Grudgingly the women agreed.

'Then what will we do?' ^

'Conduct your affairs as always. They'll come to the Aphrodisia first to collect the taxes, just as they came here first to announce it. Keep the back doors open and I'll send word. If they can't collect from me, they won't bother you.'

There was mumbled disagreement, but no one dared to look straight at Myrtis and argue the point of her power on the Street. Seated in her high-backed chair, Myrtis smiled contentedly. She had yet to determine the precise solution, but the house madams of the Street of Red Lanterns controlled much of the gold within Sanctuary, and she had just confirmed her control of them.

They left her parlour quickly after the decision was rendered. If the Street was to function as usual, they all had work to do. She had work to do. The Hell Hounds would not return for three days. In that time, the Aphrodisia House would earn far more than those three hundred gold pieces the empire wanted, and would spend only slightly less than that amount to maintain itself. Myrtis opened the ledger, making new notations in a clear, educated hand. The household sensed that order had been restored at least temporarily, and one by one they filed into the parlour to report their earnings or debts.

It was well into afternoon and Ambutta had not returned from placing her message behind a loose stone in the wall behind the altar at the temple of Ils, For a moment, Myrtis worried about the girl. The streets of Sanctuary were never truly safe, and perhaps Ambutta no longer seemed as childlike to all eyes. There was always an element of risk. Twice before girls had been lost in the streets, and not even Lythande's magic could find them again.

Myrtis put such thoughts aside and ate dinner alone in her parlour. She had thought a bribe or offer of free privileges might still be the way out of her problem with the taxes. Prince Kada-kithis was probably sincere, though, in his determination to make Sanctuary the ideal city of his adviser's philosophies while the capital city of the empire displayed many of the same excesses that Sanctuary did. The young prince had a wife and concubines with whom he was supposedly well pleased. There had never been any suspicion that he might partake of the delights of the Street himself. And as for the Hell Hounds, their first visit had been to announce the taxes.

The elite guard were men made of a finer fibre than most of the soldiers or fighters Sanctuary had known. On reflection, Myrtis doubted that they could be bought or bribed, and knew for certain that they would never relent in their persecution of the Street if the first offer did not succeed in converting them.

It was gathering dusk. The girls could be heard throughout the house, giggling as they prepared for the evening. Myrtis kept no one who showed no aptitude or enjoyment of the profession. Let the other houses bind their girls with poverty or drugs; the Aphrodisia House was the pinnacle of ambition for the working girls of the Street.

'I got your message.' A soft voice called from the drapery-hung doorway near her bed.

'1 was beginning to get worried. My girl has not returned.'

Lythande walked to her side, draping an arm about her shoulders and taking hold of her hand.

'I've heard the rumours in the streets. The new regime has chosen its next enemy, it would seem. What is the truth of their demands?'

'They intend to levy a tax of ten gold pieces on every woman living on the Street.'

Lythande's habitual smile faded, and the blue star tattooed forehead wrinkled into a frown. 'Will you be able to pay that?'

'The intent is not that we pay, but that the Street be closed, and that we be sent up to the empire. If 1 pay it once, they'll keep on levying it until I can't pay.'

'You could close the house ...'

'Never!' Myrtis pulled her hands away. 'The Aphrodisia House is mine. I was running this house when the Rankan Empire was a collection of half-naked barbaric tribes!'

'But they aren't any longer,' Lythande reminded her gently. 'And the Hell Hounds - if not the prince - are making substantial changes in all our lives.'

'They won't interfere with magic, will they?'

Myrtis's concern for Lythande briefly overshadowed her fears for the Aphrodisia House. The magician's thin-lipped smile returned.

'For now it is doubtful. There are men in Ranke who have the ability to affect us directly, but they have not followed the prince to Sanctuary, and I do not know if he could command their loyalty.'

Myrtis stood up. She walked to the leaded-glass window, with its thick, obscuring panes which revealed movement on the Street but very little else. '

'I'll need your help, if it's available,' she said without facing Lythande.

'What can I do?'

'In the past you've prepared a drug for me from a qualis-berry extract. I recall you said it was quite difficult to mix - but I should like enough for two people when it's mixed with pure qualis liqueur.'

'Delicate and precise, but not particularly difficult. It is very subtle. Are you sure you will only need enough to serve two?'

'Yes, Zaibar and myself. I agree; the drug must be subtle.'

'You must be very certain of your methods, then.'

'Of some things, at least. The Street of Red Lanterns does not lie outside the walls of Sanctuary by accident - you know that. The Hell Hounds and their prince have much more to lose by hindering us than by letting the Street exist in peace. If our past purpose were not enough to convince them, then surely the fact that much of the city's gold passes through my hands every year will matter.

'I will use the qualis-berry love potion to open Zaibar's eyes to reality, not to close them.'

'I can have it for you perhaps by tomorrow evening, but more likely the day after. Many of the traders and smugglers of the bazaar are no longer well supplied with the ingredients I will need, but I can investigate other sources. When the Hell Hounds drove the smugglers into the Swamp of Night Secrets, many honest men suffered.'

Myrtis's eyes narrowed, she released the drapery she had clutched.

'And if the Street of Red Lanterns wasn't here ... The mongers and merchants, and even the smugglers, might not want to admit it, but without us to provide them with their gold while "respectable" people offer promises, they would suffer even more than they do now.'

There was a gentle knocking on the door. Lythande stepped back into the shadows of the room. Ambutta entered, a large bruise visible on the side of her face.

'The men have begun to arrive, Madame Myrtis. Will you collect their money, or shall I take the ledger downstairs?'

'I shall attend to them. Send them up to me and, Ambutta -'

She stopped the girl as she headed out of the parlour. 'Go to the kitchen and find out how many days we could go without buying anything from any of the tradesmen.'

'Yes, madame.'

The room was suddenly empty, except for Myrtis. Only a slight rippling of the wall tapestries showed where Lythande had opened a concealed panel and disappeared into the secret passages of the Aphrodisia House. Myrtis had not expected the magician to stay, but despite all their years together, the magician's sudden comings and goings still unsettled her. Standing in front of a full-length mirror, Myrtis rearranged the pearl-and-gold pins in her hair, rubbed scented oils into her skin, and greeted the first gentleman-caller as if the day had been no different from any other.

Word of the taxation campaign against the Street had spread through the city much as Lythande had observed. The result was that many of their frequent guests and visitors came to the house to pay their last respects to an entertainment that they openly expected would be gone in a very short time. Myrtis smiled at each of them as they arrived, accepted their money, and asked their second choice of the girls before assuring them that the Aphrodisia House would never close its doors.