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 mefor 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.