SANCTUARY IS FOR LOVERS by Janet and Chris Morris

Down on Wideway by the docks, where a warehouse destroyed by fire was being rebuilt by fish-eyed Beysibs to house a glass-making enterprise as alien as the fish-folk who funded it, a big man in tattered trail gear sat alone on a mud colored horse and watched the storm roll in from the sea.

Thunderstorms in Sanctuary during summer weren't uncommon. This one, loud as a wounded bear and dark as a witch's eye, cleared the dockside of folk as he watched from shadows thrown by two overhanging roofs: Thunderstorms, these days in a revolution-wracked thieves' world suddenly bereft of the magic that had driven it, meant that a new and feral god called Stormbringer was abroad.

The big man, on the horse whose muddy disguise did nothing to hide its extraordinary girth or the intelligence in its eyes, cared nothing for the god behind the storm-if indeed the chaotic principle named Stormbringer could rightfully be called one.

The man cared more than he wished to admit for that god's daughter-for Jihan, called Froth Daughter, primal expression of Stormbringer's lust for wind and wave, who was betrothed to Randal, the Tysian wizard, and trapped here until the marriage either was consummated or renounced. He'd cared enough to return to Sanctuary, though it was doomed by imperial decree and the folly of its own selfish inhabitants- doomed to eradication at New Year's, when the grace period the new Rankan Emperor, Theron, had given Prince/Governor Kadakithis would have elapsed without order being restored here.

Then the Emperor's troops would come in a multitude- "Even though it be a soldier for every tramp, an arrow for every rebel, a legion if necessary," in Theron's words-and the thieves' world would be a fools' paradise no longer.

Pacifying refractory towns was a passion of Theron's. Pacifying wizard-ridden Sanctuary might once have been an impossibility, but not now: The feuding witches and the greedy priests had, between them, managed to destroy both Nisibisi Globes of Power before spring had sprung, leaving Sanctuary's magical fabric rent and its wards weakened.

At long last. Sanctuary had become what Tempus's fighters of the Sacred Band had long called it: well and truly damned. That this damnation had come from the greedy power plays of its low-lifes, rather than from the pillar of fire which had sprung from an uptown house to affront the heavens, didn't surprise Tempus.

The fact that no one in town save the weakened wizards and a handful of impotent priests knew the truth of it-how Sanctuary had destroyed its own manna and been deserted by the more prudent of its pantheon of gods-did surprise even the unflappable Riddler who now headed his horse into the storm and northeast toward the Maze.

He felt no twinge of nostalgia for the old days, when he'd ridden these streets alone as a palace Hell-Hound in Kada-kithis's employ, testing the prince's mettle for the Rankan interests who eventually chose Theron in Kadakithis's stead. But he felt a spark of regret when he passed the docks from which Nikodemos, his favorite among the mercenary fighters who followed him, had departed seaward, bound for the Ban-daran Islands with two godchildren who might have been Sanctuary's only hope.

As Niko might have been the only hope of a man who'd taken the name Tempus when he realized that his curse caused time itself to pass him by. But hopes were for Sanctuarites, the children of the damned, the dark Ilsigi whom Rankan and Beysib oppressors alike called Wrigglies, and for women touched with Nisibisi wizard blood who sucked purer blood in Sanctuary's steamy summer nights-for anyone but him.

Tempus was relieved of duty here, of all responsibility save what his conscience might impose. And it had brought him back here only to complete preparations under way since winter's end, when Theron had offered him a commission to explore the unknown east and immunity from prosecution to any he chose to hire for the venture.

So once again, and in the east during the trek to come, he would have his Stepsons, the Sacred Band of paired fighters and certain single mercenaries, and the 3rd Commando, Ranke's most infamous cadre, for company.

And if their imminent withdrawal from Sanctuary didn't signal and seal the town's doom, then Tempus hadn't outlived a hundred enemies and their legions. But that wasn't what made him hesitate, brought him down from the capital to ride once more through garbage-heaped streets where the lawless fought each other block by block in open revolt and man by man over matters of eye color and skin hue and heavenly affiliation.

He couldn't possibly care about Sanctuary's survival. The town itself was his enemy. Those who did not fear him for good reason, hated him on principle; those who did neither had left this dungheap long ago.

He could have left the withdrawal to Critias, the Stepsons' first officer, and to Sync, the 3rd Commando's line commander. He could have waited in imperial Ranke's palace with Theron, interviewing chart makers and seamen who told of dragons in the eastern sea with emerald eyes and of treasures in shoreline caves the like of which the Rankan Empire had never seen.

But neither Jihan nor her intended, Randal, understood that their betrothal was the result of a deal Tempus had made with Stormbringer, the Froth Daughter's father-a deal he'd struck in expediency and haste with a god known as a master trickster. Though deal it was, he was no longer certain it was prudent: He'd have use for both Jihan and Randal, the Stepsons' warrior-mage, on the eastward trek, and neither one could leave until the matter was decided.

So he was here, to yea or nay the thing, to make sure that Randal, a Sacred Band partner and one of his men, was not trapped in hell's own bowels against his will, and that Jihan's father did not blow storms of confusion in his daughter's eyes to keep her where He had chosen to abide.

He had come in disguise, as best he was able. His form was heroic in proportion and his face resembled that of a god once known in Sanctuary, but banished now: High-browed and honey-bearded, that face looked upon the gutted ways of the warehouse district with all the disgust three centuries and more of life could impart.

It was the face of Vashanka, now called the Hidden God, that Tempus wore tonight: Selfish and proud, full of war and death, it was the face of Sanctuary itself.

It made him feel at home here, as did the storm descending. In Sanctuary, self interest never flagged; his presence here upon pressing, private business, was proof of that.

Turning up Shadow Street toward the Maze, he saw deserted checkpoints of some faction who claimed everything from Lizard's Way to the Governor's warehouses as its own.

And because that faction was said to be Zip's Popular Front for the Liberation of Sanctuary (PFLS), as unpopular now as was Zip himself, Tempus reined the horse left on Red Clay Street to reconnoiter despite the gusts and darkening sky and thunderous promise of rain that made the Tros horse under him shiver and throw its muzzle skyward.

He'd never exchanged a civil word with Zip, whom some said had caused far too much of the springtime carnage- whom Crit said had attempted murder and tried to blame the affair on Tempus's own daughter, Kama.

And since the target of the murderous attack had been Straton, Critias's Sacred Band partner, the pair had teams out night and day, even in the midst of the Stepsons' preparations to withdraw-teams seeking to even the score with Zip's eyes and tongue: an old Band prescription for curing traitors.