Just south of Caravan Square and the bridge over the White Foal River, the Nisibisi witch had settled in.  She had leased the isolated complex - one three-storied "manor house" and its outbuildings - as much because its grounds extended to the White Foal's edge (rivers covered a multitude of disposal problems) as for its proximity to her business interests in the Wideway warehouse district and its convenience to her caravan master, who must visit the Square at all hours.

The caravan disguised their operations.  The drugs they'd smuggled in were no more pertinent to her purposes than the dilapidated manor at the end of the bridge's south-running cart track or the goods her men bought and stored in Wideway's most pilferproof holds, though they lubricated her dealings with the locals and eased her troubled nights.  It was all subterfuge, a web of lies, plausible lesser evils to which she could own if the Rankan army caught her or the palace marshal Tempus's Stepsons (mercenary shock troops and "special agents") rousted her minions and flunkies or even brought her up on charges.

Lately, a pair of Stepsons had been her particular concern.  And Jagat - her first lieutenant in espionage - was no less worried.  Even their Ilsig contact, the unflappable Lastel who had lived a dozen years in Sanctuary, cesspool of the Rankan empire into which all lesser sewers fed, and managed all that time to keep his dual identity as east side entrepreneur and Maze-dwelling barman uncompromised, was distrssed by the attention the pair of Stepsons were paying her.

She had thought her allies overcautious at first, when it seemed she would be here only long enough to see to the "death" of the Rankan war god, Vashanka.  Discrediting the state-cult's power icon was the purpose for which the Nisibisi witch, Roxane, had come down from Wizardwall's fastness, down from her shrouded keep of black marble on its unscalable peak, down among the mortal and the damned.  They were all in this together: the mages of Nisibis; Lacan Ajami (warlord of Mygdon and the known world north of Wizardwall) with whom they had made pact; and the whole Mygdonian Alliance which he controlled.

Or so her lord and lover had explained it when he decreed that Roxane must come.  She had not argued - one pays one's way among sorcerers; she had not worked hard for a decade nor faced danger in twice as long.  And if one did not serve Mygdon - only one - all would suffer.  The Alliance was too strong to thwart.  So she was here, drawn here with others fit for better, as if some power more than magical was whipping up a tropical storm to cleanse the land and using them to gild its eye.