Wings of Omen

Whoever had sent him the note which had bade him come here (Hakiem, for the tale most worth telling this season, meet me at the bench under the parasol pine in Promise Park at midday, two days hence.) was willing to take outrageous chances: even in daylight, the Beysib discouraged public gatherings. Two, these days, was a public gathering.

Still, this was the first time the rebels had tried to contact him, although it seemed to Hakiem that they should have realized they needed him sooner: without rumor, without the proper stirring stories of heroism and success, without a vision of the Revolution to come, no insurgency could succeed.

Two blond, bare-breasted Bey women went by, their bulging eyes downcast, demurely veiled, Beysib males prancing behind them, and behind those, Ilsig boys carrying sunshades.

When they'd gone, Hakiem took a deep breath. He didn't have any assurances that it was the revolutionaries who'd sent him the note: he'd made an assumption, one that might not be true. Either of the fish-women with their trained serpents who now receded into the distance, their entourage behind, could have sent that note.

Hakiem rubbed his face, bleary-eyed and weary: this final indignity heaped upon luckless Sanctuary was almost too much for him to bear. Daily, the rubble piles grew greater and the body count mounted. Orphans now outnumbered parented children, and child gangs as deadly as the Nisibisi-sponsored death squads roamed the town at night when (everywhere but in the Maze, which was impossible to police) the Beysib curfew was in force.

Once, the town of Sanctuary had been sneered at as the anus of Empire-but at least then it had been part of something comprehensible: the Rankan Empire, venal and vicious, was a creation of men and manpower, not of women and sorcery. The Harka Bey and their sorceresses imposed a rule of supernatural terror upon Sanctuary that all priests- Ilsig and Rankan alike-agreed would soon bring down the wrath of the elder gods.

An Ilsigi priest, in his fiery sermons (held surreptitously north of town in the Old Ruins), had warned that the gods might send Sanctuary to the bottom of the sea if the populace did not unite and oust the Bey.

Some had hoped Kadakithis might show his face there last night; but no one in the city had seen the poor Prince/Governor up close since the takeover: sometimes a personage who looked very like Kadakithis appeared at the high window in the Hall of Justice, but the whispers were that this was only a simulacrum of Kadakithis, that the Prince/ Governor languished, all but dead, under the Beysa Shupansea's spell. And the rumors were not so far from the truth, though Kadakithis was held in thrall by love, not magic.

Things were so much worse now than they'd been when the Nisibisi witches had come down from the north preaching Ilsig liberation and prophesying a great upheaval to come that, had the most terrible Nisibisi witch-Roxane, Death's Queen-appeared now before Hakiem and demanded his soul in payment for the opportunity to tell a tale of Sane- f tuary's freedom, Hakiem would gladly have given it.

Things were so damned depressing, sometimes he wanted to cry.

When he wiped his eyes and took his old, gnarled hands away, a woman stood there before him.

He drew in a shocked breath and almost cowered: was it a witch? Was it dreaded Roxane, come back from the northern war? Roxane, who had all but destroyed the Stepsons and made undead slaves of her conquests? Had he just pacted with a witch? By the mechanism of a thought, just an errant thought? Surely, no one could lose their soul so easily, so offhandedly....

The woman was tall and broad-shouldered, with a turn chin and clear narrow eyes; her hair was as black as a wizard's, her clothes nondescript but cut to facilitate easy movement-her tunic vented, her Ilsig leggings bloused at the knees and disappearing into calf-high, laced boots.

"Hakiem, are you? I'm Kama. Shall we walk?"

"Walk? I'm... waiting for someone-my apprentice," he lied lamely. Was this a Bey mercenary? He didn't know they covered their breasts or wore pants. Was he to be arrested? That would be a story- "Inside a Beysib Interrogation Cell"-if only he might live to tell it....

"Walk." The woman's voice was throaty as she chuckled. "It's safer, for this kind of meet. And the someone you're waiting for, I hope, is me." She smiled, and there was something familiar about her eyes, as if an old acquaintance looked out of them. She extended her hand to him as if he were infirm, some old woman to be helped to her feet. Women were getting altogether out of hand in Sanctuary this season.

He brushed her hand aside and got up stiffly, hoping she wouldn't notice.

She was saying, "-your apprentice? That idea's not half-bad. I'd probably qualify, having won first prize at the last Festival of Man, wouldn't you think?"

"First prize? Festival of Man?" Hakiem repeated dumbly. "What did you say your name was?" The Festival of Man was held once every four years, far to the north. It was a festival for kings and armies, a matter of war games and athletic events, and there was a poetry contest for historians of the field and tellers of heroic tales that every storyteller alive dreamed of wi

"Can I trust you, old man? Or am I safe because, though I told you once, you've already forgot?" Her mouth twisted in a defensive little grin that definitely reminded him of someone else. But who?

Hakiem said carefully, "You can trust me if your heart is in the right place. Candy." That was what she'd said, he thought-or close enough to make her correct him.

She looked at her booted feet as they scuffed up autumn dirt and when she raised her head she looked right at him: "I'm Kama, of the Rankan 3rd Commando. If your heart's in the right place, you'll put me in touch with the rebels. Otherwise," she shrugged, "you folks are going to have a lot of dead amateurs and a stillborn Revolution."

"What? What are you talking about? Rebels? I know no rebels-"

"Wonderful. I like your spirit, old man. You're the ears of this town, and some say the mouth. Tell whomever you don't know that I'll be at Marc's Junky Weapons Shop an hour before curfew and thereafter, tonight, to make sure we don't have another little problem like we had on the Street of Red Lanterns two nights ago. If we're going to kick some Beysib pantaloons, we'll need every man we've got."

Hakiem had the distinct feeling that this Kama of the Rankan 3rd Commando had forgotten that she, herself, was a woman. "I can't promise anything," he said politically. "After all, I've only your word and-"

"Just do it, old man; save the talk for those who'll listen. And show up tonight, if you dare, to hear some tales you'll die from telling. Even if you don't, I'll be telling everyone I meet I'm your apprentice-do try to remember my name."

She increased her pace, leaving him behind as if he were standing still.

Watching her draw away, Hakiem stopped trying to catch up. There were too many Bey around. If he wanted a story worth dying for, he could drop by Marc's.

He wasn't sure if he would, or sure that not going would save him from involvement by implication. But then, she- Kama-knew that. He'd been too daunted by her talk of the Festival of Man and her whole bearing to consider much of what she'd said.