"I reason."

 

He looked into her changeless face with the impulse to hit her, which she could neither feel nor comprehend. "I don't choose to reason. Gather up a food kit for me, Annie. Get the gear into the lock."

 

"This program is preparatory to going to the river."

 

"Yes. It is."

 

"This is hazardous. This caused injury. Please reconsider this program."

 

"I'm going to pick up your sensor box. Retrieve valuable equipment, a part of you, Annie. You can't reach it. I'll be safe."

 

"This unit isn't in danger. You were damaged there. Please reconsider this instruction."

 

"I'd prefer to have you functioning and able to come to my assistance if you're needed. I don't want to quarrel with you, Anne. Accept the program. I won't be happy until you do."

 

"Yes, Warren."

 

He breathed a slow sigh, patted her shoulder. Her hand touched his, rested there. He walked from under it and she followed, a slow clicking at his heels.

 

the raft was still there. Nests of sodden grass lodged in tree branches and cast high up on the shores showed how high the flood had risen, but the rope had held it. The water still flowed higher than normal. The whole shoreline had changed, the bank eroded away. The raft sat higher still, partially filled with water and leaves.

 

Warren picked his way down to it, past brush festooned with leaves and grass, only food and water and a folding spade for a pack. He used a stick to support his weight on the injured leg, walked slowly and carefully. He set everything down to heave the raft up and dump the water- no more care of contamination, he reckoned: it had all had its chance at one time or another, the river, the forest. The second raft was in the crawler upslope, but all he had lost was the paddle, and he went back after that, slow progress, unhurried.

 

"Anne," he said via com, when he had settled everything in place, when the raft bobbed on the river and his gear was aboard. "I'm at the river. I won't call for a while. A few hours. My status is very good. I'm going to be busy here."

 

"Yes, Warren."

 

He cut it off, put it back at his belt, launched the raft.

 

The far bank had suffered similar damage. He drove for it with some difficulty with the river running high, wet his boots getting himself ashore, secured the raft by pulling it up with the rope, the back part of it still in the water.

 

The ground in the forest, too, was littered with small branches and larger ones, carpeted with new leaves. But flowers had come into bloom. Everywhere the mosses were starred with white flowers. Green ones opened at the bases of trees. The hanging vines bloomed in pollen-golden rods.

 

And the fungi proliferated everywhere, fantastical shapes, oranges and blues and whites. The ferns were heavy with water and shed drops like jewels. There were beauties to compensate for the ruin. Drops fell from the high branches when the wind blew, a periodic shower that soaked his hair and ran off his impermeable jacket. Everything seemed both greener and darker, all the growth lusher and thicker than ever.

 

The grove when he came upon it had suffered not at all, not a branch fallen, only a litter of leaves and small limbs on the grass; and he was glad-not to have lost one of the giants. The old tree's beard was flower-starred, his moss even thicker. Small cuplike flowers bloomed in the grass in the sunlight, a vine having grown into the light, into the way of the abandoned, rain-sodden blanket, the sensor box.

 

And Sax- Warren went to the base of the aged tree and looked inside, found him there, more bone than before, the clothing sodden with the storm, some of the bones of the fingers fallen away. The sight had no horror for him, nothing but sadness. "Sax," he said softly. "It's Warren. Warren here."

 

From the vacant eyes, no answer. He stood up, flexed the spade out, set to work, spadeful after spadeful, casting the dirt and the leaves inside, into what made a fair tomb, a strange one for a starfarer

 

- poor lost Sax, curled up to sleep. The earthen blanket grew up to Sax's knees, to his waist, among the gnarled roots and the bones. He made spadefuls of the green flowers and set them there, at Sax's feet, set them in the earth that covered him, stirring up clouds of pollen. He sneezed and wiped his eyes and stood up again, taking another spadeful of earth and mold.

 

A sound grew in his mind like the bubbling of water, and he looked to his left, where green radiance bobbed. The welcome flowed into him like the touch of warm wind.

 

He ignored it, cast the earth, took another spadeful.

 

Welcome, it sang to him. The water-sound bubbled. A flower unfolded, tinted itself slowly violet.

 

"I've work to do."

 

Sorrow. The color faded.

 

"I don't want it like the last time. Keep your distance. Stop that." Its straying thoughts brushed him, numbing senses. He leaned on the spade, felt himself sinking, turning and drifting bodilessly-wrenched his mind back to his own control so abruptly he almost fell.

 

Sorrow. A second time a flower, a pale shoot from among the leaves, a folded bud trying to open.

 

"Work," Warren said. He picked up the spadeful, cast it; and another.

 

Perplexity. The flower folded again, drooped unwatered.

 

"I have this to do. It's important. And you won't understand that. Nothing of the sort could matter to you."

 

The radiance grew, pulsed. Suns flickered across a mental sky, blue and black, day and night, in a streaming course.

 

He leaned on the spade for stability in the blur of days passed. "What's time-to you?"

 

Desire. The radiance took shape and settled on the grass, softly pulsing. It edged closer-stopped at once when he stepped back.

 

"Maybe you killed Sax. You know that? Maybe he just lay there and dreamed to death."

 

Sorrow. An image formed in his mind, the small sickly creature, all curled up, all its inward motion suddenly stopped.

 

"I know. You wouldn't have meant it. But it happened." He dug another spadeful of earth. Intervening days unrolled in his mind, thoughts stolen from him, where he had been, what he had done.

 

It stole the thought of Anne, and it was a terrible image, a curled-up thing like a human, but hollow inside, dark inside, deadly hostile. Her tendrils were dark and icy.

 

"She's not like that. She's just a machine." He flung the spadeful. Earth showered over bare bone arid began to cover Sax's face. He flinched from the sight. "She can't do anything but take orders. I made her, if you like."

 

There was horror in the air, palpable.

 

"She's not alive. She never was."

 

The radiance became very pale and retreated up into the branches of one of the youngest trees, a mere touch of color in the sunlight. Cold, cold, the terror drifted down like winter rain.

 

"Don't leave." The spade fell. He stepped over it, held up his hands, threatened with solitude. "Don't."

 

The radiance went out. Re-formed near him, drifted up to sit on the aged, fallen tree.

 

"It's my world. I know it's different. I never wanted to hurt you with it."

 

The greenness spread about him, a darkness in its heart, where two small creatures entwined, their tendrils interweaving, one living, one dead.

 

"Stop it."

 

His own mind came back at him: loneliness, longing for companionship; fear of dying alone. Like Sax. Like that. He held deeply buried the thought that the luminance offered a means of dying, a little better than most; but it came out, and the radiance shivered. The Anne-image took shape in its heart, her icy tendrils invading the image that was himself, growing, insinuating ice into that small fluttering that was his life, winding through him and out again.

 

"What do you know?" he cried at it. "What do you know at all? You don't know me. You can't see me, with no eyes; you don't know."

 

The Anne-image faded, left him alone in the radiance, embryo, tucked and fluttering inside. A greenness crept in there, the least small tendril of green, and touched that quickness.

 

Emotion exploded like sunrise, with a shiver of delight. A second burst. He tried to object, felt a touching of the hairs at the back of his neck. He shivered, and the light was gone. Every sense seemed stretched to the limit, heightened, but remote, and he wanted to get up and walk a little distance, knowing even while he did so that it was not his own suggestion. He moved, limping a little, and quite suddenly the presence fled, leaving a light sweat over his body.

 

Pain, it sent. And Peace.

 

"Hurt, did it?" He massaged his knee and sat down. His own eyes watered. "Serves you right."

 

Sorrow. The greenness unfolded again, filling all his mind but for one small corner where he stayed whole and alert.

 

"No," he cried in sudden panic, and when it drew back in its own: "I wouldn't mind-if you were content with touching. But you aren't. You can't keep your distance when you get excited. And sometimes you hurt."

 

The greenness faded a little. It was dark round about.

 

Hours. Hours gone. A flickering, a quick feeling of sunlit warmth came to him, but he flung it off.

 

"Don't lie to me. What happened to the time? When did it get dark?"

 

A sun plummeted, and trees bowed in evening breezes.

 

"How long did you have control? How long was it?"

 

Sorrow. Peace- settled on him with a great weight. He felt a great desire of sleep, of folding in and biding until warm daylight returned, and he feared nothing any longer, not life, not death. He drifted on the wind, conscious of the forest's silent growings and stretchings and burrowings about him. Then he became himself again, warm and animal and very comfortable in the simple regularity of heartbeat and breathing.

 

HE AWOKE in sunlight, stretched lazily and stopped in mid-stretch as green light broke into existence up in the branches. The creature drifted slowly down to the grass beside him and rested there, exuding happiness. Sunrise burst across his vision, the fading of stars, the unfolding of flowers.

 

He reached for the food kit, trying to remember where he had laid it. Stopped, held in the radiance, and looked into the heart of it. It was an effort to pull his mind away. "Stop that. I have no sense of time when you're so close. Maybe you can spend an hour watching a flower unfold, but that's a considerable portion of my life."

 

Sorrow. The radiance murmured and bubbled with images he could not make sense of, of far-traveling, the unrolling of land, of other consciousnesses, of a vast and all-driving hunger for others, so strong it left him shaking.

 

"Stop it. I don't understand what you're trying to tell me."

 

The light grew in his vision and pulsed bright and dark, little gold sparks swirling in the heart of it, an explosion of pure excitement reaching out to him.

 

"What's wrong with you?" he cried. He trembled.

 

Quite suddenly the light winked out altogether, and when it reappeared a moment later it was not half so bright or so large, bubbling softly with the sound of waters.

 

"What's wrong?"

 

Need. Sorrow. Again the impression of other consciousnesses, other luminances, a thought quickly snatched away, all of them flowing and flooding into one.

 

"You mean others of your kind."

 

The image came back to him; and flowers, stamens shedding pollen, golden clouds, golden dust adhering to the pistil of a great, green-veined lily.

 

"Like mating? Like that?"

 

The backspill became unsettling, for the first time sexual.

 

"You produce others of your kind." He felt the excitement flooding through his own veins, a contagion. "Others-are coming here?"

 

Come. He got the impression strongly, a tugging at all his senses, a flowing over the hills and away. A merging, with things old and wise, and full of experiences, lives upon lives. Welcome. Come.

 

"I'm human."

 

Welcome. Need pulled at him. Distances rolled away, long distances, days and nights.

 

"What would happen to me?"

 

Life bursting from the soil. The luminance brightened and enlarged. The man-image came into his vision: The embryo stretched itself and grew new tendrils, into the radiance, and it into the fluttering heart; more and more luminances added themselves, and the tendrils twined, human and otherwise, until they became another greenness, another life, to float on the winds.

 

Come, it urged.

 

His heart swelled with tears. He wept and then ceased to be human at all, full of years, deep-rooted and strong. He felt the sun and the rain and the passage of time beyond measure, knew the birth and death of forests and the weaving undulations of rivers across the land. There were mountains and snows and tropics where winter never came, and deep caverns and cascading streams and things that verged on consciousness deep in the darkness. The very stars in the heavens changed their patterns and the world was young. There were many lives, many, and one by one he knew their selves, strength and youth and age beyond reckoning, the joy of new birth, the beginning of new consciousness. Time melted. It was all one experience, and there was vast peace, unity, even in the storms, the cataclysms, the destruction of forests in lightning-bred fires, the endless push of life toward the sun and the rain-cycle on cycle, year on year, eons passing. At last his strength faded and he slept, enfolded in a green and gentle warmth; he thought that he died like the old tree and did not care, because it was a gradual and comfortable thing, a return to elements, ultimate joining. The living creature that crept in among his upturned roots for shelter was nothing less and nothing more than the moss, the dying flowers, the fallen leaves.

 

He lay on the grass, too weary to move, beyond care. Tears leaked from his eyes. His hands were weak. He had no terror of merging now, none, and the things he had shared with this creature would remain with them, with all its kind, immortal.

 

It pulled at him, and the pull that worked through his mind was as strong as the tides of the sea, as immutable and unarguable. Peace, it urged on him; and in his mind the sun flicked again through the heavens.

 

He opened his eyes. A day gone. A second day. Then the weakness in his limbs had its reason. He tried to sit up, panicked even through the urging of peace it laid on him.

 

Anne. The recollection flashed through his memory with a touch of cold. The luminance recoiled, resisting.

 

"No. I have to reach her. I have to." He fought hard for consciousness, gained, and knew by the release that the danger got through. Fear flooded over him like cold water.

 

The Anne-image appeared, a hollow shell in darkness, tendrils coiling out. Withered. Urgency pulled at him, and the luminance pulsed with agitation.

 

"Time-how much time is there?"

 

Several sunsets flashed through his mind.

 

"I have to get to her. I have to get her to take an instruction. She's dangerous."

 

The radiance was very wan. Urgency. Urgency. The hills rolled away in the mind's eye, the others called. Urgency.

 

And it faded, leaving behind an overwhelming flood of distress.

 

Warren lay still a moment, on his back, on the grass, shivering in the cold daylight. His head throbbed. His limbs ached and had no strength. He reached for the com, got it on, got it to his lips, his eyes closed, shutting out the punishing sun.

 

"Anne."

 

"Warren. Please confirm status."

 

"Fine-I'm fine." He tried to keep his voice steady. His throat was raw. It could not sound natural. "I'm coming home, Anne."

 

A pause on the other side. "Yes, Warren. Assistance?"

 

"Negative, negative, Anne. Please wait. I'll be there soon." He gathered himself up to his arm, to his knees, to his feet, with difficulty. There were pains in all his joints. He felt his face, unshaven and rough. His hands and feet were numb with the cold and the damp. His clothes sagged on him, belt gone loose.

 

"Warren?"

 

"I'm all right, Anne. I'm starting back now."

 

"Accepted," Anne said after a little delay. "Emergency procedures canceled."

 

"What-emergency procedures?"

 

"What's your status, Warren?"

 

"No emergency, do you hear me? No emergency. I'm on my way." He shut it down, found his canteen, the food packet, drank, forced a bite down his swollen throat and stuffed the rest into his sodden jacket. Walked. His leg hurt, and his eyes blurred, the lids swollen and raw. He found a branch and tore it off and used that as he went-pushed himself, knowing the danger there was in Anne.

 

Knowing how little time there was. It would go, it would go then, and leave him. And there would be nothing after that. Ever.

 

II

 

anne was waiting for him, at the riverside-amid the stumps of trees, mud, cleared earth. Trees dammed the river, water spilling over them, between them, flooding up over the banks and changing the land into a shallow, sandy lake.

 

He stopped there, leaned against the last standing tree on that margin and shivered, slow tremors which robbed him of strength and sense. She stood placidly in the ruin; he called her on the com, heard her voice, saw her face, then her body, orient toward him. He began to cross the bridge of tumbled trees, clinging to branches, walking tilted trunks.

 

"Damn you," he shouted at her. Tears ran down his face. "Damn you!"

 

She met him at the other side, silver slimed with mud and soot from the burning she had done. Her sensors blinked. "Assistance?"

 

He found his self-control, shifted his attack. "You've damaged yourself."

 

"I'm functioning normally. Assistance?"

 

He started to push past her, slipped on the unstable log. She reached to save him, her arm rock-solid, stable. He clung to it, his only point of balance. Her facelights blinked at him. Her other hand came up to rest on his shoulder. Contact. She offered contact. He had meant to shove at her. He touched her gently, patted her plastic-sheathed shoulder, fought back the tears. "You've killed, Annie. Don't you understand?"

 

"Vegetation."

 

He shoved past her, limped up the devastated shore, among the stumps of trees. His head throbbed. His stomach felt hollow.

 

The crawler still waited on the bank. Anne overtook him as he reached it; she offered him her hand as he climbed in. He slid into the seat, slipped the brake, started the motor and threw it full throttle, leaving her behind.

 

"Warren." Her voice pursued him.

 

He kept driving, wildly, swerving this way and that over the jolts, past the brush.

 

...

 

"anne," he said, standing at the airlock. "Open the lock."

 

Silence.

 

"Anne. Open the lock, please."

 

It hissed wide. He walked in, unsteady as he was, onto the cargo platform. "Engage lift, Anne."

 

Gears crashed. It started up, huge and ponderous that it was. "Warren," the disembodied voice said, from the speakers, everywhere, echoing. "What's your status, Warren?"

 

"Good, thank you."

 

"Your voice indicates stress."

 

"Hoarseness. Minor dysfunction in my speaking apparatus. It's self-repairing."

 

A silence. "Recorded." The lift stopped on nether-deck. He walked out, calmly, to the lower weapons locker, put his card in.

 

Dead. "I've got a lock malfunction here, Anne. Number 13/546. Would you clear it up?"

 

"Emergency locks are still engaged."

 

"Disengage."

 

Silence.

 

"There is no emergency." He fought the anger from his voice. "Disengage emergency locks and cancel all emergency procedures."

 

"This vocal dysfunction is not repaired."

 

He leaned against the wall, stared down the corridor.

 

"Warren, please confirm your status."

 

"Normal, I tell you." He went to the lift. It worked. It brought him up to the level of the laboratories. He walked down to Bio, walked in, tried the cabinets.

 

"Anne, I need medicines. Disengage the locks. I need medicines for repair."

 

The lock clicked. It opened.

 

He took out the things he needed, washed his torn hands, prepared a stimulant. He was filthy. He saw himself like a specter in a reflecting glass, gaunt, stubbled; looked down and saw his clothes unrecognizable in color. He washed an area of his arm and fired the injection, rummaged through the cabinet for medicines to cure the hoarseness. He found some lozenges, ripped one from the foil and sucked on it, then headed off for the showers, undressing as he went.

 

A quick wash. He had forgotten clean clothes; he belted on the bathrobe he had left in the showers, on a body gone gaunt. His hands shook. The stim hummed in his veins. He could not afford the shakes. He had visions of the pseudosome walking back toward the ship; she would be here soon. He had to make normal moves. Had to do everything in accustomed order. He went to the galley next, opened the box and downed fruit juice from its container; it hit his stomach in a wave of cold.

 

He hauled out other things. Dried food. Stacked it there. He took out one frozen dinner and put it in the microwave.

 

It turned on without his touching it.

 

"Time, please."

 

"Fifteen minutes," he told it. He walked out. He took the dried food with him to the lift.

 

He punched buttons. It took him up. He walked out into the corridor; lights came on for him. Lights came on in the living quarters, in his own quarters, as he entered. He dumped the dried stores on the bed, opened the locker and pulled out all his clothing- dressed, short of breath, having to stop and rest in the act of putting his boots on.

 

The lock crashed and boomed in the bowels of the ship.

 

She was back. He pulled the second boot on. He could hear the lift working. He folded his remaining clothes. He heard the next lift work. He arranged everything on his bed. He heard footsteps approach.

 

He looked round. Anne stood there, muddy, streaked with soot.

 

"Assistance? Please confirm your status, Warren."

 

He thought a moment. "Fine. You're dirty, Anne. Decontaminate."

 

Sensors flickered, one and then the others. "You're packing. This program is preparatory to going to the river. Please reconsider this program."

 

"I'm just cleaning up. Why don't you get me dinner?"

 

"You fixed dinner, Warren."

 

"I didn't like it. You fix it. I'll have dinner up here at the table. Fifteen minutes. I need it, Anne. I'm hungry."

 

"Yes, Warren."

 

"And clean up."

 

"Yes, Warren."

 

The pseudosome left. He dropped his head into his hands, caught his breath. Best to rest a bit. Have dinner. See what he could do about a program and get her to take it. He went to the desk where he had left the programming microfilm, got it and fed it into the viewer.

 

He scanned through the emergency programs, the E sequences, hoping to distract her into one of those. There was nothing that offered a way to seize control. Nothing that would lock her up.

 

It was feeding into her, even now; she had library access. The viewer was part of her systems. The thought made him nervous. He scanned through harmless areas, to confound her.

 

"Dinner's ready," the speaker told him.

 

He wiped his face, shut down the viewer and walked out, hearing the lift in function.

 

Anne arrived, carrying a tray. She set things on the table, arranged them.

 

He sat down. She poured him coffee, walked to her end of the table and sat facing him.

 

He ate a few bites. The food nauseated him. He shoved the plate away.

 

Her lights flickered. "Chess?"

 

"Thank you, no, Anne. I've got other things to do."

 

"Do. Yes. Activity. What activity do you choose, Warren?"

 

He stared at her. Observation and question. Subsequent question. "Your assimilation's really made a lot of progress, hasn't it? Lateral activity."

 

"The lateral patterning is efficient in forecast. Question posed: what activity do you choose, Warren?"

 

"I'm going down below. You stay here. Clean up the dinner."

 

"Yes, Warren."

 

He pushed back from the table, walked out and down the corridor to the lift. He decided on routine, on normalcy, on time to think.

 

He rode the lift back to the lab level, walked out.

 

She turned the lights on for him, turned them off behind as he walked, always conservative.

 

He pushed the nearest door button. Botany, it was. The door stayed shut.

 

"Lab doors locked," he said casually. "Open it."

 

The door shot back. Lights went on.

 

The room was a shambles. Planting boxes were overthrown, ripped loose, pipes twisted, planting medium scattered everywhere, the floor, the walls. Some of the boxes were partially melted, riddled with laser fire.

 

He backed out, quietly, quickly. Closed the door. Walked back to the lift, his footsteps echoing faster and faster on the decking. He opened the lift door, stepped in, pushed the button for topside.

 

It took him up. He left it, walking now as quickly, as normally, as he could, not favoring his leg.

 

Anne had left the living quarters. He went by the vacant table, to the bridge corridor, to the closed door at the end. He used his cardkey.

 

It stayed shut.

 

"Anne," he said, "you have a malfunction. There's no longer an emergency. Please clear the emergency lock on the bridge. I have a critical problem involving maintenance. I need to get to controls right now."

 

A delay. The speaker near his head came on. "Emergency procedure remains in effect. Access not permitted."

 

"Anne. We have a paradox here. The problem involves your mistake."

 

"Clarify: mistake."

 

"You've perceived a false emergency. You've initiated wrong procedures. Some of your equipment is damaged. Cancel emergency. This is a code nine. Cancel emergency and open this door."

 

A further delay. "Negative. Access denied."

 

"Anne." He pushed the button again. It was dead. He heard a heavy step in the corridor behind him. He jerked about with his back to the door and looked into Anne's dark faceplate with its dancing stars. "Open it," he said. "I'm in pain, Anne. The pain won't stop until you cancel emergency procedure and open this door."

 

"Please adjust yourself."

 

"I'm not malfunctioning. I need this door opened." He forced calm into his voice, adopted a reasoning tone. "The ship is in danger, Anne. I have to get in there."

 

"Please go back to permitted areas, Warren."

 

He caught his breath, stared at her, then edged past her carefully, down the corridor to the living quarters. She was at his back, still, following.

 

"Is this a permitted area?" he asked.

 

"Yes, Warren."

 

"I want a cup of coffee. Bring it."

 

"Yes, Warren."

 

She walked out into the main corridor. The door closed behind her. He delayed a moment till he heard the lift, then went and tried it. Dead. "Anne. Now there's a malfunction with number two access. Will you do something about it?"

 

"Access not permitted."

 

"I need a bath, Anne. I need to go down to the showers."

 

A delay. "This is not an emergency procedure. Please wait f6r assistance."

 

A scream welled up in him. He swallowed it, smoothed his hand over the metal as if it were skin. "All right. All right, Anne." He turned, walked back to his own quarters.

 

The clothes and food were gone from the bed.

 

The manual. He went to the viewer. The microfilm was gone. He searched the drawer where he kept it. It was not there.

 

Panic surged up in him. He stifled it, walked out. He walked back to the table, sat down-heard the lift operating finally. Heard her footsteps. The door opened.

 

"Coffee, Warren."

 

"Thank you, Annie."

 

She set the cup down, poured his coffee. Hydraulics worked in the ship, massive movement, high on the frame. The turret rotating. Warren looked up. "What's that, Anne?"

 

"Armaments, Warren."

 

The electronic snap of the cannon jolted the ship. He sprang up from his chair and Anne set down the coffee pot.

 

"Anne. Anne, cancel weapons. Cancel!"

 

The firing went on.

 

"Cancel refused," Anne said.

 

"Anne-show me- what you're shooting at. Put it on the screen."

 

The wallscreen lit, the black of night, a thin line of orange: a horizon, ablaze with fires.

 

"You're killing it!"

 

"Vegetation, Warren. Emergency program is proceeding."

 

"Anne." He seized her metal, unflexing arm. "Cancel program."

 

"Negative."

 

"On what reasoning? Anne-turn on your sensor box. Turn it on. Scan the area."

 

"It is operating, Warren. I'm using it to refine target. Possibly the equipment will survive. Possibly I can recover it. Please adjust yourself, Warren. Your voice indicates stress."

 

"It's life you're killing out there!"

 

"Vegetation, Warren. This is a priority, but overridden. I'm programmed to make value judgments. I've exercised my override reflex. This is a rational function. Please adjust yourself, Warren."

 

"The lab. You destroyed the lab. Why?"

 

"I don't like vegetation, Warren."

 

"Don't like?

 

"Yes, Warren. This seems descriptive."

 

"Anne, you're malfunctioning. Listen to me. You'll have to shut down for a few moments. I won't damage you or interfere with your standing instructions. I'm your crew, Anne. Shut down."

 

"I can't accept this instruction, Warren. One of my functions is preservation of myself. You're my highest priority. To preserve you I have to preserve myself. Please adjust yourself, Warren."

 

"Anne, let me out. Let me out of here."

 

"No, Warren."

 

The firing stopped. On the screen the fires continued to burn. He looked at it, leaned on the back of the chair, shaking.

 

"Assistance?"

 

"Go to hell."

 

"I can't go to hell, Warren. I have to hold this position."

 

"Anne. Anne-listen. I found a being out there. A sapient life form. In the forest. I talked with it. You're killing a sapient being, you hear me?"

 

A delay. "My sensors detected nothing. Your activities are erratic and injurious. I record your observation. Please provide data."

 

"Your sensor box. Turn it on."

 

"It's still operating, Warren."

 

"It was there. The life was there, when I was. I can go back. I can prove it. I talked to it, Anne."

 

"There was no other life there."

 

"Because your sensor unit couldn't register it. Because your sensors aren't sensitive enough. Because you're not human, Anne."

 

"I have recorded sounds. Identify."

 

The wallscreen flicked to a view of the grove. The wind sighed in the leaves; something babbled. A human figure lay writhing on the ground, limbs jerking, mouth working with the sounds. Himself. The murmur was his own voice, inebriate and slurred.

 

He turned his face from it. "Cut it off. Cut it off, Anne."

 

The sound stopped. The screen was blank and white when he turned his head again. He leaned there a time. There was a void in him where life had been. Where he had imagined life. He sat down at the table, wiped his eyes.

 

After a moment he picked up the coffee and drank.

 

"Are you adjusted, Warren?"

 

"Yes. Yes, Anne."

 

"Emergency program will continue until all surrounds are sterilized."

 

He sat staring at his hands, at the cup before him. "And then what will I do?"

 

Anne walked to the end of the table, sat down, propped her elbows on the table, head on hands, sensor lights blinking in continuous operation.

 

The chessboard flashed to the wallscreen at her back.

 

The pawn advanced one square.

 

---

 

IV

 

"well, how many were there?" I ask, over supper.

 

"There might have been four."

 

"There was one," I say. "Anne was Warren too." blink in all innocence. "In a manner of speaking."

 

We sit together, speaking under the canned music. Art made into white noise, to divide us table from table in the dining hall. "Awful stuff, that music," I say. Then I have another thought:

 

"On the other hand-"

 

"There were four?"

 

"No. The music. The Greeks painted vases."

 

"What have Greek urns got to do with canned music?"

 

"Art. Do you know-" I hold up a spoon. "This is art."

 

"Come on. They stamp them out by the thousands."

 

"But an artist designed this. Its balance, its shape. An artist drew it and sculpted it, and another sort made the die. Then a workman ran it and collected his wage. Which he used to buy a tape. Do you know, we work most of our lives to afford two things: leisure and art."

 

"Even mass-produced art?"

 

"The Greeks mass-produced clay lamps. Now we call them antiquities. And we set them on little pedestals in museums. They painted their pots and their lamps. Rich Greeks had musicians at their banquets. Nowadays the poorest man can have a fine metal spoon and have music to listen to with his dinner. That's magical."

 

"Well, now the rest of us have got to put up with damned little die-stamped spoons."

 

"How many of us would have owned a spoon in those good old days?"

 

"Who needed them? Fingers worked."

 

"So did typhoid."

 

"What has typhoid to do with spoons?"

 

"Sanitation. Cities and civilizations died for want of spoons. And good drainage. It's all art. I've walked the streets of dead cities. It's an eerie thing, to read the graves and the ages. Very many children. Very many. And so many cities which just-died. Not in violence. Just of needs we take for granted. I tell you we are all kings and magicians. Our touch on a machine brings light, sound, musicians appear in thin air, pictures leap from world to world. Each of us singly wields the power output of a Mesopotamian empire-without ever thinking about it. We can afford it."

 

"We waste it."

 

I lift my hand toward the unseen stars. "Does the sun? I suppose that it does. But we gather what it throws away. And the universe doesn't lose it, except to entropy."

 

"A world has only so much."

 

"A solar system has too much ever to bring home. Look at the asteroids, the moons, the sun-No, the irresponsible thing is not to wield that power. To sit in a closed world and do nothing. To refuse to mass-produce. To deny some fellow his bit of art bought with his own labor. It's not economical to paint a pot. Or to make a vase for flowers. Or to grow flowers instead of cabbages."

 

"Cabbages," you recall, "have their importance in the cosmic system."

 

"Don't flowers? And isn't it better that a man has music with his dinner and a pot with a design on it?"

 

"You don't like the ancient world?"

 

"Let me tell you, most of us didn't live well. Most of us didn't make it past childhood. And not just villages vanished in some bitter winter. Whole towns did. Whole nations. There were no good old days."

 

"History again."

 

"That's why we make fantasies. Because it was too bad to remember."

 

"Cynic."

 

"I do write fantasies. Sometimes."

 

"And they're true?"

 

"True as those poor dead kids in Ephesus."

 

"Where's that?"

 

"See?" I sigh, thinking of dead stones and a child's game, etched forever in a dead street, near a conqueror's arch. "Let me tell you a story."

 

"A cheerful one."

 

"A cheerful one. Let me tell you a story about a story. Lin Carter and I were talking just exactly like this, about the wretchedness of the ancient world once upon a time-he was doing an anthology, and wanted me to write a story, a fantasy. And then Lin said a remarkable thing which I'm sure didn't come out quite the thing he was trying to say. I think what he meant to say was that the medieval age was not particularly chivalrous, that the open land was quite dangerous and that it was an age which quite well cast everyone into a series of dependencies-i.e., villein upon master, him upon his lord, lord upon baron, baron upon king, and king upon emperor, who relied on God and played politics with Him whenever he could. The way it came out was that no woman could possibly survive in the middle ages-

 

"I laughed. Lin took a curious look at his glass and amended the remark to say that it at least would not be the merry life of derring-do practiced by the males of fiction. I countered that the real-life rogues hardly had a merry time of it in real life either. You were more likely to mistake the aristocrats for the outlaws than vice versa.

 

"But immediately that became the orchard fence, the thou-shalt-not which of course was precisely the story I meant to do for Lin's anthology. Not only that, in my tale, the woman would be no princess, no abbess, no burgher's daughter with defensive advantages."

 

"Witch?"

 

"Well, take a very typical swash and buckle hero-illiterate, battling wizards, gods, and double-dealing princes, selling what can be sold and spending all the gain by sunrise-"

 

"-Who carries off the woman?"

 

"That is the woman."

 

---

 

A Thief in Korianth

 

1

 

the yliz river ran through Korianth, a sullen, muddy stream on its way to the nearby sea, with stone banks where it passed through the city- gray stone and yellow water, and gaudy ships which made a spider tangle of masts and riggings above the drab jumbled roofs of the dockside. In fact all Korianth was built on pilings and cut with canals more frequent than streets, the whole pattern of the lower town dictated by old islands and channels, so that buildings took whatever turns and bends the canals dictated, huddled against each other, jammed one up under the eaves of the next-faded paint, buildings like ancient crones remembering the brightness of their youths, decayed within from overmuch of wine and living, with dulled, shuttered eyes looking suspiciously on dim streets and scummed canals, where boat vendors and barge folk plied their craft, going to and fro from shabby warehouses. This was the Sink, which was indeed slowly subsiding into the River-but that took centuries, and the Sink used only the day, quick pleasures, momentary feast, customary famine. In spring rains the Yliz rose; tavern keepers mopped and dockmen and warehousers cursed and set merchandise up on blocks; then the town stank considerably. In summer heats the River sank, and the town stank worse.

 

There was a glittering world above this rhythm, the part of Korianth that had grown up later, inland, and beyond the zone of flood: palaces and town houses of hewn stone (which still sank, being too heavy for their foundations, and developed cracks, and whenever abandoned, decayed quickly). In this area too were temples- temples of gods and goddesses and whole pantheons local and foreign, ancient and modern, for Korianth was a trading city and offended no one permanently. The gods were transients, coming and going in favor like dukes and royal lovers. There was, more permanent than gods, a king in Korianth, Seithan XXIV, but Seithan was, if rumors might be believed, quite mad, having recovered after poisoning. At least he showed a certain bizarre turn of behavior, in which he played obscure and cruel jokes and took to strange religions, mostly such as promised sybaritic afterlives and conjured demons.

 

And central to that zone between, where town and dockside met on the canals, lay a rather pleasant zone of mild decay, of modest townsmen and a few dilapidated palaces. In this web of muddy waterways a grand bazaar transferred the wealth of the Sink (whose dark warrens honest citizens avoided) into higher-priced commerce of the Market of Korianth.

 

It was a profitable place for merchants, for proselytizing cults, for healers, interpreters of dreams, prostitutes of the better sort (two of the former palaces were brothels, and no few of the temples were), palm readers and sellers of drinks and sweetmeats, silver and fish, of caged birds and slaves, copper pots and amulets and minor sorceries. Even on a chill autumn day such as this, with the stench of hundreds of altars and the spices of the booths and the smokes of midtown, that of the River welled up. Humanity jostled shoulder to shoulder, armored guard against citizen, beggar against priest, and furnished ample opportunity for thieves.

 

Gillian glanced across that sea of bobbing heads and swirling colors, eased up against the twelve-year-old girl whose slim, dirty fingers had just deceived the fruit merchant and popped a first and a second handful of figs into the torn seam of her cleverly sewn skirt. Gillian pushed her own body into the way of sight and reached to twist her fingers into her sister's curls and jerk. Jensy yielded before the hair came out by the roots, let herself be dragged four paces into the woman-wide blackness of an alley, through which a sickly stream of something threaded between their feet.

 

"Hist," Gillian said. "Will you have us on the run for a fistful of sweets? You have no judgment."

 

Jensy's small face twisted into a grin. "Old Haber-shen's never seen me."

 

Gillian gave her a rap on the ear, not hard. The claim was truth: Jensy was deft. The double-sewn skirt picked up better than figs. "Not here," Gillian said. "Not in this market. There's high law here. They cut your hand off, stupid snipe."

 

Jensy grinned at her; everything slid off Jensy. Gillian gripped her sister by the wrist and jerked her out into the press, walked a few stalls down. It was never good to linger. They did not look the best of customers, she and Jensy, ragged curls bound up in scarves, coarse sacking skirts, blouses that had seen good days-before they had left some goodwoman's laundry. Docksiders did come here, frequent enough in the crowds. And their faces were not known outside the Sink; varying patterns of dirt were a tolerable disguise.

 

Lean days were at hand; they were not far from winter, when ships would be scant, save only the paltry, patched coasters. In late fall and winter the goods were here in midtown, being hauled out of warehouses and sold at profit. Dockside was slim pickings in winter; dockside was where she preferred to work-given choice. And with Jensy-

 

Midtown frightened her. This place was daylight and open, and at the moment she was not looking for trouble; rather she made for the corner of the fish market with its peculiar aromas and the perfumed reek of Agdalia's gilt temple and brothel.

 

"Don't want to," Jensy declared, planting her feel.

 

Gillian jerked her willy-nilly. "I'm not going to leave you there, mousekin. Not for long."

 

"I hate Sophonisba."

 

Gillian stopped short, jerked Jensy about by the shoulder and looked down into the dirty face. Jensy sobered at once, eyes wide. "Sophonisba never lets the customers near you."

 

Jensy shook her head, and Gillian let out a breath. She had started that way; Jensy would not. She dragged Jensy to the door, where Sophonisba held her usual post at the shrine of the tinsel goddess- legitimacy of a sort, more than Sophonisba had been born to. Gillian shoved Jensy into Sophonisba's hands- overblown and overpainted, all pastels and perfumes and swelling bosom-it was not lack of charms kept Sophonisba on the market street, by the Fish, but the unfortunate voice, a Sink accent and a nasal whine that would keep her here forever. Dead ear, Gillian reckoned of her in some pity, for accents came off and onto Gillian's tongue with polyglot facility; Sophonisba probably did not know her affliction-a creature of patterns, reliable to follow them.

 

"Not in daylight," Sophonisba complained, painted eyes distressed. "Double cut for daylight. Are you working here? I don't want any part of that. Take yourselves elsewhere.".

 

"You know I wouldn't bring the king's men down on Jensy; mind her, old friend, or I'll break your nose."

 

"Hate you," Jensy muttered, and winced, for Sophonisba gripped her hair.

 

She meant Sophonisba. Gillian gave her a face and walked away, free. The warrens or the market- neither plate was safe for a twelve-year-old female with light fingers and too much self-confidence; Sophonisba could still keep a string on her-and Sophonisba was right to worry: stakes were higher here, in all regards.

 

Gillian prowled the aisles, shopping customers as well as booths, lingering nowhere long, flowing with the traffic. It was the third winter coming, the third since she had had Jensy under her wing. Neither of them had known hunger often while her mother had been there to care for Jensy-but those days were gone, her mother gone, and Jensy-Jensy was falling into the pattern. Gillian saw it coming. She had nightmares, Jensy in the hands of the city watch, or knifed in some stupid brawl, like their mother. Or something happening to herself, and Jensy growing up in Sophonisba's hands.

 

Money. A large amount of gold: that was the way out she dreamed of, money that would buy Jensy into some respectable order, to come out polished and fit for midtown or better. But that kind of money did not often flow accessibly on dockside, in the Sink. It had to be hunted here; and she saw it-all about her-at the risk of King's-law, penalties greater than the dockside was likely to inflict: the Sink took care of its own problems, but it was apt to wink at pilferage and it was rarely so inventively cruel as King's-law. Whore she was not, no longer, never again; whore she had been, seeking out Genat, a thief among thieves; and the apprentice had passed the master. Genat had become blind Genat the beggar-dead Genat soon after-and Gillian was free, walking the market where Genat himself seldom dared pilfer.

 

If she had gold enough, then Jensy was out of the streets, out of the way of things that waited to happen.

 

Gold enough, and she could get more: gold was power, and she had studied power zealously, from street bravos to priests, listening to gossip, listening to rich folk talk, one with the alleys and the booths- she learned, did Gillian, how rich men stole, and she planned someday-she always had-to be rich.

 

Only three years of fending for two, and this third year that saw Jensy filling out into more than her own whipcord shape would ever be, that promised what Jensy would be the fourth year, when at thirteen she became a mark for any man on the docks-

 

This winter or never, for Jensy.

 

Gillian walked until her thin soles burned on the cobbles. She looked at jewelers' booths-too wary, the goldsmiths, who tended to have armed bullies about them. She had once-madly-entertained the idea of approaching a jeweler, proposing her own slight self as a guard: truth, no one on the streets could deceive her sharp eyes, and there would be no pilferage; but say to them, I am a better thief than they, sirs?-that was a way to end like Genat.

 

Mistress to such, instead? There seemed no young and handsome ones-even Genat had been that-and she, moreover, had no taste for more such years. She passed the jewelers, hoping forlornly for some indiscretion.

 

She hungered by afternoon and thought wistfully of the figs Jensy had fingered; Jensy had them, which meant Jensy would eat them. Gillian was not so rash as in her green years. She would not risk herself for a bit of bread or cheese. She kept prowling, turning down minor opportunities, bumped against a number of promising citizens, but each was a risk, and each deft fingering of their purses showed nothing of great substance.

 

The hours passed. The better classes began to wend homeward with their bodyguards and bullies. She began to see a few familiar faces on the edges of the crowd, rufflers and whores and such anticipating the night, which was theirs. Merchants with more expensive goods began folding up and withdrawing with their armed guards and their day's profits.

 

Nothing-no luck at all, and Sophonisba would not accept a cut of bad luck; Gillian had two coppers in her own purse, purloined days ago, and Sophonisba would expect one. It was the streets and no supper if she was not willing to take a risk.

 

Suddenly a strange face cut the crowd, making haste: that caught her eye, and like the reflex of a boxer, her body tended that way before her mind had quite weighed matters, so she should not lose him. This was a stranger; there was a fashion to faces in Korianth, and this one was not Korianthine- Abhizite, she reckoned, from upriver. Gillian warmed indeed; it was like summer, when gullible foreigners came onto the docks carrying their traveling funds with them and giving easy opportunity to the light-fingered trade.

 

She bumped him in the press at a corner, anticipating his move to dodge her, and her razor had the purse strings, her fingers at once aware of weight, her heart thudding with the old excitement as she eeled through the crowd and alleyward.

 

Heavy purse-it was too soon missed; her numbing blow had had short effect. She heard the bawl of outrage, and suddenly a general shriek of alarm. At the bend of the alley she looked back.

 

Armored men. Bodyguards!

 

Panic hit her; she clutched the purse and ran the dark alley she had mapped in advance for escape, ran with all her might and slid left, right, right, along a broad back street, down yet another alley. They were after her in the twilight of the maze, cursing and with swords gleaming bare.

 

It was no ordinary cutpursing. She had tripped something, indeed. She ran until her heart was nigh to bursting, took the desperate chance of a stack of firewood to scamper to a ledge and into the upper levels of the midtown maze.

 

She watched them then, she lying on her heaving belly and trying not to be heard breathing. They were someone's hired bravos for certain, scarred of countenance, with that touch of the garish that bespoke gutter origins.

 

"Common cutpurse," one said. That rankled. She had other skills.

 

"Someone has to have seen her," said another. "Money will talk, in the Sink."

 

They went away. Gillian lay still, panting, opened the purse with trembling fingers.

 

A lead cylinder stamped with a seal; lead, and a finger-long sealed parchment, and a paltry three silver coins.

 

Bile welled up in her throat. They had sworn to search for her even into the impenetrable Sink. She had stolen something terrible; she had ruined herself; and even the Sink could not hide her, not against money, and such men.

 

Jensy, she thought, sick at heart. If passersby had seen her strolling there earlier and described Jensy- their memories would be very keen, for gold. The marks on the loot were ducal seals, surely; lesser men did not use such things. Her breath shuddered through her throat. Kings and dukes. She had stolen lead and paper, and her death. She could not read, not a word-not even to know what she had in hand.

 

-and Jensy!

 

She swept the contents back into the purse, thrust it into her blouse and, dropping down again into the alley, ran.

 

2

 

the tinsel shrine was closed. Gillian's heart sank, and her vision blurred. Again to the alleys and behind, thence to a lower-story window with a red shutter. She reached up and rapped it a certain pattern with her knuckles.

 

It opened. Sophonisba's painted face stared down at her; a torrent of abuse poured sewer-fashion from the dewy lips, and Jensy's dirty-scarfed head bobbed up from below the whore's ample bosom.

 

"Come on," Gillian said, and Jensy scrambled, grimaced in pain, for Sophonisba had her by the hair.

 

"My cut," Sophonisba said.

 

Gillian swallowed air, her ears alert for pursuit. She fished the two coppers from her purse, and Sophonisba spat on them. Heat flushed Gillian's face; the next thing in her hand was her razor.

 

Sophonisba paled and sniffed. "I know you got better, slink. The whole street's roused. Should I take such risks? If someone comes asking here, should I say lies?"

 

Trembling, blind with rage, Gillian took back the coppers. She brought out the purse, spilled the contents: lead cylinder, parchment, three coins. "Here. See? Trouble, trouble and no lot of money."

 

Sophonisba snatched at the coins. Gillian's deft fingers saved two, and the other things, which Sophonisba made no move at all to seize.

 

"Take your trouble," Sophonisba said. "And your brat. And keep away from here."

 

Jensy scrambled out over the sill, hit the alley cobbles on tier slippered feet. Gillian did not stay to threaten. Sophonisba knew her-knew better than to spill to king's-men- or to leave Jensy on the street. Gillian clutched her sister's hand and pulled her along at a rate a twelve-year-old's strides could hardly match.

 

They walked, finally, in the dark of the blackest alleys and, warily, into the Sink itself. Gillian led the way to Threepenny Bridge and so to Rat's Alley and the Bowel. They were not alone, but the shadows inspected them cautiously: the trouble that lurked here was accustomed to pull its victims into the warren, not to find them there; and one time that lurkers did come too close, she and Jensy played dodge in the alley. "Cheap flash," she spat, and: "Bit's Isle," marking herself of a rougher brotherhood than theirs. They were alone after.

 

After the Bowel came the Isle itself, and the deepest part of the Sink. There was a door in the alley called Blindman's, where Genat had sat till someone knifed him, She dodged to it with Jensy in tow, this stout door inconspicuous among others, and pushed it open.

 

It let them in under Jochen's stairs, in the wine-smelling backside of the Rose. Gillian caught her breath then and pulled Jensy close within the shadows of the small understairs pantry. "Get Jochen," she bade Jensy then. Jensy skulked out into the hall and took off her scarf, stuffed that in her skirts and passed out of sight around the corner of the door and into the roister of the tavern.

 

In a little time she was back with fat Jochen in her wake, and Jochen mightily scowling.

 

"You're in trouble?" Jochen said. "Get out if you are."

 

"Want you to keep Jensy for me."

 

"Pay," Jochen said. "You got it?"

 

"How much?"

 

"How bad the trouble?"

 

"For her, none at all. Just keep her." Gillian turned her back-prudence, not modesty-to fish up the silver from her blouse, not revealing the purse. She held up one coin. "Two days' board and close room."

 

"You are in trouble."

 

"I want Nessim. Is he here?"

 

He always was by dark. Jochen snorted. "A cut of what's going."

 

"A cut if there's profit; a clear name if there's not; get Nessim."

 

Jochen went. "I don't want to be left," Jensy started to say, but Gillian rapped her ear and scowled so that Jensy swallowed it and looked frightened. Finally a muddled old man came muttering their way and Gillian snagged his sleeve. The reek of wine was strong; it was perpetual about Nessim Hath, excommunicate priest and minor dabbler in magics. He read, when he was sober enough to see the letters; that and occasionally effective magics-wards against rats, for one-made him a livelihood and kept his throat uncut.

 

"Upstairs," Gillian said, guiding sot and child up the well-worn boards to the loft and the private cells at the alleyside wall. Jensy snatched the taper at the head of the stairs and they went into that room, which had a window.

 

Nessim tottered to the cot and sat down while Jensy lit the stub of a candle. Gillian fished out her coppers, held them before Nessim's red-rimmed eyes and pressed them into the old priest's shaking hand.

 

"Read something?" Nessim asked.

 

Gillian pulled out the purse and knelt by the bedside while Jensy prudently closed the door. She produced the leaden cylinder and the parchment. "Old man," she said, "tell me what I've got here."

 

He gathered up the cylinder and brought his eyes closely to focus on it, frowning. His mouth trembled as did his hands, and he thrust it back at her. "I don't know this seal. Lose this thing in the canal. Be rid of it."

 

"You know it, old man."

 

"I don't." She did not take it from him, and he held it, trembling. "A false seal, a mask seal. Some thing some would know-and not outsiders. It's no good, Gillian."

 

"And if some would hunt a thief for it? It's good to someone."

 

Nessim stared at her. She valued Nessim, gave him coppers when he was on one of his lower periods: he drank the money and was grateful. She cultivated him, one gentle rogue among the ungentle, who would not have failed at priesthood and at magics if he did not drink and love comforts; now he simply had the drink.

 

"Run," he said. "Get out of Korianth. Tonight."

 

"Penniless? This should be worth something, old man."

 

"Powerful men would use such a seal to mask what they do, who they are. Games of more than small stakes."

 

Gillian swallowed heavily. "You've played with seals before, old man; read me the parchment."

 

He took it in hand, laid the leaden cylinder in his lap, turned the parchment to all sides. Long and long he stared at it, finally opened his purse with much trembling of his hands, took out a tiny knife and cut the red threads wrapped round, pulled them from the wax and loosed it carefully with the blade.

 

"Huh," Jensy pouted. "Anyone could cut it." Gillian rapped her ear gently as Nessim canted the tiny parchment to the scant light. His lips mumbled, steadied, a thin line. When he opened his mouth they trembled again, and very carefully he drew out more red thread from his pouch, red wax such as scribes used. Gillian held her peace and kept Jensy's, not to disturb him in the ticklish process that saw new cords seated, the seal prepared-he motioned for the candle and she held it herself while he heated and replaced the seal most gingerly.

 

"No magics," he said then, handing it back. "No magics of mine near this thing. Or the other. Take them. Throw them both in the River."

 

"Answers, old man."

 

"Triptis. Promising-without naming names- twenty thousand in gold to the shrine of Triptis."

 

Gillian wrinkled her nose and took back parchment and cylinder. "Abhizite god," she said. "A dark one." The sum ran cold fingers over her skin. "Twenty thousand. That's-gold-twenty thousand. How much do rich men have to spend on temples, old thief?"

 

"Rich men's lives are bought for less."

 

The fingers went cold about the lead. Gillian swallowed, wishing Jensy had stayed downstairs in the pantry. She held up the lead cylinder. "Can you breach that seal, old man?"

 

"Wouldn't."

 

"You tell me why."

 

"It's more than a lead seal on that. Adepts more than the likes of me; I know my level, woman; I know what not to touch, and you can take my advice. Get out of here. You've stolen something you can't trade in. They don't need to see you, do you understand me? This thing can be traced."

 

The hairs stirred to her nape. She sat staring at him. "Then throwing it in the river won't do it, either."

 

"They might give up then. Might. Gillian, you've put your head in the jaws this time."

 

"Rich men's lives," she muttered, clutching the objects in her hand. She slid them back into the purse and thrust it within her blouse. "I'll get rid of it. I'll find some way. I've paid Jochen to keep Jensy. See he does, or sour his beer."

 

"Gillian-"

 

"You don't want to know," she said. "I don't want either of you to know."

 

There was the window, the slanting ledge outside; she hugged Jensy, and old Nessim, and used it.

 

3

 

alone. she traveled quickly, by warehouse roofs for the first part of her journey, where the riggings and masts of dockside webbed the night sky, by remembered ways across the canal. One monstrous old warehouse squatted athwart the canal like a misshapen dowager, a convenient crossing that avoided the bridges. Skirts hampered; she whipped off the wrap, leaving the knee breeches and woolen hose she wore beneath, the skirt rolled and bound to her waist with her belt. She had her dagger, her razor and the cant to mark her as trouble for ruffians-a lie: the nebulous brotherhood would hardly back her now, in her trouble. They disliked long looks from moneyed men, hired bullies and noise on dockside. If the noise continued about her, she might foreseeably meet with accident, to be found floating in a canal-to quiet the uproar and stop further attentions.

 

But such as she met did not know it and kept from her path or, sauntering and mocking, still shied from brotherhood cant. Some passwords were a cut throat to use without approval, and thieves out of the Sink taught interlopers bitter lessons.

 

She paused to rest at the Serpentine of midtown, crouched in the shadows, sweating and hard-breathing, dizzy with want of sleep and food. Her belly had passed the point of hurting. She thought.of a side excursion-a bakery's back door, perhaps-but she did not dare the possible hue and cry added to what notoriety she already had. She gathered what strength she had and set out a second time, the way that led to the tinsel shrine and one house that would see its busiest hours in the dark.

 

Throw it in the canal: she dared not. Once it was gone from her, she had no more bargains left, nothing. As it was she had a secret valuable and fearful to someone. There comes a time, Genat had told her often enough, when chances have to be taken-and taken wide.

 

It was not Sophonisba's way.

 

Panting, she reached the red window, rapped at it; there was dim light inside and long delay-a male voice, a curse, some drunken converse. Gillian leaned against the wall outside and slowed her breathing, wishing by all the gods of Korianth (save one) that Sophonisba would make some haste. She rapped again finally, heart racing as her rashness raised a complaint within-male voice again. She pressed herself to the wall, heard the drunken voice diminish- Sophonisba's now, shrill, bidding someone out. A door opened and closed.

 

In a moment steps crossed the room and the shutter opened. Gillian showed herself cautiously, stared up into Sophonisba's white face. "Come on out here," Gillian said.

 

"Get out of here," Sophonisba hissed, with fear stark in her eyes. "Out, or I call the watch. There's money looking for you."

 

She would have closed the shutters, but Gillian had both hands on the ledge and vaulted up to perch on it; Gillian snatched and caught a loose handful of Sophonisba's unlaced shift. "Don't do that, Sophie. If you bring the watch, we'll both be sorry. You know me. I've got something I've got to get rid of. Get dressed."

 

"And lose a night's-"

 

"Yes. Lose your nose if you don't hurry about it." She brought out the razor, that small and wicked knife of which Sophonisba was most afraid. She sat polishing it on her knee while Sophonisba sorted into a flurry of skirts. Sophonisba paused once to look; she let the light catch the knife and Sophonisba made greater haste. "Fix your hair," Gillian said.

 

"Someone's going to come back here to check on me if I don't take my last fee front-"

 

"Then fix it on the way." Steps were headed toward the door. "Haste! Or there'll be bloodletting."

 

"Get down," Sophonisba groaned. "I'll get rid of her."

 

Gillian slipped within the room and closed the shutters, stood in the dark against the wall while Sophonisba cracked the door and handed the fee out, heard a gutter dialogue and Sophonisba pleading indisposition. She handed out more money finally, as if she were parting with her life's blood, and closed the door. She looked about with a pained expression. "You owe me, you owe me-"

 

"I'm carrying something dangerous," Gillian said.

 

"It's being tracked, do you understand? Nessim doesn't like the smell of it."

 

"O gods."

 

"Just so. It's trouble, old friend. Priest trouble."

 

"Then take it to priests."

 

"Priests expect donations. I've the scent of gold, dear friend. It's rich men pass such things back and forth, about things they don't want authority to know about."

 

"Then throw it in a canal."

 

"Nessim's advice. But it doesn't take the smell off my hands or answer questions when the trackers catch me up-or you, now, old friend."

 

"What do you want?" Sophonisba moaned. "Gillian, please-"

 

"Do you know," she said softly, reasonably, "if we take this thing-we, dear friend-to the wrong party, to someone who isn't disposed to reward us, or someone who isn't powerful enough to protect us so effortlessly that protection costs him nothing-who would spend effort protecting a whore and a thief, eh, Sophie? But some there are in this city who shed gold like gods shed hair, whose neighborhoods are so well protected others hesitate to meddle in them. Men of birth, Sophie. Men who might like to know who's paying vast sums of gold for favors in this city."

 

"Don't tell me these things."

 

"I'll warrant a whore hears a lot of things, Sophie. I'll warrant a whore knows a lot of ways and doors and windows in Korianth, who's where, who has secrets-"

 

"A whore is told a lot of lies. I can't help you."

 

"But you can, pretty Sophonisba." She held up the razor. "I daresay you know names and such-even in the king's own hall."

 

"No!"

 

"But the king's mad, they say; and who knows what a madman might do? What other names do you know?"

 

"I don't know anyone, I swear I don't."

 

"Don't swear; we've gods enough here. We improvise, then, you and I." She flung the shutter open. "Out, out with you."

 

Sophonisba was not adept at ledges. She settled herself on it and hesitated. Gillian thought of pushing her; then, fearing noise, took her hands and lei her down gently, followed after with a soft thud. Sophonisba stood shivering and tying her laces, the latter unsuccessfully.

 

"Come on," Gillian said.

 

"I don't walk the alleys," Sophonisba protested in dread; Gillian pulled her along nonetheless, the back ways of the Grand Serpentine.

 

They met trouble. It was inevitable. More than once gangs of youths spotted Sophonisba, like dogs a stray cat, and came too close for comfort. Once the cant was not password enough, and they wanted more proof: Gillian showed that she carried, knife-carved in her shoulder, the brotherhood's initiation, and drunk as they were, they had sense to give way for that. It ruffled her pride. She jerked Sophonisba along and said nothing, seething with anger and reckoning she should have cut one. She could have done it and gotten away; but not with Sophonisba.

 

Sophonisba snuffled quietly, her hand cold as ice.

 

They took to the main canalside at last, when they must, which was at this hour decently deserted. It was not a place Gillian had been often; she found her way mostly by sense, knowing where the tall, domed buildings should lie. She had seen them most days of her life from the rooftops of the Sink.

 

The palaces of the great of Korianth were walled, with gardens, and men to watch them. She saw seals now and then that she knew, mythic beasts and demon beasts snarling from the arches over such places.

 

But one palace there was on the leftside hill, opposed to the great gold dome of the King's Palace, a lonely abode well walled and guarded.

 

There were guards, gilt-armed guards, with plumes and cloaks and more flash than ever the rufflers of midtown dared sport. Gillian grinned to herself and felt Sophonisba's hand in hers cold and limp from dread of such a place.

 

She marked with her eye where the guards stood, how they came and went and where the walls and accesses lay, where trees and bushes topped the walls inside and how the wall went to the very edge of the white marble building. The place was defended against armed men, against that sort of threat; against-the thought cooled her grin and her enthusiasm-guilded Assassins and free-lancers; a prince must worry for such things.

 

No. It was far from easy as it looked. Those easy ways could be set with traps; those places too unguarded could become deadly. She looked for the ways less easy, traced again that too-close wall.

 

"Walk down the street," she told Sophonisba. "Now. Just walk down the street."

 

"You're mad."

 

"Go."

 

Sophonisba started off, pale figure in blue silks, a disheveled and unlaced figure of ample curves and confused mien. She walked quickly as her fear would urge her, beyond the corner and before the eyes of the guards at the gate.

 

Gillian stayed long enough to see the sentries' attention wander, then pelted to the wall and carefully, with delicate fingers and the balance Genat had taught, spidered her way up the brickwork.

 

Dogs barked the moment she flung an arm over. She cursed, ran the crest of the thin wall like a trained ape, made the building itself and crept along the masonry-too much of ornament, my lord!-as far as the upper terrace.

 

Over the rim and onto solid ground, panting. Whatever had become of Sophonisba, she had served her purpose.

 

Gillian darted for a further terrace. Doors at the far end swung open suddenly; guards ran out in consternation. Gillian grinned at them, arms wide, like a player asking tribute; bowed.

 

They were not amused, thinking of their hides, surely. She looked up at a ring of pikes, cocked her head to one side and drew a conscious deep breath, making obvious what they should see; that it was no male intruder they had caught.

 

"Courier," she said, "for Prince Osric."

 

4

 

he was not, either, amused.

 

She stood with a very superfluous pair of men-at-arms gripping her wrists so tightly that the blood left her hands and the bones were about to snap, and the king's bastard-and sole surviving son-fingered the pouch they had found in their search of her.

 

"Courier," he said.

 

They were not alone with the guards, he and she. A brocaded troop of courtiers and dandies loitered near, amongst the porphyry columns and on the steps of the higher floor. He dismissed them with a wave of his hand; several seemed to feel privileged and stayed.

 

"For whom," the prince asked, "are you a courier?"

 

"Couriers bring messages," she said. "I decided on my own to bring you this one. I thought you should have it."

 

"Who are you?"

 

"A free-lance assassin," she said, promoting herself, and setting Prince Osric back a pace. The guards nearly crushed her wrists; they went beyond pain.

 

"Jisan," Osric said.

 

One of the three who had stayed walked forward, and Gillian's spine crawled; she knew the look of trouble, suspected the touch of another brotherhood, more disciplined than her own. "I was ambitious," she said at once. "I exaggerate."

 

"She is none of ours," said the Assassin. A dark man he was, unlike Osric, who was white-blond and thin; this Jisan was from southern climes and not at all flash, a drab shadow in brown and black beside Osric's glitter.

 

"Your name," said Osric.

 

"Gillian," she said; and recalling better manners and where she was: "-majesty."

 

"And how come by this?"

 

"A cutpurse- found this worthless. It fell in the street. But it's some lord's seal."

 

"No lord's seal. Do you read, guttersnipe?"

 

"Read, I?" The name rankled; she kept her face calm. "No, lord."

 

He whisked out a dagger and cut the cords, unfurled the parchment. A frown came at once to his face, deepened, and his pale eyes came suddenly up to hers. "Suppose that someone read it to you."

 

She sucked a thoughtful breath, weighed her life, and Jensy's. "A drunk clerk read it-for a kiss; said it was something he didn't want to know; and I think then-some great lord might want to know it; but which lord, think I? One lord might make good use and another bad, one be grateful and another not- might make rightest use of something dangerous- might be glad it came here in good loyal hands, and not where it was supposed to go; might take notice of a stir in the lowtown, bully boys looking for that cutpurse to cut throats, armed men and some of them not belonging hereabouts. King's wall's too high, majesty, so I came here."

 

"Whose bravos?" Jisan asked.

 

She blinked. "Wish I knew that; I'd like to know."

 

"You're that cutpurse," he said.

 

"If I were, would I say yes, and if I weren't, would I say yes? But I know that thing's better not in my hands and maybe better here than in the River. A trifle of reward, majesty, and there's no one closer mouthed than I am; a trifle more, majesty, and you've all my talents at hire: no one can outbid a prince, not for the likes of me; I know I'm safest to be bribed once and never again."

 

Osric's white-blue eyes rested on her a very long, very calculating moment. "You're easy to kill. Who would miss you?"

 

"No one, majesty. No one. But I'm eyes and ears and Korianthine-" Her eyes slid to the Assassin. "And I go places where he won't."

 

The Assassin smiled. His eyes did not. Guild man. He worked by hire and public license.

 

And sometimes without.

 

Osric applied his knife to the lead cylinder to gently cut it. "No," Gillian said nervously. And when he looked up, alarmed: "I would not," she said. "I have been advised-the thing has some ill luck attached."

 

"Disis," Osric called softly, and handed the cylinder into the hands of an older man, a scholarly man, whose courtier's dress was long out of mode. The man's long, lined face contracted at the touch of it in his hand.

 

"Well advised," that one said. "Silver and lead-a confining. I would be most careful of that seal, majesty; I would indeed."

 

The prince took the cylinder back, looked at it with a troubled mien, passed it back again. Carefully then he took the purse from his own belt, from beside his dagger. "Your home?" he asked of Gillian.

 

"Dockside," she said.

 

"All of it?"

 

She bit her lip. "Ask at the Anchor," she said, betraying a sometime haunt, but not Sophonisba's, not the Rose either. "All the Sink knows Gillian." And that was true.

 

"Let her go," Osric bade his guards. Gillian's arms dropped, relief and agony at once. He tossed the purse at her feet, while she was absorbed in her pain. "Come to the garden gate next time. Bring me word-and names."

 

She bent, gathered the purse with a swollen hand, stood again and gave a shy bow, her heart pounding with the swing of her fortunes. She received a disgusted wave of dismissal, and the guards at her right jerked her elbow and brought her down the hall, the whole troop of them to escort her to the door.

 

"My knives," she reminded them with a touch of smugness. They returned them and hastened her down the stairs. She did not gape at the splendors about her, but she saw them, every detail. In such a place twenty thousand in gold might be swallowed up. Gillian might be swallowed up, here and now or in the Sink, later. She knew. She reckoned it.

 

They took her through the garden, past handlers and quivering dogs the size of men, and there at the garden gate they let her go without the mauling she had expected. Princes' favor had power even out of princes' sight, then; from what she had heard of Osric, that was wise of them.

 

They pitched the little bundle of her skirt at her feet, undone. She snatched that up and flung it jauntily over her shoulder, and stalked off into the alleys that were her element.

 

She had a touch of conscience for Sophonisba. Likely Sophonisba had disentangled herself by now, having lied her way with some small skill out of whatever predicament she had come to, appearing in the high town: forgive me, lord; this lord he brought me here, he did, and turned me out, he did, and I'm lost, truly, sir- Sophonisba would wait till safe daylight and find her way home again, to nurse a grudge that money would heal. And she-

 

Gillian was shaking when she finally stopped to assess herself. Her wrists felt maimed, the joints of her hands swollen. She crouched and slipped the knives back where they belonged, earnestly wishing she had had the cheek to ask for food as well. She rolled the skirt and tied it in the accustomed bundle at her belt. Lastly-for fear, lastly-she spilled the sack into her cupped hand, spilled it back again quickly, for the delight and the terror of the flood of gold that glinted in the dim light. She thrust it down her blouse, at once terrified to possess such a thing and anxious until she could find herself in the Sink again, where she had ratholes in plenty. This was not a thing to walk the alleys with.

 

She sprang up and started moving, alone and free again, and casting furtive and careful glances all directions, most especially behind.

 

Priests and spells and temple business. Of a sudden it began to sink into her mind precisely what services she had agreed to, to turn spy; Triptis's priests bought whores' babes, or any else that could be stolen. That was a thief's trade beneath contempt; a trade the brotherhood stamped out where it found it obvious: grieving mothers were a noise, and a desperate one, bad for business. It was that kind of enemy she dealt with.

 

Find me names, the lord Osric had said, with an Assassin standing on one side and a magician on the other. Suddenly she knew who the old magicker had been: Disis, the prince had called him; Aldisis, more than dabbler in magics-part and parcel of the prince's entourage of discontents, waiting for the mad king to pass the dark gates elsewhere. The prince had had brothers and a sister, and now he had none; now he had only to wait.

 

Aldisis the opener of paths. His ilk of lesser station sold ill wishes down by the Fish, and some of those worked; Aldisis had skills, it was whispered.

 

And Jisan cared for those Aldisis missed.

 

Find me names.

 

And what might my lord prince do with them? Gillian wondered, without much wondering; and with a sudden chill: What but lives are worth twenty thousand gold? And what but high-born lives?

 

She had agreed with no such intention; she had priest troubles and hunters on her trail, and she did not need to know their names, not from a great enough distance from Korianth. One desperate chance-to sell the deadly information and gamble it was not Osric himself, to gamble with the highest power she could reach and hope she reached above the plague spot in Korianth- for gold, to get her and Jensy out of reach and out of the city until the danger was past.

 

Dangerous thoughts nibbled at her resolve, the chance she had been looking for, three years on the street with Jensy-a chance not only of one purse of gold- but of others. She swore at herself for thinking of it, reminded herself what she was; but there was also what she might be. Double such a purse could support Jensy in a genteel order: learning and fine clothes and fine manners; freedom for herself, to eel herself back dockside and vanish into her own darknesses, gather money, and power- No strange cities for her, nothing but Korianth, where she knew her way, all the low and tangled ways that took a lifetime of living to learn of a city-no starting over elsewhere, to play whore and teach Jensy the like, to get their throats cut in Amisent or Kesirn, trespassing in another territory and another brotherhood.

 

She skipped along, the strength flooding back into her, the breath hissing regularly between her teeth. She found herself again in familiar territory, known alleys; found one of her narrowest boltholes and rid herself of the prince's purse, all but one coin, itself a bit of recklessness. After that she ran and paused, ran and paused, slick with sweat and light-headed with fortune and danger and hunger.

 

The Bowel took her in, and Blindman's-home territory indeed; her sore, slippered feet pattered over familiar cobbles; she loosed her skirt and whipped it about her, mopped her face with her scarf and knotted that about her waist, leaving her curls free. The door to the Rose was before her. She pushed it open.

 

And froze to the heart.

 

5

 

all the rose was a shambles, the tables broken, a few survivors or gawkers milling about in a forlorn knot near the street-side door. There was chill in the air, a palpable chill, like a breath of ice. Fat Jochen lay stark on the floor by the counter, with all his skin gone gray and his clothes- faded, as if cobweb composed them.

 

"Gods," Gillian breathed, clutching at the luck piece she bore, easygoing Agdalia's. And in the next breath: "Jensy," she murmured, and ran for the stairs.

 

The door at the end of the narrow hall stood open, moonlight streaming into a darkened room from the open window. She stopped, drew her knife- clutched the tawdry charm, sick with dread. From her vantage point she saw the cot disheveled, the movement of a shadow within, like a lich robed in cobwebs.

 

"Jensy!" she shouted into that dark.

 

The wraith came into the doorway, staggered out, reached.

 

Nessim. She held her hand in time, only just, turned the blade and with hilt in hand gripped the old man's sticklike arms, seized him with both hands, heedless of hurts. He stammered something. There was a silken crumbling in the cloth she held, like something moldered, centuries old. The skin on Nessim's poor face peeled in strips like a sun-baked hinterlander's.

 

"Gillian," he murmured. "They wanted you."

 

"Where's Jensy?"

 

He tried to tell her, pawed at the amulet he had worn; it was a crystal, cracked now, in a peeling hand. He waved the hand helplessly. "Took Jensy," he said. He was bald, even to the eyebrows. "I saved myself-saved myself-had no strength for mousekin. Gillian, run away."

 

"Who, blast you, Nessim!"

 

"Don't know. Don't know. But Triptis. Triptis's priests- ah, go, go, Gillian."

 

Tears made tracks down his seared cheeks. She thrust him back, anger and pity confounded in her. The advice was sound; they were without power, without patrons. Young girls disappeared often enough in the Sink without a ripple.

 

Rules changed. She thrust past him to the window and out it, onto the creaking shingles, to the eaves and down the edge to Blindman's. She hit the cobbles in a crouch and straightened.

 

They were looking for her. For her, not Jensy. And Nessim had survived to give her that message.

 

Triptis.

 

She slipped the knife into her belt and turned to go, stopped suddenly at the apparition that faced her in the alley.

 

"Gillian," the shadow said, unfolding upward out of the debris by Goat's Alley.

 

Her hand slipped behind her to the dagger; she set her back against solid brick and flicked a glance at shadows- others, at the crossing of Sparrow's. More around the corner, it was likely.

 

"Where is it?" the same chill voice asked.

 

"I sell things," she said. "Do you want it back? You have something I want."

 

"You can't get it back," the whisper said. "Now what shall we do?"

 

Her blood went colder still. They knew where she had been. She was followed; and no one slipped up on Gillian, no one.

 

Seals and seals, Nessim had said.

 

"Name your price," she said.

 

"You gained access to a prince," said the whisper. "You can do it again."

 

Osric, she thought. Her heart settled into a leaden, hurting rhythm. It was Osric it was aimed at.

 

"We also," said the whisper, "sell things. You want the child Jensy. The god has many children. He can spare one."

 

Triptis; it was beyond doubt; the serpent-god, swallowing the moon once monthly; the snake and the mouse. Jensy!

 

"I am reasonable," she said.

 

There was silence. If the shadow smiled, it was invisible. A hand extended, open, bearing a tiny silver circlet. "A gift you mustn't lose," the whisper said.

 

She took the chill ring, a serpent shape, slipped it onto her thumb, for that was all it would fit. The metal did not warm to her flesh but chilled the flesh about it.

 

A second shadow stepped forward, proffered another small object, a knife the twin of her own. "The blade will kill at a scratch," the second voice said. "Have care of it."

 

"Don't take off the ring," the first whispered.

 

"You could hire assassins," she said.

 

"We have," the whisper returned.

 

She stared at them. "Jensy comes back alive," she said. "To this door. No cheating."

 

"On either side."

 

"You've bid higher," she said. "What proof do you want?"

 

"Events will prove. Kill him."

 

Her lips trembled. "I haven't eaten in two days; I haven't slept-"

 

"Eat and sleep," the shadow hissed, "in what leisure you think you have. We trust you."

 

They melted backward, shadow into shadow, on all sides. The metal remained cold upon her finger. She carried it to her lips, unconscious reflex, thought with cold panic of poison, spat onto the cobbles again and again. She was shaking.

 

She turned, walked into the inn of the Rose past Jochen's body, past Nessim, who sat huddled on the bottom of the steps. She poured wine from the tap, gave a cup to Nessim, drank another herself, grimacing at the flavor. Bread on the sideboard had gone hard; she soaked it in the wine, but it had the flavor of ashes; cheeses had molded: she sliced off the rind with a knife from the board and ate. Jochen lay staring at the ceiling. Passers-by thrust in their heads and gaped at a madwoman who ate such tainted things; another, hungrier than the rest, came in to join the pillage, and an old woman followed.

 

"Go, run," Nessim muttered, rising with great difficulty to tug at her arm, and the others shied from him in horror; it was a look of leprosy.

 

"Too late," she said. "Go away yourself, old man. Find a hole to hide in. I'll get Jensy back."

 

It hurt the old man; she had not meant it so. He shook his head and walked away, muttering sorrowfully of Jensy. She left, then, by the alleyway, which was more familiar to her than the street. She had food in her belly, however tainted; she had eaten worse.

 

She walked, stripped the skirt aside and limped along, feeling the cobbles through the holes that had worn now in her slippers. She tucked the skirt in a seam of itself, hung it about her shoulder, walked with more persistence than strength down Blindman's.

 

Something stirred behind her; she spun, surprised nothing, her nape prickling. A rat, perhaps; the alleys were infested this close to the docks. Perhaps it was not. She went, hearing that something behind her from time to time and never able to surprise it

 

She began to run, took to the straight ways, the ways that no thief liked to use, broke into the streets and raced breathlessly toward the Serpentine, that great canal along which all the streets of the city had their beginnings. Breath failed her finally and she slowed, dodged late walkers and kept going. If one of the walkers was that one who followed her- she could not tell.

 

The midtown gave way to the high; she retraced ways she had passed twice this night, with faltering steps, her breath loud in her own ears. It was late, even for prowlers. She met few but stumbled across one drunk or dead in the way, leapt the fallen form and fled with the short-range speed of one of the city's wary cats, dodged to this course and that and came out again in the same alley from which she and Sophonisba had spied out the palace.

 

The garden gate, Prince Osric had instructed her. The ring burned cold upon her finger.

 

She walked into the open, to the very guards who had let her out not so very long before.

 

6

 

the prince was abed. The fact afforded his guards no little consternation-the suspicion of a message urgent enough to make waking him advisable; the suspicion of dangerous wrath if it was not. Gillian, for her part, sat still, wool-hosed ankles crossed, hands folded, a vast fear churning at her belly. They had taken the ring. It had parted from her against all the advice of him who had given it to her; and it was not pleasing them that concerned her, but Jensy.

 

They had handled it and had it now, but if it was cold to them, they had not said, had not reacted. She suspected it was not. It was hers, for her.

 

Master Aldisis came. He said nothing, only stared at her, and she at him; him she feared most of all, his sight, his perception. His influence. She had nothing left, not the ring, not the blades, not the single gold coin. The scholar, in his night robe, observed her and walked away. She sat, the heat of exertion long since fled, with her feet and hands cold and finally numb.

 

"Mistress Gillian," a voice mocked her.

 

She looked up sharply, saw Jisan standing by a porphyry column. He bowed as to a lady. She sat still, staring at him as warily as at Aldisis.

 

"A merry chase, mistress Gillian."

 

Alarm might have touched her eyes. It surprised her, that it had been he.

 

"Call the lord prince," the Assassin said, and a guard went.

 

"Who is your contract?" she asked.

 

He smiled. "Guildmaster might answer," he said. "Go ask."

 

Patently she could not. She sat still, fixed as under a serpent's gaze. Her blades were in the guards' hands, one more knife than there had been. They suspected something amiss, as it was their business to suspect all things and all persons; Jisan knew. She stared into his eyes.

 

"What game are you playing?" he asked her plainly.

 

"I've no doubt you've asked about."

 

"There's some disturbance down in lowtown. A tavern with a sudden- unwholesomeness in it. Dead men. Would you know about that, mistress Gillian?"

 

"I carry messages," she said.

 

His dark eyes flickered. She thought of the serpent-god and the mouse. She kept her hands neatly folded, her feet still. This was a man who killed. Who perhaps enjoyed his work. She thought that he might.

 

A curse rang out above, echoing in the high beams of the ceiling. Osric. She heard every god in the court pantheon blasphemed and turned her head to stare straight before her, smoothed her breeches, a nervousness-stood at the last moment, remembering the due of royalty, even in night dress.

 

Called from some night's pleasure? she wondered. In that case he might be doubly wrathful; but he was cold as ever, thin face, thin mouth set, white-blue eyes as void of the ordinary. She could not imagine the man engaged in so human a pastime. Maybe he never did, she thought, the wild irrelevance of exhaustion. Maybe that was the source of his disposition.

 

"They sent me back," she said directly, "to kill you."

 

Not many people surely had shocked Osric; she had succeeded. The prince bit his lips, drew a breath, thrust his thin hands in the belt of his velvet robe. "Jisan?" he asked.

 

"There are dead men," the Assassin said, "at dockside."

 

"Honesty," Osric murmured, looking at her, a mocking tone.

 

"Lord," she said, at the edge of her nerves. "Your enemies have my sister. They promise to kill her if I don't carry out their plans."

 

"And you think so little of your sister, and so much of the gold?"

 

Her breath nigh strangled her; she swallowed air and kept her voice even. "I know that they will kill her and me whichever I do; tell me the name of your enemies, lord prince, that you didn't tell me the first time you sent me out of here with master Jisan behind me. Give me names, lord prince, and I'll hunt your enemies for my own reasons, and kill them or not as you like."

 

"You should already know one name, thief."

 

"A god's name? Aye, but gods are hard to hunt, lord prince." Her voice thinned; she could not help it. "Lend me master Aldisis's company instead of master Jisan's, and there's some hope. But go I will; and kill me priests if you haven't any better names."

 

Osric's cold, pale eyes ran her up and down, flicked to Jisan, back again. "For gold, good thief?"

 

"For my sister, lord prince. Pay me another time."

 

"Then why come here?"

 

"Because they'd know." She slid a look toward the guards, shifted weight anxiously. "A ring; they gave me a ring to wear, and they took it."

 

"Aldisis!" the prince called. The mage came, from some eaves-dropping vantage among the columns or from some side room.

 

An anxious guard proffered the serpent ring, but Aldisis would not touch it; waved it away. "Hold it awhile more," Aldisis said; and to Osric: "They would know where that is. And whether she held it."

 

"My sister," Gillian said in anguish. "Lord, give it back to me. I came because they'd know if not; and to find out their names. Give me their names. It's almost morning."

 

"I might help you," said Osric. "Perhaps I might die and delight them with a rumor."

 

"Lord," she murmured, dazed.

 

"My enemies will stay close together," he said. "The temple-or a certain lord Brisin's palace- likely the temple; Brisin fears retaliation; the god shelters him. Master Aldisis could explain such things. You're a bodkin at best, mistress thief. But you may prick a few of them; and should you do better, that would delight me. Look to your reputation, thief."

 

"Rumor," she said.

 

"Chaos," muttered Aldisis.

 

"You advise me against this?" Osric asked.

 

"No," said Aldisis. "Toward it."

 

"You mustn't walk out the front gate this time," Osric said, "mistress thief, if you want a rumor."

 

"Give me what's mine," she said. "I'll clear your walls, lord, and give them my heels; and they'll not take me."

 

Osric made a sign with his hand; the guards brought her her knives, her purse and her ring, the while Osric retired to a bench, seated himself, with grim stares regarded them all. "I am dead," he said languidly. "I shall be for some few hours. Report it so and ring the bells. Today should be interesting."

 

Gillian slid the ring onto her finger; it was cold as ever.

 

"Go!" Osric whispered, and she turned and sped from the room, for the doors and the terrace she knew.

 

Night opened before her; she ran, skimmed the wall with the dogs barking, swung down with the guards at the gate shouting alarm-confused, and not doing their best. She hit the cobbles afoot as they raced after her, and their armor slowed them; she sprinted for known shadows and zigged and zagged through the maze.

 

She stopped finally, held a hand to a throbbing side and fetched up against a wall, rolled on a shoulder to look back and find pursuit absent.

 

Then the bells began out of the dark-mournful bells, tolling out a lie that must run through all of Korianth: the death of a prince.

 

She walked, staggering with exhaustion, wanting sleep desperately; but the hours that she might sleep were hours of Jensy's life. She was aware finally that she had cut her foot on something; she noted first the pain and then that she left a small spot of blood behind when she walked. It was far from crippling; she kept moving.

 

It was midtown now. She went more surely, having taken a second wind.

 

And all the while the bells tolled, brazen and grim, and lights burned in shuttered windows where all should be dark, people wakened to the rumor of a death.

 

The whole city must believe the lie, she thought, from the Sink to the throne, the mad monarch himself believed that Osric had died; and should there not be general search after a thief who had killed a prince?

 

She shivered, staggering, reckoning that she ran ahead of the wave of rumor: that by dawn the name of herself and Jensy would be bruited across the Sink, and there would be no more safety.

 

And behind the doors, she reckoned, rumor prepared itself, folk yet too frightened to come out of doors-never wise for honest folk in Korianth.

 

When daylight should come- it would run wild- mad Seithan to rule with no hope of succession, an opportunity for the kings of other cities, of upcoast and upriver, dukes and powerful men in Korianth, all to reach out hands for the power Seithan could not long hold, the tottering for which all had been waiting for more than two years-

 

This kind of rumor waited, to be flung wide at a thief's request. This kind of madness waited to be let loose in the city, in which all the enemies might surface, rumors in which a throne might fall, throats be cut, the whole city break into riot-

 

A prince might die indeed then, in disorder so general.

 

Or- a sudden and deeper foreboding possessed her- a king might.

 

A noise in one place, a snatch in the other; thief's game in the market. She had played it often enough, she with Jensy.

 

Not for concern for her and her troubles that Osric risked so greatly- but for Osric's sake, no other.

 

She quickened her pace, swallowing down the sickness that threatened her; somehow to get clear of this, to get away in this shaking of powers before two mites were crushed by an unheeding footstep.

 

She began, with the last of her strength, to run.

 

7

 

the watch was out in force, armed men with lanterns, lights and shadows rippling off the stone of cobbles and of walls like the stuff of the Muranthine Hell, and the bells still tolling, the first tramp of soldiers' feet from off the high streets, canalward.

 

Gillian sped, not the only shadow that judged the neighborhood of the watch and the soldiers unhealthy; rufflers and footpads were hieing themselves to cover apace, with the approach of trouble and of dawn. She skirted the canals that branched off the Serpentine, took to the alleys again and paused in the familiar alley off Agdalia's Shrine, gasping for breath in the flare of lanterns. A door slammed on the street: Agdalia's was taking precautions. Upper windows closed. The trouble had flowed thus far, and folk who did not wish to involve themselves tried to signify so by staying invisible.

 

The red-shuttered room was closed and dark; Sophonisba had not returned- had found some safe nook for herself with the bells going, hiding in fear, knowing where her partner had gone, perhaps witness to the hue and cry after. Terrified, Gillian reckoned, and did not blame her.

 

Gillian caught her breath and took to that street, forested with pillars, that was called the Street of the Gods. Here too the lanterns of the watch showed in the distance, and far away, dimly visible against the sky- the palace of the king upon the other hill of the fold in which Korianth nestled, the gods and the king in close association.

 

From god to god she passed, up that street like an ascent of fancy, from the bare respectability of little cults like Agdalia's to the more opulent temples of gods more fearsome and more powerful. Watch passed; she retreated at once, hovered in the shadow of the smooth columns of a Korianthine god, Ablis of the Goldworkers, one of the fifty-two thousand gods of Korianth. He had no patronage for her, might, in fact, resent a thief; she hovered fearfully, waiting for ill luck; but perhaps she was otherwise marked. She shuddered, fingering that serpent ring upon her thumb, and walked farther in the shadow of the columns.

 

It was not the greatest temple nor the most conspicuous in this section, that of Triptis. Dull black-green by day, it seemed all black in this last hour of night, the twisted columns like stone smoke, writhing up to a plain portico, without window or ornament.

 

She caught her breath, peered into the dark that surrounded a door that might be open or closed; she was not sure.

 

Nor was she alone. A prickling urged at her nape, a sense of something that lived and breathed nearby; she whipped out the poisoned blade and turned.

 

A shadow moved, tottered toward her. "Gillian," it said, held out a hand, beseeching.

 

"Nessim," she murmured, caught the peeling hand with her left, steadied the old man. He recoiled from her touch.

 

"You've something of them about you," he said.

 

"What are you doing here?" she hissed at him. "Old man, go back-get out of here."

 

"I came for mousekin," he said. "I came to try, Gillian."

 

The voice trembled. It was, for Nessim, terribly brave.

 

"You would die," she said. "You're not in their class, Nessim."

 

"Are you?" he asked with a sudden straightening, a memory, perhaps, of better years. "You'd do what? What would you do?"

 

"You stay out," she said, and started to leave; he caught her hand, caught the hand with the poisoned knife and the ring. His fingers clamped.

 

"No," he said. "No. Be rid of this."

 

She stopped, looked at his shadowed, peeling face. "They threatened Jensy's life."

 

"They know you're here. You understand that? With this, they know. Give it to me."

 

"Aldisis saw it and returned it to me. Aldisis himself, old man. Is your advice better?"

 

"My reasons are friendlier."

 

A chill went over her. She stared into the old man's eyes. "What should I do?"

 

"Give it here. Hand it to me. I will contain it for you- long enough. They won't know, do you understand me? I'll do that much."

 

"You can't light a candle, old trickster."

 

"Can," he said. "Reedlight's easier. I never work more than I have to."

 

She hesitated, saw the fear in the old man's eyes. A friend, one friend. She nodded, sheathed the knife and slipped off the ring. He took it into his hands and sank down in the shadows with it clasped before his lips, the muscles of his arms shaking as if he strained against something vastly powerful.

 

And the cold was gone from her hand.

 

She turned, ran, fled across the street and scrambled up the stonework of the paler temple of the Elder Mother, the Serpent Triptis's near neighbor- up, madly, for the windowless temple had to derive its light from some source; and a temple that honored the night surely looked upon it somewhere.

 

She reached the crest, the domed summit of the Mother, set foot from pale marble onto the darker roof of the Serpent, shuddering, as if the very stone were alive and threatening, able to feel her presence.

 

To steal from a god, to snatch a life from his jaws-

 

She spun and ran to the rear of the temple, where a well lay open to the sky, where the very holy of the temple looked up at its god, which was night. That was the way in she had chosen. The sanctuary, she realized with a sickness of fear, thought of Jensy and took it nonetheless, swung onto the inside rim and looked down, with a second impulse of panic as she saw how far down it was, a far, far drop.

 

Voices hailed within, echoing off the columns, shortening what time she had; somewhere voices droned hymns or some fell chant.

 

She let go, plummeted, hit the slick stones and tried to take the shock by rolling- sprawled, dazed, on cold stone, sick from the impact and paralyzed.

 

She heard shouts, outcries, struggled up on a numbed arm and a sprained wrist, trying to gain her feet. It was indeed the sanctuary; pillars of some green stone showed in the golden light of lamps, pillars carved like twisting serpents, even to the scales, writhing toward the ceiling and knotting in folds across it. The two greatest met above the altar, devouring a golden sun, between their fanged jaws, above her.

 

"Jensy," she muttered, thinking of Nessim and his hands straining about that thing that they had given her.

 

She scrambled for the shadows, for safety if there was any safety in this lair of demons.

 

A man-shaped shadow appeared in that circle of night above the altar; she stopped, shrank back farther among the columns as it hung and dropped as she had.

 

Jisan. Who else would have followed her, dark of habit and streetwise? He hit the pavings hardly better than she, came up and staggered, felt of the silver-hiked knife at his belt; she shrank back and back, pace by pace, her slippered feet soundless.

 

And suddenly the chanting was coming this way, up hidden stairs, lights flaring among the columns; they hymned Night, devourer of light, in their madness beseeched the day not to come-forever Dark, they prayed in their mad hymn. The words crept louder and louder among the columns, and Jisan lingered, dazed.

 

"Hsst!" Gillian whispered; he caught the sound, seemed to focus on it, fled the other way, among the columns on the far side of the hall.

 

And now the worshippers were within the sanctuary, the lights making the serpent columns writhe and twist into green-scaled life, accompanied by shadows. They bore with them a slight, tinseled form that wept and struggled. Jensy, crying! she never would.

 

Gillian reached for the poisoned blade, her heart risen into her throat. Of a sudden the hopelessness of her attempt came down upon her, for they never would keep their word, never, and there was nowhere to hide: old Nessim could not hold forever, keeping their eyes blind to her.

 

Or they knew already that they had been betrayed.

 

She walked out among them. "We have a bargain!" she shouted, interrupting the hymn, throwing things into silence. "I kept mine. Keep yours."

 

Jensy struggled and bit, and one of them hit her. The blow rang loud in the silence, and Jensy went limp.

 

One of them stood forward. "He is dead?" that one asked. "The bargain is kept?"

 

"What else are the bells?" she asked.

 

There was silence. Distantly the brazen tones were still pealing across the city. It was near to dawn; stars were fewer in the opening above the altar. Triptis's hours were passing.

 

"Give her back," Gillian said, feeling the sweat run down her sides, her pulse hammering in her smallest veins. "You'll hear no more of us."

 

A cowl went back, showing a fat face she had seen in processions. No priest, not with that gaudy dress beneath; Duke Brisin, Osric had named one of his enemies; she thought it might be.

 

And they were not going to honor their word.

 

Someone cried out; a deep crash rolled through the halls; there was the tread of armored men, sudden looks of alarm and a milling among the priests like a broken hive. Jensy fell, dropped; and Gillian froze with the ringing rush of armored men coming at her back, the swing of lanterns that sent the serpents the more frenziedly twisting about the hall. "Stop them," someone was shouting.

 

She moved, slashed a priest, who screamed and hurled himself into the others who tried to stop her. Jensy was moving, scrambling for dark with an eel's instinct, rolling away faster than Gillian could help her.

 

"Jisan!" Gillian shouted to the Assassin, hoping against hope for an ally; and suddenly the hall was ringed with armed men, and herself with a poisoned bodkin, and a dazed, gilt child, huddled together against a black wall of priests.

 

Some priests tried to flee; the drawn steel of the soldiers prevented; and some died, shrieking. Others were herded back before the altar.

 

"Lord," Gillian said nervously, casting about among them for the face she hoped to see; and he was there, Prince Osric, in the guise of a common soldier; and Aldisis by him; but he had no eyes for a thief.

 

"Father," Osric hailed the fat man, hurled an object at his feet, a leaden cylinder.

 

The king recoiled pace by pace, his face white and trembling, shaking convulsively so that the fat quivered upon it. The soldiers' blades remained leveled toward him, and Gillian seized Jensy's naked shoulder and pulled her back, trying for quiet retreat out of this place of murders, away from father and son, mad king who dabbled in mad gods and plotted murders.

 

"Murderer," Seithan stammered, the froth gathering at his lips. "Killed my legitimate sons- every one; killed me, but I didn't die- kin-killer. Kin-killing bastard- I have loyal subjects left; you'll not reign."

 

"You've tried me for years, honored father, majesty. Where's my mother?"

 

The king gave a sickly and hateful laugh.

 

There was movement in the dark, where no priest was- a figure seeking deeper obscurity; Gillian took her own cue and started to move.

 

A priest's weapon whipped up, a knife poised to hurl; she cried warning- and suddenly chaos, soldiers closed in a ring of bright weapons, priests dying in a froth of blood, and the king-

 

The cries were stilled. Gillian hugged Jensy against her in the shadows, seeing through the forest of snakes the sprawled bodies, the bloody-handed soldiers, Osric-king in Korianth.

 

King! the soldiers hailed him, that made the air shudder; he gave them orders, that sent them hastening from the slaughter here.

 

"The palace!" he shouted, urging them on to riot that would see throats cut by the hundreds in Korianth.

 

A moment he paused, sword in hand, looked into the shadows, for Jensy glittered, and it was not so easy to hide. For a moment a thief found the courage to look a prince in the eye, wondering, desperately, whether two such motes of dust as they might not be swept away. Whether he feared a thief's gossip, or cared.

 

The soldiers had stopped about him, a warlike knot of armor and plumes and swords.

 

"Get moving!" he ordered them, and swept them away with him, running in their haste to further murders.

 

Against her, Jensy gave a quiet shiver, and thin arms went round her waist. Gillian tore at a bit of the tinsel, angered by the tawdry ornament. Such men cheated even the gods.

 

A step sounded near her. She turned, dagger in hand, faced the shadow that was Jisan. A knife gleamed in his hand.

 

He let the knife hand fall to his side.

 

"Whose are you?" she asked. He tilted his head toward the door, where the prince had gone, now king.

 

"Was," he said. "Be clever and run far, Gillian thief; or lie low and long. There comes a time princes don't like to remember the favors they bought. Do you think King Osric will want to reward an assassin? Or a thief?"

 

"You leave first," she said. "I don't want you at my back."

 

"I've been there," he reminded her, "for some number of hours."

 

She hugged Jensy the tighter. "Go," she said. "Get out of my way."

 

He went; she watched him walk into the beginning day of the doorway, a darkness out of darkness, and down the steps.

 

"You all right?" she asked of Jensy.

 

"Knew I would be," Jensy said with little-girl nastiness; but her lips shook. And suddenly her eyes widened, staring beyond.

 

Gillian looked, where something like a rope of darkness twisted among the columns, above the blood that spattered the altar; a trick of the wind and the lamps, perhaps. But it crossed the sky, where the stars paled to day, and moved against the ceiling. Her right hand was suddenly cold.

 

She snatched Jensy's arm and ran, weaving in and out of the columns the way Jisan had gone, out, out into the day, where an old man huddled on the steps, rocking to and fro and moaning.

 

"Nessim!" she cried. He rose and cast something that whipped away even as he collapsed in a knot of tatters and misery. A serpent-shape writhed across the cobbles in the beginning of day-

 

- and shriveled, a dry stick.

 

She clutched Jensy's hand and ran to him, her knees shaking under her, bent down and raised the dry old frame by the arms, expecting death; but a blistered face gazed back at her with a fanatic's look of triumph. Nessim's thin hand reached for Jensy, touched her face.

 

"All right, mousekin?"

 

"Old man," Gillian muttered, perceiving something she had found only in Jensy; he would have, she vowed, whatever comfort gold could buy, food? and a bed to sleep in. A mage; he was that. And a man.

 

Gold, she thought suddenly, recalling the coin in her purse; and the purse she had buried off across the canals.

 

And one who had dogged her tracks most of the night.

 

She spat an oath by another god and sprang up, blind with rage.

 

"Take her to the Wyvern," she bade Nessim and started off without a backward glance, reckoning ways she knew that an Assassin might not, reckoning on throat-cutting, on revenge in a dozen colors.

 

She took to the alleys and began to run by alleys a big man could never use, cracks and crevices and ledges and canal verges.

 

And made it. She worked into the dark, dislodged the stone, took back the purse and climbed catwise to the ledges to lurk and watch.

 

He was not far behind to work his big frame into the narrow space that took hers so easily, to work loose the self-same stone.

 

Upon her rooftop perch she stood, gave a low whistle- shook out a pair of golden coins and dropped them ringing at his feet, a grand generosity, like the prince's.

 

"For your trouble," she bade him, and was away.

 

---

 

V

 

we've gone for jump now. You wobble back to the lounge, a little frayed about the edges.

 

So have I come, some minutes before. Perhaps we both want to be sure the stars are still there.

 

Or that we are.

 

"Looking for something?" I ask as you lean against the glass.

 

"The Sun."

 

"Wrong direction." I point aft.

 

"I know that. I just prefer this window."

 

Jump is the kind of experience that makes philosophers-of some people. It's certain that no other passengers venture here this soon.

 

"Tell me. What do you think of?"

 

"In transit? It varies. You?"

 

"Earth. Home."

 

I smile. "That, most often. Sea-anchor."

 

"What?"