by Janet Morris
"Tell me it's mine, in there." Crit, raising his head, let his glance flicker toward her belly.
Whack! The slap Kama gave Crit rang across the room and turned his head with its force, and other heads with the sound it made.
He rubbed his jaw and nodded. "All right. I get the point. Kama, I…" Crit blew out a long, slow breath. "I'd like to be consulted, help you with whatever you decide." His hands came up before she got a word out of her mouth. "Now, don't yell at me. The damage is done, if damage it is. It's my responsibility but it's your body, I know. Just let's go off and talk about it by ourselves. Can we do that? This is no place for the sort of things I'd like to say."
Kama's mouth closed, her fists unclenched. She nodded wordlessly and Critias, moving quickly, was around the table pulling back her chair before she could get up. "Strat, I'm sorry about the timing. What we started in the stableyard… you'll see it through? Use Niko and Witchy-Ears, over there, and some of our 'friends' from the 3rd Commando. Tell Sync I'll need his help."
"No problem," Strat said to Crit's retreating back, then turned away to Madame Bomba, who sighed and remarked, "That's how I like to see those two—arm in arm. Romance, Straton, my boy, is an area I've heard you Sacred Band pairs know as well as any woman." She winked to take the sting from her innuendo. "I'll be moving on now. Accompany me to my table and we'll have a little krrf to celebrate."
Straton went, not asking what it was that they were celebrating: Crit was in worse trouble, having gotten the Riddler's daughter pregnant, than Strat had thought him capable of engendering. And what was trouble for one, was trouble for both.
He'd had less qualms walking straight into the mageguild to bring out Randal. And when he'd been escorted up deeply shadowed stairs to a tiny room by overly polite junior magelings, into a sulfurous mist and out again and face-to-face with Randal, Straton had only recognized the mage by his freckles and his prodigious ears.
Now, at the head table, Randal tugged on Stra-ton's sleeve. Bending down, Strat said, "What is it, Stepson?" loudly enough that all would know he was not intimidated by this fast-rising Hazard.
"Did you see that woman over there, Straton? Does she look to you," Randal lowered his voice, "like Cybele? Or am I the only one who sees it?"
"Yep. No. Crit saw it, too."
"Can we watch her, where she goes? Keep her away from Stealth?"
Taking orders from Randal? Straton bristled, then told himself that he had too many responsibilities this evening to let personal feelings intrude. "You've got legs, Randal. And eyes. And you're better qualified than any other to watch that one. Report to me when you've satisfied yourself. Crit's left me in command."
Randal nodded, his gaze weary, yet game. "I can't stay out here, in the open, away from my… work… too long, you realize. I'm vulnerable in ways you don't understand. I'll give it until morning. Then you'll have to come to me. You'll find me where you found me this evening, task force leader."
And that was that; the mage turned away.
Madame Bomba had her krrf out, which drew Tempus down to their end of the table, away from Sync and someone else who'd just slipped in, covered with trail dust. The stranger whispered to the Riddler and left again so fast that Strat was sure only he and the 3rd Commando leader marked it. And when Tempus bent his head to snort the Madame's krrf through a golden straw, he said to Straton, "Bashir wants to see me—and Niko. We're leaving now for the high peaks. Where's Crit?"
Straton said casually, "Out in the garden with Kama."
Tempus nodded. "Bashir sent a homing hawk to Hidden Valley. He says it's urgent. You and Crit take care of things in Tyse while we're away. We won't be long. We'll take the Aškelonians and send back a message as to what the trouble is… two, three days."
"Fine with me, commander. Just let him—" Straton indicated Sync, who was regaling Niko's friend, Aisha, with some exploit or other while Niko, eyes half-lidded, looked bored to a casual observer but actually studied Strat and Tempus where they made their plans "—know that the 3rd's under our command for the duration… if we need them. Otherwise, we'll be stepping on each other's toes without you here to say who's doing what."
"I've done that already. But you deal with Sync; he and Crit have Kama in dispute, and other problems. I'd talk to Crit myself, but we've got to be off."
Straton agreed as if explaining this to Critias would be easy. It wouldn't.
"Good man." Tempus clapped him on the shoulder with one hand while he tugged on his own tunic with his other. At that signal, Niko got up and threaded his way through the crowd—going to get the horses, no doubt. "If for some reason," Tempus said, "you haven't heard from us within the alloted time, make use of Randal. You seem to be able to come and go as you please at the mageguild."
* * *
Yet again Tempus had left Jinan in the lurch, alone among his Stepsons and a clutch of mortals who neither loved nor understood her.
She left the ambassador's party early and wandered, distraught, among the jumbled streets. They were full of filth and crowded. Why the humans here huddled together, defiling one another and their environment, when just beyond the city's limits land stretched green and beckoning, Jihan could not understand.
Perhaps they were afraid to be alone. She was not. After Tempus had left the party, Sync of the 3rd Commando had propositioned her, either not knowing who and what she was or hoping to show his fearlessness in the face of it. She didn't know. Humans were a puzzlement, though for Tempus's love she would gladly become one. If that happened, then she would understand them.
Now she merely mingled with them, a bemused spectator, taking note, but taking nothing she saw to heart.
At the party, Sync's proposal that they "get together for a bit of fag-bashing, now that the Stepdaughters' denmother, Tempus, is gone," made no more sense to her than his vow to lay "the right hands of a hundred Rag-heads at your feet to prove my love."
Subsequently Randal had explained to Jihan that Sync was drunk, that "Rag-heads" was what the 3rd Commando called the Mygdonians who wore turbans rather than helmets into battle. But Randal had no time then for her wealth of other questions. "Meet me at the mageguild gates an hour before dawn the slight Hazard had proposed. "Perhaps we can help each other, since our partners have left us both to our own devices."
Jihan fancied she'd heard in Randal's voice a touch of the resentment and loneliness she felt. Thus, she agreed. Then Randal had bustled off to other business and once again Jihan was alone, embedded in the human crowd like a fly in amber. She'd drifted out onto the patio, seeking composure from the stars above, which never changed or turned away or played favorites, but gave their light equally to all, and thus she'd heard Kama and Critias, first arguing, then declaring love, fidelity, and passion in thickening voices. Kama was, Jihan learned, pregnant with Grit's child.
Weeping was foreign to Jihan; it still surprised her when water flowed from her eyes and her body gave up her mind to emotion's pain. But when the couple she could hear beyond the bushes began to sigh and murmur and then to gasp in pleasure, Jihan wept and wandered off into the deserted evening streets, letting her tears flow in the Lanes where none might see or ask her why.
It was she who should be pregnant, cooking up a child for Tempus within her human belly. What else was this equipment she'd been given for, and this life on earth she'd chosen, but to live most fully, to love and reproduce and bind the Riddler to her for eternity?
But Tempus would not accommodate her; her father had forbidden her (and, knowing Him, most likely Tempus, too) from earthly parenthood. The Mygdonian child she mothered was no substitute for a suckling babe. She'd not have Shamshi long, in any case. If Tempus had his way, the boy would be given back to his rightful parents; if not, time itself would take Shamshi from her. In the child's own eyes, he was fast becoming a man and even now treating her as if he were one.
Resentment rose within her, the fury of the undervalued. She strode the streets and kicked at garbage, piles of refu
se from which rats ran. She'd even offered to give up her super-human attributes for Tempus, to make him love her more. He wouldn't have it; her finest gift he had refused.
She froze a rabid dog who leaped from shadows, mouth dripping foam as it sought to bite her. Its blood now solid ice, it shattered as it hit the ground.
Jihan strolled on, turning left onto Mageway, and as she did she heard a sound, spun around in time to see Grillo and some others from the party headed south by southwest, toward the old amphitheater on the outskirts of Tyse.
When she reached the mageguild, Randal was waiting under a torch set in the gate. His face was flushed and his words came fast. "Froth Daughter, if you'll join me, lend a hand, we'll sneak up on the witch—I think it's Roxane… I'm almost certain—and identify, maybe foil, her allies. Think of it! You and I, doing what the Stepsons couldn't! Tempus and Niko will take us more seriously, after this. What do you say, Jihan?"
She noticed then that Randal's right hand rested on a kris slung at his hip, that his pale young face was pinched and his eyes sparkling.
"You can't do it without me, is that it?"
"Yes. No, I can't. Wouldn't dare to try. I've got to be back here to meet with Straton by sunrise. My globe… it's given me hints, but it takes its toll. If I leave it and some other power should snatch it from its place while I am absent, then they've got me. I'm attached to it, you see— Never mind." The mageling shook his head. "If you don't want to show the Riddler what you're made of, we'll leave the honor and the glory to Straton and his crew."
"Straton! Never! Honor and glory, you say, Adept? Lead on. When next I meet the sleepless one, I'll speak to him in language even he can understand."
* * *
In the ancient amphitheater, old when even Roxane had been young, she'd met her human allies: Grillo, here against his better judgment; Oman, who had none to go against; the Machadi ambassador, who fretted and paced to and fro and looked at her accusingly, that she would risk him, flaunt him openly where all could see; nearly thirty other rebels, some here because they fought for freedom, some—like the Machadi and the Rankan, Grillo—because they had no choice.
Then there came her unnatural allies—her friends and contract demons, her undeads, two full score. The Riddler was gone upcountry, taking Niko with him. Now was the time to strike terror into Tysian hearts, take the Stepsons down a peg, send the 3rd Commando running, tails between their legs. For Lacan Ajami's army was closing; soon enough, despite the cloaking spells of her fellow sorcerers headed south, they'd be sighted. By then, the town must be ripe for conquest, inclined toward capitulation.
All this she told her gathered flunkies while, above, two young Nisibisi mages who'd flown in early with messages from Lacan glided, circling upon the predawn's gentle air currents, their hawks' eyes fixed on the surrounds to give her early warning should any uninvited folk intrude.
Tonight, much earlier, she'd dared to join the embassy festivities, brashly donning her Cybele form to see what Niko's response might be.
But the dream lord had his hooks in Nikodemos deeply, so much so that he'd either not remembered her, or been able to ignore his formerly obsessive attraction to Roxane's Cybele persona.
She fumed, reviewing her troops and giving orders. This coming evening, they would burn the northern barracks, where the 3rd billeted, to the ground. And Hidden Valley, too, would flame and smoke, horses roasting—for there Shamshi languished under guard. This second task she assigned to Oman, who was fearless, the one among these human pawns who knew he'd nothing left to lose.
The Machadi ambassador, whose niece sucked up to Niko, would suffer for the girl's audacity. Aisha, like all Machadi slime, fervently believed in an ancient mother goddess and aspired to be a priestess—not just of Niko's heart, but of the Order of the Earth. As such, Roxane speculated, she'd been a perfect foil for Aškelon to interpose between the witch and her beloved Nikodemos, who boasted Aškelon's protection though the fighter neither knew or wanted it.
She was just about to materialize a plethora of incendiary pellets, fireballs-to-be, and conjured wagons with drays of awful aspect for her minions to drive rampaging through the town when, above, a hawk cried, then another, and both came plummeting to earth to burst apart with a sound like shattering crystal as they landed at her feet.
Before Roxane could pretend that nothing untoward was happening, a demon shouted, "Attack! Take cover, mortals! The rest of you, fan out and find our foes!"
Thereupon others, fire demons from the earth's bowels, took wing, their breath already steaming and their jaws agape to incinerate the murderers when they found them.
Human women screamed as, from a blue-and-purple sky, a roiling cloud descended, black and lit intermittently with bolts of lightning forking down to land right in their midst.
Fiends cackled as the first humans flamed, forgetting their own peril to crouch over fresh-roasted flesh and lick their chops and eat.
A mortal's throwing star, the sort of weapon Niko used, came flashing by her ear; she lost a lock of hair to it and this, at last, convinced her that her person was in danger. Until then she'd thought to calm the crowd and form a cogent plan.
The lightning struck again, snaking around her feet in a full and vicious circle. In its light she saw the Machadi ambassador, robe lifted high, fleeing for his life.
Then the first fire-breathing demon, and his brothers, swooped, and the entire amphitheater blazed as antique wood caught fire.
Running from the deadly conflagration, Roxane caught sight of Oman, his back afire, rolling hysterically in the dirt.
Then above her head the clouds opened up in an attempt by her unseen enemy to douse the demons' flames with a downpour so fierce it beat the fire demons from the sky.
Howling humans and hissing undeads stumbled through the fire and smoke. Roxane saw, as she changed into her eagle-form and took wing above the carnage, that the demons had tried to trap in a fiery circle the adversaries who had brought the lightning and cast the throwing stars and deluged everything with rain.
But only two figures were in the circle of flame: one was slight and robed like a magician; one was feminine but sturdy, overlarge and glowing. And as Roxane watched from high above, all her minions, soaked with rain, began to slow, then stop, then freeze in place as frost and ice encased them and they tumbled over, toppling to the ground to lie there stiff and cold.
Then, when she attempted to spiral down, to dive and pull the encircling net of flame in and over her two audacious enemies, the mage got out a paltry, wriggly sword. And just before the flames would have met above the heads of these two accursed enemies, he spoke a power word and waved the sword. The flames parted, obedient to the sword's command, so that those two walked calmly out of danger on a charred but no longer fiery path.
Roxane screamed her eagle's scream and in her fury dived straight down at the adept who dared defy her, though it might singe her wings to claw out the offending rival's sorcerous eyes or snatch the charmed and hostile weapon from his hand.
But she hadn't counted on the woman-form, whom her eagle eyes now recognized. Jihan, the hateful spawn of Stormbringer, raised her pointing finger Roxane's way and all the blood coursing through her eagle-body turned to ice, so that she plummeted, out of control, into the raging flames with one final, defiant scream of fury which could not form itself into a curse when issuing from a mere eagle's mouth.
Frozen, she fell. Falling, she burned. Burning, she hated. Hating, she hit the ground.
* * *
Crit had brought Kama, at Straton's urging, with them to the mageguild gates at dawn.
Strat had suggested that Randal could help with Crit and Kama's joint dilemma. Not sure that he wanted any help, Crit still had to try it: if it were he who had a child growing inside him at so inopportune a time, he'd want what Kama wanted. He couldn't take it lightly that she wouldn't bear his child, but he couldn't blame her. She was 3rd Commando first. He'd always understood this.
Morose and full of conflicts of morality and honor, he shifted from foot to foot, leaning against the mageguild's marble-columned gate, leaving it to Strat to fill an awkward silence with small talk and help Kama pass the time.
He wished she'd reconsider; maybe she would, yet. If Crit could face the Riddler's disapproval— perhaps his wrath—then Kama could survive the snickers of her unit. Crit didn't see why she couldn't have their child and raise it with him, bravely, honorably. If the 3rd cast her out instead of giving her a few months' leave, he'd put her in his own contingent.
But because of Straton, who meant well but wasn't helping, they hadn't had a chance to talk about it when Randal, his robes askew and his face black as a chimney sweep and sweating, came hurrying up from somewhere with Jihan, her eyes aglow and her laughter hearty, on his right.
"Task force leader!" Randal chortled. "Straton! What a stroke, you've brought Critias along. We've won! We did it! Jihan and I, we've finally done it. Got her! Congratulate us!"
"Won what? Did what? Got whom?" Crit demanded before Straton or Kama, back to the wall and face in shadow so no one could see her puffy eyes, could say a word.
"The witch! Roxane… you know… Cybele! You saw her at the party, Crit!" Randal rubbed his hands together. "Jihan was marvelous! Freezing rain and thunder claps and lightning from the heavens! What a team we made! If only Stealth was there to see it."
"If only Tempus was," Jihan added huskily, and Crit saw that her chest was heaving under scale-armor smudged with smoke.
"Let me get this straight: you routed Roxane… Cybele, if they're really one and the same. Where? How? And why, without my orders?"
"Why?" Randal, his feelings hurt, nearly howled. "Why? We've a trifling bit of trouble with hostile magic, if you'll recall, task force leader. Or are you too caught up with… problems… of your own creation to remember that?"
Then Straton hastily explained, rubbing his neck as he spoke and with a rueful expression on his face. "I ordered Randal to follow the witch—or whatever it is: Cybele, the one we saw at the party. Tempus, when he left, said he'd told you that for the interim I was to take command…" Strat's face screwed up; he shook his head.