he lived, he too would have a tale to tell. ...
"Assassin, I am here and you are there and there you will stay," croaked Lalo when the dull hammering finally stilled.
"I will give you gold-I have never broken my word . . . You could establish yourself in the capital."
"I don't want your gold." I don't even want to go to Ranke, his thought continued, not anymore.
"I will give you your life..." said Zanderei. "Coricidius won't believe you, you know, and the Hell-Hounds will have your skull for a drinking bowl. At the very least they will strike off your hands ..."
Involuntarily, Lalo's fingers clasped protectively around his wrists, as if a bright blade were already descending. It was true-surely he had lost all he had ever gained. Better to meet Zan-derei's knife than to live without being able to take brush in hand. If I cannot paint I am nothing, he thought. I will surely die.
But he did not move. Shivering with exhaustion and despair, still he would not throw away this victory, even though he hardly understood his reasons anymore.
"Limner, I will give you your soul..."
"You can only give death, foreigner! You cannot trick me!"
"I do not need to-" the voice seemed very tired. "I only need to ask you a question. Have you ever painted your own portrait, Limner with the sorcerer's eye?"
The silence stretched into eternity while Lalo tried to understand. He felt a subtle quiver in the earth that told him the tide was beginning to turn. What did Zanderei mean? Of course he had done self-portraits by the dozen, when he could get no one else to pose for him-
-In the old days, before Enas York had taught him to paint the soul ...
I've been too busy-no... the awareness came reluctantly, I was afraid.
"What will you see on your canvas when you have murdered me?" The voice echoed his fear.
"Stop it! Leave me alone!" Lalo cried aloud. He heard a deep voice shout orders in the street beyond the alley, and saw for a moment the flicker of lanterns bobbing by, pallid in the moonlight.
In a few minutes the poisoned waters would be driven from their bed by the inexorable pressure of the tide, and rush through the sewers of Sanctuary like a host of angry serpents seeking their prey. In a few minutes Zanderei would be dead.
If he disappears, maybe they will blame Zanderei for the Fire. When the stir dies down I'll be free to paint again. His hand twitched as if he held a brush, but the motion triggered Zanderei's words in his memory.
"Have you ever painted your own portrait?"
Lalo shuddered suddenly, violently. Could even Enas Yorl lift the curse this man had laid upon his soul? He heard the irregular tramp of men trying to march in close order over an uneven road. The sound was louder now-in a few moments they would pass his alleyway. In a few moments the waters would be here.
"What will you see when you have murdered me?"
Without conscious decision, Lalo found himself running stiffly towards the Serpentine.
"Ho there! Guards-he is hiding in the sewers-down this alley!" He held his ground while they debated, knowing that they could not recognize him under the sodden clothes and mud, and motioned to them to follow him.
Then he pounded down the alley, bent to wrestle the bar from the shaft-cover and ran on until he found the dark overhang of a staircase to shelter him. Below he felt a trembling and heard the hiss of many waters, and, just as the wooden lid of the shaft was knocked aside, the hollow boom of water forced upward through too narrow a way.
Something dark clung to the rim of the shaft, like a rat flooded from its hole, then clambered the rest of the way out once the fury of the waters had passed. But now the Hell-Hounds surrounded the shaft. There was a flurry of movement and Lalo heard swearing and a cry of pain. Among the voices he distinguished the soft tones of the Emperor's Commissioner.
"Is that who you say you are?" A deep voice, Quag's voice, replied. "Well, if we've lost the dauber, at least we have you. My Lord Prince will be interested to learn what sharp-toothed rats his brother keeps to guard his granaries! Come along, you!"
Lalo sank back against the post of the stair. It was over. The Hell-Hounds were dragging Zanderei away as once they had dragged him into the night.
He would find a way to let Coricidius know what the painting had shown and what Zanderei had confessed to him. Would they call him into court to prove it? Would they dispose of the assassin quietly, or send him back to Ranke to report his failure? With a dim wonder Lalo realized that it did not matter anymore.
Gilla would have harsh words for him when he reached home, but her arms would be soft and comforting ...
But still he did not move, for below the surface questions in his mind pulsed one more perplexing-Why did I let Zanderei go?
Today he had faced death, and fought for his life, and conquered fear. He had realized that the evil of the world was not confined to Sanctuary. But if he could do all this, he was not the person that he had thought he knew.
He held out his magic hands, his painter's hands, so that the moonlight silvered them, staring as if they held his answer. And perhaps that was true, for if he had beaten Zanderei, the other man's final question had also vanquished him. And he could only answer it by facing his mirror with a paintbrush in his hand.
The moon was poised above the tattered rooftops, resting after the labor of drawing in the tide. Like a silver mirror, she blessed the tortured streets of Sanctuary, and the tear-streaked face of the man who gazed at her, with the reflected splendor of the hidden sun.