'At what rate am I expected to pay back this loan?'
'Equal value, nothing more. If the prince, my lord, will have patience, I will explain all to Your Majesty's satisfaction. That, truly, is why I am come.'
'Explain away, then.'
'First, one small digression, which touches a deeper truth. You must have some idea who and what the man you call Tempus is. I am sure you have heard it from your wizards and from his enemies among the officials of the Mageguild. Let me add to that this: Where he goes, the god scatters His blessings. By the cosmological rules of state cult and kingship. He has invested this endeavour with divine sanction by his presence. Though he and the god have their differences, without him no chance remains that you might triumph. My father found that out. Even sick with his curse, he is too valuable to waste, unappreciated. If you would rather remain a princeling forever, and let the empire slide into ruin apace, just tell me and I will take word home. We will forget this matter of the kingship and this corollary matter of a small standing army, and I will release Tempus. He would as soon it, I assure you.'
'Your father? Who in the God's Eye are you?'
'Ah, my arrogance is unforgivable; I thought you would know me. We are all so full of ourselves these days, it is no wonder events have come to such a pass. 1 am Man of the God in Upper Ranke, Sole Friend to the Mercenaries, the Hero, Son of the Defender, and so forth.'
'High Priest of Vashanka.'
'In the Upper Land.'
'My family and yours thinned each other's line,' stated Kadakithis baldly, no apology, no regret in his words. Yet he looked differently upon the other, thinking they were of an age, both wielding wooden swords in shady courts while the slaughter raged, far off at the fronts.
'Unto eradication,' remarked the dark young man. 'But we did not contest, and now there is a different enemy, a common threat. It is enough.'
'And you and Tempus have never met?'
'He knew my father. And when I was ten, and my father died and our armies were disbanded, he found a home for me. Later, when I came to the god and the mercenaries' guild, I tried to see him. He would not meet with me.' He shrugged, looking over his shoulder at the man walking the blue-grey horse into blue-grey shadows falling over the blue-black sea. 'Everyone has his hero, you know. A god is not enough for a whole man; he craves a fleshly model. When he sent to me for a horse, and the god approved it, I was elated. Now, perhaps, I can do more. The horse may not have died in vain, after all.'
'I do not understand you. Priest.'
'My Lord, do not make me too holy. I am Vashanka's priest: I know many requiems and oaths, and thirty-three ways to fire a warrior's bier. They call me Stepson, in the mercenaries' guild. I would be pleased if you would call me that, and let me talk to you at greater length about a future in which your destiny and the wishes of the Storm God, our Lord, could come to be the same.'
'I am not sure I can find room in my heart for such a god; it is difficult enough to pretend to piety,' grated Kadakithis, squinting after Tempus in the dusk.
'You will, you will,' promised the priest, and dismounted from his horse to approach Tempus's ground-tied sorrel. Abarsis reached down, running his hand along the beast's white-stocking'd leg. 'Look, Prince,' he said, craning his neck up to see Kadakithis's face as his fingers tugged at the gold chain wedged in the weight-cleat on the horse's shoe. At the end of the chain, sandy but shining gold, was an amulet. 'The god wants him back.'
3
The mercenaries drifted into Sanctuary dusty from their westward trek or blue lipped from their rough sea passage and wherever they went they made hellish what before had been merely dissolute. The Maze was no longer safe for pickpocket or pander; usurer and sorcerer scuttled in haste from street to doorway, where before they had swaggered virtually unchallenged, crime lords in fear of nothing.
Now the whores walked bowlegged, dreamy-eyed, parading their new finery in the early hours of the morning while most mercenaries slept; the taverns changed shifts but feared to close their doors, lest a mercenary find that an excuse to take offence. Even so early in the day, the inns were full of brawls and the gutters full of casualties. The garrison soldiers and the Hell Hounds could not be omnipresent: wherever they were not, mercenaries took sport, and they were not in the Maze this morning.
Though Sanctuary had never been so prosperous, every guild and union and citizens' group had sent representatives to the palace at sunrise to complain.
Lastel, a.k.a. One-Thumb, could not understand why the Sanctuarites were so unhappy. Lastel was very happy: he was alive and back at the Vulgar Unicorn tending bar, and the Unicorn was making money, and money made Lastel happy, always. Being alive was something Lastel had not fully appreciated until recently, when he had spent aeons dying a subjective death in thrall to a spell he had paid to have laid upon his own person, a spell turned against him by the sons of its deceased creator, Mizraith of the Hazard class, and dispelled by he knew not whom. Though every night he expected his mysterious benefactor to sidle up to the bar and demand payment, no one ever came and said: 'Lastel, I saved you. I am the one. Now show your gratitude.' But he knew very well that someday soon, someone would. He did not let this irritation besmirch his happiness. He had got a new shipment of Caronne krrf (black, pure drug, foil stamped, a full weight of it, enough to set every mercenary in Sanctuary at the kill) and it was so good that he considered refraining from offering it on the market. Having considered, he decided to keep it all for himself, and so was very happy indeed, no matter how many fistfights broke out in the bar, or how high the sun was, these days, before he got to bed ...
Tempus, too, was happy that morning, with the magnificent Tros horse under him and signs of war all around him. Despite the hour, he saw enough rough hoplites and dour artillery fighters with their crank-bows (whose springs were plaited from women's hair) and their quarrels (barbed and poisoned) to let him know he was not dreaming: these did not bestir themselves from daydreams! The war was real to them. And any one of them could be his. He felt his troop-levy money cuddled tight against his groin, and he whistled tunelessly as the Tros horse threaded his way towards the Vulgar Unicorn. One-Thumb was not going to be happy much longer. Tempus left the Tros horse on its own recognizance, dropping the reins and telling it, 'Stay.' Anyone who thought it merely ripe for stealing would learn a lesson about the strain which is bred only in Syr from the original line ofTros's.
There were a few locals in the Unicorn, most snoring over tables along with other, bagged trash ready to be dragged out into the street.
One-Thumb was behind his bar, big shoulders slumped, washing mugs while watching everything through the bronze mirror he had had installed over his stock.
Tempus let his heels crack against the board and his armour clatter: he had dressed for this, from a box he had thought he might never again open. The wrestler's body which Lastel had built came alert, pirouetted smoothly to face him, staring unabashedly at the nearly god-sized apparition in leopard-skin mantle and helmet set with boar's tusks, wearing an antique enamelled breastplate and bearing a bow of ibex-horn morticed with a golden grip.
'What in Azyuna's twat are you?' bellowed One-Thumb, as every waking customer he had hastened to depart.
'I,' said Tempus, reaching the bar and removing his helmet so that his yarrow honey hair spilled forth, 'am Tempus. We have not chanced to meet.' He held out a hand whose wrist bore a golden bracer.
'Marshal,' acknowledged One-Thumb, carefully, his pate creasing with his frown. 'It is good to know you are on our side. But you cannot come in here ... My -'
'I am here, Lastel. While you were so inexplicably absent, I was often here, and received the courtesy of service without Charge. But now I am not here to eat or drink with those who recognize me for one who is fully as corrupt as are they themselves. There are those who know where you were, Lastel, and why -and one who broke the curse that bound you. Truly, if you had cared, you could have found out.' Twice, Tempus called One-Thumb by h
is true name, which no palace personage or Maze-dweller should have known enough to do.
'Marshal, let us go to my office.' Lastel fairly ramped behind his bar.
'No time, krrf-dealer. Mizraith's sons, Stefab and Marype; Markmor: those three and more were slain by the woman Cime who is in the pits awaiting sentence. I thought that you should know.'
'What are you saying? You want me to break her out? Do it yourself.'
'No one', said the Hell Hound, 'can break anyone out of the palace. I am in charge of security there. If she were to escape, I would be very busy explaining to Kadakithis what went wrong. And tonight I am having a reunion here with fifty of my old friends from the mercenaries' guild. I would not want anything to spoil it. And, too, I ask no man to take me on faith, or go where I have not been.' He grinned like the Destroyer, gesturing around. 'You had better order in extra. And half a piece ofkrrf, your courtesy to me, of course. Once you have seen my men when well in hand, you will be better able to conjecture what might happen should they get out of hand, and weigh your alternatives. Most men I solicit find it to their benefit to work in accord with me. Should you deem it so for you, we will fix a time, and discuss it.'
Not the cipher's meaning, nor the plan it shrouded, nor the threat that gave it teeth were lost on the man who did not like to be called 'Lastel' in the Maze. He bellowed: 'You are addled. You cannot do this. I cannot do that! As for krrf, I know nothing about... any ... krrf.' But the man was gone, and Lastel was trembling with rage, thinking he had been in purgatory too long; it .had eroded his nerves!
4
When the dusk cooled the Maze, Shadowspawn ducked into the Unicorn. One-Thumb was not in evidence; Two-Thumbs was behind the bar.
He sat with the wall supporting him, where the story-teller liked to sit, and watched the door, waiting for the crowd to thicken, tongues to loosen, some caravan driver to boast of his wares. The mercenaries were no boon to a thief, but dangerous playmates, like Kadakithis's palace women. He did not want to be intrigued; he was being distracted moment by moment. As a consequence, he was very careful to keep his mind on business, so that he would not come up hungry next Ilsday, when his funds, if not increased, would run out.
Shadowspawn was dark as iron and sharp like a hawk; a. cranked crossbow, loaded with cold bronze and quarrels to spare. He wore knives where a professional wears them, and sapphire and gold and crimson to draw the eye from his treasured blades.
Sanctuary had spawned him: he was hers, and he had thought nothing she did could surprise him. But when the mercenaries arrived as do clients to a strumpet's house, he had been hurt like a whore's bastard when first he learns how his mother feeds him.
It was better, now; he understood the new rules.
One rule was: get up and give them your seat. Hanse gave no one his seat. He might recall pressing business elsewhere, or see someone he just had to hasten over to greet. Tonight, he remembered nothing earlier forgotten; he saw no one he cared to bestir himself to meet. He prepared to defend his place as seven mercenf aries filled the doorway with plumes and pelts and hilts and mail, and looked his way. But they went in a group to the bar, though one, in a black mantle, with iron at chest and head and wrists, pointed directly to him like a man sighting his arrow along an outstretched arm.
The man talked to Two-Thumbs awhile, took off his helmet with its horsehair crests that seemed blood-red, and approached Hanse's table alone. A shiver coursed the thief's flesh, from the top of his black thatch to his toetips.
The mercenary reached him in a dozen swinging strides, drawing a stabbing sword as he came on. If not for the fact that the other hand held a mug, Shadowspawn would have aired iron by the time the man (or youth from his smooth, heartshaped face) spoke: 'Shadowspawn, called Hanse? I am Stepson, called Abarsis. I have been hoping to find you.' With a grin full of dazzling teeth, the mercenary put the ivory-hiked sword flat in the wet-rings on the table, and sat, both hands well in evidence. clasped under his chin.
Hanse gripped his beltknife tightly. Then the panic-flash receded, and time passed, instead of piling all its instants terri-fyingly on top of one another. Hanse knew that he was no coward, that he was plagued by flashbacks from the two times he had been tapped with the fearstick ofVashanka, but his chest was heaving, and the mercenary might see. He slumped back, for camouflage. The mercenary with the expensive taste in accoutrements could be no older than he. And yet, only a king's son could afford such a blade as that before him. He reached out hesitantly to touch its silvered guard, its garnet pommel, his gaze locked in the sell-sword's soulless pale one, his hand slipping closer and closer to the elegant sword of its own accord.
'Ah, you do like it then,' said Stepson. 'I was not sure. You will take it, I hope. It is customary in my country, when meeting a man who has performed heroically to the benefit of one's house, to give a small token.' He withdrew a silver scabbard from his belt, laid it with the sword, which Hanse put down as if burned.
'What did I ever do for you?'
'Did you not rescue the Riddler from great peril?'
'Who?' The tanned face grinned ingenuously. 'A truly brave man does not boast. I understand. Or is it a deeper thing? That -' He leaned forward; he smelled sweet like new-mown hay '- is truly what I need to know. Do you comprehend me?'
Hanse gave him an eagle's look, and shook his head slowly, his fingers flat on the table, near the magnificent sword that the mercenary Stepson had offered to give him. The Riddler? He knew no one of that name. 'Are you protecting him? There is no need, not from me. Tell me, Shadowspawn, are you and Tempus lovers?'
'Mother-!' His favourite knife leapt into his palm, unbidden. He looked at it in his own grasp in consternation, and dropped his other hand over it, and began paring his nails. Tempus! The Riddler? Hanse's eyes caressed the covetable blade. 'I helped him out, once or twice, that's all.'
'That is good,' the youth across from him approved. 'Then we will not have to fight over him. And, too, we could work a certain bargain, service for service, that would make me happy and you, I modestly estimate, a gentleman of ease for at least six months.'
'I'm listening,' said Shadowspawn, taking a chance, commending his knife to its sheath. The short sword too, he handled, fitting it in the scabbard and drawing it out, fascinated by the alert scrutiny of Abarsis the Stepson's six companions.
When he began hearing the words 'diamond rods' and 'Hall of Judgement' he waxed uneasy. But by then, he could not sec any way that he could allow himself to appear less than heroic in the pale, blue-grey eyes of Stepson. Not when the amount of money Stepson had offered hung in the balance, not when the nobly fashioned sword he had been given as if it were merely serviceable proclaimed the flashy mercenary's ability to pay that amount. But too, if he would pay that, he would pay more. Hanse was not so enthralled by the mercenaries' mystique to hasten into one's pay without some good Sanctuary barter. Watching Stepson's six formidable companions, waiting like purebred hunting dogs curried for show, he spied a certain litheness about them, an uncanny cleanliness of limb and nearness of girded hips. Close friends, these. Very close.
Abarsis's sonorous voice had ceased, waiting for Hanse's response. The disconcertingly pale eyes followed Hanse's stare, frank now, to his companions.
'Will you say yea, then, friend of the Riddler? And become my friend, also? These other friends of mine await only your willingness to embrace you as a brother.'
'I own,' Hanse muttered.
Abarsis raised one winged brow. 'So? They are members of a Sacred Band, my old one; most prized officers; heroes, every pair.' He judged Hanse's face. 'Can it be you do not have the custom, in the south? From your mien I must believe it.' His voice was liquid, like deep running water. 'These men, to me and to their chosen partners, have sworn to forsake life before honour, to stand and never retreat, to fall where they fight if need be, shoulder to shoulder. There is no more hallowed tryst than theirs. Had I a thousand such, I would rule the earth.'
'Which one is yo
urs?' Hanse tried not to sneer, to be conversational, unshaken, but his eyes could find no comfortable place to rest, so that at last he took up the gift-sword and examined the hieratic writing on its blade.
'None. I left them, long ago, when my partner went up to heaven. Now I have hired them back, to serve a need. It is strictly a love of spirit, Hanse, that is required. And only in Sacred Bands is a mercenary asked so much.'
'Still, it's not my style.'
'You sound disappointed.'
'I am. In your offer. Pay me twice that, and I will get the items you desire. As for your friends, I don't care if you bugger them each twice daily. Just as long as it's not part of my job and no one thinks I am joining any organizations.' A swift, appreciative smile touched Abarsis. 'Twice, then. I am at your mercy'
'I stole those diamond rods once before, for Tem-, for the Riddler. He'll just give them back to her, after she does whatever it is she does for him. I had her once, and she did nothing for me that any other whore would not do.'
'You what? Ah, you do not know about them, then? Their legend, their curse?'
'Legend? Curse? I knew she was a sorceress. Tell me about it! Am I in any danger? You can forget the whole idea, about the rods. I keep shut of sorcery.'
'Hardly sorcery, no need to worry. They cannot transmit any of it. When he was young and she was a virgin, he was a prince and a fool of ideals. 1 heard it that the god is his true father, and thus she is not his sibling, but you know how legends are. As a princess, her sire looked for an advantageous marriage. An archmage of a power not seen anymore made an offer, at about the time the Riddler renounced his claim to the throne and retired to a philosopher's cave. She went to him begging aid, some way out of an unacceptable situation, and convinced him that should she be deflowered, the mage would not want her, and of all men the Riddler was the only one she trusted with the task; anyone else would despoil her. She seduced him easily, for he had loved her. all his young life and that unacceptable attraction to flesh of his flesh was part of what drove him from his primogeniture. She loved nothing but herself; some things never change. He was wise enough to know he brought destruction upon himself, but men are prone to ruin from women. In passion, he could not think clearly; when it left him he went to Vashanka's altar and threw himself upon it, consigning his fate to the god. The god took him up, and when the archmage appeared with four eyes spitting fire and four mouths breathing fearful curses, the god's aegis partly shielded him. Yet, the curse holds. He wanders eternally bringing death to whomever loves him and being spurned by whomsoever he shall love. She must offer herself for pay to any comer, take no gift of kindness on pain of showing all her awful years, incapable of giving love as she has always been. So thus, the gods, too, are barred to her, and she is truly damned.'
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