by Janet Morris
"… of our joint ventures with the 3rd, that's all. You've overstepped. You know it, Strat, from the look of you.
"Randal," Crit turned upon the Hazard, "since when do you take orders from my right—"
"Critias! Straton!" Jihan intervened. "We have seen the witch, in eagle's form, fall into a cleansing flame. We have seen the end of Oman, the revolutionary, seen him die afire, caught him in the act of plotting evil with a bunch of demons, fiends, white-eyes, and human traitors. We have seen that the Machadi ambassador, and our old friend Grillo, were present among our enemies, though those two got away. A compliment or two would be in order. Praise for our valor, a medal, or some such token of esteem that I can show the sleepless one when he returns." Jihan's fists, upon her hips, uncurled and her fingers tapped. "Individual initiative, when the results are good, surely won't be penalized by you." She stared at Crit and he felt his flesh begin to cool.
He raised a hand to fend off her freezing glance. "I didn't mean that, Froth Daughter. You did very well, just fine. We'll have a ceremony, some sort of honors assembly, so that everyone will know. Now, let's hear the whole tale, slowly, and in full detail. We'll see where we can go from here. The Machadi ambassador was there, you say? And escaped?" Kama cleared her throat then. Crit had nearly forgotten her. He said, "Ah… Randal, I've got to talk to you alone."
"Good." The Hazard eyed the sky, where purple was giving way to pink and gold as the sun began to rise over the mountains. "I've got to be indoors and with my globe quite soon. I can't go with you anywhere, not now, and all of you can't come inside—I don't own or run this mageguild, only work here."
Taking Randal aside, Crit said quickly, "It's Kama. She's pregnant and doesn't want to be. Just a little; it's not too late to do something. If you could help us… I'd be grateful."
"A little? Piff. Critias—sir. that's not my line."
"But surely you could—"
"Murder, by any other name… Not right now, not me. But I'll send someone around to see her who hasn't got a globe and stand… And, Critias," Randal added as Crit, with a grunt that meant he should have known better, turned away to hide his relief. "Are you sure you want to do this?"
"Me? No. But she is." He turned back. "Now, let's get down to business. Give me your expert, wizardly opinion of how best, in Tempus's absence, we might proceed."
* * *
Roxane had been thawed by the flames, protected to some extent from immolation by the ice within her veins. But more than her pride was singed. She'd had just enough of her wits about her to avoid capture or death at the hands of Tempus's unnatural whore, Jihan, and her warlock partner, Randal.
Roxane hadn't been able to remove herself from the battlefield, only to make her eagle's body invisible. And she'd had to lie there on the blackened ground until they'd gone away.
Then there was a grisly interval, before she had strength enough to change out of her wounded, broken eagle-form, during which she hopped about, eating the wounded and the newly dead—hearts and souls, where she could find them.
The sun was high above the peaks before she had the energy to transform herself—this time into a lowly sparrowhawk. She'd heard men and horses coming. Though this form was weak, she managed to take wing.
Out of harm's way on a laurel branch, she watched the soldiers root among the wounded and the dead.
When these were gone, she alighted on the ground and shifted shape again—a bleeding human arm dangling useless at her side was less troublesome than a torn and dislocated wing—and trekked in woman's form, still weak with pain from burns and loss of blood, to the first human habitation she could find.
This was a farm or small estate and the folk there took her in, believing her tale of attack by sorcerous insurgents, for they'd heard the thunder and the screams and seen the lightning and the smoke. By nightfall she would have strength enough, thanks to the tender care given her by the farm manager's plump and solicitous wife, to suck the souls from the human fools who tended her.
In the meantime she rested, just a wounded, luckless girl from Tyse, planning her revenge.
* * *
Straton and Sync had spent all day following up last evening's leads: they'd investigated the carnage out at the ancient amphitheater, a place which gave Strat chills. There they'd found the hoofprints of Grillo's horse and others Crit and Straton had marked.
Sync's horse, too, had a glyph filed into its iron shoe. When Sync realized it, Strat had had to tell the 3rd Commando leader how it got there. To his relief, Sync had only shrugged and said, "Well, that's one less we've got to track."
Six of Sync's 3rd Commando rangers had been drafted to aid what Crit referred to as the "cleanup." Whatever Randal had said to the task force leader when they went off alone hadn't eased Strat's partner's mind. Years with Crit made it easy for Straton to tell that his partner was preoccupied. Crit wasn't going to be much good to anyone but Kama until this personal problem was satisfactorily resolved.
So Strat stepped in without a word to fill the gap; he'd done it often enough before.
With Sync, he passed the time relating tales of wizard wars he'd known, in Sanctuary and other places. The Stepsons' tour in Sanctuary had made them experts on sorcery and undisputed masters of endurance. The 3rd had pulled no duty which could compare in terms of hardship with sorting out the foulest town in empire. Sanctuary veterans lorded it over other mercenaries that they'd survived there. Strat had hated the town when he'd had to live there, but now that he'd left, he found it was the sort of place it was handy to be able to say that one had been.
At the end of one particularly grisly story, Sync remarked that, these days in Sanctuary, there was nothing to revere in those who bore the unit designation "Stepson."
Not wanting to fall into any trap of Sync's, Straton let this pass. They'd traced Grillo's horse's prints as far as the double-dealer's home in Out-bridge. Short of going in there to arrest him, there was nothing more that they could do.
Oman's horse, however, its owner dead, had bolted on its own and made its way into the souk. They lost its track whenever it crossed a cobbled street like Embassy Row or Broadway, then picked it up again in the dirt and clay of the alleyways.
The souk was a hard place to track any animal; its clay was a palimpsest of wheel- and hoof- and footprints. But one of Sync's cadre was lounging on his horse near Palapot the horse trader's stalls and Strat found out the man had been on duty since last night. "Come to relieve me, sirs? After that fracas at the amphitheater, I don't think I'll sleep for weeks. I'd just as soon stay here—common folk making common mischief's more my style than demons and lightning bolts and what-have-you."
So it turned out that they had an eyewitness to what went on in the amphitheater. Strat proposed outright that they take the ranger to Crit without delay.
"Don't you want this Palapot?" The ranger had said that he'd followed Oman's wall-eyed chestnut here and that the horse was presently inside Palapot's grooming tent, "probably having his blaze dyed brown and his mane dyed black." "Wait here." Straton dismounted and went inside. Palapot remembered Straton only too well. The horse-trader tugged on his greasy pigtail and his face turned white.
"Want to come talk to me in the Lanes, Slime? Or can we do it here, without theatrics?"
Palapot fairly stuttered, falling over himself in his eagerness to please. Grooms were sent packing and tent flaps tied.
Strat took a stylus from his beltpouch: this confession would be one he'd want to have in writing. If it were good enough, and implicated folk enough, maybe it would shake Crit out of his funk.
* * *
Aisha's uncle had come to her, his eyes wild and his long gray hair disheveled so that it no longer covered his balding pate, but hung in strings about his face, saying, "My dear, I have to talk to you. In here."
And when they were in the ambassador's study, musty and warm and cluttered with folios, he said, "That young man of yours, Nikodemos—how well do you know him? How far would h
e go to help a relative of yours?"
"Uncle, I don't understand."
Sinking into the chair behind his desk, her uncle poured himself Machadi brandy from a stoppered jug, for the first time in Aisha's memory offering her strong drink. "Have some. You'll need it. And never mind why, child—just answer me."
"Nikodemos… left the party last night abruptly." She sipped the brandy. "He didn't even say goodbye. I might have offended him, paying so much attention to Sync. I… don't know. But I'm sure, if it's important, he'll help as best he can. He's a man of honor, one of impeccable—"
"But can he keep his mouth shut, respect a confidence, listen to a proposal and keep it to himself if he can't help or doesn't think it workable?"
Aisha shifted. She was fascinated by Niko. He'd come to her in a dream and taken her by the hand and together they'd approached, by boat, a glowing city on a pacific island from which wondrous music came. He'd been in his best armor, and it had been glowing. She'd been dressed in a wedding gown. A tall and dignified man with silver-starred hair in regal robes had greeted them at quayside. They'd been so happy… And then, she'd met Nikodemos. The very next night, her uncle sent her down to make sure the Stepson and his partner weren't out to harm the Mygdonian prince who'd been visiting at the embassy. Her uncle's actions, she knew, were dangerous; but what action was not, these days? Her parents languished in a Mygdonian prison camp. Whatever had to be done to keep them alive, both she and her uncle would gladly do.
She said, "This won't get Niko into trouble? Or hurt him? He'll never go against his commander's wishes—Tempus is like a father to him."
"Girl, just answer me: can you arrange a private meeting—him and me. Yes or no?"
"Yes… I think so. Yes, I'll try."
Blinking back tears for whatever might have been between them, thinking she'd never be Niko's bride on her honeymoon in the golden city now and that this war was ruining her life, no doubt about it, Aisha got up to go, to change, to set out brazenly to compromise the one she loved for reasons she was not supposed to understand.
* * *
When the Machadi girl came riding into Out-bridge on a flashy sorrel horse, Crit was up to his ears in trouble. Randal had rushed in not an hour earlier, saying, "Crit! Did you find Roxane's corpse? Or any trace of her?"
"Randal, can't you remember even an occasional 'sir'? In front of rny men, at least?" Crit had been with several Stepsons and two 3rd Commando rangers in the courtyard when Randal interrupted. Thinking Randal had come about Kama's plight, he'd left them in mid-conversation. "Did you find someone?" he demanded of Randal. "Or have you changed your mind and decided to do it yourself?"
"Find someone? Mind? Oh, Kama. By the Writ, sir, that doesn't matter now. I took a nap, just a doze actually, and when I awoke, this message was scrawled in blood on my power-glyph, this high—" Randal held one hand over his other, a foot apart "—on the mosaic floor." The Hazard closed his eyes and repeated verbatim:"'Thy doom, foul magician, is sealed. One by one your friends will suffer until you beg me for your well-earned punishment." And it was signed, "Roxane." Now, answer my question: did you find her corpse, some trace of her?"
"No. Strat went out himself and took a look. But what is the big surprise? You got yourself into this, you and Jihan. You solve it. If my problems aren't important to you, what do you expect from me, Hazard?"
Randal looked peeved. "You still don't understand. She got into the mageguild, somehow. She was there! Cut through all our wards like cheese. It's a wonder I've still got my globe."
Crit smiled knowingly. "I didn't want you to have that globe in the first place. I knew it would come to no good. And if she was there, why didn't she take your precious globe? You're imagining things—or she's content with scaring you to death."
"You're not going to do anything? It's your responsibility, taking care of Stepsons and the town while Tempus is away."
"Tell me what to do. Against a witch. When you can't handle it. If your knees stop knocking, maybe you can conjure your way out of this mess you witched yourself into. It's not my problem, as long as Kama's not yours. Now get out of here. I've got urgent matters to attend to. And don't come back until you've a magic potion or some damn spell to help the Riddler's daughter. Failing that, you and I are quits."
Later, Crit was sorry he'd been so hard on Randal, but he didn't have time to think about it just then. Strat wanted to arrest Grille on the strength of Palapot's confession, though for Straton, Palapot would have confessed to being the archmage Datan himself, risen from the dead. The safest thing to do would be, Crit thought, to bring in the widow Maldives, Grillo's bedmate, and see how Grille reacted. Personally, Crit wanted to leave Grillo where he was, untouched, until Tempus returned. The two were old friends; it wasn't Grit's place to lock up or put into Straton's eager hands someone Tempus was still trying to protect.
Crit was explaining this to Sync without letting too much slip or allowing the commando to think the Stepsons were protecting Grillo when Aisha galloped through the gates on her sorrel, ignoring orders from the gatewatch to halt for identification and almost getting herself speared. "Stay here, Sync."
Crit approached her alone, reaching up to take her heaving horse's bridle. "Aisha, isn't it? To what do we owe the honor?"
"Niko… that is, I've come to see Niko. It's urgent."
"I imagine it is." Arms out to help her down, he continued: "But Niko's not here. Will I do?"
She shrank from his touch. "Not here? Oh, no. What will I do? When will he be back?"
"Don't know. Can't say. If it's really as urgent as all that, why don't you let me help you? I'm Niko's commanding officer, after all. Anything you could have said to him, you can say to me—unless it's intimate, of course."
"It's not. It's…" Then, suddenly, she slipped off her horse, almost into his arms. As if she'd stumbled, she leaned against him, whispering, "My uncle wants to talk to someone in authority. I have a message, but it's meant for Nikodemos. If I give it to you, you must promise to tell no one, keep it confidential… Oh, Goddess! What if I'm doing the wrong thing?"
"You're not. Let's see it." With a gentle demeanor Crit reserved for horses and street men given impossible assignments in the field, he rushed her: if she had time to think, she'd get back on her horse and ride away. It had to have something to do with last night's escapade at the old amphitheater.
The message she carried, when he'd broken the Machadi embassy seal, said, "I want to discuss sensitive matters regarding the Mygdonian forces here and abroad. Come alone. Be prepared to offer assurances of safety for myself and my family." And it was signed in the ambassador's own hand.
"Stay right here. I'll just get my horse." As he spoke, Crit took a flint from his pouch and ostentatiously burned the parchment, turning it in his fingers. "Don't worry, Aisha. Niko, if he truly wanted to help you, would have turned this over to me in any case."
"Really? Oh, good." She let him boost her up on her horse and waited while he extemporized a likely explanation to Sync and his own mount was brought. The ambassador was right: nobody should know about this but the principals involved.
It took only a few minutes to reach the embassy at speed, but when Crit and the girl got there, servants were running hither and yon and three garrison soldiers were at the embassy door talking to guards who looked very unhappy.
Only Critias's rank got them in the door at all, and then one of the garrison soldiers accompanied them, saying, "Now, don't touch anything. Nothing whatsoever, sir."
"I know the drill," Crit snapped.
The soldier, unfazed, continued, "It's pretty bloody in there—nothing for a lady's eyes."
"I want to see him," Aisha said dully, her fingers digging into Grit's arm.
She was tough enough, he saw when they entered the room and viewed her uncle's disemboweled corpse. She didn't retch or cry or faint, just stood there; but Crit could feel her trembling and had to disengage her. "Stay here, Aisha. You've proved your love. He would
n't want you to see him like this."
The smells of death and the apparent pleasure someone or something had taken in killing this man mixed to make even Critias, a field veteran, woozy in this close and shuttered space. The word "Traitor!" was scrawled on one wall in Machadi; other, nastier epithets in Nisi were appended. Crit hoped Aisha couldn't read them.
So much for an informer in the witch's confidence. More than anything else, Crit was disappointed. The ambassador's offer was the luckiest break he'd had all season.
He took the girl with him, bought her lunch in a cafe on Embassy Row to see if she might prove useful, but she knew no more than the "whys" of her uncle's entanglement with the insurgents and the Nisibisi witch.
Nevertheless, he took Aisha back to Outbridge with him. Though one more skirt was the last thing he needed to worry about, this one was Niko's, by her own admission. It occurred to him she could be another Nisibisi witch or some phantasm of Roxane's making; but if that were so, Randal would soon discover it—and one way or the other, he'd want to keep Aisha under surveillance for a while.
* * *
By dusk, in his mageguild tower room, Randal had finished scrubbing the defilement from his power-glyph and reinstating and rebuilding protective wards and consecrating spells.
He hadn't eaten, he hadn't slept since the one fateful nap he'd taken. He sat on his glyph in rumpled robes and nearly wept with distress: he should really tell the archmage what had happened, that the mageguild had been breached. But he just couldn't. The whole, horrible mess was his fault.
He'd repaired the damage, he hoped. If not, until he'd regained enough composure to consult his globe and meditate upon how to proceed, what he'd done would have to do.