by Janet Morris
Gayle said, "Critias, this is—"
"We ve met."
"That's the commander's—?" asked Grit's companion, heavyset and taut, with swordsman's shoulders and bleak eyes that stripped her without apology.
These two were old friends; Crit didn't need to hear the rest of his companion's question. He slipped familiarly into the other's pause. "Straton, meet Kama, attached to the Rankan 3rd Commando. Kama, this is my right-side partner and better half, Strat."
Sacred Banders, then. Who would have thought it? Her heart sank, unreasonably. She offered her hand to Straton and his grip was cool, firm, and noncommittal.
Then Strat said, "Gayle, I have to talk to you.
Alone."
Gayle and Straton excused themselves and threaded their way among scattered tables to take seats against the far wall.
"I see Gayle didn't spare you the obligatory hazing," Crit said, his finger tapping the goat's-blood cocktail before her. "I'm sorry; Nisibisi comestibles take a little getting used to."
"You were looking for me. Let's stop toying with one another." In the bronze mirror behind the bar she could see Straton and Gayle, their heads together, watching them.
"That's right. I have a problem I'm wagering you'll help me with—and not tell Tempus I asked you."
"Which is?"
"A man named Belize was murdered here just before you arrived. Ever hear of him?"
Belize? "An assassin," she said carefully. "A good soldier, though. Special work." She couldn't afford to guess which lie would do, how much or little Critias might already know about the man in question. "But why ask me? The Rankan army's widespread."
Crit shrugged but watched her steadily; his eyes were level, his mouth a straight line. "Two strangers, both from Ranke. Both with safe-conducts issued from the same office. Both with coded messages for the Riddler which he says read exactly alike… Redundant."
"Are you implying something?"
"Not really. Just tying up loose ends. You weren't in competition with Belize to get here first, by any chance?"
"I didn't even know they'd sent him," she said honestly and with real anger. "If he was a decoy to make sure I'd get through, they needn't have bothered. Is that what you think?"
"I'm just doing my job. Asking questions. Trying to make sense of the answers. An assassin, you say. Does that mean you are, too?"
"I've told you what I am." Flustered, she reached out for the pottery goblet of blood wine. His hand closed over hers. "You don't have to drink that, or prove anything to me." This voice was deeper, more intimate; she looked at her hand in his, up at him, then away.
"Your commander told me not to fraternize with you," she said.
"He told me the same thing. Maybe because you two are related…"
"You've got a right-side partner. Sacred Band, isn't it?"
"To the death with honor." He grinned. "What's that got to do with anything?"
"Anything …" she repeated, telling herself she had to consider her assignment.
"Anything I do on my own time is not Tempus's business; Strat and I are an old working team—no problem."
"Is this a proposition?" She slid her hand out from under his.
"A declaration of intent." He told her where his Lanes drop was. "I've got an office there, sleeping quarters; I run lots of agents. I'd like to consider you one of them. Think it over. Sometimes the Riddler sees things in terms of black and white— good and evil; sorcery and religion; men and women. He'll keep you around and give you busy-work. I'll use you. We'll both like it. I'm sure you can keep secrets; I can smell it. If you want me, you know where to find me."
Then he collected his partner, waved from the doorway, and headed into the night.
Gayle motioned to her to join him. Before she did, she reached into her beltpouch and pulled out a pair of dice. She threw them three times: eight, nine, nine: power and increase; money. She'd thrown for the outcome of Grit's offer. Nodding, she put the dice away and caught sight of herself in the bronze mirror as she turned to join Gayle across the room.
The spells she'd bought from Rankan magicians in the capital had been worth their price: so far, she'd outmaneuvered her competition, though she hadn't known she had any; she'd met the man she had to meet, the one who'd help her; she'd found her father, for what that was worth.
Grille could live a while longer. Belize's death changed things; she'd have to be more careful. Perhaps she'd hire a take-out artist from the mercenaries' guild to put an end to Grille. Perhaps she'd merely discredit him, make him suspect and thus useless here, ruin his career and force an early retirement. It was her choice. And Gayle, who knew his former master well, was going to help her make it.
Kama had been sent to deal with Grille, infiltrate the Riddler's confidence, make sure that the Mygdonian child they held here was sent back to Mygdonia where he'd die along with his father and his uncle, Lacan Ajami.
She'd made sacrifices to the gods openly and contracted success spells on the sly because everyone knew that the gods weren't what they used to be: sorcery and hard work were the only ways to get anything done.
She hadn't yet caught sight of the fabled Froth Daughter, or Shamshi of Mygdon. But Crit was going to be a very fruitful contact; her dispatcher had been wrong in assuming that enlisting the Stepsons could be accomplished only through the Riddler himself. Tempus was, as her hired mage had predicted, too bound up in the affairs of Free Nisibis. That, too, she hoped to rectify. Wizardwall had been taken by dint of Rankan effort: Grillo, Tempus, the Stepsons—all were fielded on Rankan gold and sworn to Rankan service. Free Nisibis should not exist; Nisibis should be a Rankan client state. And so it would be.
Kama had an open mandate here, and beyond Wizardwall—one which extended into Mygdonia itself. Sliding into a seat beside Gayle, she began expertly to guide the conversation toward Grillo's extracurricular activities: bribe-taking, smuggling, lending his forces to the Nisibisi guerrillas. Gayle was proud of all that; her credentials, vouched for by Straton, she assumed, while Crit was propositioning her, were no longer in doubt so far as Gayle was concerned.
He began to explain the complex political structure of Tyse, the personal militias, the provisional military government, the insurgent substructure funded by Mygdonia, the difference between "good" and "bad" Nisibisi and how Tempus managed to keep the Stepsons nonaligned.
She listened very closely; Kama's work here for the 3rd Commando had begun. At the end of it might lie a palace coup in Ranke, an end to the mismanagement which had the empire teetering on the very brink of collapse. But first the 3rd must be reunited with its founder and reconsecrated in the fiery sack of Mygdonia. On this, every Rankan mage and seer of the armies agreed. If they were going to get their god back, His avatar must toil in their cause.
* * *
"You'd better watch Critias," Grille warned, his handsome head upon his fists, tapers burning low about them in his office. His bleary eyes narrowed. "By Vashanka's bunioned balls, Riddler, I'm tired. Not everyone can go without sleep as long as you. Where is that woman?" He picked up a mallet from his desk and desultorily struck the gong hanging on its red-lacquered stand.
"Any particular reason?" Tempus asked evenly. Grillo detested Crit, and vice versa: they both were expert at the same sort of work and rivalry was too gentle a term for what existed between them, especially now that Crit had interdicted a shipment meant to fatten Grillo's wallet.
"My sources in the mageguild network tell me Randal's gone to Bandara. I'll lay this whole lot of krrf—" he patted the gilt quartz box from which they'd been reviving their wits all evening "—against an equal amount of muck from your stables that you didn't know about it."
"Should I have?" Tempus responded mildly as the widow Maldives, a brown-haired wench he'd have taken home himself if she weren't Grillo's mistress, brought steaming cha—an aromatic, bracing tea—in delicate Rankan cups with saucers, smiled at him, switched her hips and left.
Tempus took a cup, sip
ped. "This would wake the dead." The brown liquid was opaque, so long had it been steeping.
"Good," Grillo grunted. "Then maybe I'll be able to keep up with you. You asked me why you should have known. I'll tell you. Because he went at Critias's behest. There's only one reason for that…"
"I'm mystified," Tempus admitted. "What's your point?"
"See! You don't know what your own people are doing."
"Critias has the authority to send for any Stepson. I'm not babysitting Tyse, he is. If he wants Niko back, that's his business."
"Maybe. Maybe it's all of ours. You come to me with some half-assed story about dead Rankan assassins and a daughter of yours you don't like and questions about Bashir's security. Niko and, for all I know, other Stepsons on leave, are being recalled by your first officer without your knowledge—"
"I didn't say that. I only said I didn't know Randal had gone to Bandara. We think it's time to consolidate our forces."
"Even the adepts? You used to stay clear of wizards. Now you're all but a mageguild sponsor."
"Grillo, this isn't getting us anywhere. Will you increase your personal security for a while? Go up to Wizardwall and talk to Bashir about stationing more men up there—yours, mine, the garrisons', I don't care whose, but we need to be able to secure Nisibis's northern border." "Why?"
"Standard procedure."
"Yours, not mine. I wish you'd tell me what's bothering you."
Tempus drank deeply of the cha, stared into it ruminatively. He couldn't tell Grillo any more than he had—not that Kama had orders to make an end to Grillo; not that the 3rd would descend on Tyse like the wrath of gods; not that an incursion into Mygdonia itself was in the offing; and not—especially not—that given the foregoing, an attempt at coup d'etat in Ranke was almost a certainty. All Tempus had was suspicion, instinct, an itch he could not scratch but which, over centuries, he'd learned never to ignore. He sighed rattlingly, his normally smooth brow deeply furrowed. "I don't know what more I can say. I've warned you."
"Of what?" demanded the exasperated operations officer. "Tell me that the god is whispering in your ear! Tell me something substantive!"
Tempus sighed once more. "Of the Logos, which is as I describe it, men always prove to be uncomprehending—both before they have heard it and once they have heard it. They fail to notice what they do after they wake up just as they forget what they do when asleep." "What's that supposed to mean?" "You see? Consult your gods; I am not one." So it was that he left Grillo in an ill temper, not certain that he had succeeded in his purpose of protecting his friend from his daughter while still looking after those Stepsons whom he loved. They, as he, craved only sanctified battle with those who threatened not only their way of life, but their gods themselves.
As for these others, the Grilles and Kamas and Bashirs of a world his soul disdained, their Logos— what cosmic reason expressed itself as the source of world order and intelligibility—must sustain them: he could not.
He was girding for a second battle with Unreason in the guise of Mygdonian-sworn sorcery, and he was going to have to win it with only his Stepsons to wield—without even the help of friendly gods.
One particular god, whom the Rankans called Vashanka and the south called its Storm God, had been humbled or routed or vanquished—or perhaps even destroyed—by the Nisibisi mages who served godless Mygdonia and labored against even gods for pay.
Too long had his tutelary god's voice been absent from Tempus's ear. And though once the man called the Riddler had considered deific possession to be an affliction, he missed the battle of wits and wills in which the man and his god once were prone to indulge.
Though he did not love the berserker god, Tempus respected Him. Rumor had it that the once-mighty Pillager was plane-locked, a laughingstock among deities. He didn't quite believe it. But if his Storm God needed rescuing, he was bound to see to it.
In search of the once-mighty lord of rape and pillage, Tempus would venture even into godless Mygdonia. A bloodletting was coming; Kama was the sign of it, she who was conceived upon the battlefield while Vashanka was yet in him. Her message was the line and page of the mandate the Logos had sent him. Not only would his Stepsons be able to settle their score with the Nisibisi wizards who'd murdered wantonly among their number, but his own 3rd Commando was being returned to him.
And if none of this were so, he would still have gone forth, eventually, into Mygdon: he was bored, and he was lonely.
And with all the portents teasing him and events goading him, with Jihan plaguing him and the Mygdonian hostage Shamshi worrying him, he chafed to be upon his quest.
He could hardly wait.
Book Two:
MASTERS OF MYSTERY
Leeward of the Bandara chain's main island, nestled like a sleeping child between the crescent of its harbor and the northerly mainland coast, lies Ennina, The Lord's Eye, an islet reserved for returning masters of Bandara's mysteries and initiates in retreat.
Here mornings are misty and seasons tender; even on dog days, the gentle haze reaching up to heaven seldom burns off before late morning. The sea warms Bandara in winter and cools her six islands in summer. The prevailing steering currents from the west coax her pine and willow into wondrous shapes and conspire with easterly trade winds to keep her veiled in clouds impenetrable to curious, unsanctified eyes.
It was to Ennina that Nikodemos had repaired to heal his soul and put his life in order. No one in Bandara called him by his war name. Here he was simply Niko; "Stealth," the Sacred Bander, decorated leftman of the Stepsons, shock trooper without peer, did not exist. It didn't matter to the masters of Bandara that Niko was a blood brother to Bashir of Free Nisibis or that he'd become landed and wealthy employing the skills he'd learned here as a boy: silent movement; peripheral sensing; Death Touch; meditation's hunches, self-help and stamina; weapons at hand.
It did matter to them that one of their number had come home wan and troubled. Niko had claimed the attribute of maat—balance, equilibrium, and the strategic mental arsenal a quiet heart can bring to bear—during his boyhood years here. Few had attained as much. The mysteries of maat were the most elusive and difficult to master; induction into its study in no way ensured success. Many sought maat; the majority failed.
To have an initiate so gifted return hollow-eyed and sick at heart was distressing. To show overmuch concern might make matters worse. Niko had exercised his right to solitude and gone straight to Ennina, where by tradition he must be left alone. He'd said only that he needed more healing than his mental rest-place could provide and sought its equal in the phenomenal world. This was a formal request couched in the requisite language—not a revelation, just a ritual invocation any initiate might use to assert his prerogative.
No one who had tutored him from the time he'd come to the oracles' islands at the age of nine—or who'd trained with him during those four years he'd spent there locked away from "the world," as the Bandarans called the mainland—had dreamed, at first, that this time the words spoken were literally the truth.
They respected his privacy; they could not sympathize with his plight. Every man heals himself, said the sect. Every oracle makes his own truth. A wise one determines his own fate. It is upon each soul to recognize its limit. They let him be.
He'd brought a girl with him, a mute with a baby boy on her hip. This, too, was his right. They took in the homeless girl and prepared to cleanse her and adopt mother and child as their own. It was then that the oracles began boding ill, and nightmarish interludes afflicted the dream masters.
Eventually, a former instructor named Levitas was sent to speak to Niko. A Bandaran adept must not bring the world home with him; Niko should have left his worldly troubles behind.
"Our dreams are full of blood and death; witchfire fouls the sybils' caves; wizardsign has been seen: a red tide came in." The instructor Levitas, well over one hundred, lowered himself to the immaculate boards of Niko's cabin and crossed his bony legs.
; The hazel-eyed fighter watched his former teacher, unblinking, unspeaking. An exotic mage-strain whispered in Niko's flaring cheekbones and pointed jaw, in his thick ashen hair and his long clean limbs. This was as Levitas remembered. But the thin-lipped mouth drawn tight had been split in battle; the nose was not so straight as once it had been, but bent from a blow. Nikodemos yet gave the impression of being an athlete or a sporting noble rather than a warrior from Bandara's arcane schools, but that was a bequest from his parents. The venerable instructor could feel the unrest in Niko by its effect on his own heartbeat and the pounding of his pulse.
Though in a pose meant for meditation, Niko-demos was far from calm.
The teacher, having elicited no response beyond an initial nod of greeting when he'd slid back the partition and entered unbidden, tried again. "You bring the world with you, Niko. You must let go." Still no response. Levitas sighed. At least Niko's eyes did not avoid his. He made his voice as intimate, as gentle, as possible. He was about to cut deep with it, begin an excising ritual he'd never once in all his life had to employ. "Have you killed men?"
A response to that question was not a matter of choice; it was a duty.
"Yes, sir. I have." In the boy's gaze was nothing. Niko looked out at his onetime mentor from an unthinkable distance, emotionlessly as if his eyes themselves were still in the world, where the flat emptiness in them served a mercenary better than impregnable armor.
"How many have you killed?" A spark of anger flashed, then subsided. The old man's heart thumped in his chest.
The boy said, "Men? Close up? Face to face?" His eyes slid away, as if counting memories, then back. "Nine or ten." "All told?"
"Hard to say. Covertly, from shadows, indirectly in battle… I don't know, perhaps thrice that number. But you're wrong, it's not that." "Then what is it?"
"Demons. Fiends. Witches. Magic." Niko unfolded from his squat abruptly, his hand outstretched to the startled instructor. Taking it, the old man let the youngster help him up. "I've got to show you something," Niko said quietly. "Come this way."