useless, that left him with nothing but his hate and the paralysis in which he
never yet had killed one-whether because there was a remnant of selfwill in him
or that it was terror of her that kept him from killing. He was never sure. He
slept alone now. He stayed to the Downwind, knowing she was fastidious, and
hoping she was too fastidious to come here; but he had seen her first walking
the alleys of the Maze, a bit of night in black robes, a bit of darkness no moon
could cure, a dusky face within black hair, and eyes no sane man should ever
see. She hunted the alleys of Sanctuary. She still was there . . . or on the
river, or closer still. She took her lovers of a night, the unmissable, the
negligible, and left them cold by dawn.
She had sent him from her service unscathed-excepting the dreams, and his
manhood. She called him in his nightmares, promising him an end-as he had seen
her whisper to her victims and hold them with her eyes. And at times he wanted
that end. That was what frightened him most, that the darkness beckoned like the
only harbor in the world, for a man without hire and patronage, for a Nisibisi
wanted by law at home and stranded on the wrong side of a war.
He dared not become too drunk. The night Mama Becho ever thought he had all his
money on him, which he had-Then they would go for him. Now it was a game. They
tested him, learned him and his resources, whether he was a thief or no, what
skills he had. So he still baffled them.
And watched the door. Desperately casual, pretending not to watch.