Walegrin said nothing. He was not truly surprised, though he hadn't expected this. Nothing was truly surprising today.
The prince misunderstood his silence. "All right, Walegrin. Kilite's faction found you, paid you, pardoned your absence and then tried to have you killed. I've run afoul of Kilite a few times and I can promise you you'll never outsmart him on your own. You need protection, Walegrin, and you need protection from a special sort of person-the sort of person who needs you as much as you need him. In short, Walegrin, you need me."
Walegrin remembered thinking the same thing once, though he'd envisioned this interview under different circumstances. "You have the Hounds, Tempus and the Sacred Bands," he remarked sullenly.
"Actually, they have me. Face it, Walegrin: you and I are not well-equipped. Alone with only my birth or your steel, we're nothing but pawns. But, put my birth with your steel and the odds improve. Walegrin, the Nisibisi are armed to the teeth. They'll tie up the armies for years before the surrender-if they surrender. Your handful of Enlibar swords won't make any difference. But the Empire is going to forget about us while they're fighting in the north."
"Or, you want my men and my steel here instead of on the Wizardwall?"
"You make me sound just like Kilite. Walegrin, I'll make you my advisor. I'll care for you and your men. I'll tell Kilite we found you floating in the harbor and make sure he believes it. I'll keep you safe while the Empire exhausts itself in the north. It may take twenty years, Walegrin, but when we return to Ranke, we'll own it."
"I'll think about it," Walegrin said, though actually he was thinking of Illyra's visions of an invading fleet and her warning that he would not go north.
The Prince shook his head. "You don't have time. You've got to be my man before you see Tempus. You might need me to pry your man loose."
They were alone in the room and Walegrin still had his sword. He thought of using it; perhaps the Prince thought the same thing for he sat far back in the throne, playing with his sleeve again.
"You might be lying," Walegrin said after a moment.
"I'm known for many things, but not lying."
That was true enough. Just as much of what he'd said was true. And there was Thrusher's safety, and Illyra's to think of. "I'll want a favor, right away," Walegrin said, offering his hand.
"Anything in my power, but first we talk to Tempus-and don't tell him we've made an agreement."
The Prince led the way along unfamiliar corridors. They were in the private part of the palace and the surroundings, though crude by capital standards, dazzled Walegrin. He bumped into the Prince when the latter stopped by a closed door.
"Now, don't forget-we haven't agreed to anything. No, wait-give me your sword."
Feeling trapped, Walegrin unbuckled his sword and handed it to the Prince.
"He's arrived, Tempus," Kadakithus announced in his most innane voice. "Look, he gave me a present! One of his steel swords."
Tempus looked around from a window. He had some of the god's presence to him. Walegrin felt distinctly outclassed and doubted that Kitty-cat could do anything to help him. He doubted that even the metal boss in his pouch could help him free Thrusher or Illyra.
"The steel is Sanctuary's secret, not Kilite's?" Tempus demanded.
"Of course," the Prince assured him. "Kilite will never know. The entire capital will never know."
"All right, then. Bring him in," Tempus shouted.
Five Stepsons crowded into the room, a hooded prisoner with them. They sent the man sprawling to the marble floor. Thrusher pulled the hood loose and scrambled to his feet. A livid bruise covered one side of his face, his clothes were torn and revealed other cuts and bruises, but he was not seriously hurt.
"Your man-I should have let my men have him. He killed two last night."
"Not men!" Thrusher spat out. "Whoresons; men don't steal women and leave them for the rats!"
One of the Stepsons moved forward. Walegrin recognized him as the one who had overturned Illyra's table. Though he felt the rage himself, he restrained Thrusher. "Not now," he whispered.
The Prince stepped between all of them with the sword. "I think you should have this, Tempus. It's too plain for me-but you won't mind that, will you?"
The Hell-Hound examined the blade and set it aside without comment. "I see you can control your man," he said to Walegrin.
"As you cannot." Walegrin tossed the Hound the boss Dubro had found. "Your men left it behind when they stole my sister last night." They were of a height, Walegrin and Temp us, but it cost Walegrin to look into Tempus' eyes and for once he understood what it meant to be cursed, as Tempus was.
"Yes, the S'danzo. My men disliked the fortune she told for them. They bribed some Downwind to frighten her. They don't understand the Downwind yet. They hadn't intended her to be kidnapped, any more than they'd intended to get robbed themselves. I've dealt with my men-and the Downwinders they hired. Your sister is already back in the bazaar, Walegrin, a bit richer for her adventures and off-limits to all Stepsons. No one guessed you were her brother-certain men are assumed not to have family, you know." Tempus leaned forward then, and spoke only to Walegrin. "Tell me, is your sister worth believing?"
"I believe her."
"Even when she rattles nonsense about invasions from the sea?"
"I believe her enough that I'm remaining in Sanctuary-against all my better judgement."
Tempus turned away to take up Walegrin's sword. He adjusted the belt for his hips and put it on. The Stepsons had already departed. "You won't regrethelping the Prince," he said without looking at anyone. "He's favored of the gods, you know. You'll do well together." He followed his men out the door leaving the Prince alone with Walegrin and Thrusher.
"You might have told me you were going to give him my sword!" Walegrin complained.
"I wasn't. I only meant to distract him-I didn't think he'd take it. I'm sorry. What was the favor you wanted?"
With Illyra and Thrusher safe, and his future mapped out, Walegrin didn't need a favor, but he heard his stomach rumbling and knew Thrush was hungry too. "We'll have a meal fit for a king-or Prince."
"Well, at least that's something I can provide you."
WIZARD WEATHER by Janet Morris
1
In the archmage's sumptuous purple bedroom, the woman astride him took two pins from her silver-shot hair. It was dark-his choice; and damp with cloying shadows-his romanticism. A conjured moon in a spellbound sky was being swallowed by effigy-clouds where the vaulted roof indubitably yet arced, even as he shuddered under the tutored and inexorable attentions of the girl Lastel had brought to his party. She had refused to tell him her name because he would not give his, but had told him what she would do for him so eloquently with her eyes and her body that he had spent the entire evening figuring out a way the two of them might slip up here unnoticed. Not that he feared her escort's jealousy though the drug dealer might conceivably entertain such a sentiment, Lastel no longer had the courage (or the contractual protective wardings) to dare a reprisal against a Hazard-class mage.
Of all the enchanters in wizard-ridden Sanctuary, only three were archmages, nameless adepts beyond summoning or responsibility, and this Hazard was one. In fact, he was the very strongest of those three. When he had been young, he had had a name, but he will forget it, and everything else, quite promptly: the domed and spired estuary of venality which is Sanctuary, nadir of the empire called Ranke; the unmitigated evil he had fielded for decades from his swamp encircled Mageguild fortress; the compromises he had made to hold sway over curmudgeon, courtesan and criminal (so audacious that even the bounds of magics and planeworlds had been eroded by his efforts, and his fellow adepts felled on occasion by demons roused from forbidden defiles to do his bidding here at the end of creation where no balance remains between logic and faith, law and nature, or heaven and hell); the disingenuous methods through which his will was worked, plan by tortuous plan, upon a town so hateful and immoral that both the flaunted gods and magicians' devils agreed that its inhabitants deserved no less dastardly a fate-all of this, and more, will fade from him in the time it takes a star to burn out, falling from the sky.