His member sprang against the inside of his trousers. Pel felt his cheeks burn. He hadn't had this sudden an erection since he'd been a boy just reaching p.u.b.erty. It almost hurt. The hood appeared to study the reaction with intellectual interest. Pel thought he would die of shame.

"Satisfactory," the visitor said. He flicked his hand, and a soldat bounced on the stone table. With a sweep of the enveloping black sleeve, the small bottle disappeared. "I will be back for more when I require it."

"Welcome, I'm sure," Pel gritted, wishing he'd go.

The visitor laid a gloved hand on his arm for thanks. "You serve one greater than yourself." The cloak swirled out of the door, and Pel relaxed. Or tried to. It was going to be a couple of hours until things...

calmed down.

He hadn't foreseen having to test the potion for the visitor, but it was unimportant. Pel never intended to sire a child again. The potion would do exactly what he had promised the visitor it would: allow him to mate with his new priestesses. Pel had not promised that it would allow him to sire children on them.

He'd made the potion exactly as he always did, but added a special ingredient, a rare herb only found near graves and barrows. The priest might be full of new vigor and potency, but empty of seed. If he finished the entire vial, which Pel had no doubt whatever he would, he'd never be able to sire another as long as he lived.

The visitor was right: Pel did serve one greater than himself. Meshpri, and her son, would surely forgive the liberty, but it was all in the cause of saving lives. Babies who were never conceived would never die.

The Red Lucky

Lynn Abbey

Bezulshash, better known as Bezul the changer, awoke to the honking of twenty outraged geese and a dream that something had struck the front door of his family's establishment at the nether end of Wriggle Way, deep in the Shambles quarter of Sanctuary.

"Bez?" his wife, Chersey, whispered. "Bez, are you awake?"

"I am," he a.s.sured her, despite the absurdity of the question: Nothing on Wriggle Way could sleep once the geese got going.

They both shucked their blankets. Barefoot, Chersey hurried to their children, four-year-old Ayse, and her little brother, Lesimar, both beginning to howl from the cradle they shared. Bezul spared the extra moment to find his boots and the antique, iron-headed mace he kept handy beside the master bed.

He was tiptoeing down the pitch-dark stairway when a patch of light appeared on the landing behind him.

"Bezul?" a woman asked, her voice gone deep with age. "Is that you?"

"It is, Mother." Bezul spoke loudly; the geese were still in high dudgeon. "I heard a strike against the door. I'm sure it's nothing, but I've got the club. Shut the door and go back to bed where it's warm."

By the lingering light, Gedozia did neither. The stairway shuddered beneath her unsteady footfalls.

"Mother-"

"It's them," she declared. "It's them come to steal what's left. Mind the shadows, your father says.

They're waiting in the shadows. They came back. Came back with the b.l.o.o.d.y moon!"

Gedozia's body frequently awoke long before her mind. Her husband, for whom Bezul had been named, had been dead these last eighteen years, a victim of apoplexy, directly, and the b.l.o.o.d.y Hand, indirectly.

Gedozia had never recovered from his death. She was easier to deal with, though, when she was dream-addled. By the light of day, she lived on bitter tea and nostalgia.

"I'll mind," Bezul said. "You get back to bed, Mother."

She didn't, but the light from her lamp made it easier to shove through the geese milling at the foot of the stairs and find the door latch. Bezul trod precisely on a floorboard, engaging a well-oiled mechanism. A wooden post, barely ankle-high but stout and kiln-hardened, rose silently out of the floor a handspan away from the jamb. The post would halt the door's opening-for a heartbeat or two-in the event thieves were waiting on the other side. Bezul lifted the latch; the heavy door swung on its hinges and thumped against the post.

The slice of Wriggle Way visible through the partially opened door was empty save for the graying shadows of early dawn.

"Who's there?" Bezul called, his voice a trifle quavery.

Silence. Bezul noticed a pale lump near the threshold. He thought of the noise he'd remembered and bent to retrieve the object. The geese attacked his legs as he did. The birds were better than any dog when it came to watching a place, but they were completely untrain-able and never did learn the difference between owners and invaders. Bezul swatted the nearest beak and, with his arms flapping wider thantheir wings, shooed them from the doorway. The birds retreated, noisier than ever. They'd be lucky if silence returned before sun-up.

"What is it?" Chersey called from the top of the stairway. She had a lamp in one hand, a wailing Lesimar tucked in the other arm, and Ayse clinging to her drab bed-gown.

"A piece of cloth knotted around a stone. Someone's sent us a message."

Bezul picked casually at the knots. They were well-tied with oiled cord and held tight against his curiosity. He waded through the geese to the counter at the heart of the changing house. Chersey was beside him, lamp and children in hand, when he laid the wrapped fist-sized stone down for closer examination.

"So, what's the message?" Gedozia asked from halfway down the stairs.

The geese nipped at Ayse who shrieked louder than all the birds together. Flapping and honking and shedding s.h.i.te, the birds waddled into the maze of shelves and niches where the more valuable and vulnerable portion of the changing house's stock was stored. It would take the luck of Shalpa, G.o.d of thieves, to get the flock penned up before they opened for business, but Bezul couldn't worry about that yet. He couldn't get the knots loose, either.

Chersey deposited Lesimar on the counter and put his still-shrieking sister beside him. When a quick pa.s.s with the lamp failed to show any b.l.o.o.d.y nips on the little girl's flesh, Chersey took the stone from her husband's hands.

"What's the message?" Gedozia repeated from the other side of the counter. She slid her lamp beside Chersey's.

Chersey's slender, agile fingers traced a loosening path along the cord and the length of it fell to the counter.

"It's just cloth," Bezul observed, more than a little puzzled.

"Sewn cloth," Gedozia corrected. "Give it here," she demanded and s.n.a.t.c.hed it before her daughter-in-law could obey. "The hem torn off a shirt," she concluded.

"Maybe there's writing on it?" Bezul reached for the cloth.

Gedozia wouldn't relinquish her treasure. She rubbed the seam between her fingers and held it close to her eyes. Bezul could see enough of the fabric to know there were no marks upon it.

"What manner of mess-?" he'd begun when Gedozia yelped and the cloth fell from her fingers.

"Mother?"

"Perrez," she croaked, a look of sheer panic forming on her face. "Perrez! O, my husband, they've taken our son! They've taken Perrez at last! It was all for nothing! All for nothing!"

Perrez, the last member of the household, was Bezul's much younger brother, his mother's favorite son, and a man who put more effort into avoiding work than into finishing it. He called himself a scholar, which wasn't an utter lie. There wasn't a musty ma.n.u.script in the changing house-in all of Sanctuary-that Perrez hadn't memorized in his relentless quest for treasure maps and clues. Perrez hadn't been around when Bezul closed up for the night, but scholars didn't keep workingmen's hours; scholars needed the excitement only a tavern could provide.Chersey fetched up the cloth and met Bezul's eyes with a worried frown.

"It's his," she confirmed.

"How can you be sure?"

"Marking st.i.tches-"

"My st.i.tches! My son!" Gedozia wailed, setting off the children and the geese.

Chersey squared her fingers over a pattern of dark-thread crosses embroidered into the cloth. "The laundresses use these to sort their work. Most of them can't read, you know, and one white shirt looks like another."

Home-brewed soap and a wooden tub set up behind the changing house weren't good enough for Perrez's shirts. Oh no-his shirts went clear across the city to a woman in the 'Tween who dosed them with bleach and blueing for two padpols apiece. It wasn't that Bezul begrudged the padpols.

Appearances were important in a changing house. Though the bulk of their business came from ordinary folk, the bulk of their profit came from the aristocrat trades that Perrez brokered. High-colored, handsome Perrez showed off a bleached, blued shirt far better than Bezul, who took after his father's side of the family, ever could. But Perrez would swear and swear again that the laundress was a beldam liar when she came to collect her fee, when it was Perrez who lied as easily as the sun sparkled on the sea.

And now, a bit of Perrez's shirt had been thrown against the changing-house door.

What to make of it? Bezul wondered amid the cacophony. He lined up the cloth, cord, and stone on the counter. "They've taken him!" Gedozia keened. "They took him while you were sleeping!"

Bezul flinched. Short of tying Perrez to the bedpost, there was no way to keep him completely out of trouble and, by the thousand eyes of Father Ils, there was no convincing Gedozia that her most precious son drank and gambled his way into one tight corner after another.

Bezul had dreaded this night-had seen it coming for years. His heart was cold as he spun the cord between his fingers. Several moments pa.s.sed before he noticed the sheen on his fingertips. Holding the cord to his nose, Bezul inhaled deeply. Fish oil... salt... wrack... the Swamp of Night Secrets on the far side of the White Foal River. He raised his eyes to meet his wife's.

They'd married young, in the depths of the Dyareelan Troubles, and waited fifteen years to start a family of their own. That had given them the time to learn each other's ways. Bezul didn't have to say a word, nor did Chersey. She kissed Lesimar lightly on the forehead, took the lamp, and disappeared into the warrens. The geese honked and flapped as she pa.s.sed.

"What was that about?" Gedozia demanded when she was alone with her elder son.

"Good chance you're right about Perrez. Did he happen to tell you where he'd be last night?"

Gedozia pursed her lips tight and shook her head. By those gestures, Bezul recognized a lie. He could badger the truth out of her, but Chersey was already returning.

"No sign of him among the ma.n.u.scripts," she admitted, "and the latch to his room is drawn from the inside."

Meaning Perrez had left the changing house through his private entrance and had expected to return the same way. Even Gedozia could grasp the implications of that. Her lips worked silently. The bondbetween his mother and her lastborn child was nothing Bezul could understand; its strength brought out the worst in both of them.

"Whoever's got him, he sent us a message," Bezul mused aloud. "He wants something... wants to exchange something. That's what we're here for, isn't it? Setting values, brokering exchanges. Getting Perrez out of trouble... again." Bezul was mildly astonished by his own lack of panic or despair. "Put the tea on, Chersey, and keep it hot. Sun's nearly up-Ammen and Jopze will be along soon to keep an eye on things while I'm gone."

By training and temperament, Jopze and Ammen were soldiers. Imperial soldiers. They said they'd served their terms in the unsettled northern reaches of the crumbling Rankan Empire and that, five years ago, they'd decided to retire in Sanctuary because it was a quieter place these days. Bezul imagined there was more to the story; he didn't press for details. The pair could have joined the city guard, maybe commanded it, but between them they'd had six children when they arrived and at least a dozen children now. They did better swapping time for shoes, cloaks, and other household goods at the changing house than they'd have in the barracks.

Without comment, Chersey lowered her eyes. She lifted the children off the counter and herded them toward the kitchen where geese and Gedozia were forbidden. Bezul locked stares with his mother, fairly defying her to wish him well or warn him to be careful.

"It's not his fault," Gedozia said instead. "This isn't what your father meant for him..." She caught herself-"For either of you-" but the correction, as always, came too late.

"You've done him no favors, Mother, reminding him every day."

Bezul was angry to the bone, but what good was anger in a family that the Hand had broken? Someday Bezul feared he might lose control and ask how his father had truly died. And where would he be if his mother told him the truth? No closer to his father, that much was sure.

The eastern sky had taken a sunrise glow when Bezul strode onto Wriggle Way. He was dressed as befitted his station in life: plainer than the best of Sanctuary, but better than most in homespun breeches, loosely fitted boots, a linen shirt and a bit of Chersey's fancy work on his half-sleeve coat. He'd left his cloak behind. It had been a warm winter thus far-no appreciable snow and very little ice-and though the air was chillier this morning than it had been for a month, Bezul believed in the sun. He believed in the short-bladed knife sheathed at his waist, too, and another, longer knife tucked into a boot top. The latter was a weapon, not a tool, and he'd made good use of it once or twice, though no one would mistake Bezul the changer for a fighting man.

There were signs of life all around-Wriggle Way was a workman's street and workers rose before the sun in winter-but no strangers. Bezul dug the cord, the stone, and the cloth out of his scrip. He held them out for anyone to see. People hailed him left and right-the master of the changing house was known to nearly everyone in the Shambles-but no one noticed the cord, not in the quarter, nor on the Wideway where the wharves were empty, the tide was out, and the air smelled like the cord dangling from his left hand.

From the Wideway, Bezul headed northwest, toward the bazaar and past streets that would have him quickly back to the changing house, had he been returning home. Toward the raw, knocked-together tournament stands as well. Perrez, that epicure of rumor, claimed that both Ranke and Ilsig had put up the gold and silver to host a first-blood tournament-short of the old gladiator matches the Vigeles clan used to run in the Hill, when it was still the estate quarter. If Bezul believed Perrez, Sanctuary's importance in the minds of kings and emperors was growing daily. If Bezul were ever fool enough tobelieve his brother.

What Bezul did believe was that his brother's great scholarly talents were currently being employed as oddsmaker and bookkeeper for scores of ordinary folk who were squandering their savings on one duelist or another. Bezul didn't care a tinker's d.a.m.n who won the tournament; he'd made a point of ignoring it, even forbidding Jopze and Ammen-inveterate gamblers, like all career soldiers-to mention it inside the changing house. Time enough for that when the tournament was over, debts were due, and the losers trooped into the changing house to sell their clothes, their tools, anything short of their wives and children.

Bezul reminded himself he needed to visit the palace soon to do some changing himself: a sack of their valuable, but slow-moving, jewels in exchange for a chest or two of Sanctuary's near-worthless shaboozh for cutting into padpols.

He came to the footbridge below the bazaar that connected the Shambles with the fishermen's quarter where knotted, oiled nets hung by the armful over every fence and wall. The bridge-keeper held out his hand for a padpol. Bezul dug the smallest, blackest bit of pot-metal from his scrip and crossed the footbridge, holding his breath against the stench rising from the midden ditch beneath.

The men and women who crewed Sanctuary's fishing fleet lived by the tides, not the sun. Their boats were out aad had left their moorings long before the stone thumped against the changing house door. But there were other ways to harvest a living from Sanctuary's waters. Across the White Foal River, the Swamp of Night Secrets sprawled as far as the eye could see.

Night Secrets Swamp was larger than it been when Bezul was a boy. He could just about remember how this part of Sanctuary had looked before the Great Flood rechanneled the White Foal River. The slum-quarter his father had called Downwind had stood-or slouched-where thickets of swamp-scrub now grew. "Good riddance," Bezul's father had said when he'd brought him to see the damage. Of course, Sanctuary wasn't truly rid of Downwind. The Hill quarter-every bit as treacherous and squalid-had sprung up before the flood waters receded and the swamp wasn't exactly empty.

A hardy breed they called the Nightmen eked their livings from the shifty waters. They were trappers, mostly, and not particular about what they snared: fish and crabs, plume-y birds, soft-furred predators, or the occasional man. When the Hand couldn't find better targets or victims for their madness, they'd combed the swamp; and the people of Sanctuary-Bezul included-had heaved guilty, but relieved, sighs: Better the Nightmen, than kith or kin.

For their part, the Nightmen did nothing to improve the impression they left behind. They stood out in any crowd-if only by the tang of their unwashed flesh. The Irrune shaman, Zarzakhan, in all his fur-clad, mud-caked glory, looked no more unkempt than the average Nighter. And as much as the Imperials complained about the guttural belching of the Wrigglie dialect or the Wrigglies complained about high-pitched Imperial chatter, both agreed that it was impossible to converse intelligently with anyone reared in the swamp.

Still, Nightmen-their women almost never crossed the river-in their reeking leathers were regular visitors at the changing house. They found things in the mud-old coins or bits of jewelry-that weren't useful until traded away. Bezul gave them what they wanted, Chersey gave them a little more, but the changing house showed a profit either way. Fact was, a good many thieves had lost their h.o.a.rds when the White Foal flooded and there were rumors-undying rumors-of riches hidden in the Swamp of Night Secrets: the beggar king's h.o.a.rd, the slaver's mansion, the treasure troves of a half-dozen immortal mages, to name only a few.Perrez-Father Ils have mercy on his greedy heart-believed every rumor and Gedozia encouraged him.

She wouldn't forget that the family had once been jewelers-goldsmiths and gem-cutters-on the Path of Money. They'd never been as wealthy as their clients, but they'd lived very comfortably, indeed, when she was young and beautiful. Bezul kept food on the hearth and their heads above water, but a changing house on Wriggle Way could never salve Ge-dozia's wounded pride.

Perrez believed Gedozia when she told him that fate owed him, that their dead father was looking out for him, and that he was too good for labor and better than any ten other men rolled together- especially ten Nightmen who, by her reckoning, weren't really men at all.

Bezul stopped short of cursing them both as he trod carefully down the planks to the White Foal ferry-a rickety raft festooned with cleats and ropes. A blanketed figure of no discernable age or s.e.x slouched against the mooring post, the shadow of the summoning bell across its head. The figure stiffened as Bezul approached and he glimpsed the face beneath the shadow: beardless, wide-eyed... young.

Bezul loosed his silent curse: When his luck went bad, it went very bad. There were no rules in the Swamp of Night Secrets- except the ones experience taught. An honest man could negotiate with a practiced criminal if he knew what he wanted; but a raw youth with no sense of the possible-? Bezul drew the cloth through his fingers.

"You the changer?" the blankets asked with a voice that was surprisingly deep.

He nodded. "And you're the man who threw a stone at my door this morning?"

Flattery soothed the Nighter who shed the blanket and rose. He was a fine specimen of his breed: dark, dirty, scrawny, and, above all else, surly, with his head c.o.c.ked over his left shoulder and all his weight on the same leg.

"Got the red lucky?"

At least, those were the words Bezul thought he'd heard. Between the dialect slur and the snarl, he couldn't be certain. "The red lucky?"

The youth grunted. "Perrez. He said, see the changer. Said you'd have it."

Bezul's imagination swirled with countless unpleasant possibilities. "Take me to Perrez first," he demanded.

"Can't," the youth replied after a fretful glance toward the swamp.

"Nothing happens until I know my brother's safe," Bezul adopted a softer, conspiratorial tone.

Another swampward glance, more furtive than the first. Bezul guessed he was merely a messenger and already over his head.

"Who gave you the cloth?"

"Him."

"Who? Not Perrez?"

A unexpected nod. "Him. Perrez."

"Why?" Bezul asked, bracing himself for another of his brother's bollixed schemes."We swapped," the youth replied. "For the lucky, the red lucky. We was to swap back when we met up again last night. He said it was earnest. After the other night, when the moon went red an' there was fire in the swamp."