“Why should the north be any different?”
“Survival is also a tradition of the north,” Svin added, ignoring Karlini’s comment. “Dortonn is smart. He will not betray us to the Hand. I have made a bargain with him. I have forsworn my oath of revenge against him. When we are finished in Peridol I will escort him back to the north. I will speak for him to our people. I will explain how he has changed his ways.”
“What if he hasn’t changed his ways?”
“Then I will kill him anyway.” Svin hesitated. “Perhaps I have been in civilization too long. Now I make deals with the one I was sent to destroy. Now I even wonder whether the elders sent me because they thought I was the one who would ask no questions. Now I wonder whether my whole mission was not just more politics.”
“Politics is the oldest sport there is,” said Karlini. “You - wait a minute, there’s something new happening outside.”
“What’s that down there?” said Jurtan Mont.
“It appears to be a cordon,” Shaa observed. The three of them had turned back onto the block containing Shaa’s flat only to find ahead of them blocking the street a torch-lit perimeter of stretched cord backed by a pair of watchful pikemen. Others garbed for battle were maneuvering beyond the barricade. “I wonder what it’s here for,” he added superfluously.
There were still a few neighbors milling around outside the guarded area, but it stood to reason that most of the residents of the district - along with the larger part of Peridol’s inhabitants - were either making their way toward the giant stadium of the Knitting or otherwise preparing themselves for behaving riotously on the night of festivity now beginning. The number of people on the other side of the barrier, though, significantly outweighed the count of spectators. In addition to the forces on the ground eyeing his own building from various positions of concealment, Shaa could pick out a good half-dozen more perched precariously in the foliage of trees.
It did not appear, however, that anyone was gearing themselves for imminent assault. Instead, Shaa observed what appeared to be a command discussion, or more accurately argument, being conducted only a few yards beyond the roadblock. “Are you receiving any messages from the infinite?” Shaa asked Jurtan Mont.
Mont had been standing in his habitual posture, a sort of eager foxhound stance with his head cocked slightly to one side, eyes floating and vague. He was listening for his spoor rather than sniffing it out, however, plugged into who-knew-what currents of the ether. No god had stepped forward to claim Jurtan as his oracle, which of course proved nothing one way or the other, but whether his talent was a deliberate benison or an ability innate was thoroughly immaterial to the matter of its utility. “Strings,” Jurtan Mont said, “being plucked and plonked; lots of strings, with some soft horns in the back.”
“Tiptoe music,” observed Shaa. “Yet nothing overtly menacing. Yes?”
“What are you up to?” Tildamire asked warily. “What are you planning?”
“We shall see,” said Shaa. “Wait here.”
“Just a -” began Tildy. But Shaa was gone. “I thought only Max did those quick disappearances,” she said, glancing around.
“Over there,” her brother said, nodding down the cross-boulevard they’d used for their approach. The side of the property whose front extended ahead of them behind the barricade was fenced from the thoroughfare by a brick wall lined with bushes. Between two of the gas streetlights that had flared to life during their dash back from the laboratory site flickered an ascending shadow, if you were looking in exactly the right direction. “With Shaa and Max and those guys I sometimes wonder who taught whom,” Jurtan added, obviously concentrating on matching his tenses up properly, Tildamire noted. Or were they cases? Grammar was not usually her strong point.
It was exhilarating, Shaa acknowledged as he dropped to the garden beyond the wall, to be doing this sort of stuff again, less uncertain of his limitations. For the moment, at least, his limitations were constant, liable if anything to become less onerous as he built up his strength; his health and the status of his heart were unlikely to spiral down the nearest drain through his own activities bringing into play the sting of the curse, at any rate. Did this mean he no longer had to worry about that absurdly gratuitous clause to the curse, that he would only fall in love while on some adventure? Well, he had always considered life in and of itself to be an adventure, but had also made a point of refraining from falling in love out of general principles. Of course that had been Max’s principle too and look what had happened to him, going clearly head-over-heels for the Archivist, Leen. And she for him, which helped, if you were going to do that sort of thing in the first place; Shaa’s resolve to stay clear of the application notwithstanding, he was clear on the theory. Shaa wondered if Leen had managed to restrain her inclination to spring Max loose. Well, they’d know soon enough. With Max’s instinct for trouble, if he were on the streets he’d probably be showing up here at a moment perfectly timed to gum up the works.
Shaa gazed carefully past another band of shrubbery and through the barred gate at the front of the property. The barricade and its guards were to the right, the three quarreling commanders were ahead of him, and he was well within earshot of their scarcely whispered conference. So... they were the Hand, were they. And their discussion was as relevant as Shaa had suspected it might be. He waited until the three of them had reached a momentary impasse, and had drawn back to glare at each other above belligerently folded arms, then vaulted lightly over the low gate and strolled closer. “Gentlemen,” Shaa said, “I believe I have something worthwhile to contribute to your deliberations. Especially seeing as it is my apartment to which you are laying siege, and my brother who is your employer.”
“He’s talking to them,” said Tildamire. “He’s crazy - they’re going to kill him! We have to do something!”
“Let’s wait a minute and see what happens,” her brother said. “I don’t hear any sort of mounting crescendo, nothing that’d make me think they’re gonna swing right into action.”
“But look at all those soldiers - they’re surrounding Shaa’s building! Who do you think they’re after if not him? What is he doing, trying to sacrifice himself to save the rest of them still in there?”
“You’ve never really seen Shaa with all his stops pulled out, have you?” Jurtan asked, with a sidelong glance at his sister. “His deadliest weapon is his tongue. When he’s finished with you you’re not sure of your own name, or whether you actually got up that morning.”
“There’s only one person you could possibly be describing,” said a new voice, behind them and somewhat above their heads.
It was a voice Jurtan recognized, one remarkably like Zalzyn Shaa’s, only pitched an octave or so higher. “Eden!” he exclaimed, wheeling around, already looking up to search the trees to discover her lurking-place. It was not necessary to bring foliage into account, however, for the woman who also looked strikingly like Shaa was in the act of swinging off her horse. “You escaped the curse, too!”
“Looks that way,” said Eden, taking in the barricade and its associated company of troops, “for now at least. What’s Zolly gotten himself into this time? You guys have been keeping yourselves pretty busy, haven’t you - this your sister?”
“You might as well introduce me as well,” said yet another person, also on horse, but concealed until now on the farther side of Eden, “seeing as how we all may be flinging ourselves forth to hopeless death any moment now.” He was capless, and the wavy mop that omission revealed was so red Jurtan thought for a moment it was some fluorescent mutation. Maybe not, but it would still make an effective beacon in the fog.