thing for Haught these days. Stilcho felt the chill that came when Haught’s
substance passed between him and Ischade. “Don’t-I tried to reason with him. I
tried to tell him he’s dead. He’s not listening. His partner’s in trouble.”
“I know,” Haught said. His hand was viselike on Stilcho’s cloaked arm, numbing.
“And you very much don’t want to go after him, do you. Stepson?”
“He’s-crazy.”
Haught’s eyes met his, deceptively gentle, woman-gentle. The fingers loosened.
“Difficult times, Stepson. She has company and you wander the dark.” The fingers
wandered gently down his arm and took his bare hand. “You have such simple
loyalties now. Like life. Like those who can hold you to it. Ask me-how you can
help me?”
“How can I help you?” The words poured out without a thought of resistance. The
same way they did for Ischade. It was only afterward that the shame got to him.
After-ward when he had time to think; but that was not now, with Haught this
close, death gaping and lapping below the drop from the garden fence.
“You can go to hell,” Haught said.
It was not a curse. It was an order. “For her-” Stilcho said, lips stammering.
“I go for her, that’s all.”
“Oh, it’s in her service. Believe me.”
2
Strat blinked in the sunlight and rode past the Blue line checkpoint in the
morning-the bay’s shod hooves ringing hollow on the cobbles beside the bridge.
The misnamed White Foal flowed murkily by, with its scarce traffic on dark-brown
water; a skiff or two; a scruffy little barge.
The scarred end-posts stood innocent in the sun. The reeking, rotten streets of