Eden had drawn back to scrutinize him. “Okay,” she said, “I’ll bite. Why are you just hanging around and wasting time like this? Are you waiting for something?”
“Zalzyn Shaa!”
It was a new man on horseback, wearing livery Shaa had last seen only a few hours before, in the temple of Jill-tang. “Over here!” Shaa called out, waving his hand above his head. “You should be more careful when making remarks like that,” he added in an aside to his sister. “You know the universe’s habit of listening in.”
The rider reigned up, stepping his horse carefully and glancing curiously around him at the tidy aftermath of carnage. He handed an envelope down and Shaa promptly tore it open.
“What is it now?” Eden demanded.
“More news of our brother,” said Shaa, still scanning the letter. “- And Jardin’s been located, rather the worse for wear. Are you waiting for a response?” he asked the messenger.
“I expect so. Will there be one?”
“A moment for assessment, please.”
Shaa took breath in a last moment of contemplation, hearing as he did a snatch of conversation drifting across the tortured remains of the front-lawn flowerbeds. It sounded like Tildamire Mont, in a particularly biting tone of voice: “So does this resolve everything? Was that the grand finale?”
“I wish,” said Jurtan Mont, casting a glance back over his shoulder at the Shaas where they stood out in the street with their new mysterious rider. This was the first time he had actually seen the two of them together - likely the first time they’d been together in years and years, from his understanding of the terms of their just-lifted family curse. Jurtan’s earlier impression on meeting Eden seemed even more true now that he could view them side to side; they were like one person seen in a mirror with at most a modest ripple. It was not at all what Jurtan saw when he looked at his own sister, or even worse, at the father lying still in a stupor at their feet.
He hoped the Shaas were at least having a deep and meaningful conversation of reunion. As soon as Dad regained his senses such an episode of family bonding would obviously be the last thing on his family’s mind. “You think maybe I should just slide off and get out of town?” Jurtan asked his sister.
“Might as well hear what he’s doing here first,” Tildamire suggested. “It may not be a total loss for you even after he finds out what happened. I mean, you single-handedly subdued a major mercenary troop; that should be good for something with Dad. And you were already pretty cut up from this afternoon - I don’t know how you could even hold that instrument on your lips.”
“Yeah, but wiping out the mercenaries looks like what he was here for. You know how he feels about somebody stealing his fun.”
“You are his son; with you it might just make him proud.”
Jurtan snorted. “Maybe if I hadn’t done it by making him fly into a wall.”
“Uhhh!” said the former Lion of the Oolvaan Plain. The heads of his offspring swiveled down in unison. The Lion was still reclining on Shaa’s couch, which had been dragged off the front stoop to let people get through the door without stepping on his chest. An icebag slumped comfortingly on his forehead, Wroclaw having produced it in passing with his own inimitable style.
“I think he’s waking up,” said Tildamire.
“You think I should deck him out again?” suggested Jurtan.
“Why not give him the benefit of the doubt? Maybe he’ll surprise you.”
“Thanks a lot,” Jurtan moaned. “That’s all I need, more surprises.”
Off across the lawn, next to the largely demolished hedge separating the property of Shaa’s residence from the street, another small group was deciding whether to continue with rational conversation, or to have things out in some form of free-for-all. “With ancestral breeding grounds finished was bird,” Haddo was explaining again. “To work return thought was bird the time, so contact did it I. Suggested I on the way to up reinforcements pick. Relayed did message seagull.”
“My seagull?” hollered Karlini. “You used my seagull to tell that oversize vulture to drop that Lion maniac off here and let him loose to fight everything in sight?”
“Thought I not liked seagull you,” muttered Haddo.
“That’s beside the point! Whether I like having that seagull around is -” Karlini stopped and tried to pull himself together. Above Haddo’s head and across the lawn he had a remarkable view of the Lion in question half-risen from Shaa’s couch, his face an archetype of incredulity even with an icebag drooping down past one eye, one hand supporting him and the other waving in the air as though seeking for something yielding to crush; across from him, his son had one of his hands half-raised as though to protect his own throat. Karlini resolutely turned his back. He’d had it with carnage, he’d had it with feuds, he’d had it with trying to help out everyone else when he couldn’t keep his own life from sinking ever-deeper into its own mess. “If you’re working for me, Haddo, you’re working for me, not off running your own side games and getting me ground up in the gears. Now once and for all, are you working for me?”
“Yes,” said Haddo, “and no.”
“What was that?” croaked Dortonn, arching his neck to peer across the lawn in the direction from which the still-echoing despairing-voiced call of “ARRGH!” seemed to have emanated.
“As long as no open warfare follows it is safe to ignore,” Svin told him, threading his way carefully amidst the wreckage and toward the Shaas in the street. It would be too bad if the Great Karlini succumbed to his own growing tendency toward madness before he had the chance for a recuperative nap, but Svin decided that any intervention on his part would have to wait. Karlini’s holler had more exasperation than true loss-of-mind insanity in it, anyway, although he would clearly bear watching. But Karlini was not the issue at the moment. “Shaa,” Svin declared, removing Dortonn from his shoulder and arranging him on his feet. Or, rather, “Shaas,” he amended. “Dortonn has news.”
Both Shaas raised their right eyebrows at an identical angle. “Yes?” they said.
Dortonn shook himself out and spoke, still looking like the result of some barely competent necromantic conjuration and sounding as though he was unsure whether he was in or out of the grave. “I have achieved contact with my master. He is free of the ring. He is not quite incarnate, but he is not entirely dead either. I have done my best to stabilize his condition but I am too far away to be fully effective. I am not in condition to travel on my own and Pod Dall is unlikely to appear in this doorway under his own motivation. Who will assist me?” He glanced behind him, where Karlini staring down and his cloaked assistant glaring up were lambasting each other and waving their fists in the air. “Haddo?” he said dubiously.
“I will help you,” said Svin. “You may need to be dragged. Haddo would not be of much benefit.”
“Thank you for such an attractive offer,” Dortonn squawked. “Is that the best I can do?”
“Be careful what you wish for,” murmured Shaa. Dortonn followed the direction of his gaze. Svin, of course, had detected the flamboyant approach of the stalking Lion without the need of turning his back. Actually, Shaa considered, the two of them made an interestingly didactic comparison: both ex-barbarians, both appallingly competent in matters martial, at least on a tactical scale, but each with an entirely different demeanor and outlook on life. To whit:
“Stop looking like somebody died,” snarled the Lion, casting around him with a belligerent glare. “Did somebody die? It’s amazing any of you are still alive.”