Robert Asprin - Storm Season

So Tygoth would know.

"Good night," Moruth told his lieutenant, and the man closed the shutters and the door, leaving him his darkness and his sleep.

But he kept rocking and thinking, pondering this and that, shifting pieces on his mental map of Downwind alleys, remembering this and that favor owed, and how to collect.

Hawkmasks died, and either they were loyal (which seemed unlikely) or ignorant where Jubal lay, even in extremity. He had had three so far. The one nailed to the door had told him most, where these two lodged; but so far he had not pounced. He knew the homes and haunts of others.

And suddenly the trail doubled back again, to Mama's, to his own territory. He was not amused.

And just the other side of the bridge, in a curious gardened house with well lighted windows casting a glow on the same black water. ...

Ischade received quite another messenger, a slave and young, and handsome after a foreign fashion, who appeared at her gate disturbing certain wards, who came up the path only after hesitating some long time, and stood inside her dwelling as if he were dazed.

He was a gift, constantly held out to her. He had come and gone frequently, sent by those who had offered her employ, and stood there now staring at the floor, at anything but herself. Perhaps he had known in the beginning that he was not meant to come back to his masters; or that his handsomeness was to have attracted her and offered a reward; he was not stupid, this slave. He was scared, perpetually, sensing something, if only that his mind was not what it ought to be when he was here, and he would not, this time, look at her, not at all. She was, on one level, amused, and on another, vexed with those who had sent him-as if she were some beast, to take what was thrown to her, even so delicate an offering as this.

But they dared not come themselves. They were that cautious, these adherents of Vashanka, not putting themselves within this room.

She was untidy, was Ischade; her small nest of a house was strewn not with rags but with silks and cloaks and such things as amused her. Her taste was garish, with unsubtle fire-colored curtains, a velvet throw like a puddle of emerald, and it all undusted, unkept, a ruby necklace like a scatter of blood lying atop the litter on a gilded table-a bed never made, but tossed with moire silks and hung with dusty drapes. She loved color, did Ischade, and avoided it for her dress. Her hair was a fall of ink about her face; her habiliments were blacker than night; her eyes- But the slave would not look at them.

"Look up," she said, when she had read the message, and after a moment he must. He stared at her. The fear grew quiet, because she had that skill. She held him with her eyes. "I did a service for one your masters knew-lately. They seem to think this obligates me. Nothing does. Do they realize this?"

He said nothing, shaped a no with his lips. He had no wish to be party to any confidences, that was clear. Yes, or no, or whatever she wanted to hear; the mind, she thought, was unfocussed like the eyes.

"So. Do you know what this says?"

No, the lips shaped again.

"They want the slaver. Jubal. Does that amuse you?"

No answer at all. There was fear. It bubbled against her nerves like strong wine, harder and harder to resist, but she played with it, stronger than they judged she was, despising them-and perhaps a little mad. At times she thought she was, or might become so, and at others most coldly sane. Humor occurred to her, a private laughter, with this gift so obviously proffered, this-bribe. Animal she was not. She knew always what she did. She moved closer and her fingers touched his arm while she wove a circle round him like some magic rite. She came full circle and looked up at him, for he was tall. "Who were you?" she asked.

"Haught is my name," he said, all but a whisper, she was that close, and he managed then to look past her.

"And were you born a slave?"

"I was a dancer in Garonne."

"Debt?"

"Yes," he said, and never looked at her the while. She had, she thought, guessed wrong.

"But not," she said, "Caronnese."

There was silence.

"Northern," she said.

He said nothing. The sweat ran on his face. He never moved: could not, while she willed; but never tried: she would have felt a trial of her hold.

"They question you, don't they, about me?- each time. And what do you tell them?"

"There's nothing to tell them, is there?"

"I doubt that they are kind. Are they? Do you love them, these masters of yours? Do you know what you're really for?"

A flush stained his face. "No," she said sombrely, answering her own question. "Or you'd run, even knowing what you'd pay." She touched him as she might some fine marble, and there was such hunger, such desire for something so fine-it hurt.

"This time," she said after measuring that thought, "I take the gift... but I do with it what I like. My back door, Haught, is on the river, a great convenience to me; and bodies often don't surface, do they? Not before the sea. So they won't expect to find you ... So just keep going, do you hear? Serves them right. Go somewhere. I set you free."

"You can't-"

"Go back to them if you like. But I wouldn't, if I were you. This message doesn't need an answer. Don't you reckon what that means? I'd keep running, Haught-no, here." She went to the closet and picked clothing, a fine blue cloak many visitors left such remembrances behind. There were cloaks, and boots, and shirts-all manner of such things. She threw it at him; went to the table and wrote a message. "Take this back to them if you dare. Can you read?"

"No," he said.

She chuckled. "It says you're free." She took a purse from the table (another relic) and gave that into his hand. "Stay in Sanctuary if you choose. Or go. Take my word. They might kill you-but they might not. Not if they read that note. Do as you please and get out of here."

"They'll find me," he protested.

"Trust the note," she said, "or use the back door and the bridge."

She waved her hand. He hesitated one way and the other, went toward the front and then fled for the back, for the riverside. She laughed aloud, watching his flight from her doorway, watched him run, run down the riverside until the dark swallowed him.

But after the laughter was dead she read the message they had sent her a second time and burned it in the lamp, letting the ashes fall and scorch an amber silk, carelessly.

So Vashanka's faction went on wanting her services, and offered three times the gold. She cared nothing for that at present, having all she cared to have. She cared not to be more conspicuous, no, not if they offered her a palace for her services. And they could.

How would that be, she wondered, and how long till neighbors rebelled at the steady disappearances? She could buy slaves... but enter the Prince's court, but live openly-?

The thought amused, the way irony might. She could herself become Jubal, in a trade that would well suit her needs. A pity she had already taken hire-

But the irony of it palled and the bitterness stayed. Perhaps the Vashanka lovers suspected what they did. Perhaps they had some inkling of her motives or the need-and so they sent the likes of Haught, a messenger they expected to have had thus silenced on the first visit, then to supply her with more and more; or a lure they dragged past her with cynical cruelty, to ascertain how much they believed was truth-what she was, and how long her restraint might go on.

She thought on Haught and thought, as she had each time he came to her; and that too they had surely intended. The hunger grew. Soon it would be too strong.

"Vis," she said aloud. The images merged in her mind, Vis and Haught, two dark foreigners, both of whom she had let go-because she was not pitiless. There was hell in the slave's eyes, like hers. Time after time he had passed that door in either direction, and the hell grew, and the terror that was itself a lure-one could develop such a taste, for the beauty and the fear, for gentility. Like a drug. She had more pride.