by Janet Morris
"Convene your unit? In Mygdon?"
She shrugged. "I'm going to need an answer before we discuss details. Let me assure you that the 3rd can do what we say it can do, and would be honored to work with you again. After all, it's a sort of poetic necessity, having you along: no one wins without you, do they?"
"That's a myth."
"Or coincidence. But having coincidence on our side couldn't be bad. Oh, yes, one thing that we didn't want to write down, although it might already have been solved…"
"Go on."
"A man named Grillo, here, is no longer trustworthy. We feel it's time to retire him without honors."
"You'll have to do that yourself. Stepsons don't do Rankan dirty work. As you say, it's not in the message." He held it out, letting its feathered edge catch fire from the flame of the oil lamp.
"Is that an acceptance of the commission? And me?"
"Twice what we've been offered, and whatever spoils we happen upon during any battles we walk into—but no territory. We're mercenaries, not a country or part of any Rankan expansion cadre. You may stay until we hear from them that my terms have been accepted, on one condition."
"What's that?" Kama's eyes were sharp and clear, and for some reason, he didn't doubt that she could convene the 3rd, be it in hell itself.
"That you don't wear out Crit. He's got a right-side partner and he's my first officer. Find someone else."
She waved her hand, "Condition accepted," then extended it. "Let me say I'm reasonably certain that your terms will be met, and thus I'm personally gratified that we'll be working together. I've been looking forward to this for a long time."
"Why is that?" he asked politely, expecting her to respond that it had to do with cadre integrity and the history of the 3rd Commando.
"Because," Kama responded with just the hint of a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth, "unless my mother was in error, you're my father."
* * *
Before the Stepsons had joined forces with Bashir's guerrillas and taken Wizardwall, there had been nothing between Tyse and her northern enemies but the four Rankan garrisons at the town's compass points. Tyse had been—and still was, in Crit's estimation—one of the most fragile buffer states of empire.
As dawn broke and he and Straton rode past the gate guards into the free zone, Crit's eyes strayed to the peaks of Wizardwall, brooding like angry gods over the town.
They were riding toward the altar pits where a score of gods from nearly as many lands were worshiped. They could have avoided the Rankan sentries who officiated at the break in the free-zone wall, reciting their rote disclaimers that law in Tyse stopped at those ruined gates, by slipping inside through the tunnels; Grillo's specials and Bashir's commandos often did. But Crit had established a drop point in the free zone, one of half a dozen he'd put together for his street men and his plainclothes agents. As task force leader, he'd established a network of infiltrators and turncoats and cheaply bought spies: this was a routine part of his job.
It was information he was after this morning, dressed in Tysian homespuns on a nondescript horse, looking for a horse trader named Palapot whom Grillo had been at pains to make sure he and Strat didn't have a chance to interrogate.
"Seh, Crit, I don't like it." Straton had mastered enough Nisi to be fluent in its invective, curses, and taboo nouns; this one meant offal. They spoke in the polyglot mercenary argot, gleaned from worldwide campaigning, which if overheard was unlikely to be understood by the refugees who traded rags and family jewels and favors for winter wheat and goat's-hair tents. The refugees thieved from one another, every factional bloodfeud and hatred—brought with them from obliterated homelands now part of Mygdonia—alive and well here so that beyond the altar pits mass graves grew like an infestation of moles, and crematoria had sprung up to handle the overflow.
"What would Palapot be doing in here?" Strat shifted in his saddle; their horses, reins flapping loose, picked their way slowly through the human detritus. "There's no business for him here, not a customer for the kind of horseflesh he sells."
Crit didn't think his street man, who'd sighted Palapot coming out of Grillo's office in the Lanes behind Embassy Row just before sunrise, could have been mistaken. He said so. And he admitted to Straton that he didn't like it either. "Let's quit and go south and hire on as retinue guards in the emperor's palace. Or go back to Sanctuary and chase third-rate criminals. The whores there shake down quicker, and that vampire lady you've got a crush on would just love to see you again."
"Bastard." No Stepson, especially Straton, missed Sanctuary, southernmost outpost of empire; they had a stake in matters here: they had the Hidden Valley horse farm and respected allies in Free Nisibis. They had the Riddler, under whose command each was honored to serve; they had one another and the integrity of the Sacred Band to think of. "This isn't to be taken lightly," Strat complained. "While you were off twiddling that twat in man's clothing, I was working. That dart's steeped in Mygdonian poison and that fellow who took it in the neck was somebody's very special envoy—hard as nails and with weapons in his kit the likes of which I've not seen since I was in the capital. And you know it."
"Want any of it?" Crit reined his horse left through a break in low black tents where those who vended rice and onions were just building their morning fires. Up the way a knot of children huddled in the packed-dirt street, fighting over scraps or throwing bones to double the take from a night of pilfering. Keeping the waifs inside was the hardest, and saddest, part of free-zone duty: they died in the family feuds or starved if their parents did; they were worked to death by the orphans' gang bosses or sold off, if they were just a bit luckier or sturdier, by slavers who came up out of the tunnels on moonless nights and hustled them away, drugged and senseless, to fill coffles headed west to Azehur or east to Syr.
When Strat responded that assassin's garrots and incendiary kits weren't exactly his style, Crit had forgotten his teasing offer. There was something about this knot of children that seemed wrong: it didn't disperse as they rode up; it drew tighter, as if protecting something.
"Let's take a look." He kneed his horse. The filthy, big-eyed urchins should have scattered to all sides by now. Though he and Strat weren't uniformed, they had weapons and horses and were adult strangers, therefore enemies.
"Doesn't feel right," said Straton, urging his sorrel into a slow, crowd-dispersing canter. Still the children held their ground.
"It's not right," Crit confirmed, as they bore down, and to either side, veiled women gathered daughters kneading flatbread or sons hauling panniers of water and scuttled with them into tents behind the flimsy stalls.
For some reason, all the night's anomalies ran through Grit's head: the murder at the Dark Horse, Grillo's interest, the woman who'd come seeking the Riddler. Then he had to stop his horse or trample the ring of little belligerents before them. Strat swore softly; Crit saw him slide his crossbow from his saddle and lever a bolt to ready. "Easy," Crit said under his breath, and leaned forward, arms on his pommel, hands obviously empty.
The foremost child was well into his teens, with a. bristly young chin defiantly outthrust, and arms folded. His garb was free-zone nondescript, his physiognomy essentially northern—broad face, almond eyes, flat nose: no wizard blood in this one. He might have been Machadi, or of Nisibisi peasant stock, or from a subjugated buffer state of Mygdon; his hair was mousy, full of straw or dirt or dung. Beside him was a girl who might have been his sister or his wife: she was pregnant, perhaps thirteen. On his other side was a snaggletoothed youth with a dying eye; beyond, Crit saw one with a short leg, another disfigured by fire. Not slaver's meat, any of these: the hale one was too old, the others too unlucky. All were doomed to the free zone.
Crit felt like the villain they obviously thought him, but said, "What's the attraction? Clear out of here, pud, and take your classmates with you," in Nisi as he told his horse with his knees to move slowly forward. The children to the rear began to drift away but those in
the forefront held their ground. Behind him, Crit heard Strat's unnecessary warning: these desperate youngsters weren't harmless.
He knew that. All their eyes were on their leader, who hadn't answered Grit's question or said a word, just stood with legs widespread and eyes unblinking as if Crit, his big bay, and Straton with crossbow behind were invisible.
Then Grit's mount crowded the youth and the boy either had to move or be moved by the horse. A scabbed hand reached out toward the horse's bridle; the beast flattened its ears, tossed its head, and snapped at the boy in warning.
"Rankan scumsucker!" the youth said then in a loud voice. His gang froze in mid-retreat as their leader glared around at them; he took the hand of the pregnant girl beside him. "This your handiwork, bully-boy?" the youth said. "Maybe he didn't drop his pants fast enough? Or maybe he wouldn't play along with—"
Crit used his horse to break the handhold between boy and girl and knock the boy aside. The youth sprawled on the ground; unfortunately, the pregnant girl fell, too.
He heard Strat's pornographic warning to all concerned to stay very still, then he saw what the group had been protecting: one of their number, this one pale-haired, askew in his own vomit, gray upper-class eyes staring blankly at the rising sun. Dismounting with little thought of the vicious children all around him, Crit knelt beside the corpse. The boy had died on his face; they'd turned him over. The smell of vomit, blood, and defecation was strong, this close, overwhelming the background stench of the free zone. The slain youth had once had a pretty face, arch features, and he wore a better grade of clothing, which his winsome looks had doubtless helped provide. He had bled to death; he was nearly disemboweled. It was a particularly agonizing way to die, and a slow one.
Crit could see a brownish trail where the boy had pulled himself along the packed clay of the free-zone street for some little distance. Patting him down for evidence, Crit found nothing—not a wallet, a pouch or a coin—then turned to the circle of children around him. "Your friend, let's have what you took from him."
Half of them were gone, he realized. But the boy who'd stood up to him had helped the girl to her feet despite Strat's bow trained on him, and now looked Crit straight in the eye. "If I was you, sirrah, I'd get on my horse and get my professional killer's ass out of here. We don't want more truck with your sort. We ain't nobody's—" He blinked and Crit realized that, hard as he was, the sparkle in those brown eyes was not simply from anger; tears welled there.
"More? I don't know what you're talking about, but you're making me want to find out. We don't know you; we don't know him. Maybe you'll come along, sonny, and tell us just whose business you've been doing, to get one of you killed like this—" Crit made a sign with his right hand; Strat moved his horse up.
The youth looked nervously between them, realized he'd said more than he should have, then gave his own handsign. The others scattered, and as they did, he broke for it. Straton collared him with one lunge of horse and held the urchin suspended by his tunic, feet dangling while his arms flailed.
His girl, clutching her belly, sank down next to the dead boy and began to weep, then to beg for mercy for her friend, her hand extended toward Crit. "Here, here ! Take it; it's all we's got. He's a good boy, let 'im go, let 'im go… We don't know nothin' 'bout what Tip, here, died for, can't read none of this…"
In her hand, Crit realized, she had a crumpled parchment. He took it. "What else? Whose boy was this?"
"Don't say nothin'!" the boy Strat held called out.
Crit didn't look over his shoulder. He toed the dead boy. "Whose?"
"Worked… sometimes, now and again, for the specials, is all. Carrying messages… and like that." She ran her hand under her nose. "Please, sir, that there's my baby's father. We don't hurt nobody."
"Right. What else was on him?" Her eyes shifted. There had been money, then. "Just give me the papers, keep the coins." From under her dress she pulled a leather security belt, a wallet. From behind, Crit heard the boy's muffled objections, Straton's curse.
"Strat, let him go." And: "That's fine, missy. You be on your way. And take this—" He gave her a copper piece. "Buy your Tip a prayer or two."
With a sour smile at her, the best he could manage, Crit turned away. The operator in him told him he could get more from these children than the wallet belt and papers: he could use them. But he didn't want free zone runners enough to risk them paying the price the slain boy had. Nor was he touched enough by the girl to offer her work out at Hidden Valley: when children like these passed ten, they were more dangerous than useful. He heard the boy's stream of invective resume as Strat put him down, but by the time he was mounted, both children had disappeared.
"Somebody's running us in circles," Strat complained. "Grille's specials, maybe. Convenient, finding Belize's killer so soon, with every bit of incriminating evidence in place."
"At least we know it's not as simple as it seems." Crit fingered the little reed blowgun he'd found and palmed when he patted down the dead boy. Straton grunted. "Still want to see Palapot?" "Twice as badly," Crit affirmed, holding his horse steady while the two of them sorted through Belize's papers—those he'd seen at the Dark Horse which identified him and gave him permission to travel freely where he would in empire, and those he hadn't seen: a coded message with a highborn Rankan family's seal on it, opened by greasy fingers; a collection of receipts and vouchers; a map of Tyse with Palapot's trading stand in the souk and Grillo's Outbridge estate circled in red—a map so sketchy and imprecise it hadn't been made by anyone who'd ever been here.
Straton, as they threaded their way among the morning crowd of the hopeless and homeless, was persistent. "Somebody lost an agent. Grillo didn't want us talking to Palapot until he had. The agent's murderer turns up dead, and he's known to have worked with the specials. If Grillo were behind this, he'd point the finger in some other direction."
"If he could. Maybe Belize wasn't his man. Maybe Grillo was Belize's target. I don't know. We'll hear what Palapot has to say."
"What about the coded letter?"
"Can't read it. Maybe the Riddler can." Passing the Spring of the Prophet, they stopped to let their horses drink, sitting on the ochre mudbrick well's edge while their mounts quenched their thirsts in the adjacent trough. He'd been thinking that the oddest thing of all was that two couriers had arrived in town the same night, when Straton, who had an annoying habit of reading his mind, said, "Didn't that lady you took out to Hidden Valley, the one Madame Bomba put you onto, have a message in code?"
"Kama? She's no lady. Let's get going."
They looked for Palapot for the better part of the day, first in the free zone, then in the souk. His horse-line was there, tended by a nephew, but he wasn't.
At dusk they headed homeward—not to the Stepson's Outbridge barracks or the Hidden Valley farm, but to a safe haven in the Lanes. Crit sent word by messenger to the Riddler that he'd appreciate a meeting and gave his evening's itinerary. He had no intention of leaving town until he'd found Palapot and given him over to Straton, whose forte was interrogation. And he wanted to see Tempus alone. If this coded message had anything to do with Kama of the Rankan 3rd Commando, he and his commander ought to consider the implications privately.
* * *
"Shamshi! Shamshi!" It was Jihan's voice; there was no mistaking her deep, resonant tone.
Shamshi had been hiding in a thicket, shaking, shivering, letting his tears flow and his terror ebb. He was covered with blood from his scuffle in the free zone with the Maggot wretch. Finding a Maggot—a refugee—who looked enough like him had been harder than the disembodied voice of Roxane, the Nisibisi witch, had led him to believe it would be. Since the murders, he had not heard from her.
Now Shamshi was alone, her voice gone, the deed done, weak from the implications of it all. Fear had spurred him on during his mad, predawn dash through the tunnels. He'd found his pony right where he'd left it, in the burned-out barn the Nisibisi free men used to hide their coming
s and goings; he'd flung himself upon his pony and raced toward the Nisibisi border and safety.
Crossing it, he'd been elated. It was done. He'd turned eleven with the rising sun and become a man during the night; destiny was his.
"Shamshi! Shamshi!" he heard again, an urgent call, not quite a yell. The Froth Daughter would soon find him.
Wiping his tear-swollen eyes, he crawled forward on his belly. He hadn't seen the blood, soaked into his linen tunic, until the sun had risen; he'd almost reached the Hidden Valley choke point by then. He'd panicked; he found he couldn't think at all. He'd done away with the Rankan assassin, sent to ruin everything, with ease; then he'd let the scapegoat Maggot he'd found in the free zone bleed on him. Guilt had splattered him; he was covered with blood he couldn't explain. He'd reined his gold-maned pony hard about, and then it had happened: fate, or the Nisibisi mageblood which elevated him above the mortal cattle among whom he hid, had come to his aid. His pony had stumbled; he'd heard a sickening snap as they went down.
He'd sat in the dirt, unhurt, listening to its screams, then moans, of agony, watching it try to understand why it couldn't get its fractured leg under it no matter how it lunged, consumed with tremors of his own.
Then he'd realized what he must do: he took his dirk and approached the exhausted pony, whose eyes rolled in its head but who calmed as he came close, expecting him somehow to make it well, and he slit its throat.
It took longer to die than the boy he'd murdered in the free zone, and this time Shamshi retched: he'd loved his pony.
It had saved his life. He knew the Stepsons wouldn't be able to tell pony blood from Maggot blood; he'd begun the long hike home in a daze of relief. But then the enormity of it all became too much for him to bear: he'd climbed up the valley wall and circled around behind the barns, filled with grief and guilt and confusion.
What had he done? Was it enough? Was it right? The voice in his head which told him what to do and how to do it—Roxane's voice—had gone away. He'd lain shaking on the ground a long time. Now the sun was warm on his back and Jihan was calling: they'd found his pony long since. He wriggled toward the thicket's edge.