Robert Asprin - Storm Season

She took a back alley, disturbing only an urchin-girl from her rest, going round the long way, where boards might gape and afford sight or sound, but none did. She kept going, focussed now, lost in the moment-by-moment calculations, and found the windows she hoped for, shuttered, but there was a crack.

She listened, and something went twisted inside. It was a quiet voice, that described streets with deadly accuracy, a strained voice that told no lies.

... Mor-am's. Giving away all they had.

And more than three of them in there.

"There's another house," her brother volunteered all too eagerly, "by the west side. There's a way from there out into a burned house....We used that in the old days...."

Shut up, she wished him, having difficulty holding her breath.

Something moved behind her. She whirled, knife thrusting, and got the man in the belly, leapt, and saw others.

"Ai!" she yelled, slashing wild, a howl that was the last shred of honor: It's all up, it's done- She tried to run.

There were still more, arrived from out of nowhere, a sweep of men and knives in the dark, rushing the house and alley from the riverside. She stabbed and killed; the urchin-girl shrieked and ran into shadows as beggars scattered and guardsmen shouted orders.

Fire streaked Moria's side. She slashed and stumbled back; and back as wood cracked and the house erupted with shouting and with knives, and the back way opened, pouring out bodies.

She fell. Someone stepped on her back as she lay there, and she braced and rolled against the shanty wall as the battle tended the other way. She crawled for the alley, scrambling to her feet as she reached the comer of the shanty.

Someone grabbed her from the back and dragged her aside; the slave Haught pinned her knifehand under his arm and a hand muffled her as they hit the dark leanto together, a knot of three.

"Keep low," Mradhon hissed in her ear as tumult passed their hiding-hole. A man died not far from them in the first pattering of rain. She lay still, feeling the pain in her side when she breathed, feeling for the rest as if she had been clubbed.

Mor-am?

Fire glared, a quick flaring up of orange light in the direction of the shanty.

She struggled then. The two of them held her.

"You can't help him," Mradhon said, his arms locked round her.

"She's hurt," said Haught. "She's bleeding."

They tended her, the two of them. She hardly cared.

"It's him," the Stepson said, looking disdainfully at the human wreck they deposited on the road across the bridge. Rain washed the wounds, dark threads of blood trailing in a wash of water over the skin. The guard toed the informer in the side, elicited a little independent movement of the arm, lit in lightning flashes. "Oh, treat him tenderly," the Stepson said. "Very tenderly. He's valuable. Get a blanket round him."

"We lost the rest," his companion said tautly. There was rage beneath his tone.

The Stepson looked up. A shadow stood there in the lightnings, in the rain, an unlikely cloaked shape, a darkness by the bridge.

When the lightning next flashed it was gone. Fire danced on the water, full of tricks and shadows on this side of the bank. The blaze might have taken all of Downwind, but for the rain. It was dying even now.

Six horsemen thundered across the bridge from Sanctuary to Downwind, securing the road.

"You'd better send more," the garrison officer said. "They're like rats over there, small but a lot of them. You- saw that."

The Stepson fixed the man with a chill, calm eye. "I saw catastrophe. Two of us could have turned the town upside down if that were the object. Perhaps you misunderstood. But I rather doubt it. Six could raze the town. But that wasn't what we wanted, was it?" He looked down at the moaning informer, then collected his companion and walked away.

"Drink," Mradhon said. Moria drank, holding the cup herself this time, and stared blearily at the two men, Mradhon leaning over her, Haught over against the wall. It was decent food they gave her. She wondered where they got the money, dimly, in that vague way she wondered about anything. She was curious why these two kept treating her as they did, when it cost them, or why two men she had never met had proved dependable when those she had known best had not. It confounded her. They never used that language they both spoke, not since that night. Haught had put on freeman's clothing, if only that of Downwind. He had scars. She had seen them, when he dressed. So did Mradhon Vis, but different ones, made with knives.

So did she, inside and out. Maybe that was what they had in common, the three of them. Or that they wanted what she knew, names and places. Or that they were just different, thinking differently, the way people did who had not grown up in the Downwind, and that kind of maze of foreignness she never tried to figure.

She just took it that they wanted something; and so did she, which was to fill a nebulous and empty spot and to keep fed and warm and breathing.

Mor-am was dead. She hoped so. Or things were worse than she had figured.

The fleeing King ran towards the Gate, the strained lines of his back and arms, and the bunched muscles of his thighs, eloquent of desperation. His face was shadowed and his crown rolled in the dust; behind him lay a confusion of arms and weapons, and the bloodied sword of his conqueror raised against a sunset sky.

"And here we have the last King of Ilsig, pursued by Ataraxis the Great... ." Crimson damask rustled stiffly as Coricidius the Vizier motioned towards the mural that glowed on the ancient wall. He bowed to the Prince and his companions. The other guests at the reception stood in a respectful half-circle on the chequered marble of the floor.

Lalo the Limner, trailing self-consciously a few steps behind, squinted at the painting and wondered if he had made the sky too lurid after all. What would they think, these great lords of Ranke who had been sent by the Emperor to evaluate Sanctuary's preparations for the war?

Prince Kadakithis flushed with pleasure and peered more closely at the figure of his ancestor. Coricidius fixed Lalo with an eye like a moulting eagle's, summoning him. His aged skin was pallid above the vehemence of his gown.

He should not wear that color, thought Lalo, suppressing an impulse to duck behind one of the gilded pillars. Coricidius always affected him that way, and he had almost refused the task of refurbishing the Presence Hall for this visit because of it. But however discredited the Vizier might be in Ranke, in Sanctuary his power was second only to that of the Prince-Governor (indeed, some said that his influence counted for more).

"Remarkable-such freshness of line, such originality!" One of the Imperial Commissioners bent to examine the brushwork, chins quivering with enthusiasm.

"My Lord Raximander, thank you. May I present the artist! Master Lalo is a native of Sanctuary ..."

Lalo hid his paint-stained hands behind his back as they all looked at him, curious as if he had been in Meyne's Menagerie. It must be only too obvious that he lived in the city-the battered buildings through which the painted King was fleeing belonged to the Maze.

Exuding attar of roses and geniality, Lord Raximander turned to Lalo.

"You have great talent, but why do you stay here? You are like a pearl on the neck of a whore!"

Lalo stared at him, then realized that the man was not mocking him-neither the Prince nor the Vizier had ever ventured west of the Processional, and the Maze had not been included on the Commissioners' sight-seeing tour. He stifled a grin, thinking of these popinjays at the mercy of some of his old friends from the Vulgar Unicorn-like alley-cats with some Lady's pet love-bird, they would be.