Ischade also looked at the bay; then, more wryly, at her yard’s trees and
bushes, still full of green fire that burned but did not consume. She waved the
godfire out of existence and shut the door, thinking of old stories about hell.
“Haught,” she called toward one of the back rooms. “Stilcho.”
They were there in a hurry: It never did to keep Ischade waiting. “Jobs for you
both,” she said, shutting the door. “Stilcho, I need a message taken to the
uptown house. And on your way back, pick me up a corpse.”
Dead as he was, Stilcho blanched. Haught watched him out of the corner of his
eye, looking slightly amused.
“And for you,” she said to Haught, watching amused in turn as he stiffened
slightly, “something to exercise those talents you’ve been so busy improving to
please me. Fetch me a spare ghost. A soldier, I think, and one without any
alliances. Be off, now.”
She watched them go, both of them hurrying, both of them trying to look as if
they weren’t. Ischade smiled and went off to look for Straton.
All it took was the sight of a slender woman-shape, cloaked in black and
strolling sedately down the Avenue of Temples, to clear the midnight street to a
windscoured pavement desert. Behind her followed a bizarre little parade. First
came a dead man, hauling a bleating black ram and black ewe along behind him on
ropes: then a live man, small and scared-looking, leading a cowed donkey with a
long awkward bundle strapped across its back. He stank of wine, Mor-am did:
anyone but the donkey would have been revolted. Behind him and the beast came a