by Janet Morris
He refused: "I'm not bringing him in here. He's a friend of mine. He'll meet with the Riddler… alone."
Grille's head snapped around, and he examined Niko, for the first time looking the Stepson in the eye.
Crit remarked that it wasn't only Grille's specials who needed discipline. Stooped over in the low tent, Tempus came to stand beside Niko and said, very low: "Are you unwell?"
Then: "Come with me, we'll get some air, Niko. You two, try solving this murder mystery of yours another way. Niko's right: anyone can buy a Nisibisi arrow."
Niko followed the Riddler out into the twilight, and the light suited his mood. "Grille's running weaponry and supplies to the Successors in exchange for drags and security. I'm not supposed to know and I didn't tell you."
"Good. Now, Niko… do you have a message for me… something you forgot?"
"Forgot? I—" He froze, words stillborn on his tongue, remembering a wolf who spoke and a note he'd written to himself and put carefully away so that he would remember… and then forgot. He found himself on the verge of tears, unable to look Tempos in the face. Fumbling in his belt pouch, he found the bit of parchment and held it out. His hands were shaking."Here. I… I'm sorry, sir. I don't know what's the matter with me."
Tempos took the grimy, wrinkled piece of parchment, read the text, nodded, and told Niko not to worry, that he understood Niko's problem, and was working on a solution. For his part, Niko must only have faith and not question others' motives: the Sacred Band took care of its own. And: "Now, where's Bashir?"
"I can't tell you until you promise me he'll not be harmed. Not interrogated. Not detained."
"Done. Now, where is he?"
Niko told him, and Tempus nodded."And signals? Have you any? Give them."
Niko explained about the jackal call.
"Take me to him. Introduce us and take your leave. I'll guarantee his safety. There's a girl waiting for you at the mage-guild, I've been told, who's had a son. And other things to attend to, I'm sure. Take a few days rest. We'll call you when we need you."
They were walking circuitously toward Bashir's hiding place. "Bashir… we've both had too much blood wine and too much krrf and pulcis. You'd best explain about that Successor very clearly. And I know he wants to stay with me. We've arranged it. Down by the river, I've a friend with a house."
"Do you? All right. I'll see to it he discovers Brother Bomba's, and you can meet him there and take him with you, if he wishes. But he should stay at Outbridge, where we can offer him protection. I'll have to tell him that."
They skirted a pile of refuse. "And Niko? Your maat?"
Niko chuckled mirthlessly. "I can't even find my rest-place, anymore." He thought he should have lied, said that he was fine, but it wasn't true and he was sure that Tempus saw it.
At the proper distance, Niko gave forth a jackal call and heard an answer. They came up to the spot where Niko and Bashir had parted company; the Successor was nowhere to be seen. "Bashir? Bashir?" he whispered, pulse pounding in his throat.
"Here."
Behind them, Bashir rose up from shapeless shadows, a blade glinting in the lowering dark. "And who is this, Stealth?" He kept his distance, his weapon drawn but not threatening.
"My commander, the man we spoke of. Bashir, Tempus; Tempus—"
"I knew your father. He died on his feet, eyes uplifted," Tempus interrupted. "As you've seen, this is not a propitious time or place for meeting. Will you come with me to Outbridge? There I can offer you information, safe food and drink, and a bargain I think your father would have liked."
"Niko? What say you? Shall we trust him?" Bashir's up-slanted eyes glittered in his broad face; his gaze went beyond them, to where the empty interrogation wheel was; his mobile mouth drew wide: he was teasing.
"Aye."
"Stealth has another assignment, he can't go with us. We've arranged for you two to meet later. Now, I must talk with you… alone."
Bashir grinned, a flash of teeth, and agreed, saying he knew that if anything else unforseen happened, Niko would take word home to the Successors. It was the most veiled of warnings.
"Nothing," Tempus promised, "is going to happen to you, Bashir, while you are my guest. Niko, you'd better hurry."
Dismissed, Niko wandered off alone through the havoc of the free zone, his eyes narrowed against the squalor in the streets, uncertain and uneasy. If Tempus was lying, if harm came to Bashir, then it was on Niko's head, a heavy debt to repay, an insupportable error. His mantle thrown wide to the night chill, its yellow lining keeping the refugees away, his armband turned round so that the Sacred Band bulls-and-lightning showed clearly, he passed through the gates and out into Tyse unchallenged by civilian or sentry.
Tempus knew about the girl his horse had injured north of the Nisibisi border. The mage Randal, then, must have kept his word. But somehow the Riddler had found out that Niko had made a bargain with the junior Hazard. Perhaps that was why he was being banished, dismissed like a picket and told to take "a few days rest."
Whatever Bashir and Tempus were going to talk about, Niko's commander did not want Niko to know.
Feeling pestilential and ill-used, he sought out the barn in which they'd left their horses and, ponying Bashir's, rode down to Peace Falls, downhearted and sick from the drugs and drink, dreading he knew not what: the undeads who had shown themselves in Free Nisibis wouldn't dare plague him here. He'd finished the krrf-and-pulcis mixture by the time he reached Cybele's river house. He was hungry and tired. He'd stopped in briefly at Bomba's to see if any of the Sacred Banders were there and had gotten so cool a reception from two of them that he'd left straightaway. It could be that all of them knew he'd had dealings with a Tysian magician; it could be that the loss of two partners had made him a pariah among those he loved the best.
When the bay was curried and went down on his knees with a whicker of pleasure to roll around in knee-deep fresh straw in his stall, and Bashir's horse was fed and watered, he went up to the house and found he had to knock; the leather latch-strap was drawn in, the door bolted securely. But there was light in the windows.
A dog barked furiously. Claws scrabbled against the door. He heard her voice and leaned his head against the doorjamb. At least Cybele would be glad to see him.
And she was, once she'd cautiously demanded to know who was there, pulling open the door and flying into his arms, her soft blond hair perfumed and silken against his stubbled cheek so that, laughing, he had to push her away. But it was too late: the grime which had obscured the twining snakes and the glyphs of power on his cuirass had soiled her dress.
"No matter," she said, pulling him inside "We'll clean your gear and put you in hot water—a bath; one for me, too." She giggled and he shut the door.
"That's a big dog." It curled its lip at him, cocked its head and sneezed. It was black, huge and formidable. Yet its tail thumped the floorboards, wagging, and it had not attacked him when he stepped inside.
"A gift from your commander. Oh, Niko, he came to see me while you were away, to see if I needed anything, and I said I was frightened, alone, so he sent me the dog...You are frowning. You're angry? Why? He didn't mind."
Niko bent down and put out his hand. The dog offered its paw. He shook it gravely. "Some watchdog, this."
But she was already headed down the hall, calling back that she'd start his dinner and their bath at once, but that he must bathe before he ate.
In her tub, his panoply cleaned and hung upon a rack and his undershirt and breech burning in the oven (too filthy to be saved, she'd said), she joined him, laughing and teasing him, her nimble fingers rubbing the fatigue from his cramped muscles as if by magic. Grouse roasting and potatoes baking filled the whole kitchen with a wonderful aroma.
"I don't know how you do all this," he remarked, his head back, eyes closed, content to let her sponge the hot water over him, one hand upon her supple thigh.
"For you, I can do anything. Now you must tell me how you got so dirty, and
what reason was good enough to keep you away from me so long." As she spoke, her smooth leg slid along him and the water, a perfect temperature, lapped against his chest.
"What's this?" She'd found the long scrape on his arm he'd gotten in the tunnel and she scrubbed at the garlicky scab there: "Primitive! Garlic does nothing for wounds, no more than for warding off magic. Only love heals." And she kissed him, touching him, then eased atop him so that his eyes opened to see her hair, golden with jewels of water drops in it, spread out upon his chest as her lips caressed him.
"Cybele!" He pulled her head up. "You cannot wait? You'll drown!"
"I have waited long enough for you," she pouted and one of the candles guttered, then another. In one of the other rooms, the dog began to howl.
He touched her breast and a sigh came out of her. "I've got to go out later. I'm so tired… if we make love now, I'll surely fall asleep."
"Good, then. Sleep is what you need. Why should you have to go back on duty?"
"No." He hoisted himself gently up and out of the tub. She followed, water shining on her skin, no petulance about her, to get him toweled dry.
"Sit!" she commanded, pointing to the kitchen table. She dried his hair and held his head between her breasts. He couldn't refrain from touching them, each in turn, or from kissing the water from her skin. She'd been a virgin when he took her off the street; she was a virgin yet. With young girls he'd found it best to let them wait until they couldn't wait a moment longer; then they had a good beginning, came to a man's arms slick and hot and free from doubt.
In the past, he'd let her mouth him, slept hard against her, nothing more till now. But tonight he couldn't hold back with her, or even wait to carry her upstairs to the soft feather bed he'd bought. He had all he could handle to raise her head from between his thighs and lift her young hips up and keep in mind that he had to breach her physical defenses gently. Once he felt her shield give way, he rolled them over, and while she gasped he had her there on the kitchen table, stopping now and again to make sure he wasn't hurting her, that her teeth, sunk in his arm, were clenched from pleasure, not from pain.
She cried out that she loved him, and he'd made her wait too long, and rose up under him and wrapped her legs around him so that he had to get his shoulders under her knees to gain control. And what he felt when she began to quiver, he'd never felt in a new girl before, or in his own response to one.
He said so: "Usually, it's not like this for me until later… till a girl's experienced."
"I love you," she muttered thickly from underneath his arm. "You'll need no other girls, just me. I'll make you happy. You won't want—"
He chuckled, sliding out and off of her. That, at least, was normal.
Then she sat bolt upright. "The potatoes! Oh, devils save me; I've burned them." And naked, off she ran to salvage his homecoming meal.
Somehow, she'd cleaned his gear and fed him and found time to cuddle up against him and even fall asleep. He held her in the crook of his arm before the hearth and wondered if he had the strength to go out again tonight." He mustn't keep Bashir waiting...
He looked up, and the black dog was hovering near. He thought at first it wanted scraps, to lick their plates, but it stared at him and stared at him and sneezed and scraped its nose.
Strangely, it seemed familiar. But no, it couldn't be… He put thoughts of wolves and mages from his mind and set about dressing to go out; the first part (slipping out of Cybele's embrace without waking her) was the most difficult.
When he put his weight against the heavy door to open it soundlessly upon its hinges, the black dog lunged past him and out into the night.
* * *
For the Stepsons' use, the Outbridge station now had a chapel dedicated to the gods of the armies and filled with implements of war. In Enlil's vault, Tempus met at length with Bashir of the Successors, deep below ground among the weapons and the dead.
This warrior-priest of Free Nisibis made Tempus uneasy: his upswept eyes which saw for gods and sometimes turned within, unseeing, to take Their counsel, reminded Tempus of Abarsis; in all other ways—from wide, flat face to broad, thick limbs—he was his father's son, long on guile and comfortable in the company of death-dealing, vengeful gods.
It was easier to enlist Bashir's aid in the assault on Wizardwall than to warn him of Niko's plight. A soiti. up-country with a warrior-priest of Enlil meant advancing upon warlocks with the god's sanction; the Successors' leader knew the crags and craved to pray atop them; to consecrate a temple to the Storm God where the Osprey's keep now affronted piety was Bashir's fondest dream.
But to explain why Niko's hospitality must be shunned, Tempus had to admit that he himself had entered into an accommodation with Tyse's mageguild. Even for Niko's soul's sake, this was hard to justify. Only Critias, of all the Stepsons, knew the full extent of the Riddler's involvement with the mageguild; even Tempus was distressed at having to join forces with the Hazards. Not in all the wars he'd fought had he ever warred in tandem with magicians; if Niko's predicament had not been his commander's fault, Tempus would have shunned them yet, and let the boy meet his damned and heinous end.
Revealing all to Bashir had been no part of Tempus's plan. A little bit, he'd thought to tell, enough to enlist the priest and pacify the gods who listened through his ears.
Then Crit came trotting down the stairs, smiling his most cynical smile: "Randal's here. I thought you'd want to see him. He hasn't got much time." Grit's sharp eyes assessed the progress of negotiations: the incense burnt, the food spread out on polished stones, the wine jugs spent by Bashir's unshod, propped-up feet. "I'll stay and go over maps and some logistical considerations with Bashir, if it pleases my lords?… Also, Grillo's sent a copy of a message from Adrastus Ajami, saying that Machad will be Mygdonian by month's end; it's already under siege."
Grit's forthcoming speech was for Bashir's benefit, to let the priest know just how efficient and formidable a network he was being inducted into, and where Critias stood in Tempus's estimation—it was Crit with whom Bashir would have to come to terms on a workaday basis, since he was second in command.
"Bring him down, Critias. And I'll want you here. When we're through with this, we'll all be going to Bomba's. Arrange to be free for the rest of the evening."
Crit left to get the junior Hazard, and Bashir sat up among his cushions: "I'm not sure this is the proper place for meeting wizards, or that I should dignify this aberration by my presence…"
Tempus merely stared at him until Bashir continued: "But I've seen for myself that Niko's troubled; the gods have turned away from him; Enlil has forgotten his name. He spoke of going back to Bandara, the western sanctuaries, when his tour with you is done, to try to solve his problems with the secular adepts. He's never been a man for gods; I'd thought, since he was with you, perhaps this too might change."
"Gods, these days, don't speak to me."
"Ah, but they look over your shoulder. Your Rankan Storm God's penned by magic. Defeat Datan, and you might loose the Pillager again. If He were not merely out of play, Enlil would love to have you, but one god may not vie with another for adherents. Jealousy among the planes causes havoc in the world of men."
"So my curse falls on innocents like Niko, and even the Nameless One's daughter—Jihan, from the loins of the Storm-bringer Himself—is bound up in its evil."
Bashir picked his teeth with a thin, long blade that resided in his bracer. "There are other friends of yours… entelechies, lords of upper planes, one who rules the seventh sphere of dream and shadow… Things, revered Riddler, are not so bad as you make them seem. We will rout the Osprey, reclaim your wondrous horses, free my friend's soul… like that." He snapped his fingers."All Successors will rally to such a just and—"
"Six. I want just six of yours, and your own presence as upcountry avatar and spiritual guide. Until I'm cleansed of this taint of magic…"
By the time Critias brought Randal down, they'd finalized their pact and were
on to specifics of the plan: Bashir would guide the Stepsons north, up Wizardwall's high peaks, if the gods allowed; Wizardwall and all its riches beyond what loot each Stepson could carry down would be Bashir's; the Successors would have their homeland, rule in their beloved mountains with no obligation to Ranke, Mygdonia, or even to the Riddler himself.
But Randal's report almost caused the newborn alliance to belly-up before it learned to swim: the junior Hazard, puffing hard and wild-eyed, was nearly addled from all the krrf he'd had to take to keep his allergies in check and his courage resolute, and the burden his new knowledge placed upon him:
"Riddler, my lords… It's Roxane… not just any witch, but Roxane who's got Niko. He's nearly beyond salvage, enthralled for good. And her undeads… I heard her plotting with insurgents to use her minions to kill the mercenaries' representative, Vasili… use a Successor arrow, and thus set the meres against the free men of Nisibis. And there's her snakes— I killed one, couldn't help myself—but they're not snakes… I mean, they're house snakes, but they're minions… like Niko will be, if we can't—"
"Slow down!" Critias exploded. "Sit, light somewhere!"
Randal circled around in place as if still the dog he'd so recently been, sighed deeply, and squatted down where he was: "Sirs… lords… you don't understand.… If I'm going back, I've got to leave here straightaway. Anything that Niko knows, Roxane knows also… she's inside him all the time, eating up his soul. And she's sharing him with Datan, as far as I can tell… that's the archmage—"
"We know who he is," Crit interrupted. "Now what's this about her being inside him? Are you positive? How can we free him?"
Bashir shifted restlessly, his gaze averted, apparently studying the maps before him; Tempus heard a god's name muttered, saw fingers work in invocation.
"Free him?" Randal repeated."You can't. Death won't even do it. Burn the witch… it's not certain, just a start. Or buy him back from Datan, who could make her loose him. A trade… we've done that before..."