offered to the limit of that gold; and maybe think to force food down him; then
throw him out on the street when he had run through his account.
And when Ischade knew where he was-if Ischade got on his track and remembered
him among her other, higher business-
Moria sank down on her soiled bed and hugged her arms about herself, the satin
not enough against the chill.
She saw the bureau surface. The ivory-and-silver knife was gone. He had stolen
it.
The starlit face of Tasfalen’s mansion was buff stone; was grillwork over the
windows, and a huge pair of bronze doors great as those which adorned many a
temple. The detail of them was obscured in the dark and the windows were
shuttered and barred against the insanity of uptown.
But Haught had no trepidation. “Stay here,” he told Stilcho, and Stilcho turned
a worried one-eyed stare his way and wrapped his black cloak tighter about him,
melting into the ornamental bushes with which (unwisely) Lord Tasfalen’s
gardener decorated the street side.
Haught simply walked up to the door and took the pull-ring of the bell-chain,
tugged it twice and waited, arms folded, face composed in that bland grace which
he practiced so carefully. A dog barked in some echoing place far inside; was
hushed; there was some long delay and he rang again to confirm it for them-no,
it was no drunken prankster.
And now inside there had to be a consultation with the major domo and perhaps
even with the master himself, for it was not every door in Sanctuary that dared
open at night.
Eventually, in due course, there came a step to the door, an unbarring of the