no, Shkai'ra thought firmly.

A complex concept came in return, elements of youredcoat-liestillnofun and hungrythirstydogtastegood.

"First time in my life I've been called a killjoy by a long-legged weasel," the Kommanza muttered to herself. She could feel the armor on her back, the movements of the gear slung around her saddle; it was disconcerting to see nothing but skintight leathers on a body not hers. To the Ri: don't you ever think about anything besides killing and eating?

A wordless image of a bucking sheri gripped between his forelegs, squealing as he thrust.

goodwettightslidesmellpushpushpush, too She sighed, kill soon, kill walk-up twolegs.

fun. funfunfun Behind them came a group more complex, but less magical; a representation of the great conqueror Vekslaf naZak's Bane. The general and his followers were in modern Zak war-gear, with a few antique flourishes; behind the general came a cart with atrophy of weapons, and a string of figures in "chains" of silver paper marching between the warriors. They were the touch of illusion, representative types of half a dozen naZak peoples. Not real naZak, of course; of the hundred fifty thousand folk within the walls, nine-tenths were pureblood at this time of year.

Elsewhere on the Brezhan, outside the area still under F'talezons grip, Zak might be persecuted for showing their talent. Here wise naZak reflected on the realities of power, and stayed strictly indoors during Dagde Vroi .

From Inu's side, Sova fought not to goggle at the passing multitudes. Wonderment warred with fear, an atavistic stirring at childhood tales. This was Fehuund's own city, the Witch Queen of the icelands...

No, she shook her head. They're just people, who can do things others can't. Good ones and bad ones.

Shkai'ra looked back again, at her half of the warband. It seemed unnatural, somehow, to be hiding it by parading it in plain sight, armed to the teeth. Her own teeth were on edge, felt less of the quasi-sexual rush of approaching combat than she usually experienced before a fight. Too many years since so much turned on the bow and the blade, she thought.

Too much was at risk; she looked forward at Sova, and envied her the story-bred confidence of romantic youth. The Ri stirred beneath her, and she focused her mind on images of pain and dying; reassured, Hotblood bent his head to sniff curiously at the "grass" that had no smell or feel.

In the Market square the throng spread out to watch.

Watch the cniffta games between the card-painter's booth and the cutler's, join the raucous crowds betting on the spider-fights, or watch the shadow puppets of the tvayang nearby. Food sellers shouted their wares, or used their art to make sure that the smells attracted patrons: roast beef, beef pies, spiced meatballs, maranthe sugar-cakes, hot kahfe. Shkai'ra put up ahand to steady Fishook on her shoulder as the orange tabby head swiveled sharply. Perfume sellers were offering their scents in crystal vials that glowed with colors suggesting the flowers of their origin.

The dance circle was busy as was the challenge ring, though one had to look twice to be sure that the people in both were real and not dreams. The best witches'

illusions were so real that one could not tell until the figures bowed and vanished.

They made a full circuit of the square, next paraded through the worn slate sidewalks that fringed the houses. Three-story buildings of dark stone, tiny shuttered stores below, dwelling places and workshops above. Gloomy city, Shkai'ra thought. Tension touched the base of her stomach with a touch like cold jelly as Shyll turned and lead the procession off on a side street, south toward the valley wall. Natural enough; this type of travelling exhibit was done for zight, and that required exposure. But round about now someone might ask themselves why the two groups were sticking so close together, particularly since the second was not in the same league as the first.

Sidestreets, quieter and narrow, dark except where a house could afford to keep a kraumak in an iron-net holder over the door. An occasional reeling party, drunks slumped in the even narrower alleys that dove like runnels between the big, stone-shuttered houses; upper story windows opened to take in the sight. There was laughter, cheers, an occasional thrown sweetmeat or coin; many here in the Middle Quarter were holding private revel.

The street ran level along the valleyside, but the alleys were steep, upslope and down. Shkai'ra looked to one side, noticed the smooth U of wear in the central stone of a laneway. Old, she thought. Then she noticed the poor fit with the less-worn blocks on either side; the middle had been replaced more often than theflankers, several times, and had a chance to wear down once more...

No time to think. Hotblood caught the contagion and began to dance sidelong after Inu.

killdognow?

"No," Shkai'ra sighed. The animal's us-and-edible division of the world could grow wearisome.

The street was twice arm's width, overhung by eaves above. Then it flared out into a space perhaps three times as wide for ten times manheight, making a sharp turn upslope, to the south. The dosshouse Habiku's drug-bought followers were in was there, a good house sold for want of heirs and cut up into cubbyholes. The tunnel from the basement went three streets over, to emerge in a structure across from the House of the Sleeping Dragon; Habiku was expecting Megan to break her teeth on the strong walls of the manor, while his blades crept up behind. There would be some sane ones with them, just enough to control and guide them, and dole out the drug.

"Shyll, " she called softly. Her hands were drawing her wheelbow from its sheath, the first shaft from the quiver on the other side.

"Yes?" Tense, elaborately casual walk.

"Just in case... good luck."

"And to you."

Shkai'ra took a last deep breath. Freeze, she commanded the Ri.

Now for the subtle strategy, she thought. The ones in the broad doorway were a score or more, thin and gaunt and mad-looking, ragged but carrying new arms.

Lamplight spilled past them; there must be a hundredor more in there. Forty with her, all told.

"Well each just have to kill two and a half," she muttered. Fishook fluttered up into the night sky.

Then, pitched to carry: "CHARGE!"

Her first arrow pinned a man with a twofang to the door post, her second nailed two together before they realized that the tableaux wasn't playing any more.

Fighters dashed past her, darts and twofangs and the naZak weapons snatched from the cart of "trophies."

General Vekslaf howled in Annike's voice and bounced forward with a long knife in either hand.

The illusion broke as they poured across the square.

Hotblood crossed the stone in two leaps, screaming, funfunkill-killNOW! shrieked in his mind as he bowled through the doorway a step in Inu's wake, his shrilling mingling with the dog's thunder-bellow. The Ri trampling with claws and tearing with his tusks, good killnow run!

Megan had checked the entrances to her secret ways into the house. One had been pulled down, one showed signs of recent use, one was barred and guarded (the one into my own office) and one was deep in two years of dust. When night fell, Rilla and ten others waited in the dark. Time stretched, until she felt the sudden flare of excitement with Shkai'ra's taste to it.

Fishook skittered out of the sky onto Rilla's shoulder. She jumped.

"That's the beginning. Let's go." The door of the unused secret passage that Megan had found swung open under her hand. She thought of Megan, touched her shape of mind, thought, NOW, coz! and dimly felt her acknowledge.

Above, on Flutterwing Lane, twenty people tried the wall around the Manor of the Sleeping Dragon. As they reached the top, witchlight sprang up all around andthe low, sinister thupthupthup of darts hailed through the dazzle above. The figures wavered and vanished.

The dartcasters blinked as their rounds struck, met no resistance. Another alarm, around he corner, off New Cheapstreet. Again and again, at every wall. Megan sagged against the wall, pulling what power she had.

Again.

This time there was no answering flare and only a dart or two. "Hsst!" She scrambled up, using climbing claws as well as her own in the cracks in the mortar, fighting off the headache growing behind her eyes.

Grapnels swung; the others followed, avoiding the broken glass set in the top. No witchlight, no darts, good. They dropped down and were in the gardens.

Megan crouched and ran along the low line of snow-covered bushes that marked the young maze, around the white mounded rose trees. Rilla should break out in the small dining room, next the fireplace.

We'll break in on the Tower side. We'll have him between us, then.

Sova plastered herself against the entranceway as the Ri went by, a black streak through the black night, the platinum flare of its mane and tail incandescent white.

The smell was all around her for a moment, sharp musk and blood. Shkai'ra rolled out of the saddle, rolled again to avoid being trampled, bounced to her feet.

"Down!" she yelled to the beast, pointing to a narrow stair. "Down, kill, stay. Eat!" Hotblood was more than intelligent enough to understand blocking a bolt-hole while the rest of the pack drove prey to the killing ground. It poured itself down the cellar stair, into a space that a horse would have found impossible. Paws flexed and gripped stone treads, spine twisted, and the Ri flowed down into the cellars of the house.

"Sova." The Kommanza barked it. "Follow me. And stay behind."She pounded up the stairs, worn wooden risers in a central well that extended up the full four stories of the house. Inu's bellow echoed again, shaking the thin pine boards beneath their feet. Sova followed, shortsword out and buckler in hand, eyes wide with an excitement that slowed everything around her, the splintery bannister at their right, the worn, skewed doors off their hinges, even the scents of ancient pickled fish and urine. Landing, landing, landing; the treads glowing and slippery under her feet, the reason plain when they found a Vryka crewman sprawled dead, the knife that killed him still in his throat.

It was dim enough for the light to be black; her nerves chilled suddenly at the blind gape of eyes and mouth and ragged cut neck, windpipe still fluttering.

"Right," Shkai'ra muttered, plunging in that direction. "Work our way down." Sova could hear no panting in her voice, despite the sixty pounds of armor and weapons. The Thane girl had merely a steel cap and steerhide jerkin, but they weighed on her already.

Into the corridor. A single oil lamp down at the end of a line of doors. Shkai'ra wheeling, booting open the first on her left. Flinging herself in; a brief ugly crunching sound, and coming out with the bottom of her round shield dripping. Sova forced her eyes away.

There were no others until the last door. Those must have been alerted, because they jerked the thin planks open just before her bootsole would have struck.

The tall Kommanza jerked forward into the room, pulled by her momentum and the weight of the armor; she catapulted back out with her shield tucked into her chest, struck by the end of a bench with four sets of hands running it forward from the other side of the room. She struck the opposite wall with a crash that shook the floor and cracked half a dozen boards weakened by dry rot. The dreamdust addicts followed, half a dozen strong.Shkai'ra was coming to her feet before she was fully conscious, staggering to one knee; the leather and metal and fiberglass of armor and shield dinned under their cheap, stone-headed maces. Sova had time to see one drive himself onto the point of Shkai'ra's saber and crawl up it hand over hand before the sixth was upon her.

It was a woman, skeletal gaunt, her ulcerated face oozing through thin burlap bandages. She was laughing or sobbing as she attacked, impossible to see which; just possible to see that her pupils had swallowed the iris of her eyes. Zak, just under Sova's height; the smooth round globe of her macehead swept up over her right shoulder, came down with a blur of motion. Sova managed to jerk her buckler up to block the shaft behind the stone, but the impact jarred her down to the muscles in the small of her back; she skipped back, but the scarecrow figure followed, its rags flapping. The blow came again, again, again, like a nightmare where she blocked an identical stroke as she backed down a corridor without end.

Watch for patterns, a voice in her mind said. The khyd-hird's voice. It was the same blow, just very fast.

She set teeth and leg, thrust. The point of the shortsword punched through rag, into a body no heavier than a child's. Sova swallowed acid and withdrew, twisting, as she had been taught, ignored the falling body to go to Shkai'ra's aid.

A hand clamped her belt, threw her down; fingers settled about her throat and squeezed like a cage of wire. Dreamdust is a very specific nerve poison; it speeds the firing of the neurons, redirects pain signals to the pleasure center, even as it suppresses appetite and the immune system. Addicts die, but until they do they are as immune to pain and shock as a berserker.

The world swam grey at the edges of Sova's vision.

Rilla trotted down the dark corridor. The otherswere single file behind her, Moshulu scraping along, swearing in a whispered mix of Moryavska and Zak. The passage was just wide enough for his shoulders. In the glow of the kraumak she held, she could see the thick fuzz of dirt shaken down from the street above and the streaks of greenish-brown scum and rust crusting the stone. The stairs.

Wooden, spiral stairs that lead up to the floor below Megan's old apartments. The little dining room. The last time I saw it, it was dark, lit with a few candles, Megan showing me how the secret door by the fireplace opened.

The dust sifted down as quiet feet padded up after her. Four more flights. Three flights. Two. One. Here's the door. She raised her hand, pulled the latch-nothing happened. She yanked harder. The door shifted a fingernail's breadth, and stopped. She pried at it and it grated wider to show the mortar of a new brick wall. She gaped at it. Bricked in? Bricked shut? Oh shit.

Ohfishguts, ohshitohshit ohshit!

Pain. An echo, not her pain; pain in her head, her arm. Thick salt rage, reinforcing the chill determination. "Moshulu!" she called. He was right behind her, and she was startled to see tears running down the thick bearded cheeks. Goddess, don't let him collapse now! The Moryavska was speaking softly, something that sounded like names, hauntingly on the edge of understanding. The same ones over and over.

"What's wrong with him?" She asked Jakov beside him; quicker witted, he had picked up trade-Zak quickly.

"Nothing wrong, Captain", the man whispered. "Now realizing we where evil men come from. Ones who burn village. He say names; names of wifes, child, sister, brothers, all die, all be sold before you rescue. Moshulu say he see them soon; to rest quiet, he love them, now he come."Rilla Shadows'Shade swallowed and stepped aside.

"Tell him we have to break down this door," she said.

The woman Sova had stabbed sat on top of her, giggling, a red-grey bulge oozing out of the hole in her.

Strangling, strangling. Sova hammered at the elbows with the edge of her shield, felt one crunch, the fingers loosened. She heaved and the woman fell sideways, her head hitting a cracked board in the wall, driving her temple onto a protruding nail head. She stopped moving, grip falling away, stopped sliding down the wall, held by the nail. Sova struggled to breathe, but there was something in her throat. Choking.

Shkai'ra sheathed her dagger in a man's belly just above the public bone and ripped upward. He tumbled against her, laughing and gnawing along the line of her jaw above the gorget, rotten splintered teeth sinking in and ripping. With a grunt she threw him back into the arms of his companions and skipped back. Three of them on their feet now. Coming forward, smiling, one smiling past the purple growth that had eaten half her face. Body at her feet; another. Sova... back arching, face purple, eyes turning up into her head. The maceheads were rising, blood running down under her armor from the teeth wounds along her jaw.

They laughed, soft, merry sounds. Ignoring her knife; they must have been given a gram apiece at least. Sova was dying, Shkai'ra flipped the long fighting-knife in her hand forward, blood-slippery hilt sending it into a thigh instead of a throat. She went down on one knee, tearing the gauntlet off her right hand with her teeth, salt taste in her mouth.

"Down Habiku! To me, to me!" she shrieked, as she spat it out and raised the shield above her, sheltering.

The dreamdusters skittered forward smiling, and their weapons glinted dark, sweeping in full-armed arcs. She checked. Sova's tongue had fallen back into her throat.

Flip her over facedown, can she breathe... ? Her otherhand moved the shield, heard the frame cracking as the hirelings bought with their own death attacked it like peasants threshing grain.

Ah! Block the pain. Too many blows, mad-eyed dwarves beating on her like an anvil. One landed on her arm above the shieldrim. Strength left her with an impact that sent ugly vibrations down through ribs and spine; the lower rim of the shield sagged until it touched the ground. She snatched at the haft of another with her sword-hand, too far, too much swing before she could intercept, something broke in her palm and it was slippery and she gripped, gripped, her mind judging angles for the kick as the other two lifted.

In the passage, someone whispered, "I hope no one notices..."A reply, equally hushed: "Not notice a forging hammer beating through a brick wall?"

Moshulu braced his feet at the top of the worm-eaten stairs, swung the hammer back to touch the wall behind him, swung...

THUWHAM! The mortar crumbled around the twelve-pound head. THUWHAM! Bricks bulged. Shouts from through the wall, distant, feet running up stairs.

THUWHAM! One brick slid forward a knuckle deep.

Good-quality mortar, some distant portion of Rillas mind noted, as she coughed with the lime-dust.

THUWHAM! Mortar powdered down on heads below.

THUWHAM! The first brick fell out on the other side, muffled on a cushion below. THUWHAM! Three more bricks. Someone threw open the door of the room, started to run across, armor clashing.

THUWHAM! Bricks fell from above the hole, pulled by their own weight and the vanished support beneath.

Bricks and mortar fell back into the passage, bouncing on the stairs and off shields with dull floorboard thumps, on a helmet with a dull clang; somebody swore in Aeniri.Rilla blinked her eyes clear and looked up, shielding them with the fingers of one hand, dust on her lashes and white against the thin black leather of her glove.

The hole was open to chest-height now; a twofang probed through and the Moryavska snapped it with a sideways twist of his hammer. More, half a dozen; she could feel the first ram into the big man's leather breastplate over the stomach, penetrate a finder's width with an impact that shook through his body and the wood of the stair, down to her.

"Quickly, Moshulu, quickly!" she shouted, uselessly; the peasant hadn't learned more than a half a dozen words of any language she could speak, and they could be bringing up fire or vitriol or anything, Megan could be lying dead under the walls, they were caught here like meat in a sausage-grinder...

Moshulu roared the names he had been muttering under his breath, raised the sledge overhead and smashed it down into the remaining section of brick wall. It crumbled, fell; the sledge dropped from his hands.

Not enough, not enough, Rilla knew, as he stumbled and the edged steel probed for his life. If Habiku's followers could hold the entranceway it would be one against one until the end of time, with all the advantage to Habiku. Moshulu roared again, coughed blood in the middle of it; the twofangs were flickering at him now, he was above her head, there was no room. As his knees buckled he surged forward, and the bear-thick arms swept out, clutching the thicket of ashwood poles, drawing them to his breast, immobilizing them with his deathgrip as the blood and sweat poured down into his beard and his body shook with the yanking efforts of the ones who had killed him to withdraw their weapons.

Rilla screeched and bounded straight up; the knives were in each hand as she vaulted the dying man's body,out into the midst of the slayers.

Megan killed the last dog as it leaped on her, tumble under slash whirl kick. Habiku had bought heavy, wolf-hunting dogs to run in the gardens, but at least the bigger beasts tend not to sound as they attack.

An absurd thought; a thief' thought. Yappy little dogs that stay out of reach, yelling, are the worst. At least the big ones attack you and you can keep them quiet.

The others with her made a line of shadows that rushed across an open space, across the snow. From the roof someone yelled, a white-burning ball of metal fell to hiss and sizzle in the snow, lighting them clear as day, pinned in the open.

A cry of pain, someone, Piatr, down. Megan rolled, as darts and arrows hissed around them, scooped a double handful of dirt and snow, felt the sharp jerk as a dart caught her on the back, clatter off a bone-plaque, doused the light. Run for the house wall. "Go! Go!"

The first-floor windows shuttered with metal-bound wood. Plaster dust in my teeth-Rilla; pain in my arm, hand, head, worry, desperation-Shkai'ra; fighting, urgency-Shyll... She scrambled straight up the Tower wall, stone scratching under her claws, the climbing claws on her felt boots. Second story, third, window, guarded. Image of an open window, push!

The guard swore, pulled out a key and, believing he was locking it, unlocked it. Megan, above it, grabbed the cornice over the window, kicked with both feet, swung in on top of the guard. They went down in a tangle of arms and legs and too-long weapons. She dropped the knife, slashed his throat with her claws, hooked the grapple, dropped a rope.

Rilla'll be on the second floor. Other guards were running down the corridor, from the other windows.Splintering crash as an unguarded one broke in down the way. She crouched, seized the twofang, leaping across the corridor to put her back to the wall, raised it just in time to block another fang.

Shyll lunged up the steps, heard Shkai'ra yell. Saw Sova down, the Kommanza going down, two maceheads raised. They were getting in each other's way. He leaped over the body of a woman, threw the spear, saw one stagger back as it went through his throat. The other mace came down once, crunching on Shkai'ra's armor; she slid down on top of Sova. The addict raised the mace again and Shyll slammed into him, dagger half drawn, stumbling over the two on the floor, landing on top. The macehead rang on the wall, rolled away.

Pain in his arm and hand and back, burning along his face-no not his, hers. Inu scrambled up snarling, hopping forward with one paw hugged up against his chest.

His hands were locked on the addict's throat, who was smiling. The duster clawed at Shyll's eyes under the helmet, he jerked his head back as the man bucked, threw him off balance.