by Janet Morris
Riding through the ashen streets with Critias toward the house where they were supposed to deliver the huge, black wolf of a dog that Tempus had entrusted to them, Straton waxed uneasy. A krrf-sniffing dog was in itself an oddity; this one, trotting docilely beside them, spooked the horses for no apparent reason.
Crit had come from his meeting with Tempus cranky and self-absorbed—worried, he admitted when Straton pressed him, that sorcery was involved in this endeavor, no matter how straightforward it seemed. Deliver the dog to Niko's girl, make sure she understood that it must have its krrf, and get out of there without any additional conversation.
What business Niko had setting up a girl in noble fashion in a private house a mile downstream from the falls so that white water murmured by its back door and the small sounds a guerrilla fighter counts upon to warn him in moments of danger were masked, Crit couldn't, or wouldn't say.
Niko was north on assignment; a mercenary's women weren't usually his commander's concern. And this whole set of circumstances reminded Strat so much of Ischade and the house by the White Foal in Sanctuary that he was anxious to be done with it: Ischade's beautiful, inky-eyed face haunted him still. Crit had made a point of keeping Straton well out of whatever arrangements he might have made with her. It hurt Straton's pride to see Critias go to such lengths to protect him; it hurt worse to feel that Crit was right: he'd been bewitched by the vampire woman. This chink in his armor still rankled.
"There it is." Crit pulled up his horse and wiped a sooty wrist across his brow. Purple thunderheads looming to the north were underlit by the fires yet blazing so that it seemed they rode in perpetual sunset, though it was only midafternoon.
The dog, uncanny and weird, sat down on its haunches, its tongue lolling. It sneezed, rolled its eyes, and bayed as if at the moon. Somehow, it sounded distinctly frustrated.
Lightning flared; thunder followed; his horse shivered, tossing its head. "I wish it would rain." Straton's nose was stuffy from the grit he'd been inhaling; the sky threatened, but never made good.
"We'll just drop off the dog and leave. No long talks. She may be a friend of Niko's, but I got the impression that the Riddler wants to be discreet."
"Send it with a note on its collar, then. It's smarter than some Stepsons I've met." The reference to the recruits they'd found for the Sanctuary unit made Crit turn.
"Don't start. At least we haven't got that whole crew of sellswords to wetnurse. A task force is more my size. I'd say we ought to count our blessings."
"Count 'em after we've walked away from this one. Do you think there's a special reason we're making this delivery?" Not for the first time Straton wondered why he always ended up in these covert enterprises, rather than facing a clean and mortal enemy on a nice, day bright field of battle.
"He'll tell us, later. Or not. It's not our job to speculate." Critias spurred his horse forward. He called back: "Come on, Straton. Or stay behind. I want to get this over with."
Straton wasn't going to stay behind. There had been altogether too much of that lately. He loosed his horse's reins, and it leaped to catch up, sharing his own feelings about hanging back.
Cybele's house, once they'd ridden up an overgrown path to its front door, loomed forbiddingly in the gloom. Lightning flashed, blue-white, and it looked worse: once a noble building, it had fallen into disrepair. Ivy crawled over its two stories, loosening stones and blocking windows; high shade trees scraped its roof. Its windows gaped blackly.
Tethering their horses and walking up to an overhung, trellised door with the dog between them, Straton wondered again what interest the Riddler had in Niko's love life, and whether the dog had some significance—watchdogs were just not that rare, that Tempus would choose a special one—and whether Niko had finally pushed his luck too far.
Just as Crit was about to knock, the door opened. He called the dog to heel, slapping his thigh, and announced to the face behind the latch-strap (wide and blue-eyed and decidedly unmagical looking): "Mistress Cybele? We've come from Tempus with the dog he promised."
The door closed in their faces, then opened wide.
Straton saw a girl of the sort Niko liked—young and fair and barely budding.
Her voice was cultured: "Oh, he's beautiful! Bring him in, please… come in."
"We've just got time to give you his feeding regimen and special instructions." Crit held out a piece of parchment. "You do read Rankene?"
"Oh, certainly, yes; I do." She was innocently fetching. She stared behind at the sanguine sky and shivered: "It's upon us, now, the war? I'm all alone and he's not home… I can't say how much this means." Stuffing the parchment in her belt she knelt down and cooed to the dog: "Come here, big boy, come on, come…"
The dog's fur bristled; his lip curled; he growled, backed up two steps, went forward three.
"That's a good puppy," She let him sniff her hand, then scratched his head. "What's his name?"
"He hasn't got one. You shouldn't make a pet of a watchdog. And he's high as he can be on krrf." As Cybele pulled her hand away and looked at them accusingly, Crit explained: "That's how they're best; he'll tear any intruder limb from limb, and he won't eat a poisoned treat put out to down him. You have to give him krrf three times a day." He held out a pouch of krrf worth a week's pay. "Else he'll get lethargic, seem to have a cold or worse, and maybe bite you in your sleep. Got that?"
"What's your name?"
Strat spoke: "We've got to go, soldier. We're late."
"Wait, oh please. Are you two friends of Niko's? Have you word of him—how long he'll be away? Your master said I could ask anyone wearing armbands like yours—?"
"We don't have a 'master," girl." Straton jostled Crit; the dog trotted inside the house. "Lock your door. Don't be so forward. Anyone could say they knew your friend and take this place right over, you're so anxious for company. If you were smart, you'd move into town. This is no place for a child."
Hurt showed in her eyes, and the door shut thereafter, leaving Critias shaking his head as they both walked away.
"Thank you, Ace."
"For what?" Strat asked.
"I don't know why, but I really wanted to go in there. Poor little thing, alone like that, Niko gone… And I know better."
* * *
Inside the house, the Stepsons gone, Randal was having second thoughts. Doing this for Tempus—infiltrating the abode of an alleged witch in the guise of a watchdog...hadn't been Randal's idea. Tempus had arranged it with the First Hazard, who in turn had come to him and put it in a way Randal couldn't refuse: a temporary truce between Tempus and the mageguild might lead to a permanent alliance; even if it didn't, joining forces to defeat Datan was in itself a worthy endeavor. And Randal, with the aid of correlative spells from the finest sorcerers in Tyse, would surely fool the witch. Nisibisi or not, she was basically no more powerful than the whole Tysian mageguild. Wizardwall's pretensions, of a master race and superior bloodlines born to enchantment, were nothing more than propaganda.
For himself, Randal would gain a grade—he'd be a junior no more, when this was over. All he had to do was perform this minor treachery with his guild behind him, and he'd be a full-fledged member of the Hazard class. He hoped Niko wasn't this witch's willing accomplice; that was treachery too foul. He didn't want to run home telling tales of venal Stepsons. Tempus had abrogated a long-standing rule of his by joining forces with enchanters; every mage involved knew his Order to be on trial. If Niko was in feckless thrall, then all Randal had to do was figure out how to save him. He looked up at the Nisibisi witch and wagged his tail.
She called him: "Here, doggie."
He slunk over, stifling a sneeze and reciting in his mind a warding spell.
The krrf he had eaten should help maintain the spell and his courage, keep his allergies in check.
"Good dog, that's the boy," she crooned, and he strove to penetrate illusion, find the witch beneath the innocent facade. Her hands were soft and long, their touch on his ears
and fur immensely pleasurable. If he hadn't smelled the sorcery— charm and ward and ophidian dankness—he'd think the Riddler might be wrong.
His eyes half closed reflexively; he knew his tongue lolled: one could not be an animal only in name. He opened them, an act of will, and saw her changing form before him, murmuring: "It's all right, hound puppy, see? I still smell—and am—the same."
From head to toe a dark shimmer cloaked the witch, descending, leaving a jet-haired, pale-eyed beauty where a comely child had been before. Her face was heart-shaped, arch and in essence ageless.
Despite himself, Randal whined and shivered and felt his belly touch the floor: this was not just any Nisibisi witch, but fearsome, fabled Roxane, bane of the Tysian mageguild, adept assassin, queen of undeads, "Death's Queen" in Nisibisi lore.
He almost howled; he froze, instead, in panic, hoping he could hold his form, not break and run as man or mouse or flea. He thought of all there was at stake: Niko's tortured soul, Tempus and an end to a bloodfeud with his brother mages which had gone on for centuries, his own life should Roxane see through his dog-disguise and all the krrf and brother mages he'd used to reinforce it.
Then he smelled snake so strong and close he almost gagged, and the witch rose up, taller now, and shedding a blue afterglow of power which lit the shadowed room, now more opulent and gracious in appointments than it had been before or any Peace Falls dwelling had the right to be, and told him "Stay," and disappeared through the farther doorway.
With Roxane gone, he calmed his heart and tried to think, but snake odor still assailed him, and he snuffled around the edges of the room to find its source. As he reached the doorway, he heard low sounds of conversation. His canine ears detected words, a man's: "Vasili's death won't—" and Roxane's: "Use this. It will tell the tale we need to spread, incriminate the Successors."
And then, as Randal sat quite still, his head cocked, something hissed close by, and a basket up against the wall began to teeter. He backed a step, then used his nose: therefrom, the smell of snake.
House snakes, writhing, tipped their basket over, then slithered out to arch up on their coils and hiss at him. The closest one, its tongue protruding, swayed back and forth, and the dog in him took over: he'd bounded in and fastened his powerful jaws on its neck, behind its head, before he knew it.
A cry, quite human, anguished, long, came forth from somewhere. Snakes have no vocal cords. He didn't pay attention. The instinct of his change-form had taken over: he shook it in his jaws and ground his teeth on its neck; it hardly struggled; its writhing soon ceased. He was chewing on it, its lifeless body stretched between his paws, when human feet appeared before him, and fearful curses rang out above.
Then: "Bad dog! Get back! Away!"
It was Roxane, and around her neck the second house snake curled, its tongue aflicker.
He'd done something wrong; he cowered, whined, sat back and lay down flat, his expression as mournful as he could make it, his head between his paws.
He sensed her wrath, its smell, its fury. Then the rage darkening her complexion came visibly under control as three men in Tysian dress rushed in to see what the trouble was.
"Nothing, gentle sirs. My dog… he's new… he ate a house snake. Poor dog, he did what any dog would do." Her voice was tremulous. She herded the men back the way they'd come, and just in time: the house snake he'd been eating was beginning to take other shapes, in death mimicking every form its life had ever known.
* * *
Among the refugees in the free zone, Niko and Bashir moved easily, their horses left beyond the crumbling wall where the Successors' tunnel came up to ground level in a burned out, abandoned barn.
There was drizzle, now, and fog—an extra blessing. The fact that they were healthier than most, with all then- teeth and limbs, well armed beneath their rags, was doubly-hid by weather. As for the rest—they reeked of garlic, or Niko did, from using fresh cloves of it to disinfect a long, deep scrape upon his arm he'd gotten in the tunnel; they were reeling slightly, tipsy from the blood wine Successors favored; and Bashir, morose and bellicose as he moved among the "Maggots," was ranting under his breath about "heartless Rankan overlords" and "Nisibisi witches" and "Mygdonian oppression" soon to come—in short, the Successors' leader was looking for a fight.
"You promised we'd not get drunk on this." Niko slapped the empty wineskin at his hip, grabbed Bashir's arm and steered him around a tumble of poke-ribbed children eating garbage in the street and ready to defend their pile of rotting rinds and suet and slop with sharpened sticks and jagged teeth.
"I am not drunk," Bashir replied thickly, shrugging Niko's hand away and walking an elaborately careful straight line for six steps before his arms shot out to balance him and he tottered.
Niko put out a hand to save Bashir from a fall, pretending he was steadying his own uncertain progress. "You're not. I am. And I can't show up like this… We've your reputation to protect, if—"
"Excuse me." Bashir stopped, retched between two low black tents, then straightened, fumbling in his pouch.
"Here." He handed Niko a sprig of mint and a small packet of krrf mixed four-to-one with pulcis. "Chew the mint, snort the powder, and we'll be sober as foxes, sweet-smelling as farm maids, yes?"
Niko sniffed the clay-colored powder, the mint in his mouth, and everything around became preternaturally clear.
He handed the packet back to Bashir, who did likewise. "Shrivel me, that's better. Now, Stealth, escort me to your mighty, much-vaunted immortal. Let us steal upon him out of shadows, though, break through his perimeter as you did mine; it befits my mood to descend upon this meeting place from the rear."
"Anything is possible."
But when they got to the tent Tempus had designated as a meeting place, things looked less than hopeful: despite the need for secrecy, here in the free zone, a dozen operatives were stationed around the tent in varying degrees of disguise, their posture and their swagger belying darned mantles and three-day beards. One was off by himself, interrogating a prisoner lashed to a wagon's wheel, and that prisoner had the braided sidelocks of a Successor of Free Nisibis.
"Is this the kind of talk your commander thinks to have with me? Even for you, Niko, I'll not chance it." Bashir moved closer to him, dark eyes troubled in his oval, bearded face, his skin pallid in the foggy twilight, his broad forehead etched with worry lines.
"I know how it looks, what you're thinking," Niko whispered. "Stay here, out of sight. Be quiet. I'll give the jackal call, then come back myself to get you. If it's not me who comes looking, or you hear no call, then I'll be dead, and you'll be on your own. As for your man, there must be some good reason, but I'll see what I can do."
"Success, then."
"And to you." Niko slipped away, backtracked, crossed the dirt track and approached the tent and wagon from the upwind side.
A beggar/sentry rose and fell in behind him; a rug merchant left his stall and showed Niko his blade, saying, "Hold!"
"Hold yourself, Ari. You're about as subtle as a siege engine. What's afoot? Why is that Successor strung up there?"
The beggar behind backed off; Niko heard him grunt as he resumed his seat.
Ari pulled him by the elbow to his stall. "Afoot? Have you not heard? Vasili's been murdered… shot. The arrow in his neck was made in Free Nisibis—helical fletching, it's their handiwork, all right. And don't go marching over there to tell him his business… that one's the task force leader's boyfriend, some interrogation specialist… very nasty. It's nothing much to worry about—"
"Nothing much… Does Tempus know of this? Where's Grillo?"
"In the tent, there. But no one's allowed inside… Niko? Niko?"
But Niko was already striding away, toward the tent. Halfway there, he was stopped by two men he didn't know and told the same: no admittance.
He considered mayhem, remembered Bashir, watching, and approached the interrogator instead.
"Turn this man loose." He clapped his han
d on the interrogator's shoulder and spun him around: "Straton!"
The mud-specked, dirty face which had been scowling began to smirk. "Niko! I don't think you can save this one, but I warned Crit you'd want to try. Have you seen Grit? Or Tempus? You haven't, yet? They're waiting for you. This one'll keep, come on, I'll take you in."
But Niko didn't move."Let that man go. I can't bring Bashir in here with you torturing one of his people before his eyes…" He stopped before he made it worse. Straton was no one to offend.
"They killed the guild representative, Vasili," Straton shrugged."Or at least that's what the evidence seems to indicate. I can't confirm it from any I've interviewed. But I'll wait on this one, until you've seen the Riddler. Now come with me."
Within the tent, Grillo, Critias and Tempus fell silent as the flap was raised and Straton ushered Niko through. "Niko has voiced some strong objections to the interrogation in progress. He thinks, with Bashir watching, it might not be a good idea."
Grille's handsome head came up: "Bashir? Here?"
Crit, back to Niko, sitting crosslegged before a low map table, twisted in his seat. "That's something, anyway." In his hand he had an arrow with helical fletching."Take a look at this." He bared his teeth."And welcome back."
Niko, eyes locked eyes with Tempus, then examined the arrow and handed it back. "Plenty of men didn't like Vasili, myself included. And helically-fletched arrows can be had six for a soldat right here in the free zone. I brought someone important to you," he said to Tempus, "for reasons you said were sufficient. I can't believe you'd throw three weeks work and more away to find a scapegoat."
"Do you have him?" Grillo demanded.
"He got him," Crit said quietly, looking Niko up and down, "he's just not sure that we deserve him. Let's prove we do: Straton, go turn that Successor loose with our apologies and some money."
"Gladly," said Strat, in a tone that said he'd expected exactly this result, and ducked through the flap.
"That suit you, Stealth? That's twice I've let a prisoner loose at your request. Sit down, and we'll debrief you before you bring Bashir in."