"You want us to what?" Crit's disbelieving snort made Tempus frown.

For Tempus, the mercenaries' hostel north of town evoked memories and ghosts as bloody as the rufous walls here, hung with weapons which had won so many days. Here, Tempus and Crit had plotted to flush a witch without thought to the consequences; here, before Crit's recruitment, Tempus had put together the core of the Stepsons and taken command of Abarsis the Slaughter Priest's Sacred Band.

Here, even farther in the past, he'd burned a scarf belonging to a woman who was his most foul curse-a scarf that had been returned to him, magically whole and full of portent; a scarf he wore again around his waist, under his armor and his chiton, as if all between his first days in Sanctuary and the present were but a bad dream.

"I want you to protect, not hunt, this Zip, for one week," Tempus repeated, then added: "If, at the end of that week, there's no cease-fire coalition, no improvement, you can go back to collecting blood-debts."

Crit was the brightest of the- Stepsons, a Syrese fighter who'd taken the Sacred Band oath more than once and was now paired with Straton, who in turn was entangled with Ischade, the vampire woman who lived down by Shambles Cross.

No one wanted the Sacred Band out of Sanctuary more than Crit. And no one knew Tempus's heart better, or the specifics of what had transpired while the Emperor was in Sanctuary.

Crit pulled on his long nose and stirred his posset with a finger, staring into it as if it were a witch's scrying bowl. "You're not. .." he said to the bowl, then looked up at Tempus. "You're not thinking about using that bunch of Zip's as some sort of Sanctuary defense force? Tell me you're not."

"I can't tell you that. Why should I? They're trained, gods know-well enough for this town, anyway. And they're tough-as tough as any we trained ought to be, which most of them are. Niko himself spent some time working with the PFLS leader. And it shouldn't matter to you who we leave in the barracks, as long as it's not Jubal. We can't have crime-lords running things-Theron was very explicit. It'll take locals to police this place, or us."

"That's what I mean: None of us will want to stay to oversee that bunch of murderers-not me, not any of mine. Promise me you won't do that to me again, leave me with an impossible job and an intractable lot of disappointed fighters. The Band wants to go with you. I won't be able to hold them here. And Sync's commandos won't take my orders."

It wasn't like Crit to make excuses, so these weren't excuses: These were points the Sacred Bander urgently wanted Tempus to consider.

"Fine. I agree. I just want to make sure that you understand that Zip is more useful alive than dead... for one week. And that whatever is between you and my daughter-or not," Tempus held up his hand to forestall Crit's denial, "she's entangled with Torchholder, who's Nisi-an enemy. We leave her here. We take Jihan and Randal if we have to drug them senseless to do it, and we get our tails out of here-yours, mine, Strat's, the Stepsons', the Third's-and that's that. We're clear of a degenerating situation. If we can leave some force or other to help Kadakithis, then we're lily-white."

"That's why you came here in person? To cobble together some stopgap that won't hold because Theron doesn't want it to? You know what he wants... he wants a tractable, stable Empire's anus. And with the magic screwed up, or downgraded, or whatever it is Randal's been trying to explain to me, he can get it by force of arms. I don't see a winning side for us in that kind of fight, and neither do you ... I hope."

Tempus grinned fondly at his second-in-command: "Get Straton disentangled, both from the witch and from his local responsibilities, and-on my explicit order-the two of you personally see that Zip manages to make his contacts. And that none of ours, the Third included, obstructs him. Then we're out of here, back to the capital with the best possible report under the circumstances. And, no, I didn't come down-country for this-I came down for Jihan's wedding: to stop it."

Randal was in the Mageguild, consorting with the nameless First Hazard, trying to make some headway casting a simple manipulative spell to turn the swampy ground between the complex's outer and inner walls to gardens, when Tempus came to call.

The First Hazard was harried, a Rankan of Randal's age who'd assumed the dignity just when it no longer was one: The Mageguild had held the populace in thrall by fear and power for time uncounted. Now that the Nisibisi power globes' destruction had made simple spells uncastable and love potions useless, now that sympathetic magic was no longer so, the Mageguild adepts feared not merely for their income.

When Sanctuary's denizens realized that no wards protected the haughty sorcerers, that spells paid for and tendered wouldn't work, that the Mageguild's collective foot had been lifted from llsig and Rankan neck alike, the Hazards' lives would be at risk.

So finding a way to render the grounds and walls malleable to magic was not simply an exercise: The Hazards might need an unbreachable fortress in which to hide from angry clients.

And Randal, whose magic was less affected than the local mages', who had a dream-forged kris at his hip and the protection of the very lord of dreams, had been called upon to aid his guild's relatives-though when the guild had been all-powerful, they had not liked the Stepsons' wizard nearly so well as now.

"It's not me, you know," Randal was trying to explain to the First Hazard, whose war name was Cat and who looked more like a Rankan noble than a practiced adept who'd earned such a name. "My magic, such as it is," Randal went on modestly, "is part curse and part dream-spawned-not dependent on whatever forces have been weakened in the south."

The Rankan adept looked at the Tysian wizard narrowly, then wondered aloud, "It's not some power play of Nisibisi origin, then? Nothing Torchholder, Roxane, and the rest of you northern wizards have dreamed up?"

Randal sneezed and wiped his freckled nose on his sleeve, ears reddening in embarrassment: "If I were so powerful as that, couldn't I rid myself of these damnable allergies?" His affliction was back, the one concomitant he'd experienced of the local adepts' distress: Pollen, birds, and especially furred creatures could bring him to a paroxysm of distress. Once he'd had a handkerchief which quelled them, and then he'd had a power which suppressed them. Now he had neither.

The First Hazard's impolitic retort was interrupted by an apprentice who burst in, saying: "My lords Hazard, a man has breached our wards, a stranger-that is, we think so, but he's coming-up the stairs, now, and he's got his horse with him..."

The handsome First Hazard hung his head, staring at his twisting fingers in his lap, and lied to the wide-eyed apprentice, "It's a summoning. We were expecting him. Go back to your work... . What is it, for dinner? We'll have guests, of course-man and... horse."

"Dinner? It's..." The apprentice was a witchling girl, thick-haired, short and comely, with a small waist that accentuated breast and hips despite her shapeless beginner's robe. Her face was rosy-cheeked and heart-shaped, and Randal wondered why he'd never noticed her, then banished the thought: He was betrothed, soon to be wed to Jihan, a source of power he never mentioned in this afflicted Mageguild.

The girl, composing herself with obvious effort, said, "Parrots, fleas, and squirrel bunions, m'lords Hazard-a stew, if it pleases."