"I do wish people wouldn't try to cheat me," he said. "Idiots, anyway, trying spells anymore. Nothing of this intensity works right."
With a sigh he turned. "Clean up this mess," he said to one of his men, "and tomorrow detach a work detail and raze this place. We can use the stone."
Then he went away to get some sleep. He had a long day tomorrow, on Stormbringer's business.
His men took the bodies away to the chamel house and left the place in darkness. One thing they did not take: one small form, wholly there now, in the darkness of the shadows beyond the moon; a shape like a small delicate dog, with too many lives sitting behind her eyes.
Tyr snarled, and got up, and walked out into the night to consider her vengeance.
SANCTUARY NOCTURNE by Lynn Abbey
Walegrin had his back to Sanctuary-vulnerable, unconcerned. One foot rested on a broken-off piling; his folded forearms rested on his upraised knee. His eyes were empty, staring at the still, starlit harbor, watching for the faint ripple that might mean a breeze coming up.
A thick blanket of sun-steamed air had clung to the city these last four days. Last winter they-the powers in the palace-had told him to paint false plague signs along the streets. Then, in a dry spring, pestilence had erupted from the stagnant sewers and only luck, or divine intervention, had saved Sanctuary from a purging. Now, as the dank, foul air leeched vitality from every living creature, plague season had come in earnest and the nabobs were worried. Worried so much that they fled from the palace and their townhouses to outlying estates, some no more than Ilsigi ruins, to await a change in the wind. Improvements to the city's long-neglected ramparts had ground to a halt, as stone, brick, and work-gangs were openly diverted to providing comfort and security to those rich enough, or powerful enough, to afford it.
But if plague did break out, their walls, atriums, and shaded verandas wouldn't protect them. So they told him, the garrison commander, to keep the guards out and alert. His men grumbled, preferring to slouch over a desultory dice game in the barracks, but he welcomed a chance to get away from the walls that trapped the heat of summer as surely as they did the frigid dampness of winter.
Sanctuary itself was quiet. No one was moving an unnecessary muscle. The Street of Red Lanterns, which he had patrolled, had been almost deserted. Few men would pay to touch sweat-slicked flesh on a night like this.
It was ironic, in a way, that after a year or more of wizard-witched weather, the Street talk was about the failure of magic. Most of the brothels-the big houses like the Aphrodisia, anyway-usually bought cool night breezes from the journeymen up at the Mageguild, but this summer (a summer that was really no worse than any other) the big magic-banded doors stayed shut and the Hazard mages, when they were seen at all, were sweating through their robes like any common laborer.
Rumor said the worst was over and the magic was coming back, though only to the strongest, or the cursed, and as yet too unpredictable to sell at any price. Rumor said a lot of things, but Walegrin, who did Molin Torchholder's direct bidding, got the truth of them sometimes. Stormbringer's pillar, which had purged Sanctuary of its dead and deadly, had sucked away the ether that made magic work. It would be a dog's year before Sanctuary's Mageguild sold anything but charlatan spells or prestidigitation regardless of the hazardous ranking of its residents.
The black harbor water diffracted into diamonds of starlight; a breeze moved whisper-weak across the wharf. The ragged-eared cats with slitted sickly green eyes were stretched out along the damp planks. A mouse, or young rat, skittered up a mooring rope past a cat that didn't care enough to twitch its tail. If a man held still, like the cats-breathing slow, keeping his mind as calm as the water-he could forget the .heat and slip into a timeless daze that was almost pleasant.
Walegrin sought that oblivion and it eluded him. He was a Rankan soldier, the garrison commander, self-charged with patrolling the city. Such pride as he had stemmed from his ability to fulfill his duties. So his mind churned forward, pursuing the thoughts he'd lost before sunset. He had an appointment to keep: the true reason why tonight, more than any other, he rather than one of his men was making the rounds of Sanctuary's alleys.
The summer had seen a change in the city's social fabric that was as profound as it had been unexpected: Official protection had been extended to, and accepted by, the besieged remnants of the PFLS after their leader was betrayed and nearly killed within the palace walls. Gutter-fighters like Zip, whose lives had been measured in hours and minutes at the season's beginning, now dwelt in the Stepson barracks beyond Downwind and sweated hot and cold under the tutelage of Tempus's lieutenants.
And the cause of this change? None other than Prince Kadakithis's once-favorite cousin and Molin's never-favored niece: Chenaya Vigeles, a young woman of considerable talent and little sense. A young woman who had propositioned him with treason and upon whom, with the knowledge and permission of his superiors, Walegrin now spied.
Once, not so long ago, he had discounted the influence of women both in his own life and in the greater realities of the universe; then he had returned to Sanctuary. In this gods- and magic-cursed place, the worst always came from a woman's hand. He'd learned to hold his tongue and his liquor with women whose naked breasts stared back at him; women whose eyes glowed red with immortal anger and women whose love-play left a man dead in the dawn light-and all of them were saner than Chenaya.
Rumor said, and the Torch confirmed, that she was favored of Savankala himself. Rumor said she couldn't lose, whatever that meant, because she and the few frightened remnants of an unlamented Imperial dynasty had fled the Rankan capital after Theron's takeover and wound up here in Sanctuary which had never been known to attract anything or anyone but losers. But it meant something Walegrin knew that personally. And out at the Land's End estate, where she lived with her father, a small horde of gladiators, and the disaffected members of what had been the city's Rankan upper crust, there was a god-bugged priest who was determined to make a mortal goddess of her.
He'd seen the shrine Rashan was building, with stones pilfered not only from the ramparts but from long-neglected, best-forgotten altars. He'd passed the word along to Molin and watched his mentor seethe with rage, but he hadn't managed to pass along the danger-the awesomeness-he felt when Rashan made his Daughter-of the-Sun speeches or when Chenaya took him into her confidence and arms.
The water diffracted again, broken as a school of minnows scattered through a larger, slow-spreading circular ripple. Walegrin shed his reverie and stretched himself erect. His leather baldric, all he wore above the waist, slimed across his spine; the illusion of equilibrium between his flesh and the air vanished. He wiped the sweat-sheen from his forehead then wiped his hand on the limp homespun of his kilt. A nya-fish spread its fins, arching above the water to outrace the fleeing minnows. Walegrin slid the baldric into position and turned back to the city.
If there was an afterlife, if Sanctuary wasn't hell itself, then maybe he'd spend eternity as a nya-fish chasing minnows. At least fish didn't sweat.
The narrow, convoluted streets of the Maze held the heat. Turning down Odd Bin's Dodge, Walegrin passed through invisible walls of hot, stagnant air. He sniffed the air, thought about plague, and knew he'd have to send men in here to check the alleys for bodies come morning. From up on the rooftops, he heard the sounds that said love, or lust, had gained a momentary victory over the weather, but otherwise the Maze was uncommonly quiet for this hour.
Hand on his sword, he backed into a portico and put his shoulder against the half-hinged door. Picking his way across the rubble-strewn floor of what had been, until recently, one of the PFLS safe-houses, he approached the window casement, leaning away from the gray starlight, and tried to guess what route Kama would use to reach their rendezvous.
Kama.
Buoyed by the heat, Walegrin's mind drifted back in time and a few hundred yards deeper into the Maze; back to Tick's Cross and another night almost as hot as this one when he'd take
n the midnight patrol. The night he'd agreed to let Zip live-at least until Tempus had ridden beyond Sanctuary's new gates.
He'd heard the horse first, moving too fast through the rutted muck that passed for paving stones hereabout, and made his way to the cross in time to see its rider go ass over elbow to the ground. The horse was well-trained and came to a shame-faced stop not five paces from its motionless rider. Walegrin grabbed the loose reins and led it back to the moonlit intersection.
Kama lay on her back, knees splayed and angled up-a posture more becoming a whore than a 3rd Commando assassin. Walegrin had looked only long enough to be sure it was her before turning discreetly, uncomfortably, away.
"It would be you. That's twice-damnit all," the husky voice had said, reminding him of the time his men had hauled her out of a malodorous cistern. "I've killed better men for less."
He had stared at her, knowing the absolute certainty of her claim and yet, for one wild, reckless moment able to see the absolute absurdity of her position. "Better for less?" he'd repeated in a bantering tone he used infrequently, even with his own men. "Better for less? Kama, either I'm the best or you'll have to kill me right now"-and immediately wished that someone had taken the trouble to cut his tongue out long ago.
But Kama, absorbing the picture she presented, had thrown her head back and laughed heartily at some private joke. She'd extended her filthy hand toward him and, using him as a brace, jumped to her feet.
"Buy me a drink, Walegrin; buy me a tun of the sourest wine in the Maze and you can be the best."
They said magic had vanished from Sanctuary, but there was a cold, bright spark of magic that moment as they led the lame horse from Tick's Cross, Kama listing against his shoulder-her laughter a quaver short of hysteria.
Molin Torchholder trusted her, including her in any strategy session her other duties allowed her to attend, and frequently accepting her opinions about Sanctuary's darker byways without question. She had been the one to convince them to go along with Tempus's PFLS schemes when he, Molin, and half a dozen others had demanded Zip's last drop of blood. But she was also Molin's woman. She shared his bed-and not simply because the Torch's betrothal offer had gotten her out of a tight spot with the Stepsons. There was genuine passion between them as well as a mutual understanding of intrigue that gave anyone who had known either individually a shiver of apprehension whenever they were seen talking intensely to each other.
So Walegrin used his privileged position as a keeper of Sanctuary's peace to wring not sour wine, but carefully aged, wicker-wrapped flasks of brandywine from one of the town's better-off innkeepers. Then, still leading her horse, they'd hiked beyond the walls to an abandoned estate, now occupied by one of the Beysa's innumerable female cousins. She'd sluiced the worst of the muck off her leathers in a still icy stream while he got started on the first flask and reminded himself ten times over that she was more dangerous than beautiful.
They'd talked until dawn: bragging, swapping anecdotes, and finally exchanging the stories they'd sworn no other living soul would hear. Toward dawn, when she was lying on her back again, watching the stars fade, magic passed between them again; Walegrin could have set aside his baldric and undone the damp laces of her tunic. He forbore, contenting himself with one agonizingly chaste kiss as a red-gold sliver of sunlight flashed above the eastern horizon.
"I always wanted a brother," she'd said in a whisper he wasn't sure he was supposed to hear.
There was a flicker of motion on the rooftops; nothing he could focus on, nothing that was repeated, but he knew she was coming in from above. Moments later the stairs creaked softly and she stood opposite him in the starlight. The supple leather of her tunic hung loosely from her shoulders and her face was matte-shadowed.
"Puttering gods below-you're not even sweating!" he greeted her.
"There are places worse than Sanctuary-and I've lived in most of them."
"I spent five years with the Raggah on the Sun's Anvil-it wasn't as bad as this and I still sweat like a pig."
Kama laughed and slid down the wall until her spine settled against the floor. "Say it's something I get from my father."
Walegrin, having once acknowledged that Tempus at his best was a heavier burden than his own father had been at his worst, redirected his conversation to the reason for their meeting. "It's getting bad at Land's End, Kama. Since they fished her out of the harbor Chenaya's like one of those damned Beysib fire bottles. She's got herself a head full of schemes and any one of them would rip us apart. The Torch's going to have to do something."
"He's going to have to wait his turn, isn't he? Ischade's not satisfied yet; neither is Tempus and the rest haven't even launched their attacks. I hear it was Jubal's men that fished her out and that he gave her a lecture that dried the water right off her. You know Molin; He's not one to waste energy when so many others are willing to-"
"It's not just Chenaya, Kama, it's Rashan, that pet priest of hers. Rashan and his crawling little altar out there. He sits out in the heat for hours and stares at Savankala's shadow. He's god-bugged-and he's got no love for the Torch."
"God-bugged?" she asked, her body tightening.
Walegrin stammered. It was his own phrase; one he'd first used for Molin himself when Stormbringer had been after him. He used it to describe a man's face after the gods had been in his mind-when he went about his business as if a nest of fire-ants raced under his skin. When he was not only unpredictable but nigh invincible. Walegrin had witnessed those changes more than once and had only one word for them: god-bugged.
"Yeah, god-bugged," Kama repeated after he had lapsed into silence. "Crit'd like that; maybe I'll tell him sometime. You think Rashan's god-bugged, too?"
"Even if he isn't, he's doing a good job of convincing Chenaya that she's got the gods' own work to do in Sanctuary."
"Savankala's not all-powerful down here, you know," she reminded Walegrin.
"I didn't say Savankala. The frogging priest's god-bugged. It could be any one of them. He's going out in the middle of the night stealing old stones from who knows where and piling them against his altar."
"You're starting to sound like Molin," Kama mused. "All right, I'll try to convince Molin to take Rashan seriously. Anything else?"
She pulled her legs in and started to rise.
"If he doesn't listen, we'll have to do something... ourselves."
Kama stopped in mid-ascent, her weight perfectly balanced on one bent leg, then sank gently back to the floor. "Like what?"
Walegrin swallowed hard, the tension in his throat bringing pain to his ears. "Like... take him out."
"Shit."
She stared past him. He hoped he had judged her right and she'd come to the same conclusion he'd already reached; hoped her affection for and loyalty to Molin Torchholder was strong enough. She laced her fingers through her hair and, unconsciously, brought it around as a curtain to hide her face as she thought.
"Yeah, if it comes to that. If."
Her hair fell back from her face which reflected that faint starlight. She was sweating now and needed to tug her tunic away from sticky skin like any other mortal.
"How's your sister, Walegrin?" she asked, sitting beside him in the casement now, seemingly eager to place some other thoughts in the front of her mind.
"The same, I guess."
Illyra had recovered from her wounds better than they had dreamed possible. A quick glance at her sitting under the shade of the forge awning and no one would suspect that she had lain near death for over a week with a suppurating gouge in her belly where the PFLS ax which had slain her daughter had come to rest. But her spirit-that was another matter.
"She never smiles, Kama. There's only two memories in her mind: the day Lillis died and the day the ship sailed for Bandara with Arton on it. It's gone beyond mourning."
"I tried to tell you both that in the spring."
The tension went out of Walegrin's neck; his chin slanted toward his breastbone. It was a delic
ate subject among them. Molin had used his own fortune to provide for Illyra's healing and when the seeress's mind proved more injured than her body he'd prevailed upon Kama's near-legendary talent for dissimulation to provoke the S'danzo's recovery. No one wanted to discuss it but it seemed likely that Illyra's damaged mind had both started and then mercifully aborted the spring plague outbreak.
"And we didn't listen." His voice was as despairing as his half-sister's ever was.
Kama twisted her hair through her fist. "Look, I wasn't sure, either. It bothered me that one woman, who wouldn't ever hurt anybody, was suffering more than anyone else in this whole filthy, stinking town. Gods below, man, the last thing I ever want to know is my destiny-but I'd belt myself into one of Rosanda's old gowns again and stand outside that forge in the midday heat if I thought it'd make a difference-"
"But it won't. She's healed wrong-like Strat."
"Maybe another child," she mused, ignoring Walegrin's remark about the stiff shouldered Stepson. "It wouldn't make her forget-but she'd have one to care for, to keep her going from one day to the next until she didn't feel the pain so sharply."
The ebony-haired fighter stared out the window as she spoke. Walegrin knew what had passed between herself and Critias. Knew about the unborn child she'd lost up along Wiz-ardwall and her secret fear that now there could never be another one.
"Gods below, her husband's a big man. He's thought about it but she's too soon recovered," Walegrin said, trying to force humor into his voice.
It worked better than he'd expected. Kama's lips twisted into a lewd, lopsided smile. "There're other ways than that, my man."
Walegrin was grateful that such light as reached down into the room fell on her rather than him. His face burned and his groin tensed. He hadn't always known, hadn't really suspected much one way or another until recently. Chenaya took far greater pleasure from her ability to astound and stupefy him than she did from any of his own exertions.
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