by Janet Morris
"Anybody with a dram of common sense would." Straton, rubbing his eyes, dismounted also, notched crossbow held at the ready as soon as his feet touched the ground.
"They don't mean that. You know what they mean; they can't tell a Sacred Bander from a straight mercenary. They think we're all sodomizers and sneer at us for that."
"Let 'em. I'd rather be alive and misunderstood than dead and respected." Straton blinked, trying to clear his blurred vision. It was remarkable that Critias would undertake this action on his own; he wasn't supposed to take part in field actions, but command them. Tempus had been to see him, though, and since then the task force leader had been more taciturn and even more impatient than usual. Straton knew there was no use in arguing with Critias, but he was one of the few who could claim the privilege of voicing his opinion to the leader, even when they disagreed.
They'd interrogated the hawkmask briefly; it didn't take long; Straton was a specialist in exactly that. He was a pretty one, and substantively undamaged. The vampire was discerning, loved beauty; she'd taken to this one, the few bruises on him might well make him more attractive to a creature such as she: not only would she have him in her power but it would be in her power to save him from a much worse death than that she'd give. By the look of the tall, lithe hawkmask, by his clothes and his pinched face in which sensitive, liquid eyes roamed furtively, a pleasant death would be welcome. His ilk were hunted by more factions in Sanctuary than any but Nisibisi spies.
Crit said, "Ready, Strat?"
"I own I'm not, but I'll pretend if you do. If you get through this and I don't, my horses are yours."
"And mine, yours." Crit bared his teeth. "But I don't expect that to happen. She's reasonable, I'm wagering. She couldn't have turned that slave loose that way if she wasn't in control of her lust. And she's smart—smarter than Kadakithis' so-called 'intelligence staff," or Hell Hounds, we've seen that for a fact."
So, despite sane cautions, they unlatched the gate, their horses drop-tied behind them, cut the hawkmask's ankle bonds and walked him to the door. His eyes went wide above his gag, pupils gigantic in the torchlight on her threshold, then squeezed shut as Ischade herself came to greet them when, after knocking thrice and waiting long, they were about to turn away, convinced she wasn't home after all.
She looked them up and down, her eyes half-lidded. Straton, for once, was grateful for the shimmer in his vision, the blur he couldn't blink away. The hawkmask shivered and lurched backward in their grasp as Crit spoke first:
"Good evening, madam. We thought the time had come to meet, face to face. We've brought you this gift, a token of our good will." He spoke blandly, matter-of-factly, letting her know they knew all about her and didn't really care what she did to the unwary or the unfortunate. Straton's mouth dried and his tongue stuck to the roof of it. None was colder than Crit, or more tenacious when work was under way.
The woman, Ischade, dusky-skinned but not the ruddy tone of Nisibis, an olive cast that made the whites of her teeth and eyes very bright, bade them enter. "Bring him in, then, and we'll see what can be seen."
"No, no. We'll leave him—an article of faith. We'd like to know what you hear of Jubal, or his band—whereabouts, that sort of thing. If you come to think of any such information, you can find me at the mercenaries' hostel."
"Or in your hidey-hole in Shambles Cross?"
"Sometimes." Crit stood firm. Straton, his relief a flood, now that he knew they weren't going in there, gave the hawk-mask a shove. "Go on, boy, go to your mistress."
"A slave, then, is this one?" she asked Strat and that glance chilled his soul when it fixed on him. He'd seen butchers look at sheep like that. He half expected her to reach out and tweak his biceps.
He said: "What you wish, he is."
She said: "And you?"
Crit said: "Forbearance has its limits."
She replied: "Yours, perhaps, not mine. Take him with you; I want him not. What you Stepsons think of me, I shall not even ask. But cheap, I shall never come."
Crit loosed his hold on the youth, who wriggled then, but Straton held him, thinking that Ischade was without doubt the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, and the hawkmask was luckier than most. If death was the gateway to heaven, she was the sort of gatekeep he'd like to admit him, when his time came.
She remarked, though he had not spoken aloud, that such could easily be arranged.
Crit, at that, looked between them, then shook his head. "Go wait with the horses, Straton. I thought I heard them, just now."
So Straton never did find out exactly what was—or was not—arranged between his task force leader and the vampire woman, but when he reached the horses, he had his hands full calming them, as if his own had scented Niko's black, whom his gray detested above all other studs. When they'd both been stabled in the same barn, the din had been terrible, and stall-boards shattered as regularly as stalls were mucked, from those two trying to get at each other. Horses, like men, love and hate, and those two stallions wanted a piece of each other the way Strat wanted a chance at the garrison commander or Vashanka at the Wrigglies' Ds.
Soon after, Crit came sauntering down the walk, unscathed, alone, and silent.
Straton wanted to ask, but did not, what had been arranged: his leader's sour expression warned him off. And an hour later, at the Shambles Cross safe haven, when one of the street men came running in saying there was a disturbance and Tempus could not be found, so Crit would have to come, it was too late.
What they could do about waterspouts and whirlpools in the harbor was unclear.
* * *
When Straton and Crit had ridden away, Niko eased his black out from hiding. The spirit-track he'd followed had led them here; Tamzen and the others were inside. The spoor met up with the pale blue traces of the house's owner near the Sow's Ear and did not separate thereafter. Blue was no human's color, unless that human was an enchanter, a witch, accursed or charmed. Both Niko and Janni knew whose house this was, but what Crit and Straton were doing here, neither wanted to guess or say.
"We can't rush the place, Stealth. You know what she is."
"I know."
"Why didn't you let me hail them? Four would be better than two, for this problem's solving."
"Whatever they're doing here, I don't want to know about. And we've broken cover as it is tonight." Niko crooked a leg over his horse's neck, cavalry style. Janni rolled a smoke and offered him one; he took it and lit it with a flint from his belt pouch just as two men with a wagon came driving up from Downwind, wheels and hooves thundering across the White Foal's bridge.
"Too much traffic," Janni muttered, as they pulled their horses back into shadows and watched the men stop their team before the odd home's door; the wagon was screened and curtained; if someone was within, it was impossible to tell.
The men went in and when they came out they had three smallish people with them swathed in robes and hooded. These were put into the carriage, and it then drove away, turning onto the cart-track leading south from the bridge—there was nothing down there but swamp and wasteland, and at the end of it, Fisherman's Row and the sea… nothing, that is, but the witch Roxane's fortified estate.
"Do you think—Stealth, was that them?"
"Quiet, curse you; I'm trying to tell." It might have been; his heart was far from quiet, and the passengers, he sensed, were drugged and nearly somnambulent.
But from the house, he could no longer sense the girlish trails which had been there, among the blue/archmagical/ anguished ones of its owner and those of men. Boys' auras still remained there, he thought, but quiet, weaker, perhaps dying, maybe dead. It could be the fellow Crit had left there, and not the young scions of east side homes.
The moon, above Niko's head, was near at zenith. Seeing him look up, Janni anticipated what he was going to say: "Well, Stealth, we've got to go down there anyway; let's follow the wagon. Mayhap we'll catch it. Perchance we'll find out whom they've got there, if we do. And we've little
time to lose— girls or no, we've a witch to attend to."
"Aye." Niko reined his horse around and set it at a lope after the wagon, not fast enough to catch it too soon, but fast enough to keep it in earshot. When Janni's horse came up beside his, the other mercenary called: "Convenience of this magnitude makes me nervous; you'd think the witch sent that wagon, even snared those children, to be sure we'd have to come."
Janni was right; Niko said nothing; they were committed; there was nothing to do but follow; whatever was going to happen was well upon them, now.
* * *
A dozen riders materialized out of the wasteland near the swamp and surrounded the two Stepsons; none had faces; all had glowing pure-white eyes. They fought as best they could with mortal weapons, but ropes of spitting power came round them, and blue sparks bit them, and their flesh sizzled through their linen chitons, and, unhorsed, they were dragged along behind the riders until they no longer knew where they were or what was happening to them or even felt the pain. The last thing Niko remembered, before he awoke bound to a tree in some featureless grove, was the wagon ahead, stopping, and his horse, on its own trying to win the day. The big black had climbed the mount of the rider who dragged Niko on a tether, and he'd seen the valiant beast's thick jowls pierced through by arrows glowing blue with magic, seen his horse falter, jaws gaping, then fall as he was dragged away.
Now he struggled, helpless in his bonds, trying to clear his vision and will his pain away.
Before him he saw figures, a bonfire limning silhouettes. Among them, as consciousness came full upon him and he began to wish he'd never waked, was Tamzen, struggling in grisly embraces and wailing out his name, and the other girls, and Janni, spreadeagled, staked out on the ground, his mouth open, screaming at the sky.
"Ah," he heard, "Nikodemos. So kind of you to join us."
Then a woman's face swam before him, beautiful, though that just made it worse. It was the Nisibisi witch, and she was smiling, itself an awful sign. A score of minions ringed her, creatures roused from graves, and two with ophidian eyes and lipless mouths whose skins had a greenish cast.
She began to tell him softly the things she wished to know. For a time he only shook his head and closed his ears and tried to flee his flesh. If he could retire his mind to his rest-place, he could ignore it all; the pain, the screams which split the night; he would know none of what occurred here, and die without the shame of capitulation: she'd kill him anyway, when she was done. So he counted determinedly backward, eyes squeezed shut, envisioning the runes which would save him. But Tamzen's screams, her sobs to him for help, and Janni's animal anguish, kept interfering, and he could not reach the quiet place and stay: he kept being dragged back by the sounds.
Still, when she asked him questions, he only stared back at her in silence: Tempus' plans and state of mind were things he knew little of; he couldn't have stopped this if he'd wanted to; he didn't know enough. But when at length, knowing it, he closed his eyes again, she came up close and pried them open, impaling his lids with wooden splinters so that he would see what made Janni cry.
They had staked the Stepson over a wild creature's burrow— a badger, he later saw, when it had gnawed and clawed its way to freedom—and were smoking the rodent out by setting fire to its tunnel. When Janni's stomach began to show the outline of the animal within, Niko, capitulating, told all he knew and made up more besides.
By then the girls had long since been silenced.
All he heard was the witch's voice; all he remembered was the horror of her eyes and the message she bade him give to Tempus, and that when he had repeated it, she pulled the splinters from his lids… The darkness she allowed him became complete, and he found a danker rest-place than meditation's quiet cave.
* * *
In Roxane's "manor house" commotion raged; slaves went running, and men cried orders, and in the court the caravan was being readied to make away.
She herself sat petulant and wroth, among the brocades of her study and the implements of her craft: water and fire and earth and air, and minerals and plants, and a globe sculpted from high peaks clay with precious stones inset.
A wave of hand would serve to load these in her wagon. The house spells' undoing would take much less than that—a finger's wave, a word unsaid, and all would be no more than it appeared: rickety and threadbare. Bu the evening's errors and all the work she'd done to amend them had drained her strength.
She sat, and Niko, in a corner, propped up but not awake, breathed raspingly: another error—those damn snakes took everything too literally, as well as being incapable of following simple orders to their completion.
The snakes she'd sent out, charmed to look like Stepsons, should have found the children in the streets; as Niko and Janni, their disguises were complete. But a vampire bitch, a cursed and accursed third-rater possessed of meager spells, had chanced upon the quarry and taken it home. Then she'd had to change all plans and make the wagon and send the snakes to retrieve the bait—the girls alone, the boys were expendable—and snakes were not up to fooling women grown and knowledgeable of spells. Ischade had given up her female prizes, rather than confront Nisibisi magic, pretending for her own sake that she believed the "Stepsons" who came to claim Tamzen and her friends.
Had Roxane not been leaving town this evening, she'd have had to wipe the vampire's soul—or at least her memory— away.
So she took the snakes out once more from their baskets and held their heads up to her face. Tongues darted out and reptilian eyes pled mercy, but Roxane had forgotten mercy long ago. And strength was what she needed, which in part these had helped to drain away. Holding them high she picked herself up and speaking words of power took them both and cast them in the blazing hearth. The flames roared up and snakes writhed in agony, and roasted. When they were done she fetched them out with silver tongs and ate their tails and heads.
Thus fortified, she turned to Niko, still hiding mind and soul in his precious mental refuge, a version of it she'd altered when her magic saw it. This place of peace and perfect relaxation, a cave behind the meadow of his mind, had a ghost in it, a friend who loved him. In its guise she'd spoken long to him and gained his spirit's trust. He was hers, now, as her lover-lord had promised; all things he learned she'd know as soon as he. None of it he'd remember, just go about his business of war and death. Through him she'd herd Tempus whither she willed, and through him she'd know the Riddler's every plan.
For Nikodemos, the Nisibisi bondservant, had never shed his brand or slipped his chains: though her lover had freed his body, deep within his soul a string was tied. Any time, her lord could pull it; and she, too, now, had it twined around her pinky.
He remembered none of what occurred after his interrogation in the grove; he recalled just what she pleased and nothing more. Oh, he'd think he'd dreamed delirious nightmares, as he sweated now to feel her touch.
She woke him with a tap upon his eyes and told him what he was: her pawn, her tool, even that he would not recall their little talk or coming here. And she warned him of undeads, and shriveled his soul when she showed him, in her mirror-eyes, what Tamzen and her friend could be, should he even remember what passed between them here.
Then she put her pleasure by and touched the bruised and battered face: one more thing she took from him, to show his spirit who was slave and who was master. She had him service her and took strength from his swollen mouth and then, with a laugh, made him forget it all.
Then she sent her servant forth, unwitting, the extra satisfaction—gleaned from knowing that his spirit knew, and deep within him cried and struggled—giving the whole endeavor spice.
Jagat's men would see him to the road out near the Stepsons' barracks; they took his sagging weight in brawny arms.
And Roxane, for a time, was free to quit this scrofulous town and wend her way northward: she might be back, but for the nonce the journey to her lord's embrace was all she craved. They'd leave a trail well marked in place and plane f
or Tempus; she'd lie in high-peaks splendor, with her lover-lord well pleased by what she'd brought him: some Stepsons, and a Froth Daughter, and a man the gods immortalized.
* * *
In took until nearly dawn to calm the fish-faces who'd lost their five best ships; "lucky" for everyone that the Burek faction's nobility had been enjoying Kadakithis's hospitality, ensconced in the summer palace on the lighthouse spit and not aboard when the ships snapped anchor and headed like creatures with wills of their own toward the maelstrom that had opened at the harbor's mouth.
Crit, through all, was taciturn; he was not supposed to surface; Tempus, when found, would not be pleased. But Kadakithis needed counsel badly; the young prince would give away his Imperial curls for "harmonious relations with our fellows from across the sea."
Nobody could prove that this was other than a natural disaster; an "act of gods" was the unfortunate turn of phrase.
When at last Crit and Strat had done with the dicey process of standing around looking inconsequential while in fact, by handsign and courier, they mitigated Kadakithis's bent to compromise (for which there was no need except in the Beysib matriarch's mind), they retired from the dockside.
Crit wanted to get drunk, as drunk as humanly possible: helping the mageguild defend its innocence, when like as not some mage or other had called the storm, was more than distasteful; it was counterproductive. As far as Critias was concerned, the newly elected First Hazard ought to step forward and take responsibility for his guild's malevolent mischief. When frogs fell from the sky, Straton prognosticated, such would be the case.
They'd done some good there: they'd conscripted Wrigglies and deputized fishermen and bullied the garrison duty officer into sending some of his men out with the long boats and Beysib dinghies and slave-powered tenders which searched shoals and coastline for survivors. But with the confusion of healers and thrill-seeking civilians and boat owners and Beysibs on the docks, they'd had to call in all the Stepsons and troops from road patrols and country posts in case the Beysibs took their loss too much to heart and turned upon the townsfolk.