could not hold forever. Neither could they, below.
Sanctuary, with its backside to the sea.
With its mongrel gods and its mongrel merchants and the last lost rim of secure
land in the Empire. Nisibis would sweep down to the shores; and the Beysib up
from the south like a rolling wave; and for an intelligent man who had soldiered
all his life away for the fools who wore the gold and the purple-there was in
the end, riot and murder and death by stoning in city streets.
Fool, he thought, hating Kadakithis for what he was not. And had a vision of
dark eyes and felt the feathery touch of soft lips and the dizzying descent into
dark.
He took up on the reins. Looked uphill with thoughts moiling in him: And snapped
the reins and sent the bay clattering along the Maze, through increasingly
tangled streets. Red PFLS graffiti sprawled across a wall, once, twice,
obscuring the usual obscenity, Jubal’s blue hawk splashed over that. The bay
spumed broken pottery, sent a girl shrieking for the curb. A rock pelted back
and rebounded off the cobbles. The young were always the rebels.
The uptown house echoed to soft steps and the closing of doors and Moria came
downstairs, wrapped in her robe. She cursed the servants, let out a gutter oath,
and stopped dead on the steps, staring wide-eyed at what had gotten in. She
clutched the robe about her, wiped at a frowsy tangle of hair and blinked in the
dim light. Ex-thief, ex-hawkmask, she knew the elegant shape standing in the
polished foyer by the Caronnese vase: the elegant, cloaked man who looked up at