Molin felt a trickle of sweat run down his back. Jihan had taken the bait, embroidering his notions with her own, mortally incomprehensible, imagination. If he could not lure her back to plans he could shape and control, the exercise would become a disaster of monumental proportions.
"Think of the Stormchildren, dear lady," he said in what was both his most unctuous and commanding voice. "Think of your father. You can't leave them behind-not even to travel with Tempus or to destroy the Nisibisi witch."
Jihan wilted. "I couldn't leave them." She patted Gy-skouras's golden curls apologetically. "I must put those thoughts behind me." With her eyes closed, the Froth Daughter focused divine determination against mortal free will until her shoulders slumped in defeat. "I have so much to leam," she admitted. "Even the children know more than I do."
"When the Stormchildren are well again, then you will travel with them to Bandara; you will leam everything that they learn. For now, though, only you can sense Roxane through her deceits and disguises. Tempus can devise a trap for her-but only you will know if she falls into it."
She brightened and Molin almost felt sorry for Tempus. The mercenary would have no choice now but to close ranks within the Stepsons and concoct the tactics necessary to lure Roxane out of her hiding .place; no one, not even a regenerating immortal, could stand for long against Jihan's enthusiasm. The priest relaxed, then caught a flicker of movement at the comer of his eye. Niko had pushed away from Seylalha's tenderness and was staring, with his one unbandaged eye, off into nothingness. Perhaps he had heard them mention Bandara? Perhaps-? Molin shook his head, preferring not to think at all about any other possibility.
The hand that reached out of the darkness to grab Molin's shoulder had the strength of an iron trap. It was only by yielding to its force, collapsing and rolling through the mud, that the priest avoided becoming a prisoner of his assailant. He scrabbled for balance, tearing a small knife free from the hem of his priest-robe's sleeve as he scanned the courtyard for some detectable sound or movement. Then he saw the silhouette and threw the knife aside; no four finger blade would deter Tempus for long.
"I've taken all I'm going to take of your schemes. Torch." The mud squished as the big mercenary took a step forward. He leaned down and hoisted Molin to his feet by the front of his robe, then pressed him against the damp brick of the palace wall. "I warned you once-that's more than you deserve."
"Warned me of what? Warned me that you're in over your eyes with capital politics that have no meaning in this town? You want Sanctuary quiet when your high-and-mighty usurping friends get here-well, what are you doing about it? You started off welclass="underline" you got Roxane's Nisi globe; drove her into hiding- but you haven't done anything since." Molin's voice was cracking from the pressure Tempus put against his breastbone but it could not be said that his courage had failed him as well.
"The streets will be quiet-I've seen to that."
"Straton saw to that. You can't take credit for the acts of a man who thinks you've issued orders to have him killed by his partner, Riddler."
Tempus gave the priest one last, vicious shake, then released him to slide down the wall to his proper height.
"But this scheme of Jihan's-of yours. Torch, it's beneath you, using her against me like that. We've got all our vulner-ables in one place and the strength to guard them. It's no time to be traipsing through the countryside splitting our forces."
"I'm a siege engineer, Riddler. I build walls and I tear them down. It took our golden-haired light-weight, Kadakithis, to point out how predictable our tactics have become. I've got one idea for luring the bitch into the open-but I don't want to try it. I was counting on Jihan's provoking you into coming up with something better."
"And if she doesn't?"
"I'll bum the portrait that little Ilsigi painter made of you, Roxane, and Niko."
"Vashanka's balls. Torch-you aren't afraid of anything, are you? We better talk this through. Where've you got that painting now? Still here in the palace?" Tempus took Molin's arm, more gently this time, and led him toward the West Gate of the palace.
"It's where it's always seemed to be, Riddler," Molin said as he shook free of the other man's assistance. "But don't think that because you can see it you can reach it. Randal's taught me a bit about hiding things in plain sight."
They went through the gate in silence, not because of the tension between them though it was as thick as the perennial fog-but because they were both aware that the walls were the most porous part of the palace and that nothing private should be said in their shadow. They continued in silence, Tempus leading, through the better pans of town into the Maze and toward the Vulgar Unicom where, improbably enough, privacy was sacred.
"I'd leave that picture wherever you've hidden it if I were you, priest," Tempus warned after he'd bellowed their orders toward the bar,
"Certainly it would be cleaner if the little ginger-man had painted a simpler picture. I gather he's had more problems with things coming to life. He claims not to know at all what happens when his paintings cease to exist."
Molin looked at a recently replastered section of the wall, still noticeably less grimy than the rest and completely unmarked by grafitti or knife gouges. Lalo had painted the soul of the tavern there once and a score of people had died before it had been laid to rest again. Both men were thinking about the painter's unpredictable art when a warty, gray arm thrust between them.
"Good beer. Special beer for the gentlemen^" the wall-eyed bouncer with the garish orange hair said with a smile that revealed corroded, and not quite human, teeth.
Tempus froze and Molin, whose aplomb was sturdier, took the mugs.
"A fiend, I should think. Not quite what Brachis and his entourage will be expecting when they order a drink. If we're lucky they'll blame it on the beer," Molin commented as the acid, lifeless brew crossed his lips.
"Hers," Tempus said and hid his face behind his hands. After a moment he raised his eyes. "And nobody notices. Roxane's fiend is ladling the Unicorn's swill and no one bloody notices'"
"A living fiend, my friend. You've been away too long. In this part of town being alive, in your own life, is all that really matters."
Tempus sighed. He drained the crudely made mug and motioned for another round. Now that he had adjusted to the smoky light, Molin could see that the Riddler's eyes were bloodshot and the skin around them was bruised from exhaustion.
"I should kill you for that, too," Tempus said, rubbing his eyes, making them redder. "A bad habit, you said. There's a magician-The Dream Lord, Askelon; my brother-in-law- he overstepped himself at the Festival of Man, as you may have heard. Been exiled to Meridian by greater powers than his own. Usually I don't have to worry about him but now, thanks to you, he's always right there at the comer of my mind, waiting to get into my dreams."
"He gets into everyone else's dreams and they're none the worse for it, Riddler."
"Not into my dreams, damn you!" He took the second mug from the fiend without a flinch, downing it as he had the first.
"More beer? Good beer for the gentleman?" the fiend inquired. "Snapper Jo gets good beer for the gentleman. Snapper Jo remembers this gentleman, this soldier. Mistress made sure Snapper always remember... Tempus."
Tempus's hands were on Snapper Jo's throat; Molin's were on a long, wickedly efficient knife but the fiend only smiled. He knotted the muscles in his warty neck and belched his way to freedom.