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? Whatwould 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. Aldisishimself, 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. Thatwas 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.