The Walls of Air

by Barbara Hambly

Chapter 6

  By command of her brother, Minalde did not return to the refugee camp by the Tall Gates. But a week after her first visit there, Gil took the downward road again, as cautious as a hunter of leopards, conscious of Maia's warnings about the kind of man who might succeed him in command of the Penambrans.

  The watch on the road was still kept, but far less strictly. The numbers of the Penambrans had dwindled alarmingly; a Guard named Caldern, a big, deceptively slow-looking north-countryman, had visited the camp and said they were but a handful, huddled around their pitiful fires, cooking a fox they'd snared. He had seen nothing of Maia, and at this news Minalde had wept.

  Why, then, Gil wondered, standing in the overcast gloom beneath the silent trees, did she feel this prickle of danger, this sense of being watched? About her the winter woods were hushed, a sombre world of wet sepia bark and drab, snow-laden black pine needles, the bare, twisted limbs of shrubs sticking through the drifts like the frozen hands of corpses. It had not snowed in three days, and the ground was churned in muddy tracks where the Penambrans had been foraging and setting their snares. In the still air, she could smell the woodsmoke of the camp.

  Why did the desolation have that sensation of hidden, watching life? What subliminal cues, she wondered, keyed her stretched nerves so badly? Or was it simply rumours of White Raiders and the old, half-buried wolf tracks she'd seen farther up the road?

  The Icefalcon would know, she thought. The Icefalcon would not only sense the danger if there was danger but be able to identify its source.

  But the Icefalcon was slogging his way down the drowned river valleys and dealing with dangers of his own.

  Through the silence of the brooding woods, sounds came to her from the direction of the road - the smuch of hooves through frosty slush, the creaking of wheels, men's and women's voices, and the faint ringing of sword belts and mail - sounds comforting in their familiarity, if for no other reason. Gil hurried toward the road, thankfulness in her heart. The forage-train had returned in safety from the valleys below.

  From the high bank of the road at this point, she saw them, the straining horses slipping in the frozen mud. She recognized Janus afoot, leading the way; his horse had been pressed into service to draw a wagonload of mouldy, filthy grain bags and the smoked carcasses of half a dozen swine. The road was bad here, and the Red Monks and Alwir's troops had fallen to, helping to lift and force the sinking wheels through the knee-deep slop. Every wagon was laden.

  She saw Janus stop and raise a hand to signal a general halt. He was almost directly below her, and she noticed that, in the week of foraging in the valleys, he'd visibly lost flesh; his square face under a grimy, reddish stubble was drawn and marked with sleepless nights and bitter, exhausting labour by day. He stepped forward, probing the road with a stick he carried; it sank in the ice-skimmed slush. His whole body, like those of his troops, was plastered in half-dried, half-frozen mud, his dark surcoat scarcely distinguishable from the scarlet ones of the men he led, except for the places where the mud had been brushed off. With a gesture of disgust, he summoned the troop to him; Gil heard his voice, assigning men to collect pine boughs and branches to lay over the road, to make some kind of footing so they wouldn't be stuck there until this time next week. '

  The men and women scattered, scrambling up the frozen banks, vanishing into the darkness of the woods. They were fewer than when they had gone down to the river valleys, worn,

  exhausted, and muddied to the eyes.

  Janus walked back to stand among the handful who were left, glancing uneasily at the crowding, close-ranked trees. There was something in all this that he, too, misliked. Then he saw Gil, and some of the tension lightened from his eyes. 'Gil-Shalos!' he called up to her. 'How goes it at the Keep?

  The same,' she called back down. 'Little word of the Dark; a few broken heads. Did you pass the camp at the Tall Gates?'

  He nodded, and his taut, over-keyed face seemed to harden with regret. 'Aye,' he said, more quietly. 'Curse Alwir, he could take in those who are left. There's few enough of 'em now; they wouldn't cause him trouble. '

  Another voice, soft and gentle and a little regretful, replied, 'Perhaps more than you think. '

  Gil looked up. Maia of Thran stood on the high bank of the road opposite her, looking like the rag-wrapped corpse of a starving beggar whose hair and beard had grown after death. There was a stirring in the woods. Clothed in the skins of beasts, with their matted hair like beasts themselves, half a hundred of his men appeared from the monochrome darkness of the trees. Among them they pushed the bound, gagged, and unarmed dozen or so of the Red Monks who had gone to look for pine boughs. Janus' call for help died on his lips. 'It is an easy matter,' the Bishop continued in his soft voice, 'even for starving warriors to ambush a warrior or two alone. Easier indeed than it has been to keep that road shovelled and churned into mud impassable by laden wagons and to watch here for you. If you had been gone three more days, I doubt we would have been able to keep it up. But now, as you see, we have food. . . ' He gestured toward the stocked wagons. '. . . and the wherewithal, once we have recovered our strength, to go see for more. '

  Gil heard a noise behind her. Penambrans were coming out of the woods on her side of the road as well - grimy, wolflike, so thin that the women could be distinguished from the men only

  by their absence of beards. Those who did not have steel weapons had clubs or makeshift armament. One woman carried an iron frying-pan whose blood-stained undersurface proclaimed successful use. They were already scrambling down the banks to the road to carry away the contents of the wagons.

  'Once upon a time we trained together as warriors, Janus of Weg,' Maia continued, his clawed, crippled hands shifting their grip upon the staff that Gil suspected was all that kept him on his feet. 'Perhaps you will do me a service now and carry a message for me to the Lord of the Keep of Dare. '

  Gil sighed and rubbed at her tired eyes. 'I would sell my sister to the Arabs,' she announced to the empty darkness of the Aisle around her, 'for a cup of coffee. ' But no one heard this handsome offer, and only the echoes of midnight stillness murmured to her in response.

  It was night in the Keep.

  It was always night there. The dark walls held darkness inside as effectively as they held the Dark without. But in daylight hours the mazes of its corridors were alive with the flickering confusion of lights, grease lamps, pine knots, and the smoulder of tiny fires in grubby and crowded cells. Voices echoed and reechoed with laughter, song, scolding, Keep gossip, and Keep politics. The Aisle was always a circus of people working on what handicrafts they could barter for food or goods or simple goodwill, people washing clothes in the pools by the water channels, and people gathered to talk or to gamble for points, pennies, and love. In the deep night, one could feel the weight, the age, the mass of the Keep. Then the empty silence reminded Gil of Ingold's descriptions of the Nests where the Dark bred underground.

  The silence oppressed her, redoubling the loneliness in her soul. From the rickety second-level balcony where she stood, Gil could see very little of the cavernous spaces before her, for they were lighted only by the gate torches, weak and tiny with distance, and by occasional wall sconces down near the doors of

  the Church. A draught touched her face, clammy as the finger of a passing ghost.

  A tribute, like the murmur of the water below, to someone's long-past skill as an engineer.

  Whose?

  Gil flexed her stiff muscles and tried not to yawn. The last two days had been exhausting ones.

  She had not been a party to the Council meetings called in the wake of the message that Janus had delivered to Alwir from Maia of Thran. But she had been there when the Chancellor and Govannin had met Janus on the steps of the Keep; and she had seen the livid rage that had suffused Alwir's dark face at the news that several tons of food, plus every wagon and every spare horse in the Keep, had been
appropriated by the Bishop of Penambra and his people. It had not helped the situation when, after a second of shocked silence, Govannin had said, 'I told you to send more guards. ' Had Alwir been a wizard, Gil thought, the Bishop of Gae would surely have hopped, rather than walked, away from his glare.

  A very plump merchant in green velvet who had come out as part of Alwir's entourage cleared his throat uncomfortably and ventured, 'Is there any possibility, my lord, that the Dark Ones might destroy this - this shameful upstart?' Govannin replied drily, The Bishop of Penambra would seem to be an able enough commander to forestall even that for quite a while yet. '

  The merchant toyed for a moment with the ermine tags that decorated his doublet. 'Um - between the Guards of Gae and your own troops, my lord Alwir, we ourselves can field quite a force. . . '

  'No. ' The harshness of the new voice startled them all. In the shadowless grey of the overcast afternoon, Aide's face was like marble, her mouth set and her nostrils flared with anger. None of them had seen her slip up, as quiet as Alwir's shadow, to join the group upon the broad Keep steps. They are our people, Bendle Stooft, and they will be sharing this fortress with us. I shall thank you to remember it. '

  Against her rage, even Alwir had nothing to say.

  There had been councils, of course, and negotiations. The earlier system of food distribution, personal barter, subsidy, and random charity had to be revamped, and Govannin fought tooth and nail against the suggestion of a general inventory of food in the Keep. But that same day outside storage compounds were laid out; every man, woman, and child in the Keep, warrior and civilian, was turned out to help work on building them and to transport food to them to clear the upper levels. It was an exhausting task to those who also mounted watch through the dark hours of the night, but necessary. Gil knew that whatever Alwir wanted to say in negotiations, Maia and his Penambrans would be admitted into the Keep.

  And so they should be, she thought, stretching her shoulders to ease the kinks from them and fighting the ache in her muscles that came from too little sleep and too little

  food. Quite apart from the need for the extra warriors of Penambra to counterbalance the troops of the Empire, when they arrived, it had been monstrous to deny the refugees shelter in the first place.

  She had watched through too many nights herself, on the road from Karst to Renweth, ever to be free of the horror of being in open ground in the dark. She thought of the Icefalcon, making his way alone through the flooded and peril-fraught valleys, with only the token of the Rune of the Veil to guard him, and of Rudy and Ingold, out in the emptiness of the plains. She found she missed Ingold more than she had imagined possible and wished that, like the wizards, she were able to see faces in the firelight. It wouldn't be the same - nothing was the same as Ingold's presence, his wry, tolerant amusement at the world around him - but at least she'd know if he were still alive.

  She could think of no single person in her own world whose loss affected her so. The world itself, yes - the sunlit tranquillity of the UCLA lawns, gilded by autumn evenings, and the warm peace of the library at midnight, surrounded by musty volumes as she traced a single reference through reams of medieval Latin and Old French. By this time, her women friends and her adviser, Dr. Smayles, would have reported her missing, and her parents would have instituted a search. The thought of what they all must be going through troubled her deeply. Of course they would have found no sign of any intention to leave anywhere in her cluttered apartment. Maybe they'd even come across her old red Volkswagen, rusting in the hills near where a deadbeat pinstriper named Rudy Solis had last been seen.

  And how would she explain when she got back?

  A cross- draught pulled at the flame of her torch, making her shadow leap nervously across the wall at her side. On the cross-draught, Gil smelt the scent of snow.

  The doors of the Keep were open!

  She held her torch aloft, her eyes narrowed with darkness and distance. Her heart pounded suddenly loud in her breast. It was the dead of night outside; the Dark could be anywhere. At this distance she couldn't tell whether there was any widening in the shadows of the gates or not, but the torches beside them, she saw now, were leaping and flickering in the draught, throwing irregular sooty patches on the dark wall behind. There was no sign of the gate Guard anywhere.

  Fear chilled her. If the Dark had got in and seized the Guard. . . It would be Caldern, she thought rapidly, ducking through the mazes of stone-flagged passages at a run, the smoke of her torch trailing her like comet-hair. If the Dark had got in and seized Caldern. . . But how would they have got in? She counted turnings, left and right, dodging through a makeshift access corridor and down a splintery ladder, her sword already in her hand. The torchlight jerked crazily around her spinning shadow as she emerged into the Aisle and ran for the doors.

  The inner gates stood a foot or so ajar, the slot of darkness between them like an eye slit in the visor of a black Hell. Gil sidled toward it, feeling the rushing of her own blood like fire in her veins. The steps where she had stood with Ingold, when he had asked her to hold the light at his back, were empty, and Gil frowned suddenly at

  the anomaly. If the Dark had got in and seized Caldern, there would have been something - bones, blood, his sword - to show it. Even if they had seized him, carried him off bodily. . .

  She swung violently around. The empty Aisle stretched a thousand feet at her back.

  Don't start that, she told herself grimly. First things first.

  She pushed the inner gates a fraction wider and stood in the inky slit.

  The misty starlight visible in the narrow rectangle of the open outer gates wasn't much, but it was enough to show her the ten-foot passage of the gates. There was no movement in the inky shadows clustering in the corners and the vault of the roof and, more importantly to Gil, no feeling of the presence of the Dark. She held up her torch; though it jittered in the draught, it revealed nothing untoward. Still her whole body was tensed like a cat's as she slid noiselessly down the tunnel and stood in the open doors of night.

  For the first time since Gil had come to Renweth, the cloud-cover had broken. Icy moonlight frosted the world outside, turning the snow to diamonds and the shadows to velvet. Frost lay like lace on the black stone of the steps. Three sets of heavily booted tracks led down the steps and through the frozen mud of the path outside, circling around toward the food compounds that had been built only that week and filled within the last two days.

  Gil sighed tiredly. The story was now clear.

  Maia and the Penambrans would be coming to the Keep within days. The food stored by Alwir's government and hundreds of large and small Keep entrepreneurs had been moved out to the compounds to make room for them. Probably not all, Gil guessed; there were still probably hoards cached in deserted cells and back corners by those who did not trust fate and would not admit to anyone all they had. Guards, Alwir's men, and Church troops were supposed to protect the compound by day-and fear of the Dark by night.

  The wetness in the tracks was not yet frozen. Caldern could easily have been lured away; since the night of the Dark's great assault on the Keep, the Dark Ones had made no further attempt to break the gate, and the post of gate Guard was generally given to the captain of the watch, simply so the other members of the watch would know where to find their leader. Who would guess, Gil thought, that somebody would actually leave the gates open to venture outside at night to steal food?

  There were three of them, she thought, considering the tracks, and a fourth to distract the captain. That argued a ring - not a single man or woman, fearful for some family's hunger after the arrival of the Penambrans in the Keep, but an organized group who would steal as much as they could and lock it away, holding it until the starving spring.

  It was all as clear as the moonlight that edged the steps in crystal.

  Gil stood for what seemed like a long time in the diamond night, the smell o
f snow

  and pine like ice water in her nostrils. Long ago, she remembered, she had been a scholar, and it had never been her wish to harm anyone. All that she had ever desired had been the clean solitude of knowledge, the peace of mind and heart to read, to think, to unravel riddles and reconstruct past times, and to seek the truth behind the polemics of those whose business it was to lie about the dead. Alone in the hoarfrost cold of midnight, she remembered it clearly, for knowledge had been all she had ever wanted. She had chosen it over the husbands she might have had, if she had ever bothered to seek them, and the peace of family goodwill that she had let slip by the wayside in the wake of her parents' horror at her chosen course.

  But since that time, she had come to other knowledge.

  She stepped silently back into the blackness of the gateway. Putting her shoulder to the massive iron bindings of the door, she pushed it to.

  The guttering light of her torch threw a fitful and tarnished gilding over the rings and levers that operated the locks. She heard the muted click of the mechanism, deep within the tons of poised iron, and, as if hastening to escape from what she had done, she took her torch from its wall holder and hurried back up the passage. She walked soundlessly, all her senses keyed. It was not impossible that the Dark had slipped through the open gates and were lurking somewhere in the darkness of the Keep. Above her own fear, she felt fury at the irresponsibility of the men who had done it who had risked not only their own lives but the lives of everyone in the Keep and the integrity of the last sanctuary on earth for money.

  In the weeks since the Guards had asked her to become one of them, Gil had killed dozens of the Dark Ones. The Icefalcon had said she was a born killer, a creepy sort of compliment that she wasn't sure she wished to accept. Maybe it only meant that she was naturally cold-hearted and single-minded and that she would, if put to it, rather kill than be killed. But she felt now as if she had cut a lifeline and let three men drown. She was glad she had not seen their faces and did not know who they were.

  She never clearly identified the sound as she stepped out of the inner gates. It might have been cloth swishing, or the whine of something hard and heavy whistling through the air. But weeks with the Guards had given her hair-trigger ' reflexes, and the leaded stick meant to crush her skull cracked instead on her shoulder with splintering pain, throwing her forward to the floor. The torch skidded from her hand, and darkness seemed to swim down over her eyes, even as she rolled. Feet approached at a run, and she drew her sword with a long sideways hack at floor level, bracing her body as best she could against the impact. One of the looming figures in the darkness above her jumped. The other one screamed and fell on her, kicking and writhing in agony and screaming with a voice that rang in the hollow enormity of the vaulted Aisle. The weight of him crushed on Gil's injured shoulder, the screaming rang in her ears, and hot, slimy wetness gushed over them both.

  Irrationally furious at him for wallowing over her like that, Gil twisted out from under, pain ripping through her shoulder as she moved. Her eyes cleared. A bearded man she vaguely recognized hopped around on the outskirts of the encounter, a short sword in his hand. There was another man in the shadows behind him, also armed with a sword, his fat face pallid with nausea. Without stopping to wonder, Gil tried to get to her feet, but the bearded man, taking his chance, stepped in on her with a brutal downward swing of his blade. Through a welter of pain and darkness, Gil recognized

  the blow as 'coffin bait,' a fool's move, and her reaction was as automatic as a blink. She took him under the sternum with a two-handed thrust of her longer blade and saw blood burst simultaneously from chest and mouth. His eyes glazed with shock and with the amateur's almost comical astonishment at death. The fat little man dropped his sword and fled. On her knees, her head reeling, Gil watched him run all the way down the Aisle; she felt nothing but a cold, queer detachment, mixed with a little contempt for his cowardice. The man behind her was still thrashing on the floor, still screaming wildly on that same high note, still clawing vainly at his leg. Gil turned her head slowly and saw she'd cut his left foot off at the ankle. It was lying, still in its gold-stitched slipper of green kid, about four feet away. Then she fainted.

  'She be all right?'

  The voices around her were fuzzy and confused. Gil whispered, 'Ingold?' through cottony lips, blinking up at the hovering shadows.

  'You'll be fine, Babydove,' Gnift's soft, hoarse voice said, and an encouraging hand patted her hair. 'Just fine. '

  Gil sighed and shut her eyes against the smoky hurt of the dim lights. I guess the Icefalcon was right after all. So much for queasy considerations about closing the gates on those three poor thieves who'd got left outside and all that eyewash about the value of human life. Put to the test, she'd killed a man without so much as a token what am I doing?

  Gil knew that at the time she had known perfectly well what she was doing. She was saving her own life.

  Absently she thought, Four for sure and one maybe, if the poor bastard bled to death.

  And she began to cry, as she had done when she had lost her virginity. She had crossed a line that could never be recrossed. It was no longer possible for her to be what she had been.

  'Hey, Angel Eyes,' Gnift's voice said again, and the sword-calloused hand wiped the tears from her cheek. 'It's all over. Just a little broken collarbone. Nothing to that. ' But she could not seem to stop herself and wept, not for the pain, but out of a sense of loss and an understanding of herself.

  The world returned slowly to focus. She lay on her own bunk in the barracks, the narrow room jammed with her fellow Guards in the blurred yellow glare of the grease lamps. Her shoulder was strapped and braced, and Gnift was wrapping up his crude surgical equipment on the next bunk, his elf-bright eyes kind. Melantrys was standing next to him, a bloody towel dangling from her hand. Caldern, who had replaced the Icefalcon as captain of the deep-night watch, towered over them both.

  Melantrys glanced over at her. 'You did nicely,' she said. 'Clean. I told you she had a strong side-cut, Gnift. Took the foot off through both bones and halfway through the other ankle. ' Her cold, careless eyes returned to Gil. 'Was that a one-handed cut?'

  Gil drew a shuddering breath and nodded. She wondered if her father had cried the first time he'd killed some Japanese he didn't know. In a voice that sounded hideously matter-of-fact, she said, 'Yeah. What happened to you, Caldern?'

  The big captain scratched his head. 'Were had for chump,' he drawled in his north-country accent. 'Chappy come yellin' murder down the way, and 'twere no others to call. I followed, and a pretty chase he led me; and lost of him after a'. Sorry it is I am, lass. '

  Gil shook her head, closing her eyes again against the light. 'You couldn't have known. '

  'Not something anyone would have guessed,' Janus' voice said, and the Commander loomed suddenly from the darkness. 'We never thought to be posting guards on the gate to keep folk from throwing them open at night. ' He elbowed his way through the press to stand behind her, as large and solid as a Mack truck. 'Are you well, Gil-Shalos?'

  'Fine,' she said quietly. The one person who could have comforted the pain in her soul was camped somewhere in the middle of the plains; she wanted only to sleep.

  She heard Janus say to the others, 'Show's over for the night, children; time to clear out the College of Surgeons. The alarm's out - there's probably not a Dark One in a hundred miles, but it's an all-troops patrol of the Keep, just to be sure. '

  There was scuffling, moans, chaff and vivid curses in the pungent tongue of the Wathe. Through her closed eyes Gil heard them leaving, Gnift flirting outrageously with Melantrys, and Janus and Caldern conversing in their unintelligible north-country dialect. The noises faded, amid a jangle of sword belts and mail. Lonely darkness returned. 'Can I get you anything?'

  Gil opened her eyes again, surprised. In her thin peasant skirts and black cloak,
Minalde sat on the next bunk.

  'You can get me some water, if you will. 'The girl turned away to dip some out of the communal tank. 'What are you doing here?'

  'They told me you'd been hurt,' Aide said simply. 'They woke me to sign the papers to arrest Parscino Pral. ' She came back with the dripping cup in her hands. 'Can you sit up to drink?'

  'I think so. Who's Parscino Pral?' 'The man whose foot you cut off. ' Aide spoke very matter-of-factly as she helped Gil sit up a little further against the collected pillows of the entire barracks. The slightest movement ground the broken ends of the collarbone together in the bruised mess of the torn flesh. 'He was one of the wealthiest merchants in Gae. The man you killed was Yard Webbling, his partner. Pral says the third man was Bendle Stooft. '

  'He was. ' Gil remembered now, the faces falling into place. Pral had been a member of Alwir's coterie of merchants, the day Janus had been released by the Penambrans. Bendle Stooft had been there, too, dressed in green velvet and ermine. She didn't remember Yard Webbling at all. But already it was only a matter of

  academic interest. Aide certainly didn't look upset. But then, Gil thought, Aide has seen far more men die than I could ever imagine. Since the fall of Gae, her life has been nothing but a wilderness of flight and horror. She was certainly less than likely to waste good guilt over a man or two killed and a shut door that condemned three others.

  'Could you identify him before a tribunal? Aide asked.

  'Sure,' Gil said, 'no problem. '

  Aide blew out two of the room's three lamps. 'Would you like me to stay for a while?' she asked.

  Her eyes closed again, Gil said quietly, 'No. Thank you, though. ' She heard the girl hesitate; then quick, light footfalls pattered through the empty barracks and out into the Aisle beyond.

  Bendle Stooft was brought to trial late the following morning, in the big cell Alwir had taken over for his audience hall in the Royal Sector. Gil recognized him immediately. The soft, slack face and receding button chin had swum through the confusion of last night's dreams. He sat now in a carved chair, nervously fiddling with the jewels in his rings, so that his hands glittered with a fireworks display of topaz and green in the warm gold of the candlelight. It was a formal occasion; candles banked the long and strangely carved ebony table at which the tribunal sat, giving them the curious appearance of holy statues enshrined in votive light. The fire of bullion embroidery rippled and flickered over Alwir's breast and sleeves and wound like tattoo-work around the knuckles of his black kid gloves. The flame caught in a hard glint of hot red-purple in the amethyst of Bishop Govannin's episcopal ring and glowed in the crimson of her habit. Between them, Minalde looked very pale and composed.

  Gil stood behind the prisoner, flanked by Janus and Caldern. She was exhausted from the walk here, and her head buzzed with fever. The room around her had a two-dimensional quality, unreal to her tired eyes. Colours seemed to drip as vividly as blood against velvet darkness, and sounds changed their quality, either louder than they should be or humming and distant.

  Her own voice echoed strangely in her ears as she said, That is the man. '

  'Are you sure?' Alwir asked. Beside him, the Bishop unstacked her long, fragile fingers and stacked them together differently, as if observing the patterns made by the shadows of those bony knuckles.

  'Yes,' Gil said. 'Of course. '

  'You understand the severity of the charge?' Alwir asked in that soft, melodious voice. 'You must be sure there is no mistake. '

  Gil frowned. 'He and his friends tried to murder me,' she said. 'It isn't likely I would forget him. '

  'And,' Janus said quietly at her side, 'if the charge is severe, the consequences of

  leaving the Keep doors open after dark are more so. '

  'Even so,' Alwir agreed gravely. 'And indeed, some kind of punishment is certainly in order. '

  'Some kind? Govannin purred, her eyes slipping sideways at him, as dark as smoky agate. 'By Keep Law, there is but one punishment. '

  Candlelight glittered a thousandfold in the dark-blue eyes. The Chancellor made a deprecating noise of general agreement in his throat, and Stooft turned fish-belly white. 'Nevertheless,' Alwir went on, 'since there was no clear evidence that the Keep was in danger -'

  'My lord,' Janus broke in, 'we found the bones of Stooft's three helpers outside the food compounds this morning. It's sure that the Dark were in the Vale last night. '

  'But at what time, my lord Commander?' Alwir asked. 'It may not have been until hours later. We want to see justice done here. '

  Justice? Gil felt the rush of anger heat her as the broken ends of her collarbone ground together. That man tried to kill me. And she looked over at Stooft in time to see him settle back into his chair; a just perceptible movement of relaxation told its story. He had spoken to Alwir beforehand. He knew he was not going to die. Rage went through her like a river of blood, rage greater than what she had experienced in the fight at the gate. She knew exactly what policemen felt when they heard a junkie or pimp or mugger they'd hauled in get off with a suspended sentence. Janus' fingers tightened over her good arm to remind her she was still in the presence of the Council of Regents.

  'Indeed,' Alwir continued smoothly, 'I think the whole question of food theft and hoarding can be resolved by consolidating the stores under a single proprietorship. With Maia and his people coming within our walls, the danger of black marketeering is doubled. Proper guarding can nip the problem in the bud, and we will have no more troubles of this kind. '

  'Consolidation?' The Bishop's fine eyebrows rose, but her eyes remained like wet pebbles in a stream bed, as emotionless as a shark's. 'Under the wardship of the Council, with yourself at its head, my lord Chancellor?

  Alwir's shoulders stiffened. He kept his voice suave. 'Surely you can see that it would be better than the present chaos. . . '

  'I cannot say that I do. ' The wind-dry whisper of her voice was mild, considering. 'But if a consolidated storage of food appeals to you, my lord, what better centralizing agency can we find than the Church, which has a far larger and better-trained clerical staff than your own, as well as its own body of troops?

  'Out of the question!' Alwir snapped furiously.

  'Then it isn't really consolidation you seek, is it?

  'We have been through this before,' the Chancellor said, his voice suddenly tight.

  'With proper regulation. . . '

  'By whom? the Bishop rapped harshly. 'People like Bendle Stooft, your good old friend from Gae?

  'In times past we have been friends,' Alwir said stiffly. 'But in no way will I allow his friendship to affect my judgement of this case. '

  'Then follow Keep Law,' she said, 'and leave him in chains at sunset. '

  'My lord!' Stooft croaked leaping from his chair with, Gil thought detachedly, remarkable agility for so pudgy a man.

  'Be still!' Alwir snapped at him.

  The merchant flung himself to his knees in front of the ebony table. 'My lord please I'll neverdo it again. I swear it. The others made me. I swear, it was all Webbling's idea, it really was, Webbling's and - and Pral's - they forced me to go along. . . ' His sparkling hands groped over the polished surface, the gold of his rings rattling on the gleaming wood. His voice babbled on, rising in pitch like an old woman's. 'Please, my lord, I'll never do it again. You said you wouldn't let anything happen to me. I promise I'll do whatever you ask. . . '

  'SILENCE!' Alwir roared.

  The two Guards, coldblooded automatons, stepped forward in unison to take the man by the arms and set him bodily on his feet. Gil could see that he was trembling in the soft lamplight, sweat running off his face as if he were melting in the heat. Hestood hanging on to the Guards, weeping.

  Alwir went on, more calmly. 'Now, there has been no talk of an execution, though of course so
me form of severe punishment is in order. '

  Govannin looked at her hands. There is only one punishment. '

  'Really, my lady Bishop,' Alwir said, 'we do not wish to set a precedent. . . '

  She glanced up. 'I think it an admirable precedent to set. ' In the jumping light, her ageless face resembled that of some archaic vulture-god. 'It will certainly cause like-minded thieves to reconsider their actions very carefully. ' The long, cold fingers smoothed a wrinkle from her scarlet sleeve.

  'If the food supplies were consolidated. . . '

  'Confiscated, you mean? Her black eyes glittered maliciously. There are hundreds of little entrepreneurs throughout the Keep who managed to haul grain and stock and dried goods down from Gae. There are others planning to execute forage missions of their own. How many would show that kind of initiative if it were all going to people like Stooft here? If, after their trouble, they found they would be robbed of what they already have, they might even fight. '

  'Fighting would be madness!'

  She shrugged her angular shoulders. 'So, in my opinion, would be confiscation. '

  'It is not confiscation!'

  'A play upon words, my lord,' she said disinterestedly.

  With visible effort, Alwir got a grip on himself. The Bishop looked down at her hands with that little ophidian smile and said no more.

  'I suppose it is a coincidence that the largest of those -entrepreneurs, as you call them - is the Church itself? That for all your pious talk about the care of souls, your real concern is with the wealth of the Church?'

  'Souls inhabit bodies, my lord Chancellor. We have always cared for both. Like you, we seek only the greatest good for those whose charge God has given us. '

  'And is that why you, the representative of the God of mercy, demand this man's life?"

  She raised her head, flat black eyes under heavy lids meeting his with self-evident calm. 'Of course. ' Stooft made a desperate little crying noise in his throat. 'And that is my final vote, as member of the Council. '

  'And my final vote,' Alwir grated, 'is that the merchant Bendle Stooft be publicly flogged with thirty lashes and imprisoned upon bread and water for thirty days. Minalde!' He glanced sideways at his sister, who had sat all this while in perfect silence, watching everything that had passed between the merchant, the prelate, and her brother.

  She raised her head, dark, jewelled braids swinging against cheeks that had gone as white as paper in the reddish shadows. 'I vote death. '

  'WHAT?' Alwir half-rose, speechless between shock and rage.

  Stooft made an inarticulate whimpering cry and would have thrown himself to his knees again, had not Janus and Caldern prevented him. He began to sob. 'My lord! My lady!' Tears streamed down his trembling cheeks. Aide raised her eyes and regarded him with desperately held calm, her full lips taut and grey, as if with nausea.

  Gil wondered how she could ever have given herself airs about killing one man and maiming another in self-defence. There had been no question about the Tightness of her action then, no storm of protest over it. The man had not hung there wailing between his two guards, pleading for his life, for pity, for time. She had been upheld by the double supports of desperation and rage. Minalde had to do her justice cold.

  Alwir started to speak to his sister in a hushed, angry voice, but she spoke over him, sounding strained and thin. 'In doing what you did, Bendle Stooft, you endangered my life and the life of my son, as well as the life of my brother, who has shown, I think, great mercy in even asking for your reprieve. You have endangered the lives of your own wife, your daughters, your young son, and everyone in the Keep, from highest to lowest. ' Her voice gained strength and volume, but Bendle Stooft wasn't listening. He just sobbed, 'Please, no! Please, no!' over and over again.

  Aide went on. 'As Queen of Darwath and Regent for Prince Altir Endorion, I decree that at sunset tonight you will be chained between two pillars on the hill that faces the doors of this Keep and left there for the Dark Ones to take you. May God have mercy on your soul. '

  The merchant screamed, 'You're a mother, my lady! Don't leave my children fatherless!'

  Her chin went up; her face was as calm and chill as a frozen pond, but Gil saw the small upright line that appeared between her brows. Janus and Caldern were obliged to lift the prisoner bodily from his chair and half-drag, half-carry him, shrieking like a damned thing, from the room. Dizzy and ill, Gil followed on their heels. As she passed through the doorway of the hall into the darkness beyond, she looked back and caught a last glimpse of Minalde, sitting in the soft glow of the ranks of candles, her face buried in her hands, weeping.