There were still too many residents in the Palace, Beysib and otherwise, despite reclamation of a dozen or more estates beyond the city walls. Molin, having refused any reconciliation with his wife, lived in a barren room not far from the dungeon cells it resembled. He'd delegated all responsibility for the Rankan state cults to Rashan who, it seemed, was eager to insinuate himself in Lowan Vigeles's good graces. The Eye of Savankala promptly moved his entire disaffected coterie out to his estate at Land's End in hopes that not only could the Rankan upper class maintain itself there, untainted by the Beysib presence, but that they could somehow promulgate the ultimate miracle and propel Prince Kadakithis successfully back to the Imperial Throne.

Molin, in turn, spent all his time studying the reports his underlings and informants brought him, searching for the clues that would tell him which of Sanctuary's numerous factions was most powerful or most volatile. He ceased to care about anything Rankan and thought only of the fate of Sanctuary as it revealed itself through his informants. He left his room only to visit the children and practice with Walegrin each morning before dawn.

"Supper, My Lord Torchholder?" Hoxa inquired.

"Later, Hoxa."

"It is later. Lord Torchholder. Only you and the torturers are still awake. Your old quarters are empty now. I've taken the liberty of scrounging a new mattress. Lord Torchholder, whatever you're looking for, you won't find it if you don't get some sleep."

He felt his tiredness; the cramps in his legs and shoulders from too little movement and too much dampness; and remembered, with a nicker of shame, that he hadn't bathed in days and stank like a common workman. Limping, he followed his scrivener up to the sanctum where Hoxa had laid out fresh linen, a basin of faintly warm water and the somewhat soggy remnants of dinner. His glass windows, he noted, had been replaced with dirty parchment; his gilt goblets with wooden mugs and his Mygdonian carpet was gone. But she hadn't dared to touch his work table.

"Drink wine with me, Hoxa, and tell me how it feels to work with a disgraced priest."

Hoxa was a Sanctuary merchant's son, without pedigree or pretensions. He accepted the beaker, sniffing it cautiously. "The ladies and the other priests they were the ones to leave the Palace. It seems to me that you're not the one in disgrace-"

He would have said more, but there was a screeching outside the window. His mug bounced across the floor as the black bird sliced through the parchment with a beak and steel-shod talons that were more than equal to the task. "It's back," the young man gasped.

The raven-Molin felt it had begun its life as a raven, at least-carried messages between the Palace and a ramshackle dwelling by the White Foal. It had made its first journey long before the Beysib fleet set sail, offering the priest a precious artifact: the Necklace of Harmony hot off the god Ils's neck. Since then he had trained other ravens, but none was like this bird with its malevolent eyes and a glowing band around one leg to make it proof against all kinds of meddling and magic.

"Get the wine," Molin told Hoxa. "It has a message it would just as soon be rid of."

The scrivener retrieved his mug and refilled it for the bird, but he would go no closer to it than the far side of the work-table and shrank back to the corner while Molin lured the beast onto his arm. Unlike his other winged messengers who carried tiny caskets, this one spoke its message in a language only the proper receiver could understand: another property of the spelled ring. Molin whispered a reply and let it take flight again.

"The Lady of the White Foal wishes to see me, Hoxa."

"The Nisi witch?"

"No-the Other One."

"Will you go?"

"Yes. Find me the best cloak she left behind."

"Now? I'll send for Walegrin-"

"No, Hoxa. The invitation was clearly for one. I hadn't expected this-but I'm not surprised, all the same. If anything happens, you can tell Walegrin when he comes looking for me in the morning. Not before."

He shook out the cloak Hoxa offered him. It was black, lined with crimson-dyed fur, and appropriate for visiting Ischade.

Winter's night in Sanctuary belonged to the warring partisans, the forces of magic and, especially, the dead- none of which challenged Molin as he rode by. He felt eerie sensations as he neared her home: the eyes of her minions, their silent movements around him, her dark-woven wards lifting when he touched the flimsy iron gate.

"Leave the horse here. They don't like it closer."

Molin looked down into the ruined face of a man he had once known-a man long dead and yet very much alert and waiting. He hid his revulsion behind a benign, priestly demeanor, dismounted and let what remained of Stilcho lead the gelding away. When he looked back to the house the door was open.

"I have often wished to meet you," he greeted her, lifting her tiny hand to his lips after the custom of Rankan gentlemen.

"That is a lie."

"I have wished for many things I never truly wanted to have. My Lady."

She laughed, a rich sound that surrounded and enlarged her, and led him into her home.

Molin had prepared himself for many things since clasping the cloak around his shoulders. He had met Stilcho's one eye without flinching, but he swallowed when he entered her seraglio. In candlelight the cacophony of color and texture was shocking. Sunlight, if it ever reached this forsaken chamber, would have blinded a fish-eyed Beysib. Ischade shoved aside a ransom's worth of velvet, silk and embroidery to reveal an unremarkable chair.

"You had something to tell me, in person?" Molin began, sitting uneasily.

"Perhaps I wished to meet you, as well?" she teased. Then, seeing that he did not share her light-heartedness, spoke more seriously: "You have been seeking the Stepson Mage, Randal."

"He vanished more than a month ago. Stolen out of the Mageguild-as I suspect you know."

"Roxane holds him in thrall until he delivers her lover to her. He will die at Mid-Winter if he fails."

"What else-if he fails? One mage, or lover, more or less, could hardly matter to you."

"Let us say that regardless of who might fail-it is not to my interest that Roxane succeed. Let us say that it is not to my interest that you should fail, and fail you would if Roxane has her way."

"And it is certainly not to your interest that you, yourself, fail. So you think that we should, together, protect the mage, the lover and our own interests from the Nisibisi witch?" Molin said, striving to match her tone.

Ischade spun down to sit among her pillows. The hood of her cloak fell back to reveal a face that was beautiful, and human, in the candlelight. "Not together, no. In our separate ways-so none of us fail and Roxane does not succeed. You can understand the dangers of the preternatural around us, the danger to the children you shelter? The ways of magicians do not mix well with the ways of the god-choosers. Sanctuary grows bloated with power."

"And the powerful? If I am to protect those children, I'd be best without any magicians. You, Randal, or Roxane."

She laughed again. Molin saw that it was her eyes that laughed with death madness. "It is not my power that we're talking about. My power is born in Sanctuary itself-in life and death."

"Especially death."

"Priests! God-chooser, you think that because you have a ready buyer for your soul you are somehow better than those who must sell theirs piecemeal."

She was angry and her inky eyes threatened to engulf him. Molin rose unsteadily from the chair but faced her without blinking.