by Janet Morris
Madame Bomba's hearty laugh rang out. "You're ruining my story. Yes, that's Critias. Thou art: popular with thy band. He's the third to come here asking for you this evening."
"Would you know why I'm in such demand tonight?"
"No more than I know where the gods hide their treasure. I'd sooner ask your Stepsons for their favors than their secrets, as you well know. But of course, one hears of doings on the street."
"One does, of course," he prodded.
"One hears that there was a murder at the Dark Horse tonight, and that the victim was a man Crit recommended into the innkeeper's care. One hears that both Crit and Grille were at the scene soon after, and our own Randal summoned from the mageguild's crypts."
Madame Bomba had appointed herself surrogate mother to the Stepsons; she loved good fighters, Sacred Banders most of all. They were her "boys," and it was to the benefit of everyone, even Tempus, that this was so. But she liked to draw out her tales and had a penchant for innuendo. Tempus didn't try to hurry her or to interrogate her; he wouldn't spoil her fun; her eyes danced with glee over something. He had all the time in the world. He leaned his chair back on two legs and poured some umber krrf carefully into the well of his fist from a silver box, snorted the powder, offered her the box.
She pinched two piles, lay them on the black marble table at which they sat, and inhaled them through a golden straw that hung between her satined breasts on a delicate chain.
She sniffed loudly. "Aah. Good. Very good. When this woman was done eating and beginning to drink—just after Crit came in and he and I were talking at the bar—one of my staff came up to us saying the woman wanted to go upstairs."
Madame Bomba kept girls for whoring, but no boys: it was a personal prejudice of hers. She was, in her way, straight-laced: even her girls must be over twelve. Tempus fingered a smile. "You ought to let her, if she wishes."
"Oh, pish. Don't interrupt me. I was about to, when Crit asked which woman we were talking about. When I pointed her out and mentioned she was looking for you, loyal Critias offered to pretend to be one of my whores long enough to turn the tables on her and find out what she'd thought to learn from one of my belly warmers. If she's tipped him, we'll share the gratuity."
"They're done, then?"
"So it seems. And very friendly, yet. So what's your pleasure, sleepless one? See the girl? Crit? Both? Neither? I've a nap room behind that curtain—" she pointed behind her with a naughty smirk "—you've not seen yet."
"You've got me curious. Go tell Crit I'm here and follow his lead as to whether or not she should know. And—"
Bomba was already getting up. She paused quizzically.
"—should Jihan come in," he warned, "your answer's still the same: you haven't seen me."
"Seen who?" she teased, tossing back gray-streaked hair once chestnut, now faded. "But a question, dear friend and guest, in case there's no time later or you suddenly are invisible to me as well as to your other ladies."
"Speak it."
"Stealth, called Nikodemos? Any word of him?"
"None." He didn't want to talk about Niko. She sensed it and, though her question had been prompted more by business considerations than idle curiosity, let it pass. Niko had been Tempus's favorite among the Stepsons; he'd left Tyse abruptly. Tempus would not conjecture about or try to alter Niko's decision. Those the Riddler loved were bound to spurn him. In Niko's case, it might be better this way. The young fighter's soul had been coveted by a Nisibisi witch, who for a time possessed him, and his patronage was still sought by no less a power than Aškelon, the entelechy of dreams. Nikodemos had retreated to the western island sanctuaries, where he'd been trained. If ill befell him there, it would not be Tempus's fault.
When he looked up again, the curtain in the doorway was rustling and Madame Bomba's tread could be heard descending the stairs. Niko's immediate family was long dead of war. He had an uncle in Caronne who purveyed the finest and rarest of drugs; it was this that Madame Bomba wanted with Niko. The boy had written a letter of introduction for her and she'd sent it on to the uncle, but so far there'd been no response.
He watched the woman and Crit at the bar, now, as Bomba sidled nimbly through the crowd, then whispered in Crit's ear. The foreign woman's gear was eclectic. Only in the Rankan capital, or perhaps Mygdon proper, could such an assemblage of international craftsmanship be procured—or in a mercenary hostel near a hotly contested front where there was much dying and hiring taking place and camp followers pitched their mercantile, mobile cities.
The two women and Tempus's first officer conferred briefly. An ancient, dusty jar of wine was produced from behind the bar, its seal broken, lid sniffed by the madame's educated nose, a bit poured into three goblets. Then a barmaid headed toward the stairs with the jar.
Only Madame Bomba followed, and that a long interval later. Crit and the foreign woman had by then disappeared through the bar's far portal, whether to the drug dens beneath or the playrooms above, Tempus couldn't tell.
"Crit says," Bomba announced, her smile dropping away into a frown as she poured the fine wine for herself and Tempus, "that he's not done with her. He'll bring her out to the farm in Hidden Valley when he's through—on the 'off chance," he told her, that you might be there. He wants you to know that she claims to be of the Rankan 3rd Commando. Is that possible?"
"Why not?" He sipped the elegant wine. "Because she's a woman? Because she's so far upcountry? Or because she's looking for me?" Tempus had formed the 3rd Commando a quarter-century before. It had been instrumental in Ranke's northerly expansion during the so-called long wars. It had been used badly, in his opinion, for purposes other than honorable; it had obliterated city-states and contributed to the downfall of a worthy empire. He'd left it to those who had perverted its purpose; he'd not served as a Rankan field commander on active duty since that time. There was not a death squad or even a remnant of the once ferocious Nisibisi mages (who had a well-earned reputation for viciousness) that rivaled the 3rd Commando in fielded cruelty or gratuitous violence. Ranke's fame as barbarians second to none stemmed directly from the "unending deaths" the 3rd Commando inflicted on its captives. Taking to heart the doctrine that an army has failed in its purpose if it must be fielded, a war already lost once one must be fought, he had conceived them, hand-picked them, trained them, and spread word of the scourge they had become—to use them as a deterrent. But the emperor had turned them loose on subjugated peoples and rebel city-states and the slaves they had taken and sold off had made of the original members rich landowners, lords, and statesmen.
But nothing could change their true nature: they were assassins, experts at torture, skulkers, and berserkers—true followers of the Rankan gods of war. If this woman was one, she was seeking him for good reason: there was nothing in Tyse worth the time of even one of that unit's members. Years ago they'd conquered the north and deported its peoples, and driven the feared Nisibisi wizard-caste up into the peaks known as Wizardwall.
He was curious, riding toward the Nisibisi border on one of his steel-gray Trôs horses, as to what the 3rd Commando wanted with him.
He was also interested in Grit's reasons for handling the matter as he had.
Preoccupied thus, he forgot all about his determination to avoid Jihan. And so as he crossed the border into Nisibis through a narrow canyon which led directly to Hidden Valley, where he and Niko had recently agreed that the stud farm (which belonged in part to all Stepsons but mostly to Tempus and Niko) would be established, Jihan spurred a second Trôs stallion out from behind a rockfall to intercept him.
"Ha! Riddler! You are found out!" On his horse, she was an arresting sight in her brown/green/ gray scale armor of metaphysical manufacture, her proud, classically beautiful head high and bronze hair streaming, her broad shoulders, impossibly tiny waist, and muscular thighs shown to her best advantage as she cantered up beside him astride a horse than which there were only two better in the known world.
As the horse was not h
ers, neither was she responsible for the beauty of her form or the perfection of her accouterments: she was a Froth Daughter, a supernal sprite, and her eyes glowed with red flecks of anger as she brought her mount alongside his and reached down to grab his horse's reins below its bit. "Where have you been, slaggard?
I have searched everywhere for you. You must not leave me alone so long." There was no womanish whining in her voice; rather, there was a warning tone.
She was as strong as he, perhaps stronger; her stamina was unparalleled. She played at womanhood as she played at life. As a bedmate, he found her suitable; as a companion, she wore upon his nerves. Six months on earth was not nearly long enough to have mellowed her.
He squeezed his knees against his mount and muttered, "Hai," to it. It reared up on its hind legs and walked three steps, forelegs flailing, breaking her hold on its reins and causing the second Trôs to back up rapidly.
She pouted and put her hands on her hips. His horse came down on all fours again, and by then, she'd thought better of her behavior. "Let us start anew, surrogate husband. I have missed you. Let us hurry to our quarters and reacquaint our bodies with one another."
He was not through punishing her for having been taken in by the Nisibisi archmage Datan during the summer war for Wizardwall and turning against him; she was not yet through punishing him for the loss of her betrothed husband, Aškelon, lord of dreams, to Tempus's own sister, Cime. That they both enjoyed the strife they engaged in, neither would admit—out of bed. But tonight there was something new about Jihan, something he didn't understand—a sense of urgency, a tension in her. "Race me to the barn,
Tempus," she called out, and the Trôs she rode lunged homeward.
She still had a half-length lead on him when they thundered into Hidden Valley between the sheer rock walls which curved in narrowly to make an easily defensible choke point. One could climb out of the valley other ways; one could not ride out. Bashir, warrior-priest of Free Nisibis, had given the land to Niko and Tempus in gratitude for their assistance in routing the Nisibisi wizards who had long oppressed his people. They had taken it gladly; Mygdonia and Ranke might war unto the death of both, but Bashir and his Free Nisibis would endure. Sometimes Tempus considered throwing in with the warrior-priest permanently: the Stepsons would settle in gleefully among the free men. As it was, they were half at home here.
Nisibisi free men, braided sidelocks confining their long hair, lounged around the paddocks and trained desultorily with his Stepsons, even now as the moon neared its zenith.
Two of each sort of commando ambled over to take their horses. It was a measure of the easy atmosphere and mutual respect at the farm that Tempus could leave his animals to others to tend.
He slipped to the ground and caught Jihan as she slid off the blowing Trôs, rump to horse in cavalry fashion, lowering her gently to the ground. "Come, now, Jihan," he said, kissing her brow though he hadn't meant to. "What's the matter with you? You're not trying. You could have beaten me by two lengths, perhaps three."
And she melted against him as the horses were led away, so that he was very much aware that they stood in public. She said, her words muffled against his leathers: "It occurred to me today, alone and friendless, that I've only six months left with you. Then what, sleepless one, will happen to me?" She raised her head and the red flecks were muted, saddened.
"Happen to you? Whatever you choose, I'd dare say. Your father is not one to withhold his blessings."
"What if I told you I want to stay? Be with you permanently?"
"Permanently, with me, is a very long time. You'd become bored, restless. Already you complain that I spend too little time with you. We would be at each other's throats, eventually. You don't want that."
"I want to stay."
He disengaged her and walked toward his quarters, an arm over her shoulders, thinking he knew what she needed. Jihan's appetites, like her abilities, were greater than a mortal woman's.
"Then you will stay," he said to defuse a possible argument. "But I doubt that even your father could allow it without some reduction of your… extraordinary gifts."
"But then, if I gave up some… things, you would accept me? Marry me?"
"No!" It came out of him unbidden, a pure reaction. He tried to mitigate it. "I don't believe marriage would improve our lot. But you may stay with the band as long as you wish. Of course, there's the dream lord to consider… You might yet take a year with him, when my sister is done." "Hhmph. Come serve my needs, Riddler. That's all I want you for."
She vented her anger on him, but he was used to it. He rather enjoyed her attempts to make what was consummately enjoyable for them both a pleasure for her only. Jihan was an infant in an adult's body; her tantrums were part of her charm for him, and would be until she realized it.
They had worked up a good sweat on his wide, feather pallot when someone came knocking. "Send him away," she muttered blackly, "or I'll freeze him where he stands." Jihan's flesh was cool to the touch; that she sweated now was an indicator of the degree of her passion. She got up on her knees and slapped his thighs. "Banish him, or I will! Irrevocably!" Cold was her weapon, as was to some extent all water: she was born of the tides of the primordial sea.
"I'm expecting someone. You've had more than your share tonight. Go look in on our hostage. You wanted to keep the boy, to 'discover your motherhood'; you cannot in good conscience neglect him."
Jihan's guilt was stirred by Tempus's inference and she slipped, naked, corselet in hand, out his back door while he was dressing to let Crit (whose knock he knew) in the front.
Crit had the foreign woman with him and she was gracious, comely in a businesslike fashion, lithe, and possessing a handshake as firm as most men's.
"I hear you've enjoyed a joke at my expense, you and Critias," she said without preamble.
"Critias? Me?" Tempus feigned ignorance. "Crit, you look weary. You know where everything is. Refresh yourself." And Crit did look exhausted; his lips were bluish and his eye-whites red.
Crit saluted Tempus and inclined his head. "She's got a message for you. She wouldn't give it to me, no matter the persuasion. I'm going to collapse back there until you decide if she's staying. If she's not, wake me and I'll ride back to town with her. Night, all."
"Pleasant journey, Stepson," she called huskily after him, then unlatched her mantle, putting her helmet, black-crested and visored, on a hook next to his.
Tempus noted the little unit device on her cuirass: a red enameled horse, the workmanship raised, the horse rearing with three lightning bolts clenched in his teeth—3rd Commando.
But there was no rank designation beneath it. "Have you a name, sister?"
"Kama. Of the 3rd, but you'd know that, my lord. Permission to sit?"
He waved his hand. "I'm not your lord, unless you're offering yourself in service. We've a fighting woman or two…"
"Something like that." She was reaching up under her armor and into her loinguard. From it she extracted a folded parchment, sealed with red wax. She held it out. "This may explain, my lord." She handed it to him, then sat at the simple board table which dominated his front room, pushing the oil lamp on it toward him.
He slit the seal. He knew the crest stamped in it; it was from a Rankan whose bidding he still occasionally did—for large amounts of money. Tempus had gone south to the empire's nadir, wretched Sanctuary, for this man's faction.
The note was in code, introducing the messenger, Kama, and offering a mission: take the boy Shamshi home to Mygdonia as a special emissary of the Rankan government; negotiate a settlement of Rankan/Mygdonian differences which would ensure that all borders reverted to their former status—that is, return Machad to Rankan control; de-escalate the conflict along the fronts; draw up an agreement of nonbelligerence which would put an end to Mygdonian-funded revolutions and the feud between the Rankan mageguild and the remnants of the Nisibisi mages who had fought for and fled to Mygdonia. Tempus was authorized to sign any such agreement
in the name of the emperor.
"Sorry," he said, handing it back to her, "not for twice the amount they're offering."
The woman had thick eyebrows, a broad, high forehead, and a generous mouth tapering to a pointed chin. One eyebrow raised and she bit her lip. He could almost see her mind work behind wide brown eyes. Then she said, "May I ask why not?"
"It would mean returning Wizardwall to the Nisibisi mages. I like Bashir; I've fought beside him. I won't fight against him or stand aside while someone else tries to take from him what's his by right."
"I can't argue with you, my lord. Certainly not about rights. But I don't think that anyone considered that angle. If you could see your way clear to act in our interest and somehow allow Bashir to retain Wizardwall—after all, he's not a Rankan treaty signatory—we'll be more than content with that."
"How is it that you can speak for them? Is that a royal we ?
"Not exactly. The man whose message you hold is a distant relative of mine. They trust me. I had a chance of getting through. I can offer the 3rd's support, if need be. Or if need arises. Of course, should the Mygdonians refuse our offer, we would have no choice but to redouble our efforts to wipe them off the map." Kama grinned like a gargoyle and then sobered. "Either way, we think it's fitting if you make the initial overture. If we're accepted into Mygdonia and get to Lacan Ajami, anything can happen. We'll see their true strength, that's certain, and gather useful intelligence."
"We?"
"I'd be along as an observer. And to convene my unit, of course, if you decide you want us." "How much of this did you tell Crit?"
She chuckled, leaning back, one foot up on a chair rung, her legs spread enough that he saw a stain on one leather-covered thigh. "More than I'd thought to tell, I admit. But only that we had a lucrative proposition which might lead to him and me spending more time together."
