Robert Asprin - Blood Ties

"Look at me!" She jerked his head by the hair and looked him in the face. Another jerk at his hair. "Look at me!"

His sight cleared. He caught her around the waist and hugged her tight, his head against her breast, in which her heart beat like something trapped. Her hand caressed his head, and she whispered reassurance; but he felt her heart hammering fit to shake her small body. No safety. As long as she was with him there was none for her, and there was nowhere any for him.

Get out of here, he would tell her. But he dreaded the day he would slip and Moria would not be there to pull him back; he dreaded the solitude in which he might then go mad. If he were a brave man he would tell her go. But not today. They would climb out of this pit together; for that much they needed each other he needed her skill and she needed his restraint and his protection to use the gold; but after that, after she was set up and he had a chance as well, then he would find a way to let her go.

"Damn!" Crit hissed. The news had come down the hill with the swiftness only bad news could manage; but Straton said nothing at all. Straton headed out the barracks door and whistled up the bay, which came; of course it came. It made trouble in the stables, it cleared the stable fence like a gull in flight, and nothing held it. It came to him in this early dawn, and he went to the tackroom to get what belonged to it.

"Where are you going?" Crit asked him, meeting him outside as he came out into the dusty yard, his right hand hauling the saddle, the treacherous left unburdened with anything but the bridle and the blanket. Crit was careful with him nowadays, uncommonly patient, a perpetual walking on eggshells.

"Town," Strat said. He cultivated patience, too. He saw Crit's analytical look, the inevitable reckoning what small house lay on his way. And he had not thought of that till he saw Crit think of it; then it got its claws into his gut, and the thought began to grow that of powers in Sanctuary which ought to be warned, which might exert a calming influence on the town-

-damn, she had contacts in all the right places. With Moruth the beggar-king; with the rats in the very walls when it came to that, the rabble that was most like to take the slaughter uptown very hard indeed. Zip arrested. That would not last long. Best he be arrested till someone had a chance to talk sense to him. Likely Walegrin.

"Stay off riverside," Crit said, and laid a hand on his arm, delaying him a moment. In months past that would have gotten a shrug-off, at best a surly answer. But Crit was fighting for Strat's soul, and Strat had gotten to know that, in a kind of fey gratitude for a friend with a lost cause, or at best a cause that was not worth the effort Crit spent on it. I'm crippled, dammit, you got me back, you risked your damn neck pulling me out, but you have to get another partner, Crit, one who won't let you down in a pinch, and you know it and I know it. The fire's dying and I'm not going to be again what I was, when I get the twinges I know that. Tomorrow I'll tell you that. When we're out of this damned city I'll tell you that. And you'll tell me I'm a damned fool, but neither of us is. Time we split. Leave me to fend for myself: you don't have to go on carrying me, Crit.

Crit's hand dropped. There was a worried look on his face. Strat's stares could put it there, lately. And that usually got Crit's temper up when other provocations failed. This time he just stood there.

"Yeah," Strat said. "I'm going to drop out a few hours on the way back, expect it: I'll be pulling in a few contacts." He hung the bridle on his shoulder, flung the blanket over the bay's back, not-not looking more than he must at that coin-sized patch just by the bay's hipbone. "I may talk to her. Figure I can walk out of there, too. It's all cooled down; she's got her choices, I have mine." He slung the saddle up, and the bay never offered to move. It had as well been a statue that breathed and smelled like a horse. "She's sleeping around. We got corpses to prove it."

"Don't be a damn fool."

"Hey." He turned his head and looked at Crit. "Trust me to do what needs doing. All right? You're not my mother."

Crit said not a thing.

Damn mistake, Crit. Say it. My mind's like the damned shoulder, on and off, I never know when. I can't think, I can't know when I'm on target, can't know when I'll flinch.

She's got herself another lover. One I can't match, can I?

I can meet her and ride away again. You don't know how easy it is. I've seen her in the streets, Crit. Like the rest of the whores. With a pox that'll kill you.

He slipped the bridle on, cinched up, and hurled himself into the saddle without the least twinge from the shoulder. "See you." he said, and rode for the gates.

"Where?" Tempus snapped, just arrived on the hill, just arrived inside Molin's offices. It was not a good day for Molin either, but Tempus was clearly begun on a worse one. "When and who?"

"About six of the piffs. Zip survived. He's in lockup, for his own sake. And the city's. Walegrin's going to have a talk with him."

"Who did it?"

Molin drew a careful breath and told him.

The headache had diminished. The malaise persisted, and discouraged attempts at philosophy; Ischade kept to her house, her hair immaculate, the mud scrubbed from her person, the salvageable roses off the damaged bush decorating a vase on the table, not for the beauty of them (they were black and the moisture-beads which stood on their petals from their watering shone blood-bright red in certain lights), but as a reminder of a task she did not want to undertake in her present mood and with her headache.

Having power, she set limits to it; having the ability to blast an enemy, she refrained from it for no altruistic motives, but because killing was very easy for her, and very seductive, and led to untidy consequences which resisted solution.

She had taken rare inventory of her stores, and tidied up a bit (rarer still). Haught had kept things in some order. Stilcho had tried. She missed them, missed them today with outright maudlin melancholy, which both would have found bewildering.

Stilcho had fled, vanished. She might, she thought, find him.

The thought, as she paused with broom in hand, became quite inviting. Stilcho had shared her bed-many a night.

And died and waked. But that had been when her magic was unnaturally great. To do it now would risk him. And he had been loyal, he had saved Strat's life, he had deserved some choice in his fate, which was patently and sanely not to come back to her.

A presence came near her garden gate. She knew it, a little thrill along her nerves, in all the noon coming and going up and down the street just beyond.

She suddenly knew who it was even before she heard the horse distinctly, or felt someone touch the ironwork. She set the broom aside, flung the door open, and walked out onto the porch against her habit, in the full summer daylight.

"Go away," she said to Strat, and held the wards against him. "Out!"

"I've got to talk to you. It's business."

"I have no business with you."

He held both hands in plain sight. "No weapons."

"Don't try me. I warned you. I told you you'd be no different than the others."

"Fine. Open the gate. I don't want to shout from the street. This is trouble. Hear me?"

She wavered. The gate gave to his push against it, and creaked open when he shoved. He came walking up as far as the porch, his face all sullen and thin lipped. "Well?" she said.

"There's been a murder uptown. A lot of it."

"I haven't been up to much this morning."

"Six of the piffs. You understand me."

She did understand. Faction-war broken open again. With the Empire's hand already heavy on the town. "Who?"