They all backed outside. On the ground near the pit lay the shroudcovered form from Chenaya's visions. She bent down and lifted the cloth slowly from its face. "Ugh!" was all she managed. She moved quickly away, scanned the sky, and whistled Reyk down. She wrapped his jess around her hand and gave him a soothing stroke.
"Looks a lot like Kadakithis the morning after our wedding night," Daphne said. She nudged Dayme in the ribs. "I was kind of hard on him his first time."
Dayrne's expression betrayed nothing. "I should hope it was the other way around," he answered.
Leyn gestured for some of the gladiators to carry the thing away. Then he turned to Chenaya and Rashan. "It wasn't a body at all," he explained. "Rather, pieces of many bodies all stitched clumsily together to make a simulacrum of a corpse." He rubbed the back of his head. "For the life of me, I can't figure why someone would go to that kind of trouble."
"To pollute the temple," Rashan answered, his eyes filling with a sudden understanding. "Vashanka demanded a human sacrifice to consecrate this place. It was to become one of the Great Temples of the Empire, but from the beginning things kept going wrong in the construction. Rooms collapsed, ceilings leaked, columns cracked, and it never quite seemed to get finished." He folded his arms into his sleeves and stared into the hole they had made in the road. "But this was not a proper sacrifice at all. There never was a consecration. Whoever put this thing here saw to that." He clapped his hands with new joy. "We must have a new consecration! A celebration!"
Chenaya caught Rashan's sleeve. "No sacrifices," she told him. "The barbarous Vashanka is forever lost. Savankala frowns on such practices. This will be a Great Temple now, but only if you heed Him."
Rashan looked at her for a moment, then made a deep bow. "I heed the word of Savankala," he said reverently, "and I heed his true daughter."
Chenaya looked at him piercingly. She turned to Dayme and touched his huge arm. Then she turned back to Rashan. "I lied to you about that," she said abruptly, "to convince you to follow my orders. In the desert, I made a pact with the sun-god. There is a bond between us, yes. One that you do not understand and that I will not explain. What transpired is very personal and very private." She looked at Dayme again, reached out for his hand, and interlocked her fingers with his. "In any case, He has a sincere desire to spread His worship here. Ranke has become moribund. It's an empire without a future. However, in exchange for my bringing the Fire in God's Eye to Sanctuary, the Bright Father has agreed to stay out of my life. My fate is my own again."
Dayme stared down at the hand he held, so small against his own, yet filled with strength. "What does that mean?" he asked, his confusion plain.
She smiled at him. "Don't worry. You and I will discuss it over the days and nights to come." She let go of him then, catching the gleam in Daphne's eyes. "But not now. Right now, I think we'd better refill this hole before Walegrin comes along."
"So you see," Chenaya said frankly, standing before a full court in the Hall of Justice, meeting the hostile gaze of Molin Torchholder who stood at the side of Prince Kadakithis's great chair as her cousin squinted over the document she had given him. 'I did not inherit Land's End. Knowing the Rankan law, my father left it to Dayrne. You know Lowan's writing. You have his seal."
Kadakithis looked utterly uninterested. He handed the document back to Molin and folded his hands in the lap of his expensive silk robe as he gazed down at Dayrne, who stood just behind Chenaya. "Then why didn't your man simply explain this to Molin when he came to visit?"
"Because it's a forgery!" Molin Torchholder muttered, casting the document to the floor. It slithered down the few steps of the dias from the throne to Chenaya's feet. "A clever forgery!"
Chenaya declined to pick the document up. She merely smiled patiently at her uncle. She liked to see him twitch. "Because he didn't know about it. Father told only me where he kept his will, and as you know, cousin"-she nodded to Kadakithis again-"I've been out of town."
Kadakithis waved a hand under his nose as if to shoo away a fly. "Well, it all looks legal to me-the signature, the seal, the whole business. It is a prime piece of real estate, Molin, and I don't blame you for trying. But I'm afraid it belongs to Dayrne now."
Dayrne stepped forward, the smug glee on his usually stern face almost enough to make Chenaya chuckle. But now wasn't the time for that. "No," Dayrne said gruffly. "It belongs to Cheyne. Rankan law says she can't inherit property, but it doesn't prevent her from owning property. I sold Land's End back to her this morning"-he looked straight at Molin -"for a single gold soldat." He pulled the gold coin from his waistband and held it up for all to see. A murmur of restrained amusement ran around the court while Molin fumed.
Dayme and Chenaya turned as one and marched from the Hall of Justice, across the courtyard, and out into Vashanka's Square where their friends and comrades were waiting. "Well?" Ouijen said eagerly. "What happened?"
A slow grin spread across Chenaya's face.
"You should have seen Molin," Dayrne whispered, drawing them all closer.
Daphne clapped her hands and laughed. "It worked!" she cried before Gestus shushed her.
Dismas sighed with melodramatic relief. "Thank the gods!" he said. "I practiced all night on that signature. I didn't think I'd ever get it right!" Chenaya's grin brightened into a smile as she reached up and rumpled Dismas's hair. "You?" she teased. "The best thief and forger ever sentenced to an arena anywhere?"
They walked across the square and out the Processional Gate. The clouds over Sanctuary had vanished. The sky was a wonderful blue, and the sun shone warm and golden. A fresh wind blew up from the sea. Chenaya stared that way, watching the tops of the masts of ships rocking to and fro along the wharves where she had sat two nights ago and thrown a painting into the water.
"You miss him, don't you?" Dayrne whispered in her ear.
She thought of her father, calling up all the good memories of times they had spent together. "I'll always miss him," she answered quietly.
"But not today!" Daphne snapped. "No morbid moods today." She pulled a fat purse from her belt and tossed it in the air, catching it again before Leyn could snatch it. "It's the Maze for us, my brothers, and a few drinks at the Unicorn. That's as good a place as any to spread the word and let this city know." She waited, looking at them and finally winking.
"Chenaya's back in town," she proclaimed. She turned then, tossing her raven hair over her shoulders, grabbing Leyn's arm, and pulling him along as she led the way.
"Somehow," Dayrne muttered with a weak half-smile, "I think it knows."
WEB WEAVERS by Lynn Abbey
Sanctuary had been quiet since Theron's loyalists pulled out. A hundred people, certainly no more than two hundred, had straggled through the new gates to begin the long journey back to Ranke. The ordinary citizen of Sanctuary didn't miss a single one of them. The ordinary citizen of Sanctuary hadn't yet guessed that the city had been cut adrift, to sink or swim on its own strengths. Men and women who had spent their lives complaining about the Empire scarcely noticed it was gone.
For the undermanned garrison, the calm was a blessing. They desperately needed time to reorganize, to recruit new men, to train them, and to test their informant networks in the absence of the Stepsons, the 3rd, and the Mageguild Hazards. A week passed, and another. A storm rolled in from the sea. It rained for three days running, and when the skies cleared, the towering yellow-grey clouds above desert had collapsed. Farmers came to the temples with their thanksgiving offerings.