Blood Ties tw-9

by Robert Lynn Asprin

  Disconcerted, as Ischade disappeared-literally-into shadows, he mounted the Tros and stroked its neck for comfort: his comfort, not its. .

  Up north, at the Hidden Valley stud farm, a calmer life still beckoned. If he could only be content to do it, he could raise horses and a new generation of fighters to hold the line against the northern wizards with his friend Bashir.

  But no matter how he craved a different life at times like these, when battle lines of uncertain composition were drawn, with stakes not so simple as life or death, and opponents whose strength was not corporeal, the god would never let him rest.

  Torchholder, the half-Nisi priest, had told him all his curse and godbond were merely habit. It might have been true on the day the priest said it, or true to a priestly eye; but it wasn't true here and now.

  And here and now was always where Tempus was, not off somewhere in the realm of Greater Good or Mortal Soul or Eternal Consequence. He'd lost the ability to determine greater good, if there was one; his mortal soul he'd given up on long ago. And as for eternal consequence-he was its embodiment.

  So when Jihan finally made her entrance, glowing softly to his god-shared eye, her muscular, lithe form still more feminine than any mortal girl's, her waist too small and breasts too pert and thighs too sleek below scale-armor no human hand had forged, he was more than ready to be just what he was, to lay upon her the consequence of her dalliance, of her games, and of her fate.

  She came up to within an arm's length of the Tros and it backed a pace: It remembered the way she used to curry it until its hide showed bare of hair.

  He slipped off its back as her throaty voice, arch and full of childish vanity, said, "You wished to see me, Tempus? I can't imagine why. I did not invite you to my wedding."

  "Because," he said, reaching out for her with a quick grab and a step forward, "there isn't going to be one."

  His hand closed on her arm as hers grabbed for his belt.

  They struggled there, and he dropped her by thrusting a leg between her thighs and kicking her balance out from under her.

  It was a signal.

  As Jihan began to curse and rage and kick beneath him among the charcoal and the bricks, Critias and Strat and Ran-dal began the sacrifice of ox and oil, to pacify the god, while Ischade did whatever Ischade must do to release her wards.

  Raping the Froth Daughter wasn't easy: She was as strong as he and just as agile.

  He had counted on the lust they shared and the play-rapes in their past to turn her pique into passion and her body into an instrument he could play for best result.

  And something of the sort transpired, though who raped whom, he wasn't certain, when they rolled half-naked in the ruins, unconcerned with anything about them, while a witch cast spells and soldiers spoke ancient rituals and Randal, the Tysian wizard, presided over a fiery sacrifice meant to set whatever lurked in Tasfalen's free at last.

  Since Tempus was, in his way, that self-same sacrifice to Stonnbringer, father of Jihan, and since Jihan's legs were around him and her teeth sunk firmly in his neck, and since the god within him loved the rape-game and Jihan as well and since Jihan was by then wreaking enough havoc upon his flesh to make him glad the god was in him to bear the brunt of it, he missed the spectacle taking place across the street at Tasfalen's.

  As a matter of fact, the fireworks inside his head as the god and he and Jihan and her father came together blotted out the simulacrum of last winter's pillar of fire, rising up to heaven from Tasfalen's home, which had been left unscathed then.

  He was later told that, as it rose, the doors and windows of Tasfalen's flew open of their own accord and something fiery -something with huge bird's wings flew out. And flapped and circled high above the place where Tasfalen lived.

  And disappeared into the smoke which billowed everywhere-too much smoke to credit to burned ox thighs and jugs of oil; smoke that went up from, or down to, the chimney of Tasfalen's house, as if the light spewing from every window was the light of something burning bright within.

  But what burned in Tempus was a light unto itself.

  Jihan was his match in all things physical: When they lay quiet, able to hear more than their own breathing and see more than their own souls, she whispered to him, with her head buried in his neck, "Oh, Riddler, what took you so long to come and reclaim me? How could you do this to me? And to Randal?"

  "I'll take care of Randal. He'll understand. I want you, Jihan-I want you with me. I..." This was hard to say, but he had to say it, not just for Randal's sake, but for the sakes of all who put their faith in him. "I... need you, Jihan. We all do. Come north and east and everywhere with me-see this world, not just its armpit."

  "But my father..." The Froth Daughter's eyes glowed red as the light he was just beginning to notice from across the street.

  "Will he not honor his daughter's wish?"

  And Jihan's arms locked around his neck in a grip not Tempus, or death itself, could brezk, and she pulled him down to her. "Then, Riddler, let us show Him that it is my wish."

  He wasn't sure that, even with the war-god to help, he could manage to prove himself again so soon. But the god was, thanks be to Him, as insatiable as she, and, though Stormbringer began to rumble and to shake the ground in pique, so that soon they thrashed and rolled in a downpour that quenched the fire on the altar and the fire in Tasfalen's house, it was too late for Jihan's father to intervene.

  Tempus had wooed Jihan, and won her, and there was nothing even Stormbringer could do to change the Froth Daughter's mind once it was made up.

  Zip couldn't believe the trouble he was in, forced into an alliance with so many who had good reason to wish him dead.

  Jubal's hawkmasks escorted him out to the Stepsons' barracks to show him around. At least he didn't have to live there-yet.

  The deal was, as he understood it, that he spearhead some addled alliance made up of all his known enemies and some he hadn't known he had: One, a bitch named Chenaya, had more balls than half the mercenaries lounging on the white washed parade grounds and she'd made it clear that she didn't expect the pecking order to hold for long unless she was at the head of it.

  Heads tended to get lopped off in Sanctuary, he'd told her, with an exaggerated bow and outstretched hand meant to indicate that she could precede him into any grave, anytime, anyplace.

  But Chenaya was some sort of Rankan noble, and didn't realize he was being snide. She's just assumed he habitually bowed and scraped like any other Wrigglie, and let him hand her up into her fancy wagon, telling him she'd see him later.

  He'd have felt better about all the changes ifJubal had said Word One to him about settling matters, man to man, or if the Rankan Walegrin hadn't looked at him as if Zip were a goat staked out to lure a wolf, or if Straton wasn't twice his weight and conspicuously absent when Zip was shown the ropes at the barracks.

  Yeah, he could hold out in the one-time slaver's estate-turned-fortress. Yeah, it beat the offal out of Ratfall. But somehow, he didn't think he was going to live to move his rabble in here.

  And he didn't think the 3rd Commando was going to quit this town, where it was the most powerful single element save gods, wizardry, and Tempus, once the Stepsons were packed off to the capital.

  Sync was nobody's fool. And Sync was looking at him funny as the 3rd's commander whistled up a mount for Zip from the string herd and showed him how to put a warhorse through its paces.

  It was a bright day, and the horse was sweating, and he was riding around the training ring with Sync like some Rankan kid with his daddy when the arrow whizzed by his head close enough to knick his ear.

  He cursed, dove off the horse's wrong side, and rolled toward the fence while Sync bawled orders and men went running about in a fine display of concern.

  Zip went after the arrow and found it.

  If it wasn't the same one that had been aimed at Straton from a rooftop last winter, it was a perfect copy.

  "That doesn't mean that Strat-or any of t
he Stepsons- are behind this," Sync said, a stalk of hay between his teeth, an hour later as they walked their horses and men came in, sweating and dirty, giving desultory reports of no progress and grinning at Zip, the only Ilsig in the camp, with cold amusement in their meres' eyes.

  "Sure. I know. Probably somebody wants me to think it is. No sweat." And he half-believed what he was saying. If Strat wanted a piece of him, the Sacred Bander would take it with show and ceremony, lots of ritual, the whole exotic Band code enforced so that murder wouldn't be murder once it had been sanctified by the handy murderer's god.

  They had an altar to that purpose, out back of the training arena.

  Arrow in hand. Zip walked over there with his new horse, thinking about making some kind of statement by kicking the piled stones apart.

  Then he changed his mind, swung up on the horse, and loped it out of there.

  He didn't really care who'd tried to kill him. From the talk he'd heard while in the barracks, neither did the Stepsons: They were more concerned over walls and the weather.

  He'd known that this whole business of putting him at the head of some cease fire coalition was just a roundabout way of executing him.

  Ritual execution, political style, wasn't a nice way to die. But then. Zip had killed enough to know there wasn't one.

  He rode all day, through the Swamp of Night Secrets, thinking about his chances slim-and his alternatives- none.

  He was dead the minute he announced he wouldn't play the game; if he was dead a week or two later if he pretended to play along, that was a week or two of living he wouldn't have otherwise.

  It wasn't a great shot, but it was the only one he had. He didn't have anywhere to run; he had too many enemies without Tempus added to the list. If he diverged from the "arrangement," he'd have no chance at all of surviving. It would be open season on Zip-for professionals.

  He had one hole card, maybe, in Kama. He couldn't imagine she'd get that close with him for any kind of revenge.

  He wanted to see her, but by the time he got out of the swamp, the sun was going down and he knew he'd better head for Ratfall.

  Though Sync had proved Zip wasn't safe in Downwind, somebody had proved he wasn't safe out at the barracks, and he'd known for a long time that he wasn't safer anywhere than his own abilities could make him.

  So he went to ground in Ratfall, detouring only long enough to lay the arrow that had nicked his ear on the little pile of stones down at the White Foal River's edge.

  He used to bring blood sacrifices there-to something. He wasn't sure what. But it liked them. He thought maybe, if it liked him enough for bringing it presents, it might take of-fense at whoever had shot the arrow (which had his own blood on it still), and do its single servant a favor.

  Because without a god's help, a piece of alley-grime like Zip didn't have a whore's chance of making it through another Sanctuary night unmolested.

  Tempus had been right: Sanctuary was for lovers, not fighters, this season.

  LOVERS WHO SLAY TOGETHER by Robin Wayne Bailey

  Chenaya stretched in her bed as the morning sun centered itself in her east window. A mischievous little grin stole over her lips as she thought again about her encounter with Tempus Thales. Not so imaginative as Hanse Shadowspawn, not half so enchanting as Enas Yorl, and the poor madman had been disappointingly quick. If nothing else, she had added one more of Sanctuary's notables to her personal scorecard, and she was glad to have spotted him sneaking about in that gar- den, glad she had decided to intercept him.

  It had, after all, been a boring party until he showed up.

  Of course, he thought he'd raped her, and that only added to her amusement. The impish grin she wore blossomed into a truly wicked smile. What the poor fool didn't appreciate was the price he was going to pay for his brief pleasure.

  She sat up languidly, threw back the thin coverlet, rose, and pulled on a sleeveless robe of pale blue silk. On a small, ornately carved table beside her bed lay a bronze comb. She picked it up, began idly to tease it through the thick mass of her blond curls as she crossed the room and sat on the window sill. The sun felt wonderfully warm on her flesh. It would be a scorching day.

  She shut her eyes and leaned back. Her thoughts turned to the strange meeting in Ratfall. It was the first time she'd met or even seen Zip, the leader of the so -called Popular Front for the Liberation of Sanctuary. She smiled at the irony of the name. Zip wasn't particularly popular with anybody right now, and if Sanctuary wanted liberation from anything it was from the bloody terrorist tactics of his night-running faction.

  Somehow, in her imagination and from the stories she'd heard, she'd always thought of Zip as closer to her own age. Probably because everyone called him boy all the time. It had surprised her to see that the rebel was older by some years, She called up her memory of him again: dark-haired, with that cute sweatband above his eyes, pleasant to look at. He hadn't cared much for her, though. That had been clear enough in his eyes.

  Tempus had made more than one amusing proposal to her in that garden. Both his Stepsons and the 3rd Commando were leaving Sanctuary, he'd told her. That would leave the city virtually defenseless unless someone seized control of the PFLS and used it to forge a unified force of all the other factions.

  "Use your gift," he'd grunted in her ear as he fumbled with her skirts. "You can't be defeated. Be the one to take control."

  Control, indeed. It was she who'd been in control even as he'd pushed her to the ground. She smiled at that. It was a morning for her to smile, it seemed.

  Tempus had even tried to blackmail her into accepting his proposition. Apparently, he'd realized it was she and her gladiators who had attacked Theron's barge when the cursed usurper had unexpectedly come to Sanctuary. Unfortunately, the wily old crown-thief had possessed the foresight to dress some luckless fool in his raiments while he saw to business elsewhere. Her attack had been successful; she'd just aimed at the wrong man.

  Still, there was merit to the Riddler's idea, and a plan had come to her in the night, like a dream, like the voice of Sa-vankala himself guiding her. She opened her eyes, glanced at the sun thoughtfully, and resumed her combing.

  Things had not gone well between her and Kadakithis lately, and Chenaya knew she had caused the breach by returning her cousin's missing wife to Sanctuary. It hadn't been a charitable act, by any means; she'd done it to prevent a marriage between him and the Beysib Shupansea. Despite a Rankan law forbidding divorce among the royal family, Kadakithis clearly intended to announce his betrothal to the Beysa at summer's end.

  Chenaya set the comb in her lap and leaned back. Unless she made some effort the breach might never heal. She couldn't bear to have her Little Prince angry with her, and she resolved to face the fact that she might even have to make peace with the fish-eyed bitch he wanted to marry.

  Tempus, bless his inadequate little self, had handed her the means to do so. She stared upward at the sun and uttered a hasty prayer: Thank you. Bright Father, thank you for filling the world with such an abundance of fools.

  She smiled yet again, rose, and began to dress. It was going to be a good day, full of events sure to entertain her.

  The door to her quarters opened without so much as a knock to announce her visitor. The dark-haired beauty who strode toward her wore a sullen look and the garments of a Rankan gladiator. Sandalled heels clicked smartly on the un carpeted floor stones. She gave Chenaya a look of disapproval. Then, all the starch went out of the young woman; her shoulders sagged; she sighed, fell backward with great drama, and sprawled on the bed. "Up at the crack of dawn, you've told me a score of times, and out on the practice field ready to work." Another sigh rose from those pouty lips, and a delicate ivory finger pointed accusingly. "You're not ready, mistress." Her last words dripped with mockery and accusation.

  "Daphne, your bad attitude can do nothing to spoil this day," Chenaya replied as she pulled on a scarlet fighting kilt and buckled on a broad leather belt that gleamed with gold st
uds.

  "Since Daxus," Daphne whined, "you've given me no more throats."

  Chenaya tied the straps of her sandals and lied patiently. "I've told you before. The only other names I could give you would all be Raggah. Daxus sold information about your caravan to that gods-cursed desert tribe. They're the ones who sold you to the pirates on Scavengers' Island. There was no conspiracy to dispose of you. It was just business as usual for the Raggahs."

  It wasn't the truth. But those others in Sanctuary who had plotted to destroy Daphne's caravan were too important- given the threat posed by Theron-to let Daphne carve them. Despite Chenaya's promise, Daxus was the only throat Daphne was going to get.

  "Right," Daphne snapped. "Business as usual. They just happened to land themselves a princess of Ranke-Kada-kithis's wife. Nothing personal. How stupid do you think I am?"

  "I'm sure I haven't begun to plumb your depths." Chenaya lifted her sword from a wooden chest at the foot of her bed. "If you've got nothing better to do than bitch about life's un-faimess, then get up and head for the practice field. Leyn will instruct you today."

  Daphne sat up, startled, angry. Then, her face recomposed itself into a familiar frown. "Leyn?" she cried. "Where's Dayme? He's supposed to be my trainer."

  "He left on a mission last night," Chenaya told her newest student. "He's attending to some business for me that will take him to various parts of the Empire. While he's gone, Leyn will be your trainer." She pointed a finger at Daphne. "And no complaints. You've whined enough this morning. Even the least of my men has plenty to teach you. Now, on your way, Princess." She put special emphasis on the title, a not-so-subtle reminder that Daphne's rank counted for nothing while she wore fighting garb.

  Daphne rose with deliberate slowness, giving a haughty toss of her waist-length black hair. "As the mistress commands," she answered with false meekness as she moved toward the door. But before she passed through and out of sight she added, just loud enough for Chenaya to hear, "bitch."