Aftermath tw-10

by Robert Asprin

  Crit asked, to hear the voice again, "What do you want, honest work? There isn't any, not here. Prefer my service to Jubal's? Is that what you're getting at?"

  "Yours? You've got a service, now? That's how come the black man sent me to help you out?"

  The hooded man's ^'s were sibilantly northern and the tension underly- ing his words was full of satisfaction.

  Somebody they'd done something to once, for sure. Somebody the Sacred Band hadn't treated with softest gloves. Somebody who was en- joying this more than he ought, because he feared Crit and his kind more than he'd admit.

  "Got a name, friend?" Crit said easily, shifting enough that he could slide his hand onto his belt and his fingers toward his knife's hilt without being either too obvious or too surreptitious. It wasn't a threat so much as a punctuation mark.

  The contact saw, and tossed his head. "Vis. Ring a bell. Commander?"

  Commander. Crit still couldn't get used to it, not in Sanctuary, not in this context, not with all its current connotations. Did Tempus still hold Crit's affair with Kama against him so venomously that he'd sentence him to years of hard labor here with violent death at the end of it?

  For Crit remembered this "Vis" now, and what he recalled didn't put him at ease. Mradhon Vis, a northerner- Thief, malefactor, one-time part- ner-in-crime of the Nisibisi mageling, Haught. And gods knew of whom or what else. They'd beaten information out of Vis more than once, when the Stepsons were fighting the Nisibisi witch here. Strat, the Stepsons' chief interrogator, had. Crit had been in command of the intelligence unit then. They'd brought this fool up to the Shambles safe house, drawn the iron shutters, and taught him the sort of respect that turns to hatred if left untended.

  There were dozens, perhaps scores, of Vises he and Strat had made in Sanctuary. If Crit lived long enough, one of them was going to try to kill him. Perhaps this one. Perhaps tonight.

  "Vis," he repeated, his voice low. "Right, I remember. Well, let's go, Vis. Let's see what you've got."

  "My pleasure. Commander," said the mercenary, and chuckled nas- tily. "If you'll follow me into those shadows there, the worst is yet to come."

  "I'm telling you," whispered Kama intently to Straton over her beer, "Zip's moving the altar stones uptown to the Street of Temples-moving them and what they housed."

  Finished, she sat back, eyeing the other patrons of the Vulgar Unicorn surreptitiously. No one had heard, she was certain. She'd been careful of her volume, as well as the drunken slur in her voice. No one human, that is. The fiend who was tending bar late tonight had great gray ears and eyes that looked every which way. His warty countenance was averted, but that meant nothing. In the bronze mirror behind the bar he could be watching them ...

  "So what?" Strat growled, truculent, one arm absently rubbing his damaged shoulder. Perhaps once the best man with weapons among the Stepsons, Strat was doubly wounded now: Ischade either couldn't, or Wouldn't, heal his shoulder and there were no Stepsons here for him to be Mnong.

  "So, we've got to stop it," she said. Her heart ached for Strat, and for them all, left here where nothing of consequence remained in the wake of er father's leave-taking. She and Strat had something in common now- amething more than Crit. They had to shore up the sagging bulwark of ommand because Tempus might be testing them. None of the others salized it, but Kama did. If her father rode into town of a morning, sady to welcome them back to the fold if only they'd put the town to ights, Kama didn't want to be found wanting.

  But the big Stepson was too drunk, or too deeply hurt, to understand that she meant. "Stop it? Why? So Zip's found some sort of pet demon r minor deity-some Ilsig spirit to worship. What difference does it nake? The gods fare no better here than magic-or fighters."

  Strat believed only in the magic of Ischade, Kama knew. He'd seen too nuch, too many dead reborn, too many undead abroad in the streets at light. Strat had seen his doom and embraced it: he was as much the 'ampire's creature as any of her slaves.

  "C'mon, Straton," she insisted blearily, tugging on the Stepson's leeve. "Come with me. I'll show you."

  "You and your lovers," Strat grumbled over the screech of his stool's egs on sawdusted board, "What the frog you wanna do about it if you ind him lickin' his demon's feet?"

  "Ssh." Kama warned, and put her small hand to the flat of Strat's back, pushing him toward the door like a wife who'd made a nightly trip o the Unicorn to bring her drunken husband home to bed. Snapper Jo aluted her with his raffish inhuman grin, dipping his bristly chin in a ;esture of respect.

  Great. Homage from a fiend, friends in high places, estranged from her real friends because of that: because of Molin, who had another wife, Crit ind Gayle and Randal avoided her like the plague. Only Straton, in limilar circumstances, of all the men she'd campaigned with in the Wiz- ird Wars, acknowledged her. And Zip ...

  As Strat had jibed, Zip was another of her lovers. Men used their nuscle and their sex for intimidation, and no one thought ill of them for t. Kama was a different sort of operator, but used what she had to. Whatever worked to do the job. It stung her to the quick the way the men she'd fought beside treated her now, simply because she'd let the high priest wield his influence to help her. If her father had had a dozen lovers, or a hundred victims of his holy aping member, no Sanctuarite would have snickered or presumed to criticize. Maybe she should strip her next bed partner at knifepoint, prove herself her father's daughter to one and all. Maybe then Crit would stop looking past her when they met ...

  Strat stumbled in the doorway, belched, and staggered down the stairs to the street. The bay horse whickered, its ears pricked. Kama shivered. The damned thing was dead as a doornail, just didn't know it. Strat didn't seem to know it either: he fumbled in his pouch, came up with a chunk of sugarbeet, and held it out on an open palm.

  The ghost-horse's velvet lips delicately snatched the treat, and it snorted in pleasure.

  Well, maybe not quite as dead as a doornail. But unnatural as hell. Unnatural as Sanctuary, a place Kama was determined to leave com- pletely out of the history she was writing of her father's exploits. Sanctu- ary deserved no chronicler, as it deserved nothing more than the oblitera- tion it was so obviously seeking.

  The town had its own genius, Kama was sure, an Ilsig spirit that had finally had its fill of interlopers and was nudging the place itself toward oblivion's precipice. She wanted only to be quit of it before Sanctuary was razed to the ground by Rankans, gutted and left to rot by Beysibs, or torn stone from off of stone by internal strife.

  A historian, Kama knew all the signs of a town dying. Sanctuary didn't lack a one: its gods were impotent; its magic had lost its power; its populace was polarized by generations of hatred; its children wanted only to destroy.

  "What, Strat?" she said, startled by words undeciphered but still ring- ing in her ears. She looked up. The big Stepson was already mounted, reins in his right hand, his left arm carefully resting on one thigh.

  "I said, finding Zip should be easy-it's his shift, the dead of night. You want him, let's go up to the command guardpost."

  She shook her head- "Told you, he's moving those damned stones. And the porking whatever that lives in 'em, tonight. Heard it from a reliable source." The guardpost was safe for Strat, this time of night-Crit had the day shift; Strat's erstwhile partner spent his evenings in an old Sham- bles Cross safe house the Stepsons used to run.

  "So where?" Strat's voice was suddenly uneasy.

  "Down to the river, soldier. If you can handle it-the White Foal's banks, I mean, so close to Ischade's."

  "Pork what I can handle, woman," said Strat, the booze getting to his tongue. "I've picked that snipe up by his collar more than he's picked up your skirts. You wanted help, you've got it. You change your mind, that's fine, too. But we can't just sit here."

  She got her horse, her neck hot though the night was chill with the bone-deep cold of a recalcitrant spring. Her fingers were numb on her slick reins and the roan she rode bucked and danced under her. T
he wrong horse for this job, too skittish, too green. But the Stepsons had taken their string, leaving only what wasn't held in common. Except, of course, for the single Tros-bred that should have been hers, but had gone to Critias because Tempos wasn't above that sort of insult.

  It wasn't fair, but her father had never been. Didn't want a daughter, didn't care however much Kama tried to make him. A woman wasn't consequential, not to him. And her affair with Torchholder had made things worse, not better.

  Was Tempus trying to tell her, by giving Crit the horse and forcing Crit to stay on along with her here, that if she went back with Crit, he'd forgive them both? Was Crit being singled out as an acceptable choice? Or did Tempus just not give a frog's fart?

  The latter, most likely. She was going to try to do the same. Try not to care. Try to understand and overcome the trial that was Sanctuary, the punishment of being stationed here. But because she was stationed here, assigned like any of his men to onerous duty, she hadn't had the heart to refuse to tarry. That would have been playing on her blood relationship, asking special favors, admitting that she, a woman, couldn't handle hard duty like the men.

  Help the garrison commander and the hierarchy restore some order here, that's your job. You're a good intelligence collector. Collect, her fa- ther had said to her, but nothing more. Nothing personal, nothing be- yond what was said in that meeting where the rear guard was singled out.

  And Crit had stared boldly at her across the table in the safe house, knowing already whom Tempus was intending to name as commander- in-chief of Sanctuary's disparate armed forces. Knowing she'd have to come to him, be under his command.

  It stank. She kicked her roan and slapped its poll and, under diverse and punitive instruction, it settled down. Jogging beside the half-drunken Straton toward the river, she wished she was anywhere else, doing any- thing else. Trying to keep Zip from making this sort of mistake wasn't her job, but Crit's.

  Straton knew that, too, but hadn't voiced it. Crit was head of the combined militias, including the fifty grunts that made up Walegrin's regular army barracks, but Zip, like Aye-Gophlan, was an undercom- mander, responsible for the second and third shifts each day.

  Only Crit, or someone from the palace hierarchy, could tell Zip to leave the riverside altar be and make it stick.

  But Kama would die before she went to Crit and asked him to solve a problem she couldn't. Bringing Strat into it made the message she was sending the more clear: We who love you won't be treated this way. You've snubbed us both for your precious command, now live with it. But don't expect us to bow and scrape.

  Strat had wanted Sanctuary's commission, should have had it. Crit couldn't have wanted it less, so he got it. And that kept the vampire with her hidden agenda out of things, but at a personal cost only Tempus could have decreed. Only Tempus, who had no conscience, could split a Sacred Band pair like he'd split the love-match that had once been Kama and Critias.

  Suddenly, she found her eyes blurry. She swiped impatiently at them with the back of her forearm. She couldn't afford emotion now; it clouded her judgment. Her anticipation of men was generally good. Of Critias, it was woefully inadequate.

  Of Strat, her forewarning was little better. Or maybe it was just the fact that Strat was drunk and his horse a numinous creature that caused them to take a shortcut over the White Foal Bridge and down a road leading past Ischade's Foalside home.

  Zip was transported, in an altered state where every night noise was new and hostile, down by the White Foal's edge where he could barely see the eerie lights from Ischade's house up the bank. He had a wheelbar- row and, at the bank's crest, a wagon. He had three of his militia guard- ing the wagon, but he'd permitted none to come down here. Not to the shrine.

  No one should touch the piled stones but him, the thing he served had told him. As it had told him to bring it blood, and worse, it had decreed the time and manner of its uptown move. It wanted to live on the Street of Temples, with the gods. Zip had found it a place, an alley behind the Rankan Storm God's temple, and there it swore it would be content to stay.

  And he'd found it a new sacrifice, a special gift that one of his girls had brought him. The girl wanted a job on the Street of Lanterns and deliver- ance from Ratfall. In exchange for what she'd found on the Downwind beach, Zip was happy to oblige. The red-eyed thing that lived inside the stones would tike its new gift, Zip was sure.

  He hunkered down beside the knee-high pile and said, "Look here, Lord, I've got a present for you, when we're moved. But now I've got to start on the stones, by myself if you won't let my boys help."

  He waited for a reply, but only a glimpse of a burning red eye and a sound like shifting weight came to him in response.

  What was it he served here? Most times, it didn't speak. He was prompted without words to do this or that. He'd get a feeling of a pres- ence, and the things he brought it-pieces of human flesh, skins of warm blood, precious baubles-would disappear. Was it inimical only to Rankans, or to everyone? He wanted it to be his friend. He wanted it to be the Ilsigs' friend, guardian of the revolution, since he was bound to have one.

  He wanted it to show itself, magnificent and powerful, and help bring down Zip's enemies. So far, all it had done was take the sacrifices, give him bad dreams, and let him know it wanted to move uptown.

  So did they all. So did all of Zip's Ratfall movers, everyone trapped in the Maze and policed to wits* end. So did the twelve-year-old mothers and one-legged fathers of Zip's revolution, which he'd never wanted. He might have disavowed the struggle if Tempus hadn't tagged him. But Tempus had.

  Zip didn't understand why the Rankan powers wanted Zip's help, or the PFLS on its side. The Rankans wouldn't believe that there really wasn 't a PFLS when he tried to explain that a score of gang members with lamb's blood and paintbrushes didn't make a political movement.

  But since his thieves and mendicants would receive the protection of what police Crit had in Sanctuary if they took the night shift, and Zip took responsibility, his entry into the power structure and polite ... society ... had just happened.

  It wasn't being co-opted by the enemy that bothered him the most. What bothered him the most was that his bad boys and girls were doing exactly what they'd done before-extort, blackmail, roust and rough- house, bum and plunder-and doing it now with the protection and for the benefit of the state.

  It didn't make any sense, until it made all the sense in the world. And when Zip realized what Tempus had done to him, it had been too late. Zip was already part of the establishment, a hated enforcer, a dog with a Rankan collar, and his militia no better than any of the cannon fodder in Walegrin's demoralized army. They hadn't triumphed over the opposi- tion, they had become it.

  They weren't the revolution, they were the sustaining force behind the injustice that had created them.

  When he'd said that-shouted it, actually-to Crit in fury, the cynical Stepson had flashed white teeth and said, "The more things change, pud, the more they stay the same. What's your problem? Not having fun now that you're legal? It's all your type knows how to do, and this way you won't end up handiess or headless because of it. You're talent, and we're the talent scouts. Thank your slime gods you've been discovered and put to work before you ended up greasing some slaver's wagon wheels."

  That was another thing that bothered Zip: Critias seemed to know more about Zip's affairs than anybody could. "Slime gods" was an obvi- ous reference to the altar. And as for the slavers ... Zip had sold more than one soul down that river of sighs, to finance the revolution. But then it had been a matter of conscience. Now it was a godsdamned state business, for pork's sake.

  Gayle, the 3rd commando liaison man, had told him not to mind it, just make his list of expendables. He hated himself these days, as much as he hated Kama, the twit who had gotten him mixed up in all this, and her damned 3rd Commando ethos that excused the foulest misdeeds as exigencies. "Whatever works" might work for the Riddler's daughter and her lot of death dealers, but it did
n't work for Zip.

  Especially when, if he wasn't careful, he was going to become just like them. So here he had this altar, this god or whatever it was, this eater of sacrifices that never exactly said it could expiate his sins, wipe him clean, but surely must mean it. It was the thing in the altar with its red eyes that was making him believe there was some method to all his madness. It had a plan. It wanted Zip to infiltrate the Rankans and the Beysibs, to leam how to command and the weaknesses of their joint enemies. It was a living thing in there-or at least a real thing, which other gods weren't, as far as Zip could tell. It had wants and needs.

  It wanted flesh and it needed blood and it wanted to move uptown and it needed Zip to be the militia commander to serve it.'He had to serve something. He couldn't justify what he and his little band of rebels were doing otherwise. He had to have a Cause and the red eyes in the altar, the slurping sound of fresh blood being drunk and the godlike belches after- wards, these were his Cause.

  And only the river god knew what it wanted of Zip, but it did want him. Nobody had ever wanted him before. Then came, all at once, Kama and the Riddler and the river god and ... No, Kama had come before the god, but that didn't matter.

  It mattered that he got the stones uptown. With a quill he marked each stone as he lifted it from the pile into his wheelbarrow. When the barrow was full, he could almost see into the heart of the altar.

  But then he had to wheel the barrow up the slope, no easy task, and when he'd done that and given the stones to his boys to load on their ass- drawn wagon, someone came out of the gloom and hailed him.

  "Yo," he called back, while motioning his boys to cover the stones in the wagon. "Who comes?"

  One horse, out of the gloom; a single rider. He walked toward it, hand on his beltknife, his neck aprickle, back stiff.