A confused murmur arose from Seveners and clerks.
Murdoch blew blood from his nose. "Someone's cockeyed."
"Shut up." Not retracting the spear, Adira fought to think this mess through. "You've been gulled, tiger-boy. If you've tramped around with Johan, I can swear to it, for that devils' tool never spoke a true word in his life."
"Johan's back?" Still crouched on the table, the scruffy Virgil huffed. "Is that what Badger yelled? Our troubles are starting all over?"
"I said, belt up, you lot!" Adira whapped Virgil on the head, he being nearest. If she read an enemy rightly, the tiger was only resting up for another attack. She had to talk fast but should also rouse her Robaran Mercenaries to ferret out Johan. But one menace at a time.
Whipping sweaty auburn curls from her face, Adira snarled, "Listen to me, Jedit son of Jaeger! Your father fought on our side against Johan! That red-striped fiend and his followers marched down from Tirras to stamp over Palmyra and seize Bryce! It's no secret he hopes to conquer all Jamuraa! We fought like furies just to stay alive, and Jaeger braced us in every battle, never flagging, always faithful! You disgrace his memory to side with Johan, the most treacherous snake that ever crawled out of a dung heap!"
Seconds ticked away. The room might have been frozen but for the flicker of torches. Jedit Ojanen continued to glare, his thoughts unknowable. Once he squirmed, half-crushed by the table and crouching pirates, and Adira stifled him with a pinprick under his white-whiskered chin. Eventually, Jedit snorted through his black nostrils. Near panic, Adira thought. He doesn't believe me. I'll have to kill him!
"If I might say a word."
Eyes shifted to Hazezon Tamar, hunched over and clutching his ribs. Hovering near Jedit, but not too close, he plied years of political persuasion through clenched teeth.
"Adira speaks the truth, tiger-son. I found your father in the desert and drove away vultures and hyenas. For my rescue, he returned the favor a hundred times. He saved me and Bryce and Palmyra and a thousand others. You needn't take our word for it. I propose to let you go-"
"Haz!" chirped Adira, leaning the spear. "Have you fractured your skull?"
"Hush, Dira." Hazezon had no breath for argument. "Forgive her, friend tiger. Adira would contradict me if I said the sun arose each morn. I propose we back away. You'll be free to go. Leave this room and ask anyone in Palmyra whether Jaeger was our savior and champion. Even the dullest porter or smallest child will sing his praises. Then ask about Johan and sift the answers, if not a fist or spittle. See for yourself."
As Jedit ruminated, suspicious and sullen, Hazezon added, "Before you go, tell me something. I recognize certain symptoms. You are lucid now but were befuddled before. Your thoughts swam in a fog within your mind, true? Johan cloaked you in sorcery, arguing Jaeger was unloved here, but then he laid on another spell, did he not?"
"No!" Jedit frowned in concentration. "No. He brought me to the house of a woman. She… she… I can't remember!"
"That enchantment was knocked out of you." Hazezon waved for a clerk to bring a stool. Painfully he sank onto it. "If it consoles you, young Jedit, many are bewitched by the Tyrant of Tirras, whom we call Johan. Let him up, you fellows and girl. Adira, put up your spear. I'll not see the son of Jaeger Ojanen, the fiercest warrior and finest friend I ever knew, mistreated a second longer."
Carefully, with weapons poised, pirates and clerks backed away. The table dumped over. Framed in flaring torchlight so he glowed orange and black as a stormy sunset, Jedit Ojanen stood up, and up, until he towered over Adira Strongheart, Hazezon Tamar, and their astonished retainers. Black-clawed paws smoothed the tiger's whiskers and tufted mane. Amber-green eyes peered as the muzzle wrinkled. A pink tongue passed over white fangs. Still, the tiger had to lean against the cracked wall for dizziness.
Glaring about, he demanded, "I am free to go?"
Hazezon Tamar waved expansively toward the door but winced as ribs squeaked. Everyone watched the tiger warily,
A step to one side, a coiling of haunches, then in a flash Jedit Ojanen sprang to the door and vanished into predawn darkness.
Pirates and clerks gaped, astonished by the tiger's lithe speed. They jumped as Adira cracked the spear haft on a table.
"What're you gawking for, you wall-eyed mothers of moon-fish! Find Johan! Rouse the militia! Move!"
As people jammed in the doorway, Adira slumped on a chair and raked chestnut curls off her face. Her arm ached, and her throbbing leg wouldn't support her. She tried to spit but only sighed.
"Dratted weakness! Some freebooter I be!"
"Don't blame yourself. Blame Johan for running his army over you." Hazezon clutched both arms around his ribs. "Now another tiger's arrived, bigger, faster, and far more powerful than Jaeger, and more impulsive. Whiskers of Wullab, why do the spirits of the sands mock us so in times of strife?"
"Who can say?" For once, Adira didn't argue with her ex-husband. "Life is struggle and suffering."
"Speaking of suffering," groaned Hazezon, "might you fetch a leech? And stretcher bearers?"
"Make it two. Echo's blacked out." The pirate queen dragged off her chair. "You know, it's just as well Johan showed up. This town's been palling dull lately. But oh, I almost feel sorry for that murderous mage when this tiger-lad pounces."
The Tyrant of Tirras and Emperor of the Northern Realms was doing two things unusuaclass="underline" running headlong and cursing outright. His brown robe flapped around his skinny shanks as he dashed with bare feet through dusty alleys and crosswalks. He couldn't believe the fell luck that dogged him. Siccing Jedit on Adira and Hazezon, old friends of Jaeger's, seemed too outlandish a joke not to succeed. But contradictory spells, one to deceive others and one to deceive the self, had conflicted and sputtered out. Now instead of Jedit rending Tamar and Strongheart into bloody gobbets, they'd ceased fighting and dispatched pursuers. Thus Johan ran for his life. He'd been too clever. Better he'd killed Jedit outright and assassinated the twin rulers later.
Craning his neck, pelting along, Johan glimpsed Adira's lackeys hot on his trail. Skidding to a halt at a corner, the mage scooped up a loose stone and rubbed it vigorously between his palms.
He panted, "No matter. Once free of these clattering clods, I'll order my spies to smuggle me out of town. I can reach Tirras in a fortnight. No matter. Let us end this nonsense!"
Down the alley rushed Adira's pirates, as unalike as comrades could be. A sailor rife with gray streaks that earned him the nickname Badger. A devotee of Lady Caleria, Sister Wilemina, in a blue cloak and blonde braids like a girl's, and in her knotty hand her talisman, an ornate bow of horn and ivory. A buxom woman in every color of clothing, skin black as a cauldron, grinning at the chase, almost singing with joy, who'd earned the name Simone the Siren. Such an odd trio could spring only from Adira's Robaran Mercenaries, whose only credo was a craving for adventure. Heedless and headlong they rushed after Johan, arguably the most dangerous man on Jamuraa.
Johan leaned past the corner. The alley ran straight forty feet between adobe walls. Johan rubbed the stone more briskly, then flicked it into the air.
"Die, gutter trash!"
A flash answered. In mid-air, the stone exploded into a pulsing yellow light too bright to behold. Light sparkled from the sphere like the crackling rays of a shooting star. The light-spiked globe sizzled down the alley toward the pirates, soaring fast as a ball of burning pitch hurled from a catapult.
Forced to avert their eyes, squinting for a way out, Sister Wilemina chirped, "Call of Caleria! We're trapped!"
Chapter 6
"Dive!"
"Jump!"
The fireball screaming toward them fired reflexes honed in a hundred battles and brawls. Simone, lithe as a panther, bunched her legs and leaped in the air. Skinny Wilemina flopped flat, face in the dust. Only Badger hesitated, panting and fretting. He'd nearly drowned a few months past, and his lungs creaked from all this dratted running. Too, being older, he kept a fatherly eye on Adira's hotheaded youngbloods. So, when he should have leaped or dodged to save himself, instead he flung out both hands, one to knock Wilemina flatter and another to boost Simone higher, assistance neither woman needed.
In a second's fatal hesitation, the spiked force-sphere caught him. Badger had barely twitched aside when the sizzling death clipped his brisket and hurled him against the wall. The ball of ectoplasm streaked out of the alley and smashed a house front across the street, punching a hole big as a bushel basket and instantly igniting paint, lathes, and timbers. The householders dashed outside as someone yelled to form a bucket brigade.
Badger was down, feebly thrashing and slapping at his clothes. His shirt and vest burned and smoked, his formerly hairy chest was seared pink, and now his hands and even beard were scorched from licking flames. He could scarcely breathe. Simone and Wilemina whisked out the flames, then tried to stretch Badger flat to check his wounds.
Angry, sobbing, his hard hands beat them away. "Never mind me! I'll live! Get after Johan! Don't let him escape!"
Both women objected, but a sturdy kick sent them scampering in pursuit. The sailor crawled painfully to his knees and scrubbed his face with gritty hands. Sticky fluid gummed his eyes, and rubbing his wounds made them flare in agony, but he forced his eyelids open. Thank the stars, he wasn't blind. The pre-dawn world was dim and hazy.
A rumble like thunder over the horizon asked, "Are you all right?"
"Eh?" The sailor squinted painfully. The blurry figure wore some red- or orange-striped robes. Whoever he was, he was tall as a monox and seemed to steam in the chilly air. Badger was glad this was no enemy.
"Uh, yes. The women went after Johan."
Like a whisper in the night, the stranger was gone.
"Fish and follies," Badger asked himself, "who was that?"