by Glen Cook
Laella told her, “We’ll do whatever we can to help you, Reyha. You know that.”
“Thank you. I’d better run home. Before Naszif gets back. He’d be very angry if he knew I told you anything.”
“He won’t know,” Laella said. “Aaron, you’d better walk with her.”
Aaron sighed. “Yes. I suppose I’d better.”
Reyha had little to say during the walk. She had exhausted her reserves of courage and talk. When he got back home, Laella said, “Well? Something got to you while she was telling us. What was it?”
“Zouki was kidnapped before they found out about Naszif. So that couldn’t be why he was grabbed. And bel-Sidek promised me the Living didn’t have anything to do with it. Even Naszif didn’t believe the Living would be involved in child-stealing. So how come all of a sudden they tell him they’ve got Zouki when they want to twist his arm?”
“Maybe they lied.”
“But they’re taking him to see Zouki.”
“Don’t bark at me, Aaron. I don’t know who’s doing what to whom, or why. I’m not sure I care. Reyha and Zouki are what I care about. Do you understand?”
“Yes. There’s no point fussing about it till we find out what they showed Naszif or did to him. I guess.”
“What if he doesn’t come home, Aaron?”
“Huh?”
“What if they... they did something with him: What would Reyha do?”
“We’re getting ahead of things. When Reyha needs help-if she needs it-we’ll do whatever we can. So let’s not get fussed. Let’s get back to bed. I have to work tomorrow.”
Naszif burst out of the mouth of the Shu maze, turned left, lengthened his stride, ran all the way to the side door of Government House. He gave the password and his emergency code. To his amazement he was in to see Colonel Bruda before he got his wind back.
“What is it?” Bruda asked, knowing it would be dramatic if it had to be done this way.
“They’ve found me out. I can’t take more than a few minutes or they’ll know I came here. They’re trying to force me to work against you.”
“Damn!” Bruda punched the wall. “Just when we were getting close to them.” He kissed a skinned knuckle. “You want us to take you out? I can send troops to get your wife.”
“No. They have my son. He’s their leverage. I’m going to stay in till I can get him out, too. And meanwhile try to learn enough to gut them. I just wanted you to know they’re using me now. Whatever you hear from me will be what they want you to hear. I have to go. I don’t want them to suspect I’ve slipped the leash. Tell the General.”
“You’ve got more guts than I do. You find out where they’re holding your son, let us know. We’ll hit them and get him out. Then send you out of town.”
Naszif nodded. “I will. “He went downstairs, out the side door, and ran all the way home, where he found a shivering Reyha waiting in his bed.
“Did you see him, Naszif?”
“Yes.”
“How was he? Was he all right?”
“He was clean and well dressed and looked well fed. He seemed healthy. They wouldn’t let me talk to him. He didn’t know I was there. He’s all right except for being scared.”
“What are we going to do, Naszif?”
“We’re going to do whatever they tell us to do. For now.”
The Witch waited only till Torgo told her that Azel and his companion had cleared the Postern of Fate. She told the eunuch, “I’m going to go have an unfriendly chat with our ally, General bel-Karba.”
“My lady, I don’t think...”
“That’s right, Torgo. You don’t. Because I don’t want you to. You understand?”
“Yes, my lady.”
“I won’t be gone long. Get that child ready. I’ll do him when I get back.”
“But...”
“I’m strong enough, Torgo. I don’t need to rest. Get on with your business and let me get on with mine.”
She watched the eunuch depart, then gathered her skirts and headed for the Postern of Fate.
She had not been out into the city since the conquest. It seemed little changed, except that the night was more quiet. The Herodians had stilled the rowdy darknesses that had stemmed from the citadel and the mouth of Gorloch.
She slipped out of the naked openness of the acropolis and headed down Char Street, into the inevitable night fog. She made no more sound than the fog itself, and felt no more fear. There was nothing in Qushmarrah more dangerous than its Witch.
She came to the General’s door. She paused. She sensed only the one enfeebled spirit within. The door was not barred.
Only someone supremely confident of his power would lie sleeping behind an unbarred door in the Shu.
She invited herself inside.
“Hadribel? Are you back already?”
A light sleeper. She stepped into the room where he lay. “No, General. Not Hadribel. Someone you don’t want to see at all. Someone who did not want to come see you. But someone sufficiently tired of your lapses in regard to recognition of who is ruler and who is ruled that she felt compelled to come make the point clear.”
The General met her gaze without flinching. He grunted. That grunt seemed to call her a damn fool woman.
“You had your creature Azel threaten me.”
He looked at her a moment, then snorted. “My creature? Azel? Azel is nobody’s creature but his own. He carried my message, yes, and it doesn’t seem to have gotten garbled. He did his job. But if he were to surrender to his prejudices I suspect there’s only one person who could touch his heart. That person is here and it isn’t me, woman.”
“You dared to presume to control me, General.”
“I have a duty to Qushmarrah and my lord Nakar. Your obsessive behavior imperils the recovery of both. Go back to the citadel, woman. Examine the children already in your power and leave the city alone. If you press it too much it will turn on us all. None of us will get what we want.”
“You don’t understand. None of you do. You never have. I don’t give a damn about Qushmarrah. I never have. I wouldn’t care if it sank beneath the sea. I want my husband back. I’ll do whatever it takes. And I won’t let anyone get in my way. Not even you. Do you understand me?”
“I understand that Azel allowed his secret passion to cloud his reason, after all. His report on your obsession fell short of the truth. Go back to the citadel, woman. Be at peace with your heart. Be patient. Or you’ll destroy us all.”
“No. No. I’ll destroy only those who try to hinder me.” She smiled.
“What?” He tried to rise, suddenly, at last, aware that he was in danger.
“This is where the alliance ends, General.” A web of dark sorcery danced playfully on the fingers of her left hand. She laid her palm upon his chest and pressed down. He fell back with a little cry, body spasming. She turned and went out, pleased with herself.
She had taken only two steps uphill when she heard footsteps approaching. She turned and drifted downhill ahead of them.
The footsteps ended at the General’s house.
She had cut it close.
She drifted downhill a little farther, meaning to cut across and head back uphill on the far side of the street, where the fog would hide her from any excitement that exploded from the General’s household.
She froze, loosing a little bleat of surprise.
It was as faint as the breath of the sea a dozen miles in from the shore. But it was there and not forgotten, the faintest aroma of the misplaced soul. She could not help herself. She drifted to the street-side door, leaned her forehead and one forearm against it, and let the proximity of it wash over her.
Tears streaked her cheeks.
A door slammed up the street. Somebody ran into the fog cursing under his breath.
Nogah leaned against the wall of Tosh Alley, a few steps inside, and watched Char Street sleepily. He was not comfortable. There were few fogs like this at the Dartar compound. He did not like the clam
my feel it gave the air, the way it limited visibility. It made this no decent place to be.
The scrapings and whispers and sometimes hints of far lights back in the maze did nothing to buoy a man’s confidence, either.
Fifty warriors were not enough to hold anything. Fa’tad knew that as well as he did. They were a token, clinging to the dozen most important toeholds. They could be dislodged anytime the labyrinth creatures cared to make a concerted effort.
Fa’tad was convinced there was little concert among them, despite apocryphal tales of the maze being ruled by a sort of king of the underworld. If Fa’tad disbelieved that, did he also disbelieve the stories of great treasures collected by the people of the maze, of another labyrinth of natural caverns inside the hill that supported the Shu, with mouths deep in the heart of the builded maze?
Mo’atabar thought al-Akla was looking for those, thinking they would provide a way for him to sneak into the citadel and loot its reputed treasures. If those were half what was claimed, with them in hand the Dartar force could retire from the Herodian service and the tribes would never need fear the bite of the drought again.
Was that at the back of Fa’tad’s mind? Nogah wondered. It did not seem quite the Eagle’s style.
Something moved in the fog. He became alert. Then he gaped. He’d never seen such a woman. Her beauty hit him like a physical blow. He eased forward, to watch her on her way. As a barely discernible shape she paused several minutes at the door to the place where Yoseh’s little doe lived, then vanished into the mist.
He wondered about his brother’s injuries momentarily, then his thoughts returned to the woman. Had he seen a ghost? She had not made a sound. But gods, what a lovely spook, if ghost she was.
Hadribel sensed something amiss the moment he stepped through the doorway. He stopped.
There was a ghost of a hint of a scent on the air, vaguely feminine. He looked down. The apparently randomly distributed set of four dust bunnies, laid out according to bel-Sidek’s instructions, had been disturbed. Oh. Of course. Carza.
But he had relayed the instructions. Carza was not the sort to forget.
He shut the door and hurried to the bedroom.
“Sir? Sir? Are you all right?” he asked, though he knew better the moment he laid eyes on the old man. He was a soldier. He knew death intimately, in all its guises.
The impossibility of it held him for a moment. Then the enormity of the disaster to the movement bore down on him.
The General gone! That indomitable will, that steadfast genius, lost forever.
Bel-Sidek was a proven field commander, a fine tactician, steady as a mountain in a storm, and the chosen successor, but the man lacked the magnetism, the ability to fire the heart and imagination, that had marked the life of Hanno bel-Karba.
Even so, bel-Sidek had to be made aware of the disaster immediately. Much had to be done, and fast, if the movement was not to stumble over this terrible moment. He forced leaden legs to take him out the door. Unaware that he was doing so, he cursed the Fates as he stamped along.
11
Bel-Sidek felt the recriminations seethe inside him, along with the pain, the loss, the anger, the embarrassment over having been found where he had been found with Meryel. He restrained it all. He could not afford to yield at this most critical hour in the history of the Living. What he did this day would determine whether the struggle continued or the movement collapsed. He had to deal with issues, problems, and people entirely in the light of cold reason.
He paused before the door to the place he had shared for six years with a man who had meant far more to him than ever his own father had. “Send for Carza, then join me here,” he told Hadribel. “Tell your messenger he is to accept no excuses or delays.”
“What about the others?”
“After Carza gets here. I want to talk to him first.” He pushed inside, left Hadribel to his assignment.
He sniffed. He did not catch the scent Hadribel had detected, but there had been time for it to fade.
In the interim between Hadribel’s arrival and Carza’s departure could a woman have come in? Absurd! But why not?
What woman? To what purpose?
He willed himself into the bedroom.
The old man seemed smaller and more frail in death. He looked as though he had died angry. No. Not angry. Bel-Sidek knew that look. He had died exasperated. Which suggested that the visitor, if visitor there had been, had been someone known to him.
The bedclothes were tousled as though he had wrestled his fate before succumbing. His nightshirt was partly open, revealing sickly yellow skin and... the edge of something black.
Bel-Sidek eased the dirty cloth back, using one finger.
A black handprint marked the old man’s chest, over his heart. It was a dainty print, too big for a child but too small for a man. Bel-Sidek stared at it a long time.
It was a bad, bad omen. Because if it was what it looked like, the mark of a killer, they all had cause to be very, very troubled.
He had not seen this particular mark before, but he had seen its like. That recalled the killing touch of a sorcerer. Marks of that sort had been found on corpses often before the conquest, but not since. Cado and his henchmen had forbidden the practice of sorcery.
Bel-Sidek knew of no black magicians being in the city on the sly. He had heard of no witches but that one the new civil governor had brought along. Her? Unlikely. Had the Herodians known where to find the General they would not have chosen quiet murder. The end of the chieftain of the Living would have been a public spectacle a match for those of olden times, before the more peaceful Aram had dispelled the savage Gorloch.
He sat at the writing table while he awaited Carza, reviewing everything that would have to be done to ease the transition and keep the movement on its feet. His thoughts brushed the General’s secret and special agent, passed on, came back again. If the man was half what the General had believed, he might become the Living’s instrument of retribution in this.
But later. Vengeance had to await stability.
Carza entered without knocking. He had not slept and was not in a good mood. As he started to bitch, bel-Sidek pointed him toward the bedroom.
“Oh, I’ll be damned,” Carza said. “When?”
“Between the time you left and the time Hadribel came back. Assuming he was all right when you left.”
“He was healthy and mean as a boar. Why?”
“Did you arrange the telltales the way Hadribel told you?”
“You know I did.”
“I assumed. I had to hear it. They weren’t arranged when Hadribel got here.” Bel-Sidek pulled the old man’s nightshirt open again. “Any ideas?”
Carza stared at the print. He shook his head, muttered, “Did he see it coming?”
“What?”
“He had me come over to tell me about this big operation he had going for Qushmarrah. Just in case. So there’d be somebody to keep it going.”
“What was it?”
Carza shook his head. “I can’t say. He was firm about that. Don’t tell bel-Sidek anything. I’m supposed to take over that one thing and you the rest of the organization. He was right about it but the only way I could show you would be to tell you.”
Bel-Sidek did not argue. No point. Instead, he decided to define the time gap in which the murder had taken place.
It could have been ten minutes or it could have been thirty. Carza could not be exact about when he had departed.
Hadribel arrived looking harassed. “I got messages off to the others,” he said. “It’s going to be light out soon.”
They can be grieving relatives,” bel-Sidek said. “We’ve been setting it up that way.”
Carza said, “You won’t be able to get hold of Zenobel.”
“Why not?”
“The old man sent him out... Hell. No need to keep it secret. You have to deal with the consequences.”
Bel-Sidek asked, “What?”
“The new c
ivil governor sent men to throw the widow out of her house so he could have it. The old man sent Zenobel to throw them out.”
“Aram! Is that what he calls letting them think we’re falling apart?”
“It had to be done.”
“I realize that. But...”
Hadribel beckoned bel-Sidek. “Can I talk to you privately?”
Bel-Sidek left Carza scowling. He did not like being shut out, either. Near the hearth bel-Sidek asked, “What?” While he was there he started a fire for breakfast.
“While I was out rounding up messengers I got a few reports from the street. The Darters left men in the maze overnight last night. And last night, while we had the traitor out on some sort of exercise, his wife left the house. The man on watch lost her in the fog. In this part of Char Street. A man brought her home later, a few minutes before the traitor returned.”
“What the devil was he doing?”
“I don’t know. The old man had me blindfold him and take him up to Scars Comer. Somebody else took him over there. I ran off on other errands.”
“We’ll talk to the woman. Though she wouldn’t seem a likely candidate.”
The Witch summoned Torgo from his repose. “I have to see Ishabal bel-Shaduk. Do you know how to reach him?”
“Yes, my lady. But why?”
“I have a commission for him.”
“I suspect that Ishabal agrees with Azel. He just doesn’t want to argue. He hasn’t been around.”
“Find him. Tell him he can name his price on this one. It’ll be the last.”
“My lady?”
“I found him, Torgo! I think. I stumbled right over him in Char Street, while I was out. It’s almost over with, Torgo. We’re almost there.”
Torgo did not seem pleased.
“Three, four more days, Torgo. Things will be back to the way they were. Come. Why so glum?”
“I’m afraid we’re doing too much to attract attention to ourselves.”
“Foo! I’m surrounded by old women. Get your writing instruments. I’ll give you the instructions you’re to relay to Ishabal. Then we’ll examine the boy the Living want, just to make sure he wasn’t Ala-eh-din Beyh in his last incarnation.”
