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A MATTER OF HONOR

An introduction to "A Matter of Honor"

This was the story out of which God Stalk grew. My idea at the time was to put Jame in a Fritz Leiber-esque setting and see what happened. For the Gray Mouser, see Jame; for Fahrd, see Marc. For the gods, well, see them for themselves, whatever the hell they are. It was supposed to be a five-finger exercise, to see if I could write a novel. I wrote the first draft at Clarion, the workshop for would-be science fiction and/or fantasy writers, and Kate Wilhelm bought it. That was my first professional sale.

P. C.

 

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It was sunset in the free city of Tai-tastigon. To the west, fire rimmed the Ebonbane Mountains, streaking their summits with veins of snow-kindled crimson. Far below, the last light was climbing the towers of the city's thousand temples. Shadows flowed into the labyrinthine streets.

In the southeast quarter the merchants were closing their shops. Strongroom doors swung shut, traps were set, guards emerged from the dusk to take their posts. Darkness settled there bit by bit, but to the north torches flared as the thieves' bazaar began its nightly trade. Those favored by the Master of the Brotherhood had set up their stalls within the protection of his great courtyard offering cream furs and emeralds, jacinth and blood velvet. Others, less fortunate, established themselves in nearby passageways, as wary now of the street merchants gathering up their wares for the night as the latter had been of them earlier. Meanwhile, everywhere the temples had begun to speak. Night came as always to Tai-tastigon with the murmur of chants and hawkers' cries, bells and barter.

This night, from somewhere in the maze of passages near the eastern gate, a sudden howl sliced through the twilight hum of the city.

"Ai, Baio-caina, Baio-caina, ai!"

The merchants on Half Moon Street who had not yet taken down their stalls paused, listening. Then they hurriedly gathered up all they could carry and ran.

Two figures rushed down the street. They were women, hardly, in fact, more than girls. Each held something out before her as though to keep it as far from her body as possible, something long, red, and dripping. Wailing, they raced on toward the Judgment Square where all roads met.

A low roar followed in their wake: many feet, many voices. Preceded by torches, a black mass surged. In another second, the tide of bodies swept Half Moon Street, crushing the abandoned stalls under foot. There were hundreds, thousands of them, young, beautiful, terrible. They ran hand in hand in five long chains.

The Talisman Jamethiel stopped at the mouth of the narrow lane, biting her lip in exasperation. In the excitement of her own chase, she had forgotten about the festival of the goddess Baio-caina, she had forgotten that certain roads would be inaccessible because of it. It was inexcusable for an apprentice of the Brotherhood, much less for a Kencyr. If they caught her here, by the third face of God, she deserved it.

The celebrants had seen her. They were calling to her.

"Talisman, Talisman! Join us! Dance with us!"

Jame glanced quickly over her shoulder. Two large forms had appeared at the other end of the alley. She jerked her cap down over her ears, took a deep breath, and plunged forward into the rushing mass. Hands closed eagerly on her hands. She was swept away. Baffled, the two guardsmen stopped just short of the spot where the girl had stood a moment before.

The celebrants moved swiftly, filling the street from side to side. As the way broadened, some hundred paces from the entrance to the central square, the five lines began to weave themselves into intricate patterns. Jame whirled with them. Despite precautions, her cap had been lost in the first few minutes and her long jet hair whipped in her eyes, half blinding her. She threw back her head, laughing out loud at the swift grace of the dance.

Then they were in the Judgment Square. Jame twisted free and slipped out of the crowd. A moment later she stood on the edge of the square. The celebrants were dancing around the Mercy Seat in the center of the area. So many flowers had been thrown on it that not a stone was visible. There was something sticking out near the top of the fragrant hill, something that looked at a distance like a large, dark red spider streaked with brown. It was a human hand, stripped of its skin. The rest of the body, as flayed as the single protruding member, was buried in white and amber blossoms. Up until the third hour of the afternoon it had still twitched at the touch of every fly. Not so now. The captured thief was at last dead.

Jame gave him and the worshippers a solemn salute, dodged two of the latter who wanted her to stay, broke the wrist of a third who was more persistent, and set off for home.

The inn where Jame lived and earned the honest part of her living as a senetha dancer was located on the north side of the Belching Kinka marketplace in the southwest quarter of the city. It was a popular place and did a roaring business from about the eleventh hour on, but this early in the evening it was usually deserted. It was a surprise, as she pushed open the heavy oak door, to see a wine goblet flying at her head. It was so much of a surprise that she almost forgot to duck.

"Whore . . . pervert . . . defiler of the one true temple! I saw you! I saw you dancing with them. I saw you honor that . . . that . . . "

The tirade turned into a sputter, and the sputter into a scream of rage as a Gorgo high priest rushed at her in a storm of whipping gray and silver fabric, brandishing a pudgy fist and continuing to shriek. Jame stared at him. The sheer ineptitude of the attack filled her with something very like awe. It would be almost a desecration not to let it fall apart of its own accord, she thought, but then, as the would-be assassin rushed toward her, she found herself instinctively slipping under the wild swing. The edge of her foot clipped the priest's left ankle, caught the right as it swung forward, and then, as the little man's momentum shot him forward over the threshold, swept up both sharply in a fine, high kick. It was a perfect demonstration of a senetha dance step altered into a movement of the lethal senethara fight form of the Kencyrath.

Tubain the inkeeper was waddling toward her across the room, wiping sausage fingers on his apron as he came.

"I don't think the honorable Loogan likes me very much," she said, closing the door. "Never play a joke on a priest. They have no sense of humor and they never forget."

"Priests," said Tubain with a fine rumble of contempt, "are not what you would call normal people. You should know that after all your trouble with M'lord Ishtier. Were you down in the square worshipping the goddess?"

"I was there," said Jame, making a face, "but hardly worshipping. It was a choice between dancing with the Baio-cainites and being taken and probably raped by the guards. They must have known that Marc has been hurt."

"Otherwise he would have been there to take them apart piece by piece, eh? They'll have their turn when his head heals, I'm sure. But Baio-caina . . . for a moment I thought you'd finally seen reason and given up the Three-Faced God. How you Kencyrs ever came to settle on such a grim master is beyond me."

"We didn't settle on him," said Jame sourly. "He settled on us. You have no idea what a curse it is to be a member of a chosen race. But I had better go see if Marc is all right."

"Remember," he bellowed after her as she started up the stairs, "you dance at midnight. You gave your word . . . and try eating something once in a while. No one's going to pay to see a skin full of bones, even if it is the only senetha dancer in town."

Jame stopped short on the steps. With the air of a street magician, she produced two overripe peaches from the wallet that hung with her belt.

Tubain broke into a roar of laughter. "The best apprentice thief in the Brotherhood, and she uses her talents to steal half rotten fruit! What would the Master say to that?"

Jame smile sweetly and pulled out a small leather bag. The innkeeper stared, slapped at his apron, and began to swear.

"He would probably say that practice perfects," said the Talisman, and tossed the bag of coins down to its owner.

Tubain knew his Kencyrs too well by half, Jame thought wryly as she bounded up the stairs two at a time. He knew it was safe to keep a thief child in his house because any Kencyr would rather lose a hand than break the laws of hospitality, and his life outright rather than break his sworn word. It was all a matter of honor, and honor, along with a fierce loyalty to each other, and a resentful but unquestioning belief in the god of the three faces, was an obsession among the people of the Kencyrath.

Jame shared their preoccupation with this concept of honor and the code called the Law that embodied it, but for reasons of her own. With neither strength nor friends to rely on, her survival in a violent world had always depended on wits, the same unquenchable desire to learn anything and everything that had led to her apprenticeship in the Brotherhood, and a moral flexibility that most of her kinsmen seemed to lack. She suspected that the latter was due to tainted blood. Her mother, after all, had been a priestess, and every Kencyr knew that prolonged contact with the Three-Faced God resulted in a certain contamination of mind and body. All her life Jame had fought the darkness in her, the sense of power and damnation moving together under the surface of her mind. Her loyalty to the letter of the Law, if not to its spirit, was her one grip on the normal world of the Kencyrath as she understood it. If the day ever came when she found she could lie under oath, do injury to a kinsman, or break her word, for any reason whatsoever, she would know that she was lost.

All such thoughts faded as the girl emerged on the fourth floor. It wasn't much more than a loft, with many apertures of varying sizes and the promise on this autumn night of many cold nights to come. Beneath the irregular line of windows that overlooked the market place, Marc lay face up on his pallet, snoring loudly. The big Kencyr was still in his guard's uniform except for the boot that Jame had hauled off the evening before, only to find she couldn't budge the other one. Beyond that, the only unusual thing about his appearance was the bandage wrapped around his temples. It hardly seemed enough to justify the fact that for a night and a day he had been lying as motionless as a corpse, although not as soundlessly. It had been his boast, when he came staggering home with his broken head, that he could sleep off anything short of total decapitation. Now he was proving it.

As she checked her friend's condition, Jame wondered what he would think if he ever found out what she had caused to happen to the man who had injured him. At the time it had seemed in keeping with the best traditions of the Kencyrath, but now she suspected that she had overdone it a bit.

Satisfied at last that all was well, she stood up. Her reflection rose to meet her on the polished surface of the buckler that hung from the support between the windows. She regarded it with raised eyebrows. Eyes too big, cheekbones too high, lips too thin. Tubain, damn him, was right: she looked like a winter famine colt. Jame grimaced at the mirrored features and turned her back on them.

That was when she saw it. Lying on her own pallet was a small folded square of parchment. Jame crossed the room and picked it up. She frowned when she turned it over and saw the emblem stamped on it in black wax. She broke it open and read. The frown deepened. The girl stood there for a long moment with the paper in her hands, biting her lip. Then she turned back to the sleeping guardsman.

She crouched beside him and shook his shoulder. The snoring continued without a break. Another harder shake and a light cuff were equally ineffective. Then she braced herself and began to pummel him on the chest, gently at first and then with force. The sleeper muttered and made a vague sweeping gesture with one hand as though to brush away an annoying insect.

The girl sat back on her heels, massaging her knuckles, and regarded him thoughtfully. Of course, it was to be expected. The first impulse of any wounded Kencyr was to sleep and sleep deeply. It could easily be another two days before he woke of his own accord. Was it worthwhile to keep trying? Under the circumstances, probably not, but Marc would be more upset later if she didn't try than if she succeeded.

Accordingly, Jame stood up, unhooked the buckler, and swung it with all her strength against the stone support. The resulting crash might not have been sufficient to wake the dead, but Marc, after all, was only asleep. His eyelids peeled back slowly.

"Huh? Whazzamatter?" he said.

Jame knelt beside him and took his gray head in her hands.

"Marc, listen a minute. I've been summoned to the temple by Ishtier, Trinity only knows why. If I'm not back by the time you wake up again, I suppose you'll have to come after me. Do you understand?"

"Issshtier . . . ?" Marc struggled up on one elbow. "You can't do that . . . he hates you."

"That's no distinction. He hates everyone. Now go back to sleep."

Marc gave his head a fierce shake as though to clear it, and immediately began to swear, one hand groping for the bandage. "God's claws," he muttered. "When I get my hands on the lad with the club . . . "

"No need to worry about him now," said Jame, suddenly expressionless. "He . . . uh . . . had an accident early this morning. His grapnel line snapped as he was climbing out of Merchant Dazda's compound with a few borrowed gems. Your brother guards caught him. Now he, or at least what's left of him, is in the Judgment Square on the Mercy Seat. Put down that boot. You aren't fit to do anything but sleep."

"Ha!" said Marc with a cheerful but somewhat blurry grin, climbing unsteadily to his feet and stomping to force his foot down into the heel of the boot. "You've raised the beast right and proper, and now you'll have to put up with him. I'm going with you."

Jame swore luridly under her breath. Of course he would say that. For the first time in her life she had a genuine protector even if, at the ripe middle age of eighty-three, he was old enough to be her great grandfather, and she was worse at coping with him than with her bitterest enemy. With a sigh, she helped the guardsman find and buckle on his old cross-hilted broadsword.

They went by way of the twisting streets that linked the southwest quarter of Tai-tastigon with the south. The passageways were full of life that night. Hawkers cried their wares. Merchants' sons strutted their finery. Men with bold, quick eyes slipped through the crowd. They passed the end of the incense sellers' street where clouds of myrrh, lavender and allentine waged war in the air and made the torches burn blue. Jame wrinkled her nose at the confusion of odors and jerked the trailing hem of her cloak out from under the hooves of a carthorse. Twice already someone had nearly stepped on it. It was of the sort favored by most thieves, voluminous and loosely fastened at the throat to tear off easily in the hands of a pursuer, but this particular garment was a hand-me-down from a much larger colleague. Jame swore to herself again to take up the hem as soon as she could, and promptly forgot all about it as a troupe of ophiolaters rushed past carrying the longest, limpest snake she had ever seen.

All activity and noise died away behind them as they neared their destination. The streets were completely deserted by the time the two reached the area of the temple. All was darkness and silence and slow decay there. No one asked what had happened to the buildings that lay in the shadow of the god of the Kencyrath; no one wanted to know the answer.

Jame and Marc paused on the steps. Above them, the front of the temple stretched up to the black sky as smooth and white as living bone. They crossed the threshold side by side, with Marc's great paw of a hand on Jame's shoulder.

Inside, there were floors of onyx, ivory walls, and the red, fitful winking of many torches. For Jame there was also the slow, suffocating pressure without and the growing core of darkness within that told her she was very near a source of the ancient power. The hereditary currents of her blood carried her to it unerringly through many stark rooms with Marc striding behind her. When she stopped, it was done so suddenly that the man nearly ran her down. They had come to the central chamber, and the great black granite image of the Three-Faced God loomed over them, three shrouded shapes melted into one another. Two of the dark figures were turned away. The third faced the room. It was overlaid with plates of pale marble carved so thin that they almost resembled a veil. The face and all the body except for certain sinuous curves and one hand were concealed in the stone shroud. The hand reached out and upward through a fissure in the masonry as though beckoning. Each long scythe-curved finger was tipped in ivory, honed and gleaming. Jame felt her own abnormally long fingers curl into fists at her side.

The presence of the statue was so overpowering that it was a full minute before either Jame or Marc realized that Ishtier was standing in front of it, watching them with unblinking yellow eyes. He was dressed all in white in honor of the image that towered above him, white for Regonereth, the most feared of the god's three aspects, white for That-Which-Destroys. His figure seemed sunken into the hieratic robes and the face in the shadow of the cowl was almost as fleshless as a skull's. Toward the end of most Kencyrs' lives, at some age between one hundred forty and one hundred fifty-five, it was natural for them to go into the sudden physical and mental decline that preceded death. Although Ishtier's body had been slowly collapsing in on itself longer than anyone could remember, his mind had never once been known to falter in its subtlety. Long contact with the god had been known to have even stranger effects than this.

"You wished to see me, My Lord?" said Jame.

"You, yes. Not him," he said brusquely. A curious humming murmur seemed to fill up the spaces between his words.

The strange noise made Jame frown, but she had no time to consider it. At that point Marc, despite a commendably brisk start half an hour before, suddenly began to sway. Jame slipped an arm around his waist to hold him steady and punched him in the ribs to forestall a rising snore.

"Pardon, My Lord," she said to Ishtier, getting her shoulder under Marc's armpit and heaving him upright. "We come as a set. If you try to put him out now, I shall tip him over on you."

Ishtier regarded the swaying giant sourly for a moment. Then, abruptly, something flickered through his expression. It was gone too quickly to be recognized. When his eyes turned back to Jame, they were as hard and unreadable as before.

"I have an assignment for you, thief," he said coldly.

Jame stared at him. "You want something stolen? For six months you do your best to make life impossible for me because I'm temporarily one of the Brotherhood, and now you want me to steal for you? Priest, you have a strange sense of humor."

"Hunzzaagg," said Marc.

"What?" snapped Ishtier.

"Never mind him," Jame said hastily. "He thinks he's awake. It's a common delusion."

"Humph!" the priest said. "Listen to me, wench. I said nothing of stealing. Look here." He stepped aside. There was a small altar behind him, with a fine silver chain lying shattered upon it. Jame caught her breath. "You see?" said that strange humming voice. "The Scroll of the Law is gone. Stolen. In this temple, until it is returned, only I the priest stand between the people of the Kencyrath and their god, all dread be to him. I want you to retrieve it."

Jame struggled with an answer. The murmur was no longer only in her ears but in her mind as well. It had slipped between her thoughts, deadening as heavy folds of cloth. The air of the room had suddenly become too thick to breathe. There was nothing before her but the monstrous image of Regonereth. The ivory tipped fingers were reaching out . . .

Then Jame realized what was happening. She threw back her head and shouted with all the breath that was in her. Beside her, she felt Marc jerk awake and heard his startled snort, but her eyes were locked on Ishtier. At last she knew why the priest had been attacking her so long and so viciously over the past months. He had seen the darkness in her. He had suspected that she was closer to his god by right of blood than he could ever be. The test had come and gone before she was aware of it, and she had betrayed herself by breaking free from his will. The face that flared back at her was contorted with hatred and jealousy. Now it would be war between them to the end, for he would never again let her live in peace.

But there was something else at stake now, she remembered, still struggling with the fading wisps of mind mist. It was neither priest nor god that she was being asked to serve, but the Law. If she refused, the one link that she had chosen to acknowledge with her people would be broken. An abyss had opened; if she turned her back on that empty altar, it would be beneath her feet. There was only one way to go.

"Where is the scroll?" she asked in a low voice. "Do you know?"

"I know. It has been taken to the temple of Gorgo. Promise before our god that you will bring me the scroll that lies in the arms of the false image there. Your word on it, thief!"

"Priest," said Jame grimly, "death break me, darkness take me, the scroll will be in your hands within three hours. My word on it."

"What in the three worlds," said Marc as they left the temple, "was all of that shouting about?"

"He tried to whisper the power down on me," Jame said with a gesture of contempt, although she still felt rather shaken. "The old fool. If much more of it had come, he might have whispered the building down on us all. But you had better go home now. This next bit of work calls for my talents, such as they are, not yours."

Marc only snorted.

The one-sided argument continued street after street, past the subtle fire of the opal market, the crystal temple of Jacarth, and the Judgment Square, which Jame was careful to skirt by several blocks. Several times the girl considered slipping away. Even with his wits fully about him, Marc could never have caught her in the alleys and on the rooftops. But he knew where she was going. It would only mean that he was likely to come shambling in at some awkward moment, if he didn't fall asleep in some doorway first, and Tai-tastigon at night was no place for an unconscious man. It wasn't until they were crouching in the shadows outside the silver-streaked temple of Gorgo the Lugubrious God that she finally accepted the inevitable.

The sound of ritual mourning was rolling out of the wide gate and down the steps to them. Marc stared up at the bright entrance and the stream of celebrants passing through it. His eyes had a suspiciously unfocused look to them.

"How do we get in?" he asked.

Jame took a deep breath. "The most obvious way," she said. "Put your hood over your head like a proper worshipper, and try to wail a bit."

They went up the steps together and joined the crowd within. All were gathered in the outer chamber, waiting for the evening ceremony to begin and working themselves into the approved tearful state. There were seven tall pillars spaced around the edge of the room. Loogan was perched precariously on top of the one nearest the door to the inner chamber with his long silver gray robe flowing down to the floor on all sides of it. From below, one might have supposed him either to be a very tall man with a very small head or a street performer on stilts. The combination of his loud, simulated grief and the wild circling of his arms every few minutes to maintain balance added a good deal to the liveliness of the assembly.

The young thief began to edge her way across the packed floor. Behind her, she could hear a sound vaguely like the hoarse bellowing of a love-starved bull. Marc, who had never wept out loud in his life, was valiantly doing his best. Jame began to wonder if she was doing something profoundly foolish. There was an apprehension growing in the back of her mind that refused to take on a definite shape. Something about the expression on Ishtier's face . . .

A sudden pain in her hands brought her back to the present with a start. She had been holding her fists so tightly clenched at her side that the sharp nails had actually broken the skin. It was then that she realized she was not holding up her cloak. She made a quick grab for it a second too late. Marc's foot came down on the trailing hem. The clasp at the throat immediately let go, as it had been designed to do, and the whole garment fluttered down out of sight even as she twisted around to catch it.

From his high perch, Loogan gave a shrill yelp.

"The blasphemer, the Baio-cainite!" he screamed, pointing down at the slender, hated figure. "Take her, take her! A sacrifice, a sacrifice for the great Gorgo!"

Panic caught Jame by the throat. Scores of faces were turning toward her, contorted in rage; scores of hands were reaching out. The mass of humanity in the room rose about her like the crest of a tidal wave. The nightmare quality of the scene froze her where she stood.

"Sweet Trinity," she heard Marc say under his breath in a tone of self-disgust, and then she flinched as the full-throated war cry of the Kencyrath boomed out almost in her ear. The human wave froze. Up on his pedestal, Loogan did a passable imitation of an unbalanced statue. At that moment the inner chamber door opened and another priest, startled by the sudden roar, peered out. Marc reached past Jame with a muttered, "Excuse me," caught the man by the front of his robe, and threw him over his shoulder as easily as if he were a three-day-old pup. Instantly the room was bedlam. Loogan pitched head first off the column with a squeal. Roaring, the crowd of worshippers rushed forward. Marc grabbed Jame by the collar and threw her into the inner room. A stride carried him across the threshold after her. Pivoting, he slammed the door shut with his shoulder and dropped the bar into place across it.

"Well," said Jame, gingerly picking herself up off the floor, "here we are."

The inner sanctum of the temple was small but high-vaulted. The only thing in it, beside some long, heavy benches pushed back against the wall, was the stone image of Gorgo. The statue was of an obese, crouching man at least three times life size with unusually long legs; the bent knees rose a good two feet above the head. It had the most sorrow-stricken face imaginable. A steady stream of water tickled out of tiny holes in the corners of its green glass eyes. Its huge hands, cupped together to receive burnt offerings, stretched out between the towering shins. There was a long roll of parchment balanced across them over a bed of old ashes.

"Ah ha," said Jame. "There it is . . . or is it?" She stepped forward quickly, a frown growing on her face. Something about the length, the color of the paper . . .

"Marc, see if you can find another door. I think something is very wrong here."

While the big guardsman began a slow circuit of the room, Jame took the scroll out of the stone hands and carefully unrolled it. She examined it, then gave a low whistle.

"Marc, come and see this."

There was a scraping sound and a muffled grunt from behind the statue.

"What are you doing?"

"There's some sort of a lever back here. Maybe it controls a secret exit. I think I can . . . "

There was a crack, a deep gurgle, and a second later Jame sprang back, barely in time to escape a dousing as the glass eyes of the idol flew out of their sockets, closely followed by two thick jets of water.

Marc emerged from the shadows, looking sheepish. He held out a metal bar in the broad palm of his hand. "It broke off," he said apologetically.

"Never mind that," said Jame. "Better to be drowned than sacrificed anyway. Just look at this." She held the scroll out to him. He stared at the swirl of brightly inked words on it, making an obvious effort to focus.

"That isn't the Law Scroll," he said.

"I'll say it isn't. Do you see that?" She pointed to a line of runes drawn in magenta and gold. "A name: Anthrobar. This thing is the lost treatise on the bridging of the three worlds. Trinity knows how Loogan got his fat hands on it, or Ishtier ever found out that it was in Tai-tastigon."

"Is it important?" Marc asked, staring owlishly at the roll of paper.

"If the legends about it are true," said Jame grimly, "yes, very, and also very dangerous. Nine centuries ago the Kencyr scrollsmen on the border watches claimed that this bit of parchment held the secret to the destruction of the barriers between the worlds. If they were right and the barriers can be and are brought down, nothing, neither priest nor Law, will be left to stand between this cockleshell world and the three faces of god. It would be the ultimate disaster. Of course, the stories may be apocryphal, and perhaps Ishtier won't be able to read this—Trinity knows I'm not going to translate the parts I can make out for him—but it's too big a risk. I can't give it to him."

"It isn't the Law Scroll," said the guardsman, beginning to sway gentry. "You don't have to give it to him."

"I swore to bring him the scroll in the arms of the idol," Jame said unhappily. "My word binds me."

Marc shook himself fiercely. "Aaaugh! But listen: if you take it now, lass, it will be stealing, not retrieving, and my word as a guardsman will bind me to turn you over to the merchants . . . "

" . . . who will be delighted to see me in the central square minus my skin, and probably without even the benefit of the flowers. Oh, what a mousetrap this is! I thought Ishtier was plotting something, but his confounded whispering had me too confused to guess what it was. I never dreamed it would be anything so magnificent. Look you: if I take him the scroll, I may be opening the way to an incredible disaster; if I'm killed, he at least will have the satisfaction of my death; if I refuse, I'll be breaking my word and he will declare me a renegade, which would be a good deal worse than being dead. With you here, I get flayed alive if I do the former, and he has a Kencyr witness if I go the latter way. No wonder he decided to let you come with me. I could love that man for his subtlety . . . if only we weren't the ones caught by the tail."

At that moment, three things happened more or less simultaneously: the whole face of the image gave way, releasing a torrent of water into the already half-flooded room; the bar across the door began to splinter under repeated heavy blows from the outside; and Marc suddenly fell asleep standing up.

Jame looked around the room with raised eyebrows, and then back at the scroll in her hands. One complication would have been manageable, two a calamity, three ridiculous, but four? It would be an excellent time, she thought, to burn the manuscript and drown herself, but then there was Marc, who didn't deserve to die alone, much less asleep on his feet. Almost with a feeling of regret, she reached over and tapped the swaying giant on his chest.

"You'd better see to the door," she said. "I think we're about to have company."

"Zaugh . . . oh!" said Marc, blinking at her. He turned and waded through the water which now reached almost to his waist over to the opposite wall. While Jame took refuge on top of one of the statue's kneecaps, the guardsman began to wedge benches in front of the rapidly weakening door, handling their weighty bulk easily. As he was lifting the last one into position, he suddenly swore out loud and dropped it, creating a miniature tidal wave.

"Lass!" he bellowed over the roar of the water, splashing back across the room toward her. "I've got it! You can't steal the scroll, but I can!"

Jame saw his hand sweeping up at her out of the corner of her eye. She had been studying the manuscript intently and had only half heard him. Instinctively, she twisted away from what, from anyone but Marc, would have been a threatening gesture. The stone beneath her was slick with spray. The suddenness of her movement threw her sideways off her perch with a sharp cry into the surging water.

Marc fished her out and set her sputtering back on her feet. She swept a streaming lock of hair out of her eyes, gave herself a shake, and then stopped short with a gasp. Her eyes turned to him, enormous in her thin face.

"D . . . did you just say what I think you just said?"

The big guardsman shifted his weight uncomfortably, giving the impression that he would have liked to shuffle his feet if only there hadn't been so much water on them. "I wouldn't be stealing from a Kencyr, you know," he said in a half-pleading voice. "It wouldn't be breaking the Law, just . . . uh . . . bending it a little."

Jame's stunned gaze dropped to the soggy piece of parchment in her hand. She caught her breath, and then threw back her head with a sudden shout of laughter.

Marc stared at her.

She held the scroll out to him. Bright streaks of color spiraled across it into a muddy lower margin. Not a letter remained legible. "By Trinity, M'lord Ishtier may be subtle, but he's not omniscient. This is one solution he could never have foreseen. Here, take the thing! Only this once, I'll let you steal for me. Now in all the gods' names, let's get out of here."

"Uh, lass . . . how? There's only one door and no windows at all."

"Oh, use your head," said Jame, regaining her slippery perch on the stone kneecap with a spring like a young cat's. "Where there's fire," she pointed to the wet ashes in the cupped hands, "there's usually smoke. Where there's smoke, there had better be some sort of ventilation." Her finger traced a line from the offering bowl to the ceiling far above. "There. Do you see it? A hole, not very big, but large enough, I think." She began to pull small pieces of metal out of her belt and to fit them into a spidery form. "I thought we'd find at least that much of an exit before we walked into this place, but damned if I thought we'd have to use it." The grapnel complete, she unwrapped a line from around her slim waist and snapped it on. "Of course, we could wait for the room to flood completely, but you look ready to capsize as it is." On the third try, the hook shot straight up through the dark hole and caught firmly on something outside on the roof.

Jame threw the end of the line to Marc. "You go first, and try to stay awake at least until you get to the top. Remember, if you slip, I can only pick up the pieces."

Either contact with her had corrupted him, she thought as she struggled to anchor the line, up to her shoulders in water and half choked with the spray, or perhaps Kencyrs weren't quite what she had thought, and she wasn't so hopelessly tainted after all. At that moment something hard and cold began to dissolve inside her. She found herself singing out loud above the voice of the water as she followed her friend up the rope. By far the smallest part of her exuberance was due to the fact that she had not been obliged to commit suicide after all.

Marc, by some miracle, did not fall asleep half way up the line, nor as Jame guided him across the uneven roof tops of the city, nor even on the threshold of the temple of the Three-Faced God, though when the high priest snatched the limp scroll out of his hand, he very nearly pitched head-first after it. Jame led him out reeling.

As they passed out under the dark entry arch, they heard from the heart of the temple a high wail scarcely human in its disappointment and rage.

"That," said Jame, "is the best thing I've heard all evening."

They staggered home arm in arm through the festival crowds of night, both singing at the top of their lungs and both very much off key.

At the stroke of midnight, as Marc lay on his pallet snoring happily and the temples of Tai-tastigon heralded the new day with bells, chants, and laughter, the Talisman Jamethiel walked down the stairway with the traditional silver and black streamers of a senetha dancer flowing behind her, and the waiting crowd greeted her with a roar of welcome.

At his station across the room beside a huge keg of ale, Tubain beamed at her. Trust a Kencyr to always keep her word.

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Framed