The gross man spoke quickly, a whine of excuses: the woman had 'disappeared ... taken by Askelon, the very lord of dreams. All at the Mageguild's fete where the god was vanquished saw it. You need not take my word - witnesses are legion.'
She fixed him with her pale stare. Ilsigs were called Wrigglies, and Lastel's craven self was a good example why. She felt disgust and stared longer.
The man before her dropped his eyes, mumbling that their agreement had not hinged on the mage-killer Cime, that he was doing more than his share as it was, for little enough profit, that the risks were too high.
And to prove to her he was still her creature, he warned her again of the Stepsons: 'That pair of Whoresons Tempus sicced on you should concern us, not money - which neither of us will be alive to spend if -' One of the slaves cried out, whether in pleasure or pain Roxane could not be certain; Lastel did not even look up, but continued:'... Tempus finds out we've thirty stone of krrf in -'
She interrupted him, not letting him name the hiding place. 'Then do this that I ask of you, without question. We will be rid of the problem they cause, thereafter, and have our own sources, who'll tell us what Tempus does and does not know.'
A slave serving mulled wine approached, and both took electrum goblets. For Roxane, the liquor was an advantage: looking into its depths, she could see what few cogent thoughts ran through the fat drug dealer's mind.
He thought of her, and she saw her own beauty: wizard hair like ebony and wavy; her sanguine skin like velvet: he dreamed her naked, with his dogs. She cast a curse without word or effort, refiexively, giving him a social disease no Sanctuary mage or barber-surgeon could cure, complete with running sores upon lips and member, and a virus in control of it which buried itself in the brainstem and came out when it chose. She hardly took note of it; it was a small show of temper, like for like: let him exhibit the condition of his soul, she had decreed.
To banish her leggy nakedness from the surface of her wine, she said straight out; 'You know the other bar owners. The Alekeep's proprietor has a girl about to graduate from school. Arrange to host her party, let it be known that you will sell those children krrf - Tamzen is the child I mean. Then have your flunky lead her down to Shambles Cross. Leave them there - up to half a dozen youngsters, it may be - lost in the drug and the slum.'
'That will tame two vicious Stepsons? You do know the men I mean? Janni? And Stealth? They bugger each other, Stepsons. Girls are beside the point. And Stealth - he's a/wzzbuster- I've seen him with no woman old enough for breasts. Surely -'
'Surely,' she cut in smoothly, 'you don't want to know more than that - in case it goes awry. Protection in these matters lies in ignorance.' She would not tell him more - not that Stealth, called Nikodemos, had come out of Azehur, where he'd earned his war name and worked his way towards Syr in search of a Tros horse via Mygdonia, hiring on as a caravan guard and general roustabout, or that a dispute over a consignment lost to mountain bandits had made him bond-servant for a year to a Nisibisi mage - her lover-lord. There was a string on Nikodemos, ready to be pulled.
And when he felt it, it would be too late, and she would be at the end of it.
Tempus had allowed Niko to breed his sorrel mare to his own Tros stallion to quell mutters among knowledgeable Stepsons that assigning Niko and Janni to hazardous duty in the town was their commander's way of punishing the slate haired fighter who had declined Tempus's offered pairbond in favour of Janni's and had subsequently quit their ranks.
Now the mare was pregnant and Tempus was curious as to what kind of foal the union might produce, but rumours of foul play still abounded.
Critias, Tempus's second in command, had paused in his dour report and now stirred his posset of cooling wine and barley and goat's cheese with a finger, then wiped the finger on his bossed cuirass, burnished from years of use. They were meeting in the mercenaries' guild hostel, in its common room, dark as congealing blood and safe as a grave, where Tempus had bade the veteran mercenary lodge - an operations officer charged with secret actions could be no part of the Stepsons' barracks cohort. They met covertly, on occasion; most times, coded messages brought by unwitting couriers were enough.
Crit, too, it seemed, thought Tempus wrong in sending Janni, a guileless cavalryman, and Niko, the youngest of the Stepsons, to spy upon the witch: clandestine schemes were Crit's province, and Tempus had usurped, overstepped the bounds of their agreement. Tempus had allowed that Crit might take over management of the fielded team and Crit had grunted wryly, saying he'd run them but not take the blame if they lost both men to the witch's wiles.
Tempus had agreed with the pleasant-looking Syrese agent and they had gone on to other business: Prince/Governor Kadakithis was insistent upon contacting Jubal, the slaver whose estate the Stepsons sacked and made their home. 'But when we had the black bastard, you said to let him crawl away.'
'Kadakithis expressed no interest.' Tempus shrugged. 'He has changed his mind, perhaps in light of the appearance of these mysterious death squads your people haven't been able to identify or apprehend. If your teams can't deliver Jubal or turn up a hawkmask who is in contact with him, I'll find another way.'
'Ischade, the vampire woman who lives in Shambles Cross, is still our best hope. We've sent slave-bait to her and lost it. Like a canny carp, she takes the bait and leaves the hook.' Crit's lips were pursed as if his wine had turned to vinegar; his patrician nose drew down with his frown. He ran a hand through his short, feathery hair. 'And our joint venture with the Rankan garrison is impeding rather than aiding success. Army Intelligence is a contradiction in terms, like the Mygdonian Alliance or the Sanctuary pacification programme. The cutthroats I've got on our payroll are sure the god is dead and all the Rankans soon to follow. The witch - or some witch - floats rumours of Mygdonian liberators and Ilsig freedom and the gullible believe. That snotty thief you befriended is either an enemy agent or a pawn ofNisibisi propaganda - telling everyone that he's been told by the Ilsig gods themselves that Vashanka was routed ... I'd like to silence him permanently.' Crit's eyes met Tempus's then, and held.
'No,' he replied, to all of it, then added: 'Gods don't die; men die. Boys die in multitudes. The thief, Shadowspawn, is no threat to us, just misguided, semi literate, and vain, like all boys. Bring me a conduit to Jubal, or the slaver himself. Contact Niko and have him report - if the witch needs a lesson, I myself will undertake to teach it. And keep your watch upon the fish-eyed folk from the ships -I'm not sure yet that they're as harmless as they seem.'
Having given Crit enough to do to keep his mind off the rumours of the god Vashanka's troubles - and hence, his own - he rose to leave. 'Some results, by week's end, would be welcome.' The officer toasted him cynically as Tempus walked away.
Outside, his Tros horse whinnied joyfully. He stroked its mist-dappled neck and felt the sweat there. The weather was close, an early heatwave as unwelcome as the late frosts which had frozen the winter crops a week before their harvest and killed the young sets just planted in anticipation of a bounteous fall.
He mounted up and headed south by the granaries towards the palace's north wall where a gate nowhere as peopled or public as the Gate of the Gods was set into the wall by the cisterns. He would talk to Prince Kitty-Cat, then tour the Maze on his way home to the barracks.
But the prince wasn't receiving, and Tempus's mood was ill -just as well; he had been going to confront the young popinjay, as once or twice a month he was sure he must do, without courtesy or appropriate deference. If Kadakithis was holed up in conference with the blond-haired, fish-eyed folk from the ships and had not called upon him to join them, then it was not surprising: since the gods had battled in the sky above the Mageguild, all things had become confused, worse had come to worst, and Tempus's curse had fallen on him once again with its full force.
Perhaps the god was dead - certainly, Vashanka's voice in his ear was absent. He'd gone out raping once or twice to see if the Lord of Pillage could be roused to take part in Hi
s favourite sport. But the god had not rustled around in his head since New Year's day; the resultant fear of harm to those who loved him by the curse that denied him love had made a solitary man withdraw even further into himself; only the Froth Daughter Jihan, hardly human, though woman in form, kept him company now.
And that, as much as anything, irked the Stepsons. Theirs was a closed fraternity, open only to the paired lovers of the Sacred Band and distinguished single mercenaries culled from a score of nations and diverted, by Tempus's service and Kitty-Cat's gold, from the northern insurrection they'd drifted through Sanctuary en route to join.
He, too, ached to war, to fight a declared enemy, to lead his cohort north. But there was his word to a Rankan faction to do his best for a petty prince, and there was this thrice-cursed fleet of merchant warriors come to harbour talking 'peaceful trade' while their vessels rode too low in the water to be filled with grain or cloth or spices - if not barter, his instinct told him, the Burek faction of Beysib would settle for conquest.
He was past caring; things in Sanctuary were too confused for one man, even one near-immortal, god-ridden avatar of a man, to set aright. He would take Jihan and go north, with or without the Stepsons - his accursed presence among them and the love they bore him would kill them if he let it continue: if the god was truly gone, then he must follow. Beyond Sanctuary's borders, other Storm Gods held sway, other names were hallowed. The primal Lord Storm (Enlil), whom Niko venerated, had heard a petition from Tempus for a clearing of his path and his heart: he wanted to know what status his life, his curse, and his god-bond had, these days. He awaited only a sign.
Once, long ago, when he went abroad as a philosopher and sought a calmer life in a calmer world, he had said that to gods all things are beautiful and good and just, but men have supposed some things to be unjust, others just. If the god had died, or been banished, though it didn't seem that this could be so, then it was meet that this occurred. But those who thought it so did not realize that one could not escape the intelligible light: the notice of that which never sets: the apprehension of the elder gods. So he had asked, and so he waited.
He had no doubt that the answer would be forthcoming, as he had no doubt that he would not mistake it when it came.
On his way to the Maze he brooded over his curse, which kept him unloved by the living and spurned by any he favoured if they be mortal. In heaven he had a brace of lovers, ghosts like the original Stepson, Abarsis. But to heaven he could not repair: his flesh regenerated itself immemorially; to make sure this was still the case, last night he had gone to the river and slit both wrists. By the time he'd counted to fifty the blood had ceased to flow and healing had begun. That gift of healing - if gift it was - still remained his, and since it was god-given, some power more than mortal 'loved' him still.
It was whim that made him stop by the weapons shop the mercenaries favoured. Three horses tethered out front were known to him; one was Niko's stallion, a big black with points like rust and a jughead on thickening neck perpetually sweatbanded with sheepskin to keep its jowls modest. The horse, as mean as it was ugly, snorted a challenge to Tempus's Tros - the black resented that the Tros had climbed Niko's mare.
He tethered it at the far end of the line and went inside, among the crossbows, the flying wings, the steel and wooden quarrels and the swords.
Only a woman sat behind the counter, pulchritudinous and vain, her neck hung with a wealth of baubles, her flesh perfumed. She knew him, and in seconds his nose detected acrid, nervous sweat and the defensive musk a woman can exude.
'Marc's out with the boys in back, sighting-in the high-torque bows. Shall I get him. Lord Marshal? Or may I help you? What's here's yours, my lord, on trial or as our gift -' Her arm spread wide, bangles tinkling, indicating the racked weapons.
'I'll take a look out back. Madam; don't disturb yourself.'
She settled back, not calm, but bidden to remain and obedient.
In the ochre-walled yard ten men were gathered behind the log fence that marked the range; a hundred yards away three oxhides had been fastened to the encircling wall, targets painted red upon them; between the hides, three cuirasses of four-ply hardened leather armoured with bronze plates were propped and filled with straw.
The smith was down on his knees, a crossbow fixed in a vice with its owner hovering close by. The smith hammered the sights twice more, put down his file, grunted and said, 'You try it, Straton; it should shoot true. I got a hand breadth group with it this morning; it's your eye I've got to match...'
The large-headed, raw-boned smith, sporting a beard which evened a rough complexion, rose with exaggerated effort and turned to another customer, just stepping up to the firing line. 'No, Stealth, not like that, or, if you must, I'll change the tension -' Marc moved in, telling Niko to throw the bow up to his shoulder and fire from there, then saw Tempus and left the group, hands spreading on his apron.
Bolts spat and thunked from five shooters when the morning's range officer hollered 'Clear' and 'Fire', then 'Hold', so that all could go to the wall to check their aim and the depths to which the shafts had sunk.
Shaking his head, the smith confided: 'Straton's got a problem I can't solve. I've had it truly sighted - perfect for me - three times, but when he shoots, it's as if he's aiming two feet low.'
'For the bow, the name is life, but the work is death. In combat it will shoot true for him; here, he's worried how they judge his prowess. He's not thinking enough of his weapon, too much of his friends.'
The smith's keen eyes shifted; he rubbed his smile with a greasy hand. 'Aye, and that's the truth. And for you. Lord Tempus? We've the new hard-steel, though why they're all so hot to pay twice the price when men're soft as clay and even wood will pierce the boldest belly, I can't say.'
'No steel, just a case of iron-tipped short-flights, when you can.'
'I'll select them myself. Come and watch them, now? We'll see what their nerve's like, if you call score ...'
'A moment or two. Marc. Go back to your work, I'll sniff around on my own.'
And so he approached Niko, on pretence of admiring the Stepson's new bow, and saw the shadowed eyes, blank as ever but veiled like the beginning beard that masked his jaw: 'How goes it, Niko? Has your maat returned to you?'
'Not likely,' the young fighter, cranking the spring and lever so a bolt notched, said and triggered the quarrel which whispered straight and true to centre his target. 'Did Crit send you? I'm fine, commander. He worries too much. We can handle her, no matter how it seems. It's just time we need ... she's suspicious, wants us to prove our faith. Shall I, by whatever means?'
'Another week on this is all I can give you. Use discretion, your judgment's fine with me. What you think she's worth, she's worth. If Critias questions that, your orders came from me and you may tell him so.'
'I will, and with pleasure. I'm not his to wetnurse; he can't keep that in his head.'
'And Janni?'
'It's hard on him, pretending to be ... what we're pretending to be. The men talk to him about coming back out to the barracks, about forgetting what's past and resuming his duties. But we'll weather it. He's man enough.'
Niko's hazel eyes flicked back and forth, judging the other men: who watched; who pretended he did not, but listened hard. He loosed another bolt, a third, and said quietly that he had to collect his flights. Tempus eased away, heard the range officer call 'Clear' and watched Niko go retrieve his grouped quarrels.
If this one could not breach the witch's defences, then she was unbreachable.
Content, he left then, and found Jihan, his de facto right-side partner, waiting astride his other Tros horse, her more than human strength and beauty brightening Smith Street's ramshackle facade as if real gold lay beside fool's gold in a dusty pan.
Though one of the matters estranging him from his Stepsons was his pairing with this foreign 'woman', only Niko knew her to be the daughter of a power who spawned all contentious gods and even the concept of divinit
y; he felt the cool her flesh gave off, cutting the midday heat like wind from a snowcapped peak.
'Life to you, Tempus.' Her voice was thick as ale, and he realized he was thirsty. Promise Park and the Alekeep, an east-side establishment considered upper class by those who could tell classes of Ilsigs, were right around the corner, a block up the Street of Gold from where they met. He proposed to take her there for lunch. She was delighted - all things mortal were new to her; the whole business of being in flesh and attending to it was yet novel. A novice at life, Jihan was hungry for the whole of it.
For him, she served a special purpose: her loveplay was rough and her constitution hardier than his Tros horses - he could not couple gently; with her, he did not inflict permanent harm on his partner; she was bom of violence inchoate and savoured what would kill or cripple mortals.
At the Alekeep, they were welcome. They talked in a back and private room of the god's absence and what could be made of it and the owner served them himself, an avuncular sort still grateful that Tempus's men had kept his daughters safe when wizard weather roamed the streets. 'My girl's graduating school today. Lord Marshal - my youngest. We've a fete set and you and your companion would be most welcome guests.'
Jihan touched his arm as he began to decline, her stormy eyes flecked red and glowing.
'... ah, perhaps we will drop by, then, if business permits.'
But they didn't, having found pressing matters of lust to attend to, and all things that happened then might have been avoided if they hadn't been out of touch with the Stepsons, unreachable down by the creek that ran north of the barracks when sorcery met machination and all things went awry.
On their way to work, Niko and Janni stopped at the Vulgar Unicorn to wait for the moon to rise. The moon would be full this evening, a blessing since anonymous death squads roamed the town -whether they were Rankan army regulars, Jubal's scattered hawk-masks, fish-eyed Beysib spoilers, or Nisibisi assassins, none could say.
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