"Is he ... ?" asked Khamwas as he stepped over his mind's image of where the body lay. "One of those we ... met a moment ago?"
"The gang who came after us with chains, sure," said the caravan master as he followed with a long stride. The passageway was wide enough for him to spread his arms without quite touching the walls to either side; in the Maze, that made it a street. It held only the normal sounds of feral animals going about their business and, from behind shut- ters, bestial humans. "They're all dead, the two who ran off as sure as the one who didn't. Turn left here."
"The House of Setios is more to the-"
"Turn fucking left," Samlor whispered in a voice like stones rubbing.
"Do not be a hindrance, lest you be cursed," said Tjainufi on the Napatan's shoulder. The manikin bowed toward Samlor, but the caravan master was too angry to approve of anything.
Mostly he was angry at himself, because he'd killed often enough dur- ing his life to know that he really didn't like killing. Especially not kids, even punk kids who'd have caved his skull in with weighted chains and raped Star until they sold her to a brothel for the" price of a skin of wine ...
Sanctuary might be incrementally better off without that particular trio; but Samlor hil Samt wasn't Justice, wasn't responsible to his god for the cleansing of this hellhole.
They got out of the Maze with no problem worse than a pair of thugs -who fled in terror as Khamwas's staff sent a manlike phantasm of light staggering down the street toward them. Broader pavements made walk- ing easier, and many housefronts were lighted by lanterns in barred niches.
The lanterns weren't an act of charity toward travelers. They were intended to drive lurking footpads into somebody else's doorway.
Khamwas paused, then directed them up one arm of a five-way inter- section, past a patrol station. The gate to the internal courtyard was lighted by flaring sconces, and there was a squad on guard outside. An officer took a step into the street as if to halt the trio, but he changed his mind after a pause.
They were in the neighborhood of the palace now, a better section of the city. The residents here stole large sums with parchment and whis- pered words instead of cutting wayfarers' throats for a few coins.
And the residents expected protection from their lesser brethren in crime. The troops here would check a pair of men, detain them if they had no satisfactory account of their business; kill them if any resistance were offered.
But two men carrying a young child were unlikely burglars- Most probably, they were part of the service industry catering to Sanctuary's wealthy and powerful ... and the rich did not care to have their night- time sports delayed by uniformed officiousness. Samlor had no need for the bribe-or the knife-he had ready.
"We're getting close, I think," Khamwas remarked. He lifted his head as if to sniff the air which even here would have been improved by a cloudburst to ram effluvium from the street down into the harbor.
Samlor grimaced and looked around him. He wanted to know how Khamwas found his directions ... but he didn't want to ask; and any- way, he wouldn't understand if the scholar/magician took the time to explain.
Worse, Star likely would understand.
"I wonder what Setios is keeping for her," the caravan master whis- pered, so softly that the child could not hear even though Samlor's lips brushed her fine hair as he spoke.
"Is it going to rain?" Star asked sleepily from the cradle of Samlor's arm.
The caravan master glanced at the sky. There were stars, but a scud of high clouds blocked and cleared streaks across them at rapid intervals. There was an edge in the air which might well be harbinger of a storm poised to sweep from the hills to the west of town and wash the air at least briefly clean.
"Perhaps, dearest," the Cirdonian said. "But we'll be all right."
They'd be under cover, he hoped; or, better yet, back in a bolted cham- ber of the caravansary on the White Foal River before the storm broke.
Khamwas began to mutter something with his fingers interlaced on the top of his staff. Star shook herself into supple alertness and hopped off her uncle's supporting arm. She did not touch the Napatan, but she watched his face closely as he mouthed words in a language the caravan master did not recognize.
Left to his own devices-unwilling to consider what his niece was teaching herself now, and barely unwilling to order her to turn away- Samlor surveyed the houses in their immediate neighborhood.
It was an old section of the city, but wealthy and fashionable enough that there had been considerable rebuilding to modify the original Ilsigi character. Directly across from Samlor's vantage place, the front of a house had been demolished and was being replaced by a two-story por- tico with columns of colored marble. A lamp burned brightly on a shack amid the construction rubble, and a watchman's eyes peered toward the trio from its unglazed window.
The other houses were quiet, though all save the one against which Samlor's party sheltered guarded their facades with lamplight. At this hour, business was most likely to be carried on through back entrances or trap doors to tunnels that were older than the Ilsigs ... and possibly older than humanity.
It might be a bad time to meet Setios; but again, it might not. He'd been an associate of Star's mother, which meant at the least that he was used to strange hours and unusual demands.
He'd see them now, provide the child with her legacy-if it were here. If it were portable. If Setios were willing to meet the terms of an agree- ment made with a woman now long dead.
Samlor swore, damning his sister Samlane to a hell beneath all the hells; and knowing as he recited the words under his breath that any afterlife in which Samlane found herself was certain to be worse than her brother could imagine.
"This is the house," said Khamwas with a note of wonder in his voice. He and the child turned to look at the facade of the building against which the caravan master leaned while he surveyed the rest of the neigh- borhood.
"Looks pretty quiet," said Samlor. The words were less an understate- ment than a conversational placeholder while the Cirdonian considered what might be a real problem.
The building didn't look quiet. It looked abandoned.
It was a blank-faced structure. Its second floor was corbeled out a foot or so but there was no real front overhang to match those of the houses to either side. The stone ashlars had been worn smooth by decades or more of sidewalk traffic brushing against them; the mortar binding them could have used tuck pointing, but that was more a matter of aesthetics than structural necessity.
The only ground-floor window facing the street was a narrow slit be- side the iron-bound door. There was a grate-protected niche for a lantern on the other side of the door alcove; the stones were blackened by carbon from the flame, but the lamp within was cold and dark. It had not been lighted this night, and perhaps not for weeks past.
There was no sign of life through the slit intended to give a guard inside a look at whoever was calling.
"Perhaps I'm wrong," said Khamwas uncertainly. "This should be the house of Setios, but I-I can't be sure I'm right."
He made as if to bend over his staff again, then straightened and said decisively, "No, I'm sure it must be the house-but perhaps he doesn't live here anymore." The Napatan stepped to the street-level door and raised his staff to rap on the panel.
"Ah ..." said Samlor.
The caravan master held the long dagger he had taken from the man he killed in the Vulgar Unicorn. The weapon belonged in his hand when they prowled through the Maze, but it wasn't normal practice to knock on a stranger's door with steel bare in your hand.
On the other hand, this was Sanctuary; and anyway, the new knife didn't fit in the sheath of the one Samlor had left in the corpse.
"Go ahead," he said to Khamwas. The Napatan was poised, watching the caravan master and waiting for a suggestion to replace his own intent.
Khamwas nodded, Star mirroring his motion as if hypnotized by tired- ness. He rapped twice on the door panel. The sound of wood on wood was sharp and soulless.
"Won't be anybody there," said Samlor. His own eyes were drawn to the watermarked blade of the knife. His knife, now; the owner wasn't going to claim it with a foot of steel through his chest. The whorls of blended metals, iron black against polished steel, were only memories in the distant lamplight. There was no way Samlor could see them now, even if they began to spell words as he had watched them do-in defiance of reason-twice before.
The caravan master shook himself out of the clouded reverie into which fatigue was easing him. He needed rest as badly as his niece did, and it looked as though there was no way he was going to clear up his business tonight anyway.
"Look," he said, irritated because Khamwas still faced the door as if there were a chance it would open. "There's nobody here, and-"
Metal clanked as the bar closing the door from inside was withdrawn from its staples. The door leaf opened inward, squealing on bronze pivots set into the lintel and transom instead of hanging from strap hinges.
"No one will see you," said the voice of the figure standing in the doorway. Whatever else the doorkeeper might be, it was not human.
The creature was shorter than Star. Fur clothed its body and long tail in ashen luster, but the frame beneath was skeletally thin. Its features had the pointed sharpness of a fox's muzzle, and there was no intelligence whatever in its beady eyes.
"Wait," said Samlor hil Samt as the doorkeeper began to close the portal again. He set his boot against the iron-strapped lower edge of the door. "Your master holds a trust f-for my niece Star."