If there was an afterlife, if Sanctuary wasn't hell itself, then maybe he'd spend eternity as a nya-fish chasing minnows. At least fish didn't sweat.
The narrow, convoluted streets of the Maze held the heat. Turning down Odd Bin's Dodge, Walegrin passed through invisible walls of hot, stagnant air. He sniffed the air, thought about plague, and knew he'd have to send men in here to check the alleys for bodies come morning. From up on the rooftops, he heard the sounds that said love, or lust, had gained a momentary victory over the weather, but otherwise the Maze was uncommonly quiet for this hour.
Hand on his sword, he backed into a portico and put his shoulder against the half-hinged door. Picking his way across the rubble-strewn floor of what had been, until recently, one of the PFLS safe-houses, he approached the window casement, leaning away from the gray starlight, and tried to guess what route Kama would use to reach their rendezvous.
Kama.
Buoyed by the heat, Walegrin's mind drifted back in time and a few hundred yards deeper into the Maze; back to Tick's Cross and another night almost as hot as this one when he'd taken the midnight patrol. The night he'd agreed to let Zip live-at least until Tempus had ridden beyond Sanctuary's new gates.
He'd heard the horse first, moving too fast through the rutted muck that passed for paving stones hereabout, and made his way to the cross in time to see its rider go ass over elbow to the ground. The horse was well-trained and came to a shame-faced stop not five paces from its motionless rider. Walegrin grabbed the loose reins and led it back to the moonlit intersection.
Kama lay on her back, knees splayed and angled up-a posture more becoming a whore than a 3rd Commando assassin. Walegrin had looked only long enough to be sure it was her before turning discreetly, uncomfortably, away.
"It would be you. That's twice-damnit all," the husky voice had said, reminding him of the time his men had hauled her out of a malodorous cistern. "I've killed better men for less."
He had stared at her, knowing the absolute certainty of her claim and yet, for one wild, reckless moment able to see the absolute absurdity of her position. "Better for less?" he'd repeated in a bantering tone he used infrequently, even with his own men. "Better for less? Kama, either I'm the best or you'll have to kill me right now"-and immediately wished that someone had taken the trouble to cut his tongue out long ago.
But Kama, absorbing the picture she presented, had thrown her head back and laughed heartily at some private joke. She'd extended her filthy hand toward him and, using him as a brace, jumped to her feet.
"Buy me a drink, Walegrin; buy me a tun of the sourest wine in the Maze and you can be the best."
They said magic had vanished from Sanctuary, but there was a cold, bright spark of magic that moment as they led the lame horse from Tick's Cross, Kama listing against his shoulder-her laughter a quaver short of hysteria.
Molin Torchholder trusted her, including her in any strategy session her other duties allowed her to attend, and frequently accepting her opinions about Sanctuary's darker byways without question. She had been the one to convince them to go along with Tempus's PFLS schemes when he, Molin, and half a dozen others had demanded Zip's last drop of blood. But she was also Molin's woman. She shared his bed-and not simply because the Torch's betrothal offer had gotten her out of a tight spot with the Stepsons. There was genuine passion between them as well as a mutual understanding of intrigue that gave anyone who had known either individually a shiver of apprehension whenever they were seen talking intensely to each other.
So Walegrin used his privileged position as a keeper of Sanctuary's peace to wring not sour wine, but carefully aged, wicker-wrapped flasks of brandywine from one of the town's better-off innkeepers. Then, still leading her horse, they'd hiked beyond the walls to an abandoned estate, now occupied by one of the Beysa's innumerable female cousins. She'd sluiced the worst of the muck off her leathers in a still icy stream while he got started on the first flask and reminded himself ten times over that she was more dangerous than beautiful.
They'd talked until dawn: bragging, swapping anecdotes, and finally exchanging the stories they'd sworn no other living soul would hear. Toward dawn, when she was lying on her back again, watching the stars fade, magic passed between them again; Walegrin could have set aside his baldric and undone the damp laces of her tunic. He forbore, contenting himself with one agonizingly chaste kiss as a red-gold sliver of sunlight flashed above the eastern horizon.
"I always wanted a brother," she'd said in a whisper he wasn't sure he was supposed to hear.
There was a flicker of motion on the rooftops; nothing he could focus on, nothing that was repeated, but he knew she was coming in from above. Moments later the stairs creaked softly and she stood opposite him in the starlight. The supple leather of her tunic hung loosely from her shoulders and her face was matte-shadowed.
"Puttering gods below-you're not even sweating!" he greeted her.
"There are places worse than Sanctuary-and I've lived in most of them."
"I spent five years with the Raggah on the Sun's Anvil-it wasn't as bad as this and I still sweat like a pig."
Kama laughed and slid down the wall until her spine settled against the floor. "Say it's something I get from my father."
Walegrin, having once acknowledged that Tempus at his best was a heavier burden than his own father had been at his worst, redirected his conversation to the reason for their meeting. "It's getting bad at Land's End, Kama. Since they fished her out of the harbor Chenaya's like one of those damned Beysib fire bottles. She's got herself a head full of schemes and any one of them would rip us apart. The Torch's going to have to do something."
"He's going to have to wait his turn, isn't he? Ischade's not satisfied yet; neither is Tempus and the rest haven't even launched their attacks. I hear it was Jubal's men that fished her out and that he gave her a lecture that dried the water right off her. You know Molin; He's not one to waste energy when so many others are willing to-"
"It's not just Chenaya, Kama, it's Rashan, that pet priest of hers. Rashan and his crawling little altar out there. He sits out in the heat for hours and stares at Savankala's shadow. He's god-bugged-and he's got no love for the Torch."
"God-bugged?" she asked, her body tightening.
Walegrin stammered. It was his own phrase; one he'd first used for Molin himself when Stormbringer had been after him. He used it to describe a man's face after the gods had been in his mind-when he went about his business as if a nest of fire-ants raced under his skin. When he was not only unpredictable but nigh invincible. Walegrin had witnessed those changes more than once and had only one word for them: god-bugged.
"Yeah, god-bugged," Kama repeated after he had lapsed into silence. "Crit'd like that; maybe I'll tell him sometime. You think Rashan's god-bugged, too?"
"Even if he isn't, he's doing a good job of convincing Chenaya that she's got the gods' own work to do in Sanctuary."
"Savankala's not all-powerful down here, you know," she reminded Walegrin.
"I didn't say Savankala. The frogging priest's god-bugged. It could be any one of them. He's going out in the middle of the night stealing old stones from who knows where and piling them against his altar."
"You're starting to sound like Molin," Kama mused. "All right, I'll try to convince Molin to take Rashan seriously. Anything else?"