Aftermath tw-10

by Robert Asprin

  Finally the rider answered, "Zip, it's me."

  "Frog," Zip cursed under his breath. "Kama, stay there. The footing's tricky. I'll come up." He turned his head and said to his rebels, "Get down there, load the rest of the stones, take 'em where I told you. Careful to mark them and put them back just like they were. I'll catch up."

  But he knew he wouldn't. And he knew the god was going to be angry, augh he didn't know what form the god's wrath might take. But then he thought he did: Kama was beautiful, sliding off her horse the diffuse light of a hidden moon. She always hit him that way, no atter how he told himself he didn't need the kind of trouble she repre- nted.

  And she was trouble, in doeskin boots and leggings, smelling like new- own hay with trail dust in her hair. And all about her person, as clear her velvet thighs and firm breasts as in her face or her sweet breath, ere the indications of her class: her speech, her bearing, the gulf that as between them and never could be bridged, no matter how he tried. And he tried then again, wordlessly and desperately, as if laying her on her back in the mud was somehow going to do it. But it didn't. It never had, never would.

  She laughed softly and accommodated him until urgency overtook her, but it was always the high-born girl with the velvet skin who was humming, who found him exciting for all the wrong reasons, who played with him casually when touching her was probably worth his life if Crit Molin found them.

  So when she said, as she quivered, her mouth to his ear, "Strat's here with me, somewhere back there. Don't panic, just be quick," all his passion threatened to ebb, then exploded when her nails ran down his back.

  "Damn you," he said, rolling over and off her, the best rejection he could manage and far too late.

  "Stand in line for that," she chuckled, her fingers reaching for him, railing along him, tapping him intrusively with unspeakable truths. "It's been too long since we've done this."

  He was staring up at the clouds which hid the moon like a translucent city wall. "Not long enough by half. Not when you're sleeping in with priests and commanders-in-chief. I'm a lowly watch officer, remember? I'm gettin' over you. Got something of my own now."

  Like he hadn't, before. He bit his lip and almost looked away from her. But he couldn't. It was her damned body that did this to them both, every time. Riddler's daughter, enemy of the blood, twice his experience ind probably twice his brains. What did he think he was doing?

  Then he thought he knew what she was doing: "Zip," she said in a ieductive tone he wished he'd heard long minutes earlier, "don't move that pile of stones. You don't know what you're disturbing. None of us to."

  He sat bolt upright. "Now I get it. You ask nice, and Strat's along to ask nasty if I don't agree, right? Well, it's none of your business, Rankan whore." He jerked to his feet, fumbling with his pants. He couldn't see his fingers clearly and blinked fiercely, trying to lace himself together. "Don't come around me no more, hear? Not on your father's business or because one of your boyfriends thinks I need it. I don't. And I never will, not this way."

  She was up, too, calling his name. He couldn't run from her, not from a woman where some of his boys might see. He remembered the time she'd nursed him back from the grave's edge, and the way she'd started all this, kissing him when he was too weak to do the sensible thing and bolt.

  She liked 'em helpless, hurt, battle-scarred and war-weary, he knew. He couldn't figure what Molin had, but power was a legendary aphrodis- iac. And like her father, she spread it around.

  He couldn't handle her. He kept wanting to treat her like a Ratfall girl -claim her, claim exclusivity with her. He had a comical vision of him- self sitting at some strategy table with her, all silked and leathered and shiny brass-plated in Ranke where her kind moved jade pieces represent- ing armies on marble mapboards. And jammed his hands in his pockets, walking hurriedly away.

  "Zip," she called, catching up, reaching out, and he couldn't seem to jerk his elbow away. "We need you. /need you. And you owe me this-"

  He stopped. He should have known it would come to that- "Right, we're all working together now and anyway, one time you saved my ass so I'm yours to command? No chance, lady. These're Ilsig matters, and you ain't one. Understand, or do I have to say it in Rankene?"

  "I understand that you found some sort of talisman on the beach and that if you give it to that ... thing ... you've been feeding human flesh to, you might not be able to finish what you start. If you've got to move the stones, I'll make a deal with you."

  He crossed his arms and looked down at her. At least he had that advantage: he was taller. He said; "Go on, let's hear it."

  "I won't tell anyone about the altar, or what's in it, as long as no perceptible trouble comes from it, if you'll give me the talisman you were going to give to it."

  "How do you find this crap out?" he blurted. "Is it Randal, your pet mage? You been following me? What?"

  She just looked up at him, her eyes full of a surety and power that her little, female body shouldn't have been able to contain, let alone radiate. It was Tempus's blood in her, some more-than-human attribute, he was certain.

  He said then, "No. I'm not doing anything like that. Why should I?" and turned to go back down the hill.

  And Straton was there, on that freakish bay horse everybody knew about, come from nowhere, out of nothing, leaning on his saddlehorn, meaning his thumbnail with a glittering blade. There, right between Zip and the path down to the riverbank.

  "Going somewhere, pud?" said Strat.

  "Strat," said Kama, "I can handle this."

  "I was just leaving," Zip replied.

  "No you can't," said Strat to both of them. Then: "Zip, what she wants, you give her. What she ordered, you do. Or deal with me. Kama, there's something more important than piffles going on out there. Finish with your boy toy and let's get going."

  Kama winced but held out her hand steadily and said to Zip, "Either give me the talisman, or Strat and I are going down there and crush five or six of those stones. Do you want to risk that, and what will follow if the three of us have a falling-out?"

  Zip looked from the big fighter to the slight woman and saw a shared purpose there; an implacable, uncaring deadliness common among those ure that their Cause was worth serving. He had to leam to match their pirit. Until then, he'd never win against them.

  He reached into his beltpouch and handed her the object a girl had bund in the seawrack. It hardly glittered. It wasn't even gold, just bronze. "Here, take it. And take out your lust somewhere else, from now on. I don't want to mess with you no more."

  He heard Strat's raw titter as he stalked away, and it scratched blood from his soul- He wondered if the thing in the altar would consider the extenuating circumstances under which he'd lost its gift.

  And what would happen if it did not.

  Ischade's Foalside home was dimly lit, numinous. When they got there, Kama recognized Crit's gray horse and squeezed her eyes shut. No wonder Strat had come running to get her: Crit at Ischade's was naphtha too close to a torch.

  "Gods, Strat, we both still love him, you know?"

  "I figure," Strat agreed in an odd tone. "But he doesn't love us. Get him out of there, Kama. If I go in, it's just more trouble. She isn't going to take kindly to him sticking his nose in where it doesn't belong."

  Kama was already off her horse, handing Strat its reins. "I know. You stay here, there's no use of you two getting into a brawl over this." Poised to sprint for the door, she turned back: "Strat, we have to get used to things the way my father left them. It hurts all of us. Crit didn't want this command. Not this way."

  "That and a soldat will still get you laid at Myrtis's."

  Bitterness unanswerable. Kama sprinted for the door she'd always shunned, behind which was something she didn't want anything to do with: Ischade.

  Through the gate, up the steps, and stop, hearing your own breathing, wondering what you'll do if she's hurt him, ensorcelled him, gotten her claws into him like Strat, and Janni, and Stilcho and
the rest . , .

  Knocking with your heart pounding louder, suddenly aware of more than one male in there behind that forbidding door, and hoping those other voices aren't undead voices. You've only seen the undeads at a distance, and even the memory raises gooseflesh ... "Ah, Madame Is- chade, I'm here for Crit." Blurted like a fool in a voice higher than you've heard yourself use since school days.

  Inky eyes deeper than any uncursed well, a pale face whose features are somehow indiscernible, and a hand cold as anything Kama could remember touching.

  "Good," nodded the creature in her cowl. Behind her were colors, rioting jewel tones, but Ischade was all white and black. Black. "Come in." Black eyes, so deep you could sleep in them. -

  Don't fall into any trap. Don't look at her too long. "Crit?" On tiptoes. "Crit?" The swathed shape moves away. "C/7Y?"

  There he is, with two men she recognized: Vis, and a beggar with a stutter, a creature called Mor-am. Wrong company, wrong place, wrong something going down here.

  Kama shivered and feit throwing stars she'd gotten from Niko nestled in her belt. Could you kill anything here? Would it stay dead? Could she take out the beggar, the mere, and Ischade if Crit needed that much help?

  She could try, couldn't do less. But then Crit came slowly to the door, his gait telegraphing annoyance, but nothing worse. "Good evening," he said and Kama couldn't figure where the vampire had disappeared to. "What brings you here, Kama?"

  He somehow shouldered her outside and then the door was closed, his hands on her shoulders, tight and hard, digging. "Fool," Crit whispered, "don't mix in this. I've got enough troubles." His lips hardly moved when he spoke; the hollows under his cheeks were too deep; his whole bearing was wrong and she was terrified.

  "Crit, gods, whatever it is, you can't do it alone. Strat's with me, we're here to-"

  "Strat? With you? He bunks here, Kama. Sleeps here. Does whatever he does here. For her. Not us. Go away. I'm finding someone for Torchholder. Special orders."

  She tried to shake off his grip. It wouldn't shake. She said defiantly, "Whatever you're doing, I'm doing. Special orders."

  He couldn't verify that, not without going to Randal. And Randal might lie for Kama, might say Tempus had sent a message.

  The touch of him made her ache and she suddenly wondered whether if, for just one night, every lover in Sanctuary could be in the right bed, things might straighten out.

  Critias's usually handsome Syrese face had none of its gentility tonight; it was a fright mask, just shields for eyes and a slash where his mouth should be- He tucked in his chin, bowed his head to stare into her face, then shook his head infinitesimally: "You want in, fine. We're going up- town to the ruined blocks, see if we can't find Tasfalen in one of the houses left standing there. That's where she says to look. Me, the two backstreeters she owns, and you. But no Strat."

  "Crit, he-"

  "Can't be trusted. Too much her creature. Tell him to back off, out of sight till I leave. Tell him if he wants to talk to me, get rid of the horse as a sign of good faith. Or of returning sanity. I don't need a ghost horse, or a ghost rider, which is what he's becoming. Go on. Tell him. Then meet me at the gate."

  He gave her a little push and she wished he felt so strongly about her, even if those feelings were as hard and fierce as what he felt for Strat.

  Like a page in court, she ran back to Strat's horse and said, '"He says he's going uptown to find Tasfalen for Torchholder. Doesn't want you involved. We'll talk to you iater. You stay with Ischade. If this goes wrong, we need someone on the outside who knows where we went and what happened. And we may need Ischade's-your help."

  "He didn't say that."

  "No, he didn't. I'm going with him, and I'm saying it."

  "I'll come-"

  "He did say that, Strat. He wants you here, just in case ..." It sounded like what it was, a whitewash.

  Strat's horse backed a few steps and from there she heard Straton say, "Go on, then. Ischade's warned him off, told him something. I'll find out what. You need help, you'll get it." His voice was thick.

  She was glad she couldn't see his face. She ran blindly to her horse, grabbed a handful of mane, vaulted to its back, and urged the skittish roan toward the iron gate where weird flowers bloomed. In her belt, the talisman she'd taken from Zip seemed hot against her leathers, hot enough to make her sweat.

  It was the proximity to Ischade's wards, she told herself- Nothing to fret over. She had plenty to worry about without adding the talisman into the bargain.

  Crit crossed one leg over his saddle's pommel and lit a smoke, staring at the building across the street. No sign on its steps or to either side of the rubble they'd passed getting here, of the whirlwinds and firestorm of destruction that had ravaged Tasfalen's ancestral home.

  This building was intact, its shutters drawn. The vampire had been certain of where to look, but uncertain that looking was wise.

  "She said," Crit told Kama, "that Tasfalen's in there, with Haught. You remember Haught."

  "I remember," Kama said through clenched teeth.

  Mor-am and Vis were off to one side, ordered to accompany them by Ischade, who evidently was in charge of more than her Foalside cottage. Damn Tempus, for putting Crit between sorcerous rocks and political hard places. Vis had brought him to Mor-am, who'd grinned and brought him to Ischade with more satisfaction than Crit liked.

  And the vampire had been civil. Both of them had kept Strat's name out of the conversation. "Our mutual friend" was what they called Straton, and because of that friend, Ischade was willing to tell Crit where to look.

  And to warn him: "There is more, Critias, in that home than just two men in a house. Do not go inside, but merely open the doors-if you can."

  This was said for Strat's sake, Crit knew, not his own. He unclenched a fist with difficulty and found he'd dug his nails into his palm, that his fingers were stiff from the clench. "She said," he told Kama, "you'd have the right key for this lock."

  "Excuse me?" The woman on the roan kneed her mount closer.

  "You heard me. Got anything on you that might do the trick?"

  "You're sure she didn't mean that metaphorically?"

  And Crit knew what Kama was alluding to: Tempus and an inhuman sprite had coupled before a magically locked door uptown, and things had happened.

  "I don't care what she meant, we're not trying anything like that. What have you got that might work?"

  "Keys," said Kama with maddening common sense. "Lots of keys. To my place, the guardhouse, the Shambles safe house, Molin's-"

  "Spare me the list. Let's try some." He swung first one leg and then the other over his gray's withers, reaching for his crossbow as soon as his feet hit the ground. A bolt might smash the lock, even if it were a stout one.

  They drop-tied the horses without a word, a sign both of them were thinking this might not be survivable. Crit cast a look at Kama, wonder- ing how she'd managed to insinuate herself into this so fast, so deftly. And admitting he was glad to have someone there. He was a Sacred Bander, trained to depend on a partner. He wouldn't have tried this alone, and Vis wasn't the sort of man you could trust your right side to.

  Not that Kama was any sort of man at all.

  Having crossed the street, Crit looked back once because he'd heard Vis's voice-not words, just a tone. And saw a wave of farewell so elo- quently hostile and so gloating that he almost shot the mere there and then.

  But Kama read his mind and touched his arm. "They're Ischade's.

  They'll wait. They'll run back with word if we don't come out. We need that."

  "Crap," Crit said.

  "Agreed," Kama said with a ghost of her father's smile.

  Then they climbed the steps and Crit put his back against the stone, crossbow ready, attempting to cover every avenue of attack while Kama tried key after key and cursed like a Nisibisi freeman.

  Finally she said, "No luck. Nothing works." And slumped against the doorjamb.

  They looked a
t each other too long, and Crit had to look away. It was in that silence that they heard something move inside, behind the stout wood of the door.

  Then they looked at each other again,

  "Want to knock?" Kama said lightly.

  "I don't think so," Crit replied in the same tone. "We could start digging at the wood with-"

  "Wait," said Kama, simultaneously digging in her belt. "This, maybe."

  She held out a piece of bronze about half the length of her hand and shaped like a knobbed bar or rod.

  "Never fit," he said critically, still holding his crossbow at the ready, still glancing from shadow to shadow down the quiet street. Still watch- ing Vis and Mor-am as best he could.

  "Might not have to. It washed up on the beach. I heard about it from some of my ... people. Turned a gold coin to lead, and copper to clay, in the finder's purse."

  "So?"

  "So, let's see if it'll do something to that metal."

  "We're here." Crit shrugged, trying to ignore the implications. Kama wasn't the finder. Kama had appropriated this thing from someone, for her own purposes- And she'd heard about it through some informer of whom Crit was totally ignorant. Nothing was going to work right in Sanctuary unless they all started pulling together. But what he wanted to do to Kama right then wouldn't facilitate anything of the sort.

  She shrugged, too, added a sour twist of her thin lips, and bent to the door. He didn't dare look away to watch, but he heard her tap bronze against bronze. And curse. And tap again, and chortle.

  "So?" he said when she stood up and carefully put the talisman back in her belt.

  "So, do we want to be polite, now that the lock's no problem?"

  He took one hand away from the crossbow and, balancing it on his hip, felt for the lock. It was gooey. He brought his fingers to his lips and smelled White Foal mud, rank with rot. He swore and asked her to explain herself.

  "I heard," she said, "it might be something like this. That's all."

  "Great." He spat over his shoulder. "Next time you 'hear' of some- thing like this, you come to me with it."

  "I did."