Beyond Sanctuary

by Janet Morris

  On every corner, now, a mounted pair stood watch; beyond, the roads were desolate, unguarded. Crit worried that if diversion were some culprit's purpose, it had worked all too well: an army headed south would be upon them with no warning. If he'd not known that yesterday there'd been no sign of southward troop movement, he confided to Straton, he'd be sure some such evil was afoot.

  To make things worse, when they found an open bar it was the Alekeep, and its owner was wringing his hands in a corner with five other upscale fathers. Their sons and daughters had been out all night; word to Tempus at the Stepsons' barracks had brought no answer; the skeleton crew at the garrison had more urgent things to do than attend to demands for search parties when manpower was suddenly at a premium; the fathers sat awaiting their own men's return and thus had kept the Alekeep's graveyard shift from closing.

  They got out of there as soon as politic, weary as their horses and squinting in the lightening dark.

  The only place where peace and quiet could be had now that the town was waking, Crit said sourly, was the Shambles drop. They rode there and fastened the iron shutters down against the dawn, thinking to get an hour or so of sleep, and found Niko's coded note.

  "Why wouldn't the old barkeep have told us that he'd set them on his daughter's trail?" Strat sighed, rubbing his eyes with his palms.

  "Niko's legend says he's defected to the slums, remember?" Crit was shrugging into his chiton, which he'd just tugged off and thrown upon the floor.

  "We're not going back out."

  "I am."

  "To look for Niko? Where?"

  "Niko and Janni. And I don't know where. But if that pair hasn't turned up those youngsters yet, it's no simple adolescent prank or graduation romp. Let's hope it's just that their meet with Roxane took precedence and it's inopportune for them to leave her." Crit stood.

  Straton didn't.

  "Coming?" Crit asked.

  "Somebody should be where authority is expected to be found. You should be here or at the hostel, not chasing after someone who might be chasing after you."

  So in the end, Straton won that battle and they went up to the hostel, stopping, since the sun had risen, at Marc's to pick up Straton's case of flights along the way.

  The shop's door was ajar, though the opening hour painted on it hadn't come yet. Inside, the smith was hunched over a mug of tea, a crossbow's trigger mechanism dismantled before him on a split of suede, scowling at the crossbow's guts spread upon his counter as if at a recalcitrant child.

  He looked up when they entered, wished them a better morning than he'd had so far this day, and went to get Straton's case of flights.

  Behind the counter an assortment of high-torque bows was hung.

  When Marc returned with the wooden case, Straton pointed: "That's Niko's, isn't it—or are my eyes that bad?"

  "I'm holding it for him, until he pays," explained the smith with the unflinching gaze.

  "We'll pay for it now, and he can pick it up from me," Crit said.

  "I don't know if he'd…" Marc, half into someone else's business, stepped back out of it with a nod of head: "All right, then, if you want. I'll tell him you've got it. That's four soldats, three… I've done a lot of work on it for him. Shall I tell him to seek you at the guild hostel?"

  "Thereabouts."

  Taking it down from the wall, the smith wound and levered, then dry-fired the crossbow, its mechanism to his ear. A smile came over his face at what he heard. "Good enough, then," he declared and wrapped it in its case of padded hide.

  This way, Straton realized, Niko would come direct to Crit and report when Marc told him what they'd done.

  * * *

  By the time dawn had cracked the world's egg, Tempus as well as Jihan was sated, even tired. For a man who chased sleep like other men chased power or women, it was wondrous that this was so. For a being only recently become woman, it was a triumph. They walked back toward the Stepsons' barracks, following the creekbed, all pink and gold in sunrise, content and even playful, his chuckle and her occasional laugh startling sleepy squirrels and flushing birds from their nests.

  He'd been morose, but she'd cured it, convincing him that life might take a better turn, if he'd just let it. They'd spoken of her father, called Stormbringer in lieu of name, and arcane matters of then- joint preoccupation: whether humanity had inherent value, whether gods could die or merely lie, whether Vashanka was hiding out somewhere, petulant in godhead, only waiting for generous sacrifices and heartfelt prayers to coax him back among his Rankan people—or, twelfth plane powers forfend, really "dead."

  He'd spoken openly to her of his affliction, reminding her that those who loved him died by violence, and those he loved were bound to spurn him, and what that could mean in the case of his Stepsons, and herself, if Vashanka's power did not return to mitigate his curse. He'd told her of his plea to Enlil, an ancient deity of universal scope, and that he awaited godsign.

  She'd been relieved at that, afraid, she admitted, that the lord of dreams might tempt him from her side. For when Aškelon the dream lord had come to take Tempus' sister off to his metaphysical kingdom of delights, he'd offered the brother the boon of mortality. Now that she'd just found him, Jihan had added throatily, she could not bear it if he chose to die.

  And she'd spent that evening proving to Tempus that it might be well to stay alive with her, who loved life the more for having only just begun it, and yet could not succumb to mortal death or be placed in mortal danger by his curse, his strength, or whatever he might do.

  The high moon had laved them, and her legs had embraced him, and her red-glowing eyes like her father's had transfixed him while her cool flesh enflamed him. Yes, with Jihan beside him, he'd swallow his pride and his pique and give even Sanctuary's Kadakithis the benefit of the doubt—he'd stay though his heart tugged him northward, although he'd thought, when he took her to their creekbed bower, to chase her away.

  When they'd slipped into his barracks quarters from the back, he was no longer so certain. He heard from a lieutenant all about the waterspouts and whirlpools, thinking while the man talked that this was his godsign, however obscure its meaning, and then he regretted having made an accommodation with the Froth Daughter: all his angst came back upon him, and he wished he'd hugged his resolve firmly to his breast and driven Jihan hence.

  But when the disturbance at the outer gates penetrated to the slaver's old apartments which he had made his own, rousting them out to seek its cause, he was glad enough she'd remained.

  The two of them had to shoulder their way through the gathered crowd of Stepsons, astir with bitter mutters; no one made way for them; none had come to their commander's billet with news of what had been brought up to the gatehouse in the dawn.

  He heard a harsh whisper from a Stepson too angry to be careful, wondering if Tempus had sent Janni's team deliberately to destruction because Stealth had rejected the Riddler's offered pairbond.

  One who knew better answered sagely that this was a Mygdonian message, a Nisibisi warning of some antiquity, and he had heard it straight from Stealth's broken lips.

  "What did that?" Jihan moaned, bending low over Janni's remains. Tempus did not answer her but said generally: "And Niko?" and followed a man who headed off toward the whitewashed barracks, hearing as he went a voice choked with grief explaining to Jihan what happens when you tie a man spread-eagled over an animal's burrow and smoke the creature out.

  The Stepson guiding him to where Niko lay said that the man who'd brought them wished to speak to Tempus. "Let him wait for his reward," Tempus snapped, and questioned the mercenary about the Samaritan who'd delivered the two Stepsons home. But the Sacred Bander had gotten nothing from the stranger who'd rapped upon the gates and braved the angry sentries who almost killed him when they saw what burden he'd brought in. The stranger would say only that he must wait for Tempus.

  The Stepsons' commander stood around helplessly with three others, friends of Niko's, until the barber-surgeon ha
d finished with needle and gut, then chased them all away, shuttering windows, barring doors. Cup in hand, then, he gave the battered, beaten youth his painkilling draught in silence, only sitting and letting Niko sip while he assessed the Stepson's injuries and made black guesses as to how the boy had come by green and purple blood-filled bruises, rope burns at wrist and neck, and a face like doom.

  Quite soon he heard from Nikodemos, concisely but through a slur that comes when teeth have been loosed or broken in a dislocated jaw, what had transpired: they had gone seeking the Alekeep owner's daughter, deep into Shambles where drug dens and cheap whores promise dreamless nights, found them at Ischade's, seen them hustled into a wagon and driven away toward Roxane's. Following, for they were due to see the witch at high moon in her lair in any case, they'd been accosted, surprised by a death squad armed with magic and visaged like the dead, roped and dragged from their horses. The next lucid interval Niko recalled was one of being propped against dense trees, tied to one while the Nisibisi witch used children's plights and spells and finally Janni's tortured drawn-out death to extract from him what little he knew of Tempus' intentions and Rankan strategies of defense for the lower land. "Was I wrong to try-not to tell them?" Niko asked, eyes swollen half-shut but filled with hurt. "I thought they'd kill us all, whatever. Then I thought I could hold out… Tamzen and the other girls were past help… but Janni—" He shook his head. "Then they… thought I was lying, when I couldn't answer… questions they should have asked of you— Then I did lie, to please them, but she… the witch knew…"

  "Never mind. Was One-Thumb a party to this?" A twitch of lips meant "no" or "I don't know." Then Niko found the strength to add: "If I hadn't tried to keep my silence— I've been interrogated before by Nisibisi… I hid in my rest-place… until Janni— They killed him to get to me."

  Tempus saw bright tears threatening to spill and changed the subject: "Your rest-place? So your maat returned to you?"

  He whispered, "After a fashion… I don't care about that now. Going to need all my anger… no time for balance anymore."

  Tempus blew out a breath and set down Niko's cup and looked between his legs at the packed clay floor. "I'm going north, tomorrow. I'll leave sortie assignments and schedules with Critias—he'll be in command here—and a rendezvous for those who want to join in settling up. Did you recognize any Ilsigs in her company? A servant, a menial, anyone at all?"

  "No, they all look alike… Someone found us, got us to the gates. Some trainees of ours, maybe—they knew my name. The witch said come ahead and die upcountry. Each reprisal of ours, they'll match fourfold."

  "Are you telling me not to go?"

  Niko struggled to sit up, cursed, fell back with blood oozing from between his teeth, Tempus made no move to help him. They stared at each other until Stealth said, "It will seem that you've been driven from Sanctuary, that you've failed here..."

  "Let it seem so, it may well be true."

  "Wait, then, until I can accompany—"

  "You know better. I will leave instructions for you." He got up and left quickly, before his temper got the best of him where the boy could see.

  The Samaritan who had brought their wounded and their dead was waiting outside Tempus' quarters. His name was Vis, and though he looked Nisibisi he claimed he had a message from Jubal. Because of his skin and his accent Tempus almost took him prisoner, thinking to give him to Straton, for whom all manner of men bare their souls, but he marshaled his anger and sent the young man away with a pocket full of soldats and instructions to convey Jubals message to Critias. Crit would be in charge of the Stepsons henceforth; what Jubal and Crit might arrange was up to them. The reward was for bringing home the casualties, dead and living, a favor cheap at the price.

  Then Tempus went to find Jihan. When he did, he asked her to put him in touch with Aškelon, dream lord, if she could.

  "So that you can punish yourself with mortality? This is not your fault."

  "A kind, if unsound, opinion. Mortality will break the curse. Can you help me?"

  "I will not, not now, when you are like this," she replied, concern knitting her brows in the harsh morning light. "But I will accompany you north. Perhaps another day, when you are calmer…"

  He cursed her for acting like a woman and set about scheduling sorties and sketching maps, so that each of his men would have worked out his debt to Kadakithis and be in good standing with the mercenaries' guild when and if they joined him in Tyse, at the very foot of Wizardwall.

  It took no longer to draft his resignation and Critias' appointment in his stead and send them off to Kadakithis than it took to clear his actions with the Rankan representatives of the mercenaries' guild: his task here (assessing Kadakithis for a Rankan faction desirous of a change in emperors) was accomplished; he could honestly say that neither town or townspeople nor effete prince was worth straggling to ennoble. For good measure he was willing to throw into the stewpot of disgust boiling in him both Vashanka and the child he had co-fathered with the god, by means of whom certain interests thought to hold him here: he disliked children, as a class, and even Vashanka had turned his back on this one.

  Still, there were things he had to do. He went and found Crit in the guild hostel's common room and told him all that had transpired. If Crit had refused the appointment outright, Tempus would have had to tarry, but Critias only smiled cynically, saying that he'd be along with his best fighters as soon as matters here allowed. He left One-Thumb's case in Critias's hands; they both knew that Straton could determine the degree of the barkeep's complicity quickly enough.

  Crit asked, as Tempus was leaving the dark and comforting common room for the last time, whether any children's bodies had been found—three girls and boys still were missing; one young corpse had turned up cold in Shambles Cross.

  "No," Tempus said, and thought no more about it. "Life to you, Critias."

  "And to you, Riddler. And everlasting glory."

  Outside, Jihan was waiting on one Trôs horse, the other's reins in her hand.

  They went first southwest to see if perhaps the witch or her agents might be found at home, but the manor house and its surrounds were deserted, the yard crisscrossed with cart-tracks from heavily laden wagons' wheels.

  The caravan's track was easy to follow.

  Riding north without a backward glance on his Trôs horse, Jinan swaying in her saddle on his right, he had one last impulse: he ripped the problematical Storm God's amulet from around his throat, dropped it into a quaggy marsh. Where he was going, Vashanka's name was meaningless. Other names were hallowed, and other attributes given to the weather gods.

  When he was sure he had successfully cast it aside, and the god's voice had not come ringing with awful laughter in his ear (for all gods are tricksters, and war gods worst of any), he relaxed in his saddle. The omens for this venture were good: they'd completed their preparations in half the time he'd anticipated, so that he could start it while the day was young.

  * * *

  Crit sat long at his customary table in the common room after Tempus had gone. By rights it should have been Straton or some Sacred Band pair who succeeded Tempus, someone… anyone but him. After a time he pulled out his pouch and emptied its contents onto the plank table: three tiny metal figures, a fishhook made from an eagle's claw and abalone shell, a single die, an old field decoration won in Azehur while the Slaughter Priest led the original Sacred Band.

  He scooped them up and threw them as a man might throw in wager: the little gold Storm God fell beneath the lead figurine of a fighter, propping the man upright; the fishhook embraced the die, which came to rest with one dot facing up—Strat's war name was Ace. The third figure, a silver rider mounted, sat square atop the field star—Abarsis had slipped it over his head so long ago the ribbon had crumbled away.

  Content with the omens his private prognosticators gave, he collected them and put them away. He'd wanted Tempus to ask him to join him, not hand him fifty men's lives to yea or nay. He t
ook such work too much to heart; it lay heavy on him, worse than the task force's weight had been, and he'd only just begun. But that was why Tempus picked him—he was conscientious to a fault.

  He sighed and rose and quit the hostel, riding aimlessly through the fetid streets. Damned town was a pit, a bubo, a sore that wouldn't heal. He couldn't trust his task force to some subordinate, though how he was going to run them while stomping around vainly trying to fill Tempus' sandals, he couldn't say.

  His horse, picking his route, took him by the Vulgar Unicorn where Straton would soon be "discussing sensitive matters" with One-Thumb.

  By rights he should go up to the palace, pay a call on Kadakithis, "make nice" (as Straton said) to Vashanka's priest-of-record Molin, visit the mageguild… He shook his head and spat over his horse's shoulder. He hated politics.

  And what Tempus had told him about Niko's misfortune and Janni's death still rankled. He remembered the foreign fighter Niko had made him turn loose—Vis. Vis, who'd come to Tempus, bearing hurt and slain, with a message from Jubal. That, and what Straton had gotten from the hawkmask they'd given Ischade, plus the vampire woman's own hints, allowed him to triangulate Jubal's position like a sailor navigating by the stars. Vis was supposed to come to him, though. He'd wait. If his hunch was right, he could put Jubal and his hawkmasks to work for Kadakithis without either knowing—or at least having to admit—that was the case.

  If so, he'd be free to take the band north—what they wanted, expected, and would now fret to do with Tempus gone. Only Tempus's mystique had kept them this long; Crit would have a mutiny, or empty barracks, if he couldn't meet their expectation of war to come. They weren't baby sitters, slum police, or palace praetorians; they collected exploits, not soldats. He began to form a plan, shape up a scenario, answer questions sure to be asked him later, rehearsing replies in his mind.