by Chris Bunch
My first task was to make sure Seer Tenedos’s new quarters were completely secure. The building was just as Turbery had said, a four-story circular tower with a moat on the outside and a small keep on the inside. It had sat disused for years, so the first order of business was getting it cleaned. As one of my last duties with the Helms, I’d set my own troop to the task. The “Silver Centaurs” howled complaints about being no better than housemaids when I turned them out with brooms, mops, and orders to clean the building until it shone like their helmets. I refrained from agreeing that was about the limit of their abilities.
I wished I’d not been so cavalier as to loan Legate Yonge to Marán’s friend. I could have used him and his friends, but my word had been given. When I thought of Amiel, Marán’s face and body crashed into my mind, and I was swept away for an instant, thinking of her. But then I came back, and hoped she was lying tanned, lithe, and lazy on the deck of her husband’s yacht. I also, idiotically, hoped she was celibate, and that her husband had acquired an acute shrinking disease in his private parts.
I fought my mind back to duty and the job of protecting Tenedos. I wished the Lancers would hurry and arrive — I planned to loot them thoroughly for Tenedos’s bodyguard.
The best I could manage at present was to select men from the units around the capital, not accepting volunteers for obvious reasons, and then assign them to their details randomly. Even if there were Tovieti among them, and I assumed there were, they would have little time to plan an attack and, since I teamed up the soldiers arbitrarily, the chances of everyone on a detail being conspirators was unlikely. Each day I reshuffled the details as well, and once a week returned the men to their units to be replaced with fresh soldiery.
As senior warrants I used Karjan and the other warrants I’d stolen from the Helms. Karjan, even though he gave me a dark look from time to time, proved an excellent leader, and I found myself depending more and more on him.
But all this was no more than putting a plaster on a scratch while the patient was bleeding to death from a hundred wounds. I wondered what would come next, how this unrest in Nicias would be permanently ended.
• • •
Kutulu was also reassigned to Tenedos, and with him came his stacks and boxes of cards. He also brought some assistants.
I don’t know what duties Tenedos put them to, but when I asked the warden if I could borrow a few of his men to instruct my guards in the fine art of security, he snapped that I could not — he was casting for far greater fish.
• • •
I saw little of Tenedos during this time. He was closely guarded in his travels by specially picked guards who worked direcly for the Palace of War. I didn’t trust them entirely, but could do little until my own escorts were chosen and ready.
He came back to the tower late one night, and came into my quarters.
“I would dearly appreciate a small brandy,” he sighed, “and the hells with the state of emergency. There are times you’ve got to cheat on yourself.”
I kept a flask for exactly these times, and poured him a drink. He sipped at it. “In case you have ever wondered, the singularly most stubborn, selfish, thickheaded people who walk this earth are magicians.”
I said I was already very well aware of that, thank you.
“Have you heard of the Chares Brethren?”
I had not. He explained they were a group of the most influential magicians in Nicias. They weren’t a secret order, but were quite comfortable with few people knowing of their existence.
“They were created,” Tenedos went on, “as a sort of mutual aid society. They’ve also become a very powerful political group in Nicias. I’ve been trying to woo them and I’d just as soon try to seduce ten temple virgins at once, or herd a flock of rabid sheep.”
“Might I ask why?”
“I won’t be specific, Damastes, because my idea might be a foolish one. Perhaps you know that magic is the most selfish of all the arts.”
I did not.
“A magician works a spell to benefit himself or, grudgingly, a client, for which he expects to be richly rewarded. The more selfish the deed, the more likely it is to be granted, or so it seems to me. Perhaps that’s why there’s more talk of black magic than white. Certainly spells that have been tried, altruistically trying to spread a blanket of peace over the world, or ending famine, seldom seem to take.
“Or perhaps the gods are happy seeing us squirm in misery.
“At any rate, I had a thought on the matter, and am trying to get these raving fountains of all knowledge to help me test it.
“But so far all they’re doing is talking, and don’t seem to notice that the world is in flames around them.”
• • •
I was wandering around the outside of the tower, trying to think like a Tovieti intent on breaking in and how I could thwart the villain, when the messenger found me. He was a Golden Helm, and with the adjutant’s compliments, could I find the time to return to the Helms’ cantonment on what I might consider personal business?
I couldn’t imagine how I had any personal business at all these days, but grudged the time, telling Petre where I was going.
Sitting outside the regimental headquarters was a for-hire pony trap. I dismounted, pulled off my helmet, and entered.
Marán was sitting on a bench, just inside the door. She came to her feet as I entered, and gladness lit her face. Then it vanished, and I saw that look of an innocent who’d somehow sinned without knowing it and expected to be punished.
She rushed into my arms and I held her, my helmet clanging to the floor unnoticed. I did not know what to say or do. Looking over her shoulder I saw a leather valise sitting by the bench.
We stood in silence for a space. Then she said, her voice a bit muffled against my shoulder. “This is the first time I’ve ever hugged anybody wearing armor.”
“I hope not the last,” I managed.
She stepped back, and we looked at each other wordlessly.
“I left him,” she said.
“When?”
“Three days ago. We docked at some island, and we were supposed to have a big banquet with its governor. And … and I couldn’t do it I couldn’t do any of it Not anymore.
“I threw some things in that bag, found a sailor who had a fast boat, offered him gold, and he took me back to Nicias.” She smiled a little. “He was old enough to be my grandfather, but I still think he hoped I’d think him young and lusty.”
“Idiot,” I said fondly. “You could have been sold to the pirates.”
“Would you have come looking for me if I had?”
Of course the notion was quite absurd — I had a far more serious duty here. But I knew enough to lie, and as the words came I knew they weren’t lies at all, but the raw truth.
“Always and forever.”
I kissed her, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Captain Lardier peer out of his office, look shocked, and vanish.
“Are you sure of what you’ve done?” I asked her.
She nodded. “I’ll never go back to him. Not even if you and I … not ever.” She stepped away from me.
“I came here as soon as we landed. Now … I guess I’ll go to our … my house. I’ll have his things moved out, I suppose. My family will be too busy screaming for a while for me to go near them.” She looked wistful. “I wish I could stay with you. But I guess that’d be scandalous.”
“Worse than that,” I agreed. “Forbidden by law.” I didn’t like the idea of her going back to that house, even if every sign of Count Lavedan was stripped away. Also, more logically, I assumed that others might know of our affair, and see Marán as a way to me, and through me to Seer Tenedos.
But there was no other choice.
Then the idea struck. For the first time, and one of the few times thereafter, I used a trust dishonestly. And by the gods I’m glad I was brave enough to do it. I felt that then, and I feel it now, even knowing what came later. If I had unlimited powe
rs, by Jaen I was now going to use, or rather misuse, them.
“But you aren’t going back to that mansion,” I said firmly.
“Then where?”
“You are going to live in a nice, safe tower, surrounded by men who’ll do anything to ensure you’re safe. With me. That is, if you wish.”
Marán looked at me, and again I fell into the dark, warm depths of her eyes.
“I wish,” she whispered. “Oh, Damastes, how I wish.”
• • •
“This is most irregular,” Tenedos said. “But I can see your point. I don’t think you could be blackmailed even if the countess were a hostage, but there is no point in taking the chance.”
“Thank you, sir.” I was vastly relieved.
Tenedos shrugged.
“Since it’s already done, it would look even stranger if I countermanded your orders.”
“Might I suggest you consider doing the same with Baroness Rasenna? There’s more than enough room.”
“No,” Tenedos said firmly. “First, because at the moment I have no time for anything personal. Secondly, she is in no danger whatsoever.”
“Are you sure?”
“If it makes you feel better, know that I cast a certain spell using, among other things, some of my own blood. Rasenna is very safe, very invisible, even if Thak himself came seeking her. Now, please remove your long Cimabuan nose from my business!”
“Yes, sir.”
• • •
Two weeks passed, and we’d heard no word about the reinforcing units upriver. Worse, the Palace of War informed us that heliograph stations along the river were not answering signals.
Where was the army?
• • •
It was ugly riding the streets of Nicias. There was no more open violence, but only because no soldier or member of the government rode alone, but with a full escort. Bodies were still found in the streets at dawn.
It looked as if there were only two classes left in the capital: the commoners, who held the streets in sullen anger, and the gentry, who huddled in their enclaves. The merchants, clerks, traders — all the middle levels of Nicias — seemed to have either vanished or joined the lower classes, waiting for something to happen.
• • •
I started awake, hearing the chanting of many voices. Torchlight flared into my open window, and I rolled out of bed, naked, fully awake, reaching for the sword hanging from its sheath on the bedstead.
Marán sat up, sleep-dazed.
“What is it?”
I didn’t know, but I hurried to the window and peered out. Our rooms were on the third level of the tower, looking toward the city, away from the Palace of War.
The night was a sea of bobbing torches, the streets alive with marching men and women. I could hear bits of what they were chanting, but no more than a word here, a word there: “Bread … peace … down with the Rule … voice of … people. Numantia … bum or live …” and through it a thin chorus: “Saionji … Saionji … Saionji …”
Marán was beside me, wearing only the thin shift she’d been wearing when I came to bed, exhausted from work, hours after she’d retired. She leaned out the window, elbows on the sill, fascinated.
“Can you feel it, Damastes?” she whispered. “Can you feel it? The goddess is calling.”
It was just the roar of the crowd, but then it came to me, she came to me, the goddess, the destroyer, the Creator calling to my blood, and it stirred.
Powerful magic was abroad this night, and it moved me, and I wanted to go out, to be down there, amid the crowd, ready to rend and tear, then, from the ashes, to build a new realm, a realm of absolute freedom, where all that could be wanted was there for the taking.
Marán turned, and I saw her eyes gleam in the torchlight.
“It’s like Tenedos said,” she whispered. “A new world. A new time. I can feel it, Damastes, I can feel it like the Wheel turns. Can’t you?”
I could indeed, and it gripped me, seized me by the throat, and all the dark passions rose high, and now there might have been drums out there in the night, or it might have been my pulse, but then it changed, and it was not Saionji’s manifestation of Isa, six-headed war god, but rather Jaen, and my cock rose hard, throbbing, painful.
I was behind Marán, pulling her shift up above her waist, forcing her legs apart, and then I impaled her on my cock, burying it in one thrust, and she whimpered and Jaen took her as well, and she thrust back against me and cried out.
I pulled back, until the head of my cock was at her inner lips, then rammed forward, my hands finding her breasts, pulling her against me, and she screamed, scream buried in the crowd-roar outside, and again and again, each time thrusting deeper, reaching, tearing deeper into her body, into her soul, and I shouted as I came, gushing hot, hot as the fires inside the earth that made Thak.
After a time, time came back, and I realized I was lying half-out the window across Marán, crushing her against the sill.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t apologize,” she said. “Just … give me a little warning next time. So I can put a pillow down.”
I slipped out of her, took her in my arms, and we stumbled back to the bed.
“I have the feeling,” she murmured, after we’d calmed, “I’ll be a little sore tomorrow.”
She stroked my chest.
“I think, my love, that what we just did is what I’ve heard called sex-magic. Amiel loaned me a book about it once.”
Darkness touched me for a second. “Sex-magic for who?” I asked. “Who called it?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I’ve never felt anything like it. And I don’t know if I want to ever again. I feel like … like we were, not used, but part of somebody that’s not us. No, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe we were no more than someone’s vassal.”
The Tovieti’s sorcerers? Thak himself?
Or — and the thought made me shudder — Saionji herself? Was the goddess of destruction out there, hanging over Nicias, smiling as she saw the order that had always been tremble?
I don’t know if sex-magic was cast that night, if others were grabbed and shaken by a spell, or if it was just Marán’s and my own sudden lust.
But the next day Nicias shattered into chaos.
TWENTY
THE FIRES OF NICIAS
There are many tales of what caused the riots. Some say a peasant’s child was ridden down by a nobleman’s carriage, others that a young girl was brutally beaten by the wardens, others that it began in a drunken bar fight between some government clerks and some carters.
I don’t doubt any of them, but I don’t believe the city erupted over a single incident — the madness spread too rapidly. There’d been too many years of the poor being neglected and downtrodden, too many years with their leaders not leading, too many years of instability, and so the city was like a pile of dry wood that a burning ember is touched to there … there … there … and the wildfire explodes.
The commoners ran rampant, burning, looting, beating, killing, and raping when they encountered an enemy, or simply someone who looked better off than they were.
The wardens fled to their stations and barricaded themselves in; the soldiers hid in the barracks; the rich cowered in their mansions; while the Rule of Ten and the Nicias Council met in emergency session and did nothing.
Again the disorders struck home. Rask, one of the Rule of Ten, Farel’s comrade, simply disappeared, and no one knows what became of him to this day. A mob sacked the Council Hall, happened on four of the city councilors, and tore them apart.
Scopas came to the tower to consult with Tenedos, and the seer told me what their conversation had been. Tenedos made the same suggestions he had before, and once again Scopas weaseled on taking such drastic steps. Perhaps, he said, since the commoners are mostly looting their own quarters, they should be let alone until their frenzy dies away.
Surprisingly, Tenedos agreed with what was happening, at least partially
. “Let the poor burn their tenements and slums,” he told me. “When this is over, we’ll be able to rebuild Nicias as it is supposed to look.” That callousness shocked me, but I think I was able to hide my reaction. “But anyone who thinks this rising will run out of combustibles is a fool. The Tovieti, and Chardin Sher’s agents, will make sure that will not happen.”
The insanity grew worse and worse.
Days passed, and there was still no sign, nor word, of the soldiers who’d been summoned from the Frontiers. Tenedos tried casting a spell, but said nothing happened. It was, he said, like trying to peer through a dense fog. He said this could mean only one thing — sorcery, which meant the Tovieti were keeping the troops from the capital.
I’d had Tenedos use his emergency powers to move the Golden Helms, the Nineteenth Foot, and two other of the parade regiments into tents in Hyder Park, equidistant from our tower, the Palace of War, and the Rule of Ten’s palace, for security and as an immediate reaction force. They whined about having to forsake their comfortable brick barracks. I suspected if the rioters left them alone, they’d be quite content to sit there polishing brass and practicing empty roundelays on the parade ground until all Nicias was ashes around them. Instead, they rode, and walked, guard; and made short patrols through the city’s major thoroughfares, complaining all the while. Terrible soldiers, but they were the only game in town. At least, I wryly thought, I probably didn’t have to worry about any of the complainers being Tovieti — those would be most grateful for any chance to get close to Tenedos, the Rule of Ten, or the army staff.
It was a terrible time, and there were terrible sights.
I saw a screaming, drunken woman run into the middle of a square just as a column of the Helms rode into it. She was waving something I couldn’t distinguish. But another soldier could, and a horseman spurred his horse into a gallop, his lance dropped into position, and the woman went spinning away, blood spattering the cobbles.
