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And now it was being decreed in Mygdonia's tents that he must be removed from the field - taken out of play in this southern theatre, manoeuvred north where the warlocks could neutralize him. Such was the word her lover-lord had sent her: move him north, or make him impotent where he stayed. The god he served here had been easier to rout. But she doubted that would incapacitate him; there were other Storm Gods, and Tempus, who under a score of names had fought in more dimensions than she had ever visited, knew them all. Vashanka's denouement might scare the Rankans and give the Ilsigs hope, but more than rumours and manipulation of theomachy by even the finest witch would be needed to make Tempus fold his hands or bow his head. To make him run, then, was an impossibility. To lure him north, she hoped, was not. For this was no place for Roxane. Her nose was offended by the stench which blew east from Downwind and north from Fisherman's Row and west from the Maze and south from either the slaughterhouses or the palace - she'd not decided which.
So she had called a meeting, itself an audacious move, with her kind where they dwelled on Wizardwall's high peaks. When it was done, she was much weakened - it is no small feat to project one's soul so far - and unsatisfied. But she had submitted her strategy and gotten approval, after a fashion, though it pained her to have to ask.
Having gotten it, she was about to set her plan in motion. To begin it, she had called upon Lastel/One-Thumb and cried foul: 'Tempus's sister, Cime the free agent, was part of our bargain, Ilsig. If you ca
The huge wrestler adjusted his deceptively soft gut. His east-side house was commodious; dogs barked in their pens and favourite curs lounged about their feet, under the samovar, upon riotous silk prayer rugs, in the embrace of comely krrf-drugged slaves - not her idea of entertainment, but Lastel's, his sweating forehead and heavy breathing proclaimed as he watched the bestial event a dozen other guests found fetching.
The dusky Ilsigs saw nothing wrong in enslaving their own race. Nisibisi had more pride. It was well that these were comfortable with slavery - they would know it far more intimately, by and by.
But her words had jogged her host, and Lastel came up on one elbow, his cushions suddenly askew. He, too, had been partaking ofkrrf- not smoking it, as was the Ilsig custom, but mixing it with other drugs which made it sink into the blood directly through the skin. The effects were greater, and less predictable.
As she had hoped, her words had the power of krrf behind them. Fear showed in thejowled mountain's eyes. He knew what she was; the fear was her due. Any of these were helpless before her, should she decide a withered soul or two might amuse her. Their essences could lighten her load as krrf lightened theirs.
The gross man spoke quickly, a whine of excuses: the woman had 'disappeared ... taken by Askelon, the very lord of dreams. All at the Mageguild's fete where the god was vanquished saw it. You need not take my word - witnesses are legion.'
She fixed him with her pale stare. Ilsigs were called Wrigglies, and Lastel's craven self was a good example why. She felt disgust and stared longer.
The man before her dropped his eyes, mumbling that their agreement had not hinged on the mage-killer Cime, that he was doing more than his share as it was, for little enough profit, that the risks were too high.
And to prove to her he was still her creature, he warned her again of the Stepsons: 'That pair of Whoresons Tempus sicced on you should concern us, not money - which neither of us will be alive to spend if -' One of the slaves cried out, whether in pleasure or pain Roxane could not be certain; Lastel did not even look up, but continued:'... Tempus finds out we've thirty stone of krrf in -'
She interrupted him, not letting him name the hiding place. 'Then do this that I ask of you, without question. We will be rid of the problem they cause, thereafter, and have our own sources, who'll tell us what Tempus does and does not know.'
A slave serving mulled wine approached, and both took electrum goblets. For Roxane, the liquor was an advantage: looking into its depths, she could see what few cogent thoughts ran through the fat drug dealer's mind.
He thought of her, and she saw her own beauty: wizard hair like ebony and wavy; her sanguine skin like velvet: he dreamed her naked, with his dogs. She cast a curse without word or effort, refiexively, giving him a social disease no Sanctuary mage or barber-surgeon could cure, complete with ru
To banish her leggy nakedness from the surface of her wine, she said straight out; 'You know the other bar owners. The Alekeep's proprietor has a girl about to graduate from school. Arrange to host her party, let it be known that you will sell those children krrf - Tamzen is the child I mean. Then have your flunky lead her down to Shambles Cross. Leave them there - up to half a dozen youngsters, it may be - lost in the drug and the slum.'
'That will tame two vicious Stepsons? You do know the men I mean? Ja
'Surely,' she cut in smoothly, 'you don't want to know more than that - in case it goes awry. Protection in these matters lies in ignorance.' She would not tell him more - not that Stealth, called Nikodemos, had come out of Azehur, where he'd earned his war name and worked his way towards Syr in search of a Tros horse via Mygdonia, hiring on as a caravan guard and general roustabout, or that a dispute over a consignment lost to mountain bandits had made him bond-servant for a year to a Nisibisi mage - her lover-lord. There was a string on Nikodemos, ready to be pulled.
And when he felt it, it would be too late, and she would be at the end of it.
Tempus had allowed Niko to breed his sorrel mare to his own Tros stallion to quell mutters among knowledgeable Stepsons that assigning Niko and Ja
Now the mare was pregnant and Tempus was curious as to what kind of foal the union might produce, but rumours of foul play still abounded.
Critias, Tempus's second in command, had paused in his dour report and now stirred his posset of cooling wine and barley and goat's cheese with a finger, then wiped the finger on his bossed cuirass, burnished from years of use. They were meeting in the mercenaries' guild hostel, in its common room, dark as congealing blood and safe as a grave, where Tempus had bade the veteran mercenary lodge - an operations officer charged with secret actions could be no part of the Stepsons' barracks cohort. They met covertly, on occasion; most times, coded messages brought by unwitting couriers were enough.
Crit, too, it seemed, thought Tempus wrong in sending Ja