what he claimed to have, whether Jubal was even still alive. She doubted it
sometimes, but not out loud. Mor-am’s doubts were wider. She did not fully blame
him: tonight she hated Eichan-and remembered it was Mor-am himself who had led
the outsider to them. Drunk. Stoned on krrf, using far too much.
And Becho’s-any place was dangerous if they frequented it, if they set up a
pattern, and her brother had a pattern. His habits led him here and led him
there. There was the smell of death about him, that terrified her. All the
enemies the slaver Jubal had ever accumulated (and they were many) had come to
pick bones now that his power was broken; from the days that hawk-masks used to
swagger in gaudy dress through the streets, now they wore ragged cloaks and
slunk into any hole that would keep them. And that was, for all of them, a
bitter change.
Mor-am could not bear it. She gave him money, doled it out, hers and his; but he
had lied to her-she knew he had; and gotten that little more that it needed for
Becho’s. Or he had cut a purse or a throat, defying Eichan’s plain orders. He
was committing slow suicide. She knew. They had come up together out of this
reek, this filth, to Jubal’s service, and learned to live like lords; and now
that it was back to the gutter again, Mor-am refused to live on those terms. She
held onto him with all her wit and talents, covered for him, lied for him.
Eichan might kill him himself if he had seen him go; or beat him senseless: she
wished she had the strength to pound the idiocy out of him, flatten him against