Blood Ties tw-9

by Robert Lynn Asprin

  He had come in disguise, as best he was able. His form was heroic in proportion and his face resembled that of a god once known in Sanctuary, but banished now: High-browed and honey-bearded, that face looked upon the gutted ways of the warehouse district with all the disgust three centuries and more of life could impart.

  It was the face of Vashanka, now called the Hidden God, that Tempus wore tonight: Selfish and proud, full of war and death, it was the face of Sanctuary itself.

  It made him feel at home here, as did the storm descending. In Sanctuary, self interest never flagged; his presence here upon pressing, private business, was proof of that.

  Turning up Shadow Street toward the Maze, he saw deserted checkpoints of some faction who claimed everything from Lizard's Way to the Governor's warehouses as its own.

  And because that faction was said to be Zip's Popular Front for the Liberation of Sanctuary (PFLS), as unpopular now as was Zip himself, Tempus reined the horse left on Red Clay Street to reconnoiter despite the gusts and darkening sky and thunderous promise of rain that made the Tros horse under him shiver and throw its muzzle skyward.

  He'd never exchanged a civil word with Zip, whom some said had caused far too much of the springtime carnage- whom Crit said had attempted murder and tried to blame the affair on Tempus's own daughter, Kama.

  And since the target of the murderous attack had been Straton, Critias's Sacred Band partner, the pair had teams out night and day, even in the midst of the Stepsons' preparations to withdraw-teams seeking to even the score with Zip's eyes and tongue: an old Band prescription for curing traitors.

  Lighting flared, a sheet sky-wide that banished darkness even on Shadow Street, so that Tempus saw backlit figures skulking from garbage heap to doorway in his wake.

  This was PFLS territory all right.

  The rain that accompanied a peal of thunder so loud it made the Tros horse flatten its ears and lower its head cared nothing for whom it wet or whom it unmasked: Both Tempus and his horse were only desultorily disguised-the horse with berry juice and trail mud and its "rider with dyes no better.

  The rain bounced fetlock high on cobbles and ran down the Riddler's oilskin mantle to his sharkskin-hiked sword, where it formed rivulets like spilled blood and just as red from the dye it washed.

  The specter of the man and horse (both too large and too well muscled for Sanctuary's own, both streaming water red as blood and splashing it behind, as the man called the Riddler loped his horse, oblivious to the torrent and the spray the horse's hooves kicked up, down the center of Red Clay Street) was one to stop a superstitious heart and make a criminal seek cover.

  Yet at the comer of West Gate Street, where the sudden downpour swept seaward to the wharves down the slope so deep and fast that rats and cats and pieces of less recognizable flesh were carried along in its currents as if the White Foal River had changed its course, three men stepped out from cover, barring his path, knee deep in water, crossbows drawn and blades unsheathed.

  A crossbow, in this wind so fierce it blotted out the Tros's snorts of warning, and in a rain so dense no cat-gut or woman's-hair bowstring could be dry, would shoot awry.

  Tempus knew it, and so did the three who stood there, daring him to ride them down.

  He considered it, though he'd sought a confrontation, annoyed by the boys with sweatbands around their foreheads and weapons better than street toughs ought to have.

  The Tros, having more sense and being a larger target, stopped still and craned its neck, imploring him with liquid eyes to remember why he'd come here, not just take an opportunity luck offered and waste it to vent some spleen and make his presence known.

  Still, this sort should have enough sense to fear him.

  That none did, that one stepped forward and said in a thick voice with a trace of gutter accent, "Looking for me, big fella? All your bugger boys are," gave the Riddler time enough to realize that, while he'd been looking for the rebel called Zip, Zip had also been looking for him.

  A noise behind, and then more sounds of moving men, gave the mounted soldier and his horse a good estimate of the odds without either turning to see the dozen rebels climbing down from rooftops and up from tunnels and out of cellar windows.

  Tempus's skin crawled: Pain wasn't something he sought, and with no death at the end of it, he could suffer infinitely more than other men. But it was his pride that leant him pause: The last thing he needed was to be taken hostage by the PFLS and held to ransom. Crit would never let him forget it.

  And the result for the PFLS would then be eradication- total and complete, not the minor harrassment Crit had time to field while busy with a hundred other tasks as he got two fighting units ready to depart a town that had precious little else between it and total anarchy.

  So Tempus said to the foremost fighter, "If you're Zip, I am," and slid off his horse, making fast its reins on its pommel: Whatever Tempus was worth, the Tros was irreplaceable, and would make for the Stepsons' barracks on a whistled command.

  But once the Tros, with teeth and hooves and blood lust spewing carnage in its wake, made for the barracks beyond the Swamp of Night Secrets, then the die for each and every rebel child was cast.

  And children these were, the Riddler realized as he stepped closer: The boy out in front of his compatriots was well under thirty.

  The youth held his ground, nickering a hand-signal that brought his troops in closer and made Tempus reassess the discipline and training of the rabble closing on him.

  Then the Riddler remembered that this boy had had some little congress with Kama, Tempus's daughter, a woman who was as good a covert actor as Critias and as good a soldier as Sync.

  The boy nodded a crisp assent, then added, "That's me, old man. What's this about? You didn't 'accidentally' cross our lines. We won't make peace with Jubal's bluemasks-or with that Bey-licking Kadakithis, who's sold the Ilsigs out twice over." The youth widened his stance and Tempus remembered what Sync had said of him: "The boy's got nearly enough balls, but they override his brains."

  So Tempus responded, "No, not accidentally. I want to talk to you ... alone."

  "This is as 'alone' as I'm likely to get with you-you're not half so fetching as your daughter."

  Tempus locked his fingers firmly on his swordbelt, lest they cause trouble on their own, seeking a neck to wring. Then he said, "Zip... as in zero, nothing, zilch... right? Well, despite that, I'll give you a piece of wisdom, and a chance-because my daughter thinks you're worth it." That wasn't true-or at least he didn't think so; he'd never spoken to Kama about Zip: She'd earned the right to choose her own bed-partners, and more.

  The flat-faced youth, standing in the rain, barked a laugh. "Your daughter lies in with Nisibisi wizards-or at least with Molin Torchholder, who's tainted with Nisi blood. Her idea of who's worth what ain't mine."

  The rabble behind and around laughed, but uneasily. The Tros at Tempus's side pawed the ground and pulled upon its reins to loose them. He put out a hand to soothe the horse and a dozen blades or more cleared their scabbards with a snick audible even through the pelting rain, while the three crossbows he could see were centered on his chest.

  "The wisdom is; Sanctuary is for lovers, not fighters, this season. Make peace among you, or the Empire will grind the lot into dust, and bury your flesh with corn to make it grow tall."

  "Crap, old man. I'd heard you were tough-not like the rest," Zip spat. "But it's the same garbage I hear from them. Tell it to your troops-the Whoresons and the Turd Commando: They're the ones causing all the grief."

  Tempus's patience was near an end. "Boy, mark me: I'll call them off you for a week-seven days. In it, you meet with the other factions and hammer out some agreement, or by New Year's Day, the PFLS won't be even a memory. Nor will you live even that long, to verify it."

  There was a silence, and in it someone muttered, "Let's kill the bastard," and someone else whispered back, "We can't-don't you know who that is?"

  Tempus peered through the do
wnpour and watched the flat face before him, emotionless and cold with rain streaking down it. There was strength in the youth, like the Enlibar steel some had thought would make a difference here-but, like the steel, Zip's strength was too little and too late.

  Ageless eyes shocked against mortal eyes too sure of their doom and unwilling to seek favor. But another thing passed between them: The weariness of the young fighter, hunted by too many and willing to die against sheer numbers and superior force of arms, had turned to hopelessness; that despair met its echo in the gaze of the fabled immortal who went from war to war and empire to empire, taking life and teaching the wisest something about the spirit's triumph over death.

  Tempus, who had created, trained, and fielded the Stepsons, was offering a moratorium, some forgotten hope, where an ultimatum had been expected.

  There was something in Zip's tone when the boy answered, "Yeah, a week. All right. All I can say is the PFLS will try-I can't speak for the others. It's got to be enough. Or-"

  Tempus had to interrupt. A threat uttered in front of the youth's followers would be binding. "Enough, for you and yours. What they sow, they'll reap. You can come out of this with more than you expect. Zip-an imperial pardon, maybe a profession, and do what you do best for the good of the town you say you love."

  "The town I'll die for, one way or the other," Zip murmured, because he'd understood what Tempus was saying and what had been unsaid in their met glance, and wanted the Riddler to know it, before he waved his men back without another word from Tempus.

  It took only moments for the intersection where Red Clay Street met West Gate to seem deserted once again. It took no longer to mount the Tros and head it toward Lizard's Way.

  Tempus was thinking, as he rode the Tros past a pile of refuse that undoubtedly hid at least one hostile youngster, that what Zip might gain, could he do the impossible and show progress toward peace-a coalition of rebel forces, a cease fire committee, or even a pacification program-was more than the boy's wildest dream: a home.

  There were no forces to replace the Stepsons and the 3rd. The Rankan army garrison was just that-Rankan. The Stepsons' barracks, won at so great a cost in life and love five years past, would be deserted; the job the Sacred Band did, undone. There would be a handful of Hell-Hounds to stand against Theron's battalions, Beysib oppressors, and the crime-lords of the town.

  If Zip would only let him, Tempus was going to solve a number of problems that had seemed insoluble only minutes before, and do the youth the only favor one man can do another: Give him a start on solving his own problems, a place to stand, a world to win-a fresh start.

  If Tempus could keep his own people from killing the charismatic young rebel leader in the meantime. And if Zip knew a last chance when he saw one. And if, in Sanctuary, where hate and fear passed for respect. Zip hadn't made so many enemies that, no matter what Tempus did, the boy's assassination wasn't as sure as the next thunderclap of Stormbringer's welcome-weather.

  When that thunderclap did come, Tempus was already cantering the Tros down Lizard's Way, headed for the Vulgar Unicorn, where a fiend named Snapper Jo tended bar and word could be spread fast, when a man had rumors he wanted on the wing.

  Snapper Jo was a fiend of the gray-and-warty-skinned, snaggle-toothed variety. His shock of orange hair stood out every which way from his head and his eyes looked in both directions at once, causing distress to certain patrons who wondered which orb to fix on when they earnestly begged for credit or leave to pass upstairs, where drugs and women could be had.

  Snapper's job of bartending in the day at the Vulgar Unicorn was his most prized accomplishment-save the winning of his freedom.

  He'd been the summoned minion of Roxane, the Nisibisi witch called Death's Queen. But his mistress had freed him, after her fashion ... or, at least, she'd not come around lately to order him to this or that foul depradation.

  The fact that Snapper thought of his former existence as a . witch's servant as depradacious was central to the fiend's new outlook on life. Here, among the Wrigglies and the mendicants and the whores, he was trying desperately for acceptance.

  And he was managing.. No one teased him about his looks or shrank from him in fear. They were civil, in the manner of humans, and they treated him as an equal, to the extent that anyone here ever treated anyone else so.

  And, in his heart of hearts, Snapper Jo wanted above all to be accepted by the humans-perhaps, someday, as a human. For was not humanity something in the heart, not on the surface?

  Snapper Jo wanted to believe it so, in this weird inn where pop-eyed Beysibs were hated marginally more than blond and handsome Rankans, where dark skin and uneven limbs and snaggle teeth weren't disfigurements; where everyone was equally oppressed by the wizards from the Mageguild and the priests from uptown.

  So when the tall, heroic man with the fearsome countenance, who seemed to be seeping blood-or bloody rain- from every pore, came in and spoke familiarly in a gravelly voice, saying, "Snapper, I need a favor," the day bartender drew himself up to his full height-almost equal to the stranger's-puffed out his spoon-chest, and replied, "Anything, my lord-except credit, of course: house rules."

  This, too, was part of being human: caring about little stamped circles of copper, gold, or silver, even though their value was only as great as the demand of the humans who fought and died over them.

  But this big human wanted only information: He'd come to Snapper to consult.

  The stranger said, while around him the bar cleared for a man's length on either side and behind him certain patrons skulked out into the storm and two serving wenches tiptoed into the back room, "I need to know of your former mistress -did Roxane ever find her way out of Tasfalen's house uptown? Has anyone seen her? You, of all... persons ... would know if she's about."

  "No, friend," said Snapper, who used the word friend too much because he'd just recently learned its meaning, "she's not been seen or heard from since the pillar of fire was doused."

  The big man nodded and leaned close across the bar.

  Snapper leaned in to meet him, feeling somehow special and very favored to be having this conversation with so formidable a human before all the patrons in the Unicorn. Nearly nose to nose, he began to notice, through his right-looking eye, some things about the man which were naggingly familiar: the hooded, narrow eyes that watched him with hot intensity, the thin slash of a mouth whose lips twisted with some private humor.

  Then the man said, "And Ischade, the vampire woman-is she well? Down at Shambles Cross? Holding court among her shades?"

  "She..." Then memory jogged memory, and Snapper Jo raised a crop of goose bumps to complement his warts: This was the Sleepless One, the legendary fighter his former mistress had fought so long. "She... is, sire. Ischade... is. And will be, always...."

  Snapper Jo had friends among the not-really-human, the once-dead, the straddlers of the void. Ischade was not one of them, but neither was this man, whom he now knew.

  As he knew why the crowd had drawn back, this rabble who knew the players in a game they joined only as pawns and never of their own accord.

  Snapper tried not to cringe, but his lips formed words involuntarily, words that whistled out sing-sing, "Mur-der, murder, oh there'll be mur-der everywhere and Snapper's so happy without it...."

  "When next a Stepson or Commando comes in, instruct him to seek me at the mercenaries' hostel. And don't fail." The man called Tempus lay coins upon the bar.

  Snapper could see them glitter with his left-looking eye, but he didn't pick them up until the big man had gone, leaving behind only creaking floorboards stained ruddy to prove he'd been there at all.

  Then the fiend called one of the serving wenches from the kitchen and gave the girl, whom he loved-to the extent that a fiend can love-all the money the Riddler had left him, saying, "See, fear not. Snapper protect you. Snapper take care you. You take care Snapper, too, yes, later?" And the fiend gave a broad and lascivious grin to the woman he favored, who hid
her shudder as she pocketed the equivalent of a week's wages and promised the fiend she'd warm his lonely night.

  Things were tough enough, these days in Sanctuary, that you took what you could get.

  "You want us to what?" Crit's disbelieving snort made Tempus frown.

  For Tempus, the mercenaries' hostel north of town evoked memories and ghosts as bloody as the rufous walls here, hung with weapons which had won so many days. Here, Tempus and Crit had plotted to flush a witch without thought to the consequences; here, before Crit's recruitment, Tempus had put together the core of the Stepsons and taken command of Abarsis the Slaughter Priest's Sacred Band.

  Here, even farther in the past, he'd burned a scarf belonging to a woman who was his most foul curse-a scarf that had been returned to him, magically whole and full of portent; a scarf he wore again around his waist, under his armor and his chiton, as if all between his first days in Sanctuary and the present were but a bad dream.

  "I want you to protect, not hunt, this Zip, for one week," Tempus repeated, then added: "If, at the end of that week, there's no cease-fire coalition, no improvement, you can go back to collecting blood-debts."

  Crit was the brightest of the- Stepsons, a Syrese fighter who'd taken the Sacred Band oath more than once and was now paired with Straton, who in turn was entangled with Ischade, the vampire woman who lived down by Shambles Cross.

  No one wanted the Sacred Band out of Sanctuary more than Crit. And no one knew Tempus's heart better, or the specifics of what had transpired while the Emperor was in Sanctuary.

  Crit pulled on his long nose and stirred his posset with a finger, staring into it as if it were a witch's scrying bowl. "You're not. .." he said to the bowl, then looked up at Tempus. "You're not thinking about using that bunch of Zip's as some sort of Sanctuary defense force? Tell me you're not."

  "I can't tell you that. Why should I? They're trained, gods know-well enough for this town, anyway. And they're tough-as tough as any we trained ought to be, which most of them are. Niko himself spent some time working with the PFLS leader. And it shouldn't matter to you who we leave in the barracks, as long as it's not Jubal. We can't have crime-lords running things-Theron was very explicit. It'll take locals to police this place, or us."