He"d never heard it close that way before.
He examined the bay from head to tail, from poll to fetlock, waiting for whoever it was Ischade said was coming, but he couldn"t find a scar. It was bothering him more and more. He"d seen Janni, once a Stepson, now a decomposing thing motivated by revenge upon its Nisibisi murderers; he"d seen Stilcho, in better shape but still not one to be mistaken for a living man. But the bay was just exactly what he"d been-all horse, all muscular quarters and deep-hearted chest.
The bay couldn"t be a zombie horse. At least he didn"t think it could.
He was just thinking to mount up and see how it went when the approaching rider drew close enough to halloo: "Yo! Strat, is that you?"
And that voice froze Straton like a witch"s curse: it was Critias. Critias, his leftside leader; Critias, to whom he"d sworn his Sacred Band oath. "Crit! Crit, why didn"t you tell me you were coming?"
Crit just kept riding toward him, inexorable on a big sorrel. Crit, seeking him here. That meant that Crit had heard. That he knew, or thought he knew, the hows and whys of something Straton barely understood himself.
They"d come together to Ischade"s house the first time- met her together. Then, Crit had tried to "protect" Straton from the necromant. Now, if damage there was, it was done.
Crit said, "Am I too late?" crooking one leg over his saddle and fishing in his pouch for the makings of a smoke. In Ischade"s garden there was always a weird light and it underlit the line officer"s face so that Strat couldn"t tell what Crit was thinking. Not that he ever could.
Something inside him tensed. He said, because there had been no Sacred Band greeting between them, "Look, Crit. I don"t know what you"ve heard or what you think, but she"s not like that...."
"Isn"t she? Still got your soul. Ace? Or wouldn"t you know?" Crit"s eyes were slitted and he fingered the crossbow hanging from his saddle.
Strat noticed that there was an arrow nocked, and that the bow would fire, from that position, straight into him at the click of a safety and the touch of a trigger. He tried to shrug away the suspicion he felt, but he couldn"t. "You"re here to save me from myself? She"s the only reason we"ve survived here-the Band, the real Stepsons-while you and the Riddler have been upcountry playing your palace games. I"m not asking you where you"ve been. Don"t ask me how I"ve spent my time. Unless, that is, you"re ready to be reasonable."
"I can"t. I haven"t time. Riddler wants us to roust Roxane, get the Globe of Power and destroy it by sunup. Maybe your soul-sucking friend"ll have a few ideas as to how to help us, if she likes you so well. If she does, maybe I"ll let her live until you can explain. Otherwise..." Crit lit the smoke he"d rolled and the spark illumined a carefully arranged face that Straton knew wasn"t one to argue with. "Otherwise, I"m going to b.u.m her a.s.s to a crisp and then do what I can to beat some sense back into you... partner. Before it"s too late. So, you want to call her out? Or just come with me and we"ll die like we"re supposed to, shoulder to shoulder, fighting the Nisibisi witch."
Strat didn"t have to call Ischade; she was beside him, somehow, though he hadn"t heard the door open or seen light spill out and he didn"t think Crit had, either.
She was so tiny in her cowl and long black cloak. He wanted to put an arm around her shoulder, dared not, then dared. "She"s on our side, Crit. You"ve got to-"
"The h.e.l.l I do," Crit said, and shifted his gaze to her. "I bet I don"t have to explain one whit to you, honey. I just hope you"re not too hungry to wait awhile. We"ve got something on that"s just your style."
"Critias," said Ischade with more dignity than Strat would ever have, "we should talk. No one has been hurt, no one has to be. You come-"
"-to get my partner. We can leave it at that."
"And if he is unwilling to leave?"
"Doesn"t have squat to do with it. I"ve got responsibilities; so does he, even if he"s forgotten them. I"m here to remind him. As for you, we can use you.
Come help out, and I"ll let you have your say-later. Right now, I"ve got orders. So does he." Critias gestured to Strat, who looked at Ischade and could not, in front of Critias, plead with her for patience, for help, or even for his partner"s life.
But Ischade didn"t strike Crit dead, or mesmerize him. She nodded primly and said, "As you wish. Straton, take the bay horse. He"ll serve you well in this.
I"ll ride your dun. And we"ll give Critias what he wants-or what he thinks he wants." She turned then to Crit.
"And you, afterwards, will give me the courtesy of a hearing."
"Lady, if any of us can hear anything after sunrise, I"ll be more than willing to listen," said Crit as Ischade raised a hand and Strat"s dun trotted toward her.
Roxane had been waked abruptly from exhausted sleep when Niko lopped the head from her finest minion-she would miss the bodyguard snake. And Stealth would regret what he had done.
She"d paid a heavy price this evening; her thighs ached and her b.u.t.tocks smarted as she got out of her bed and felt her way through the dark.
Her Foalside home was small sometimes, large at others. Tonight, it was cavernous with all the forces she"d disturbed.
She found her witching room and and sluiced the sweat from her body as she filled her scrying bowl herself.
Then, trembling with pain and fury, she spoke the spell to open the well that held the power globe, and another to summon a fiend of hers-the slave named Snapper Jo who spied for her in the Vulgar Unicorn where he tended bar.
Before the fiend arrived, she spoke her spell of utmost power and in the bowl she saw a fate she didn"t understand.
Men were there, and the cursed Beysa, and a G.o.ddess called Mother Bey locked in love or hate with Jinan"s terrible father, Stormbringer. And these two deities straddled the winter palace while, inside, Niko played with children and Tempus with the fates of men.
She trembled, seeing Tempus and Niko in one place-the very place where her surviving snake (more talented than most) slithered corridors in Beysib-snake disguise, biting and killing where he could.
Good. Good, she thought, and brought back Niko"s face to the surface of her bowl. But this time, the vision was not of him alone. Over one of Niko"s shoulders she could see the Riddler-or the Rankan Storm G.o.d, whose aspect was the same; over the other, a woman"s face and that face was comely in an awful way-her own.
The meaning of it, remaining hidden, chilled her.
She could do only so much; she had certain words to say.
She said them and the dark witching room was lit with balefire. The light touched the globe in its hidey-hole of nothingness and the globe began to spin.
If there was some bond of fate between her and egregious Tempus, the thread must be cut. Even if it were Niko"s life, she must do the deed. And the baby G.o.d could not be suffered to survive. Both children"s lives and souls were promised to a certain demon of her recent, intimate acquaintance.
And the cold she felt, which raised gooseflesh on sanguine Nisi skin as smooth as velvet, which drew back lips as beautiful as any that had ever spoken death for men-that cold had to do with failing and winning, with perishing and surviving.
As the door to her outer chamber shivered from something scratching on its farther side, she decided.
She let the globe spin faster, let the colors from its stones bathe her in their light.
A rushing wind filled the scrying room and in its midst was a woman"s form, changing shape.
Black mist spun around the comeliest of female guises. Black wizard hair grew long and covered limbs cut clean and meant to hypnotize any man. Her fine long nose grew chitinous, then hooked; her firm flesh sprouted feathers.
And by the time Snapper Jo, still wiping his claws on his barman"s ap.r.o.n, thought he"d better open up the door himself, an eagle with a wingspan ten feet wide stood where Roxane was before.
And Snapper, her spy among the Sanctuary denizens, who tended bar at the Vulgar Unicorn, clacked prognathic jaws together and wrung his clawed and warty hands.
"Mistress," he gurgled in his fiendish, grating voice, "is that you?" His eyes that looked every which-way squinted at the eagle swathed in dusky light. He squatted down, gray gangly limbs akimbo in submission. "Roxane?" said the fiend again. "Call Snapper, did you? Here I be, for what? Some murder? Murder do, tonight?"
And the eagle c.o.c.ked its head at him and let out a screech no fiend could misconstrue, then took wing and flapped by him, out the door, leaving him bleeding from a flesh wound made by claws much sharper than his own.
Muttering, "d.a.m.n and d.a.m.n and murder d.a.m.ned," the fiend scuttled after her.
Looking askance at her black shadow in the moonless sky. Snapper Jo chewed a long orange lock of hair in dark frustration. To be human was his wish; to be free of Roxane his hidden dream. But sometimes he thought he never would be free of her.
And the trouble was, at times like these, he didn"t care. He was hungry as the night for blood; just the thought of carnage made him giddy.
So he scuttled on, following the eagle in the night, cackling wordlessly under his breath as Roxane, in eagle"s guise, led him toward the winter palace, then lost him in Shambles Cross when he came across a fresh and bleeding morsel of a corpse.
Jihan was alone with the two children, her scale-armor discarded, cuddling one to either breast on Niko"s bed in the nursery when the snake, man-sized but silent, slithered in.
The Froth Daughter was not human, but she was lonely. Tempus was no man for progeny-he considered nothing but himself.
Jihan had wanted children of her own and been refused by him. Now, thanks to her father, fate, and Niko, she had two fine boys to care for-one of them Tempus"s own.
She would never give them up. She was ecstatic in her joy, and drowsy.
Thus she didn"t see the snake until it reared, fangs wide and gaping, and struck like lightning, biting Arton on the arm.
Then, wide awake with two terrified babes to hold, one wounded and screaming, the other howling just as loudly, she cowered.
To reach her sword or freeze the snake, arching high above the bed and glaring fire-eyed down upon her, she"d have to put down one or both children.
This the frustrated mother could not do. She tried to shield Gyskouras with her body, interpose her own arm, even force it like a gag into the snake"s gaping jaws.
But the snake was wise and quick and its jaws unhinged, so that it bit right through Jihan"s arm and punctured the G.o.dchild"s flesh and shook the Froth Daughter and the child, stapled together by its fangs.
Jihan wailed in rage and agony-a sound the like of which had not been heard in Sanctuary since Vashanka battled Storm-bringer in the sky at the Mageguild"s fete.
And that brought help, though she barely knew it as her body fought the poison and her arms, about the snake"s neck, grew weaker as she wrestled it. Even Tempus and Niko paused in horror at the sight of Jihan locked in bodily combat with the viper, the G.o.d-child being crushed in between.
Beside Tempus, Niko drew a breath and then reached out: "Riddler! Quickly! Take this dagger."
The dagger, like Niko"s sword, was dream-forged and it felt hot in the Riddler"s hand.
He raced his Stepson, on his right, to reach the snake and the two of them began to hack away.
With every stroke acid ichor spouted, so that Tempus"s skin sizzled, blistered, and peeled.
There was no time to fear for Niko, beside him as if they were once more a bonded pair.
Jihan was wound in coils, protecting one child who was absolutely silent. The other, Arton, was curled up moaning, forgotten on the floor except when ichor struck him and he squealed at the pain.
The snake didn"t flail or shrink from the damage Niko"s sword did, though Tempus"s deeper cuts could give it pause.
The Riddler realized just in time what must be wrong-just as the snake was tensing and Jihan, mouth open and eyes bulging as the breath was squeezed from her, called his name and the viper fixed Niko with a gaze that pushed Stealth backward and made him drop his sword.
For no snake, not even a Nisibisi snake, should be growing larger and bolder as it fought and bled.
Tempus looked up and around and saw the source of the snake"s supernatural power: an eagle perched, bating, in the bolthole of the palace wall.
Beside him, Niko faltered, his face blistered, his ankles entangled in the ever growing coils of the snake.
Tempus knew he risked Stealth"s life as he stepped out of striking range and raised his knifehand.
His eyes met the eagle"s and it called softly, a cry like a baby"s, and raised its head and clacked its beak.
Then the dagger Stealth had loaned him flew through the air and struck the eagle"s breast.
A screech like a witch burning at the stake resounded, so that Niko lost his footing, hands clapped to either ear, and fell among the deadly coils.
But it was a chance Tempus had had to take.
And as he strode forward, faster than anything else within that room because, at last, his wrath had brought the G.o.ds awake and power rose within him, the eagle overhead burst into flame.
The flames began around the dagger in its breast and licked hot and higher as the bird took wing.
But Tempus had no more time for watching birds or taking chances; he heard a dagger fall from the bolthole"s height as he waded amid the coils-first to Stealth, who still fought gamely though ichor had burned one eye shut and his limbs were bound with writhing snake.
Pitting all his strength against the failing power of the snake- now shrinking but perhaps not fast enough-the Riddler struggled.
Vaguely he heard voices behind him as palace praetorians gathered. "Stay back!"
he shouted without looking.
He was watching Jihan"s eyes pop, her more-than-mortal hands clutching the noose of snake still at her throat.
The d.a.m.ned thing was dying and as it did it was whipping back and forth, tossing Niko like a hook on a fishing line, crushing Jihan. And somewhere, in that thrashing mess of green slime and human limbs, a child was lost.
His child, Niko had said. But that wasn"t why the Riddler hacked as if splitting cordwood with Niko"s dream-forged sword. He"d never fought harder than he did then to free Stealth-if there was kinship between him and any here, it was strongest for his partner.
Admitting this, while all around pieces of snake flew like steaks from the block of a master butcher and smoke rose as ichor ate at stone, Tempus found reserves of strength in anger.
This youth, foolish Stealth, was not going to die on his account and leave the Riddler with that weight to bear eternally. Jihan and the G.o.d-child bom of a ceremonial rape-both of them were more than mortal. Niko was just a human fool and human foolishness-honor, valor, sacrifice, and love.-were things Tempus could not ever claim.
He didn"t notice when Beysib and human help pitched in beside him-his G.o.d-given speed made them seem too slow and the task too great to make them matter.
But Jihan, once he"d cut through the widest coil at her throat, was help worth having.
And once she was free, and it was clear that she"d saved the child from certain death, the Beysibs and the Rankan priest and Kadakithis all crowded round the Froth Daughter and the child.
Which suited Tempus, who finished cutting the yet-quivering coils from the Stepson who"d fought beside him and helped Niko to his feet.
Only when the boy, through his one good eye, put a hand on Tempus"s shoulder and said, "Life to you. Commander- and thanks," and collapsed into Tempus"s arms did Niko"s leftside leader have time for snake-bitten children or Jihan.
For he"d found out, there among the butchered chunks of snake and royal ranks of confusion, that the bond Niko and he once shared was stronger than it had ever been.
Jihan limped over to him, where he lay Stealth down, and frowned at the b.u.ms on Niko"s face and his acid-eaten eye. "The placenta of a black cat, powdered at midnight, Riddler- that will heal his eye. The rest, I can do."
The Froth Daughter"s hand was gentle on Tempus"s face, turning it away from the boy. "We have children who are worse hurt," Jihan said. "Both poisoned by the snake who bit them." Her chest was heaving, her muscles torn; flaps of skin hung loose from her thighs as if a man-wide rope had burned her.
But the children-Arton and Gyskouras, who might be his or perhaps just the offspring of the G.o.d-had crowds to care for them and all of Sanctuary"s priesthood to pray for them, while Stealth had only what a Stepson could expect.
Tempus sat flat on the floor, knees crossed under him, ignoring ichor slick which smarted and caused his skin to hiss and curl. "Get me what medicine you can, Jihan. You and I must heal this one. He wouldn"t want life returned by magic."
They exchanged glances-one immortal and mortally tired, one feral and full of the fire of fierce and forgotten G.o.ds.
Then Jihan nodded, rose up, and said, "Your dagger skewered the eagle-witch. I saw it. She"s wounded, maybe gone for good."