"Then we'll have to surprise him. I'll prepare a carriage with the children in it. We'll bring it outside the Alekeep. I trust Stormbringer. Once Stealth sees those children he'll solve that problem for us."

Walegrin shook his head. "You and the children, perhaps. Bribes aside, the Alekeep is not a place for my regulars. You'd best go with your priests."

"My priests?" Molin erupted into laughter. "My priests, Walegrin? I have the service of a handful of acolytes and ancients-the only ones who didn't go out to Land's End with Rashan. I have greater standing with the Beysib Empire than with my own."

"Then take Beysib soldiers-it's time they started earning their keep in this town. We sweat bricks to protect them."

"I'll arrange something. You let me know when he's there."

So Molin moved among the men of Clan Burek, selecting six whose taste for adventure was, perhaps, greater than their sense. He was still outlining his plans when Hoxa announced that the borrowed carriage was ready. They roused both children, and the dancer, Seylalha, from their beds. The Beysib bravos had not exchanged their gaudy silks for the austere robes of Vashanka's priests before it was time to leave the Palace.

As predicted, Niko was drunk. Too drunk, Molin feared, to be of any use to anyone, much less Gyskouras and Arton. The priest tested him with the sort of pious cant guaranteed to get a rise out of any conscious Stepson. Wine had thickened Niko's tongue; he babbled about magic and death in a language far less intelligible than Arton's. There were rumors that Roxane had stolen Niko's manhood and bound the Stepson to her with webs of morbid sensuality. Molin, watching and listening, knew the Nisi witch had stolen something far more vital: maturity. With a nod of his head the Beysibs dragged the unprotesting Nikodemos to the carriage.

He left them alone, trusting Stormbringer's riddles and turning his attention to the frightened little man the Beysibs were interrogating with a shade too much vigor.

"What has he done?" the priest interceded.

"He's painted a picture."

"It's not a crime, Jennek, even if it doesn't reach your aesthetic standards." He took a step closer and recognized the painter who had unmasked an assassination conspiracy a few years back. "You're Lalo, aren't you?"

"It's not a crime-like you said, My Lord Hierarch-it's not a crime. I'm an artist, a painter of portraits. I paint the faces of the people I see to keep in practice-like a soldier in the arena."

Yet the Ilsigi painter was plainly afraid that he had committed a crime.

"Let me see your picture," Molin ordered.

Lalo broke free of the Beysibs, but not quickly enough. Molin's fingers latched onto the painter's neck. The three of them: Molin, Lalo and the portrait moved back into the carriage lantern-light just as a shaken, sober Niko emerged.

"Nikodemos," Molin said as he studied the unfinished, frayed canvas tacked onto a battered plank, "look at this."

The limner had painted Niko, but not as a drunken mercenary in a whitewashed tavern. No, the central figure of the painting wore an archaic style of armor and looked out with more life and will than Niko, himself, possessed. And yet that was not the strangest aspect of the painting.

Lalo had included two other figures, neither of which had set foot in the Alekeep. The first, staring down over Niko's shoulder, was a man with glowing blue eyes and dark-gold hair: a figure Molin remembered as Vashanka moments before the god vanished into the void between the planes. The second was a woman whose half-drawn presence, emerging from the dark background, overshadowed both man and god. Lalo had been interrupted but Molin recognized a Nisibisi witch like his mother had been, or as Roxane still was.

He was still staring when Niko dismissed the Ilsigi limner. The Stepson began to speak of Arton and Gysk-ouras as if he alone understood their nature. The children, Niko announced, needed to be educated in Bandara-an island a month's sailing from Sanctuary. When Molin inquired how, exactly, they were supposed to transport two Storm Children, whose moods were already moving stones, across an expanse of changeable ocean, the Stepson became irrational.

"All right, they're not going any further unless and until my partner Randal who's being held by Roxane, I hear tell-is returned to me unharmed. Then I'll ride up and ask Tempus what he wants to do-if anything-about the matter of the godchild you so cavalierly visited upon a town that had enough troubles without one. But one way or the other, the resolution isn't going to help you one whit. Get my meaning?"

Molin did. He also felt a tingling at the base of his spine. Witch-blood rushed to his eyes and fingertips. He saw Nikodemos as Roxane saw him: his maat, his strength and his emotions displayed like the Emperor's banquet table- and the priest knew witch-kind's hunger.

Niko, oblivious to Molin's turmoil, continued with his demands. He expected Molin to get Askelon's armor out of the Mageguild and to storm Roxane's abode with a company of warrior-priests.

"Are you sure that will be enough?" Molin inquired, his voice turned sweetly sarcastic by the witch-blood appetites.

"No. I will free Randal, but your priests will free me. I will be Roxane's champion-facing your priests-one man against many. You will arrange to capture me unharmed, but you'll make it look good. She must never suspect my allegiance. She must think it's all your doing: priest-power against witchery."

"We are ever eager to serve," the priest agreed.

"And the timing. It must be Mid-Winter's Eve at midnight-exactly. Timing is everything, Hierarch. You know that. When you're dealing with Death's Queen, timing is everything."

Molin nodded, his face a rigid mask of obedience lest his laughter emerge.

"And I'll need a place to stay afterwards. Wherever you've been keeping those children and their mother will do. It's time they had the proper influences around them."

It was all Molin could do to keep silent. Whatever maat gave a man, it wasn't a sense of irony. Stormbringer and the rest of his Storm-kind were leaning hard on this drunk mercenary. His picayune demands became prophecy the moment they slurred out of his mouth. His babble trapped Stormbringer in Sanctuary like a fly in a spider's web. Already Molin could feel the necessary strategies and tactics crowding into his thoughts. Success was inevitable -with one, unfortunate, shortcoming: Molin would become Roxane's personal enemy, and what she would do when she found out who had been his mother was beyond even a Storm God's guess.

Niko was still drunk. He bumped into the carriage as he headed back inside the Alekeep, still muttering orders. The Beysibs moved to haul him back.

"No, Jennek, let him go. He'll be ready when we need him again; his kind always is."

"But, Torchholder," Jennek objected. "He asks for the sun, the moon, and the stars and offers you nothing in return. That's not the bargain you described back at the Palace."

"And it's not the bargain he thinks it is, either."

The witch-hungers vanished as quickly as the Stepson. Molin grabbed the carriage door to keep himself from collapsing. The door swung open, Jennek lurched forward and Molin barely had the presence of mind to haul himself onto the bench opposite the children.

"To the Palace," he commanded.

Molin closed his eyes as the carriage rattled forward along the uneven streets. He was weak-kneed and exhilarated enough that he held his breath to stifle a fit of hysterical laughter. He had felt the naked power of his witch-blood heritage and, much as it had horrified him, he had mastered it. He was revelling in the wonder and simplicity of the strategies unfolding in his mind when Lalo's picture shifted under his arm. With a shiver, the priest reopened his eyes and pulled it away from Gys-kouras's candy-coated grasp. The child's eyes glowed more brightly than the lanterns.