By the time he had promised to give their thanks and regards to the absent host when he saw him, the lady was gone, and Molin Torch-holder was left wishing he knew what it was that she saw in Lastel. Certainly it was not the dogs he raised, or his fortune, which was modest, or his business ... well, yes, it might have been just that ... drugs. Some who knew said the best krrf-black and Garonne-stamped-came from Lastel's connections. Molin sighed, hearing his wife's twitter among the crowd's buzz. Where was that Hazard? The damn Mageguild was getting too arrogant. No one could throw a bash as star-studded as this one and then walk away from it as if the luminaries in attendance were nonentities. He was glad he had not prevailed on the prince to come along.... What a woman! And what was her name? He had been told, he was sure, but just forgot. ...
Outside, torchlit, their breath steaming white through cold-sharpened night air, waiting for their ivory-screened wagon, they giggled over the distinction between "serious" and "solemn": the First Hazard had been serious, Molin was solemn; Tempus the Hell-Hound was serious, Prince Kadakithis, solemn; the destabiliza-tion campaign they were undertaking in Sanctuary under the auspices of a Mygdonian-funded Nisibisi witch (who had come to Lastel, alias One-Thumb, in the guise of a comely caravan mistress hawking Garonne drugs) was serious; the threat of northern invasion, down-country at the Empire's anus, was most solemn.
As her laughter tinkled, he nuzzled her: "Did you manage to ... ?"
"Oh, yes. I had a perfectly lovely time. What a wonderful idea of yours this was," she whispered, still speaking court Rankene, a dialect she had been using exclusively in public ever since the two of them-the Mazedweller One-Thumb and the escaped sorcerer-slayer Cime-had decided that the best cover for them was that which her magic provided: they need not do more. Her brother Tempus knew that Lastel was actually One-Thumb, and that she was with him, but he would hesitate to reveal them: he had given his silence, if not his blessing, to their union. Within reasonable limits, they considered themselves safe to bargain lives and information to both sides in the coming crisis. Even now, with the war barely under way, they had already started. This night's work was her pleasure and his profit. When they reached his modest east-side estate, she showed him the portion of what she had done to the First Hazard which he would like best and most probably survive, if his heart was strong. For her service, she demanded a Rankan soldat's worth of black krrf, before the act. When he had paid her, and watched her melt it with water over a flame, cool it, and bring it to him on the bed, her fingers stirring the viscous liquid, he was glad he had not argued about her price, or about her practice of always charging one.
2
Wizard weather blew in off the sea later that night, as quickly as one of the Sanctuary whores could blow a client a kiss, or a pair of Stepsons disperse an unruly crowd. Everyone in the suddenly mist-enshrouded streets of the Maze ran for cover; adepts huddled under beds with their best warding spells wrapped tighter than blankets around shivering shoulders; east-siders bade their jesters perform and their musicians play louder; dogs howled; cats yowled; horses screamed in the palace stables and tried to batter their stallboards down.
Some unlucky ones did not make it to safety before a dry thunder roared and lightning flashed and in the streets, the mist began to glitter, thicken, chill. It rolled headhigh along byway and alley, claws of ice scrabbling at shuttered windows, barred doors. Where it found life, it shredded bodies, lacerating limbs, stealing away warmth and souls and leaving only flayed carcasses frozen in the streets.
A pair of Stepsons-mercenary special forces whom the prince's marshal, Tempus, commanded-was caught out in the storm, but it could not be said that the weather killed one: the team had been investigating uncorroborated reports that a warehouse conveniently situated at a juncture of three major sewers was being used by an alchemist to concoct and store incendiaries. The surviving partner guessed that his teammate must have lit a torch, despite the cautions of research: human wastes, flour, sulphur and more had gone in through those now nonexistent doors. Though the problem the team had been dispatched to investigate was solved by a con-cussive fireball that threw the second Stepson, Nikodemos, through a window into an intersection, singeing his beard and brows and eyelashes, the young Sacred Band member relived the circumstances leading to his partner's death repeatedly, agonizing over the possibility that he was to blame throughout the night, alone in the pair's billet. So consumed was he with grief at the death of his mate, he did not even realize that his friend had saved his life: the fireball and ensuing conflagration had blown back the mist and made an oven of the wharfside; Wideway was freed from the vicious fog for half its length. He had ridden at a devil's pace out of Sanctuary home to the Stepsons' barracks, which once had been a slaver's estate and thus had rooms enough for Tempus to allow his hard won mercenaries the luxury of privacy: ten pairs plus thirty single agents comprised the team'score group-until this evening past....
Sun was trying to beat back the night, Niko could see it through his window. He had not even been able to return with a body. His beloved spirit-twin would be denied the honor of a hero's fiery bier. He could not cry; he simply sat, huddled, amputated, diminished and cold upon his bed, watching a sunray inch its way toward one of his sandaled feet.
Thus he did not see Tempus approaching with the first light of day haloing his just-bathed form as if he were some god's own avatar, which at times-despite his better judgment-his curse, and his battle with it, forced him to become. The tall, autumnal figure stooped and peered in the window, sun gilding his yarrow honey hair and his vast bronze limbs where they were free of his army-issue woolen chiton. He wore no arms or armor, no cloak or shoes; furrows deepened on his brow, and a sere frown tightened his willful mouth. Sometimes, the expression in his long, slitted eyes grew readable: this was such a time. The pain he was about to face was a pain he had known too well, too often. It brought to features not brutal enough by half for their history or profession the slight, defensive smile which would empty out his eyes. When he could, he knocked. Hearing no reply, he called softly, "Niko?" And again. ...
Having let himself in, he waited for the Stepson, who looked younger than the quarter-century he claimed, to raise his head. He met a gaze as blank as his own, and bared his teeth.
The youth nodded slowly, made to rise, sank back when Tempus motioned "stay" and joined him on his wood-framed cot in blessed shadow. Both sat then, silent, as day filled up the room, stealing away their hiding place. Elbows on knees, Niko thanked him for coming. Tempus suggested that under the circumstances a bier could still be made, and funerary games would not be out of order. When he got no response, the mercenary's commander sighed rattlingly and allowed that he himself would be honored to perform the rites. He knew how the Sacred Ban-ders who had adopted the war name "Stepsons" revered him. He did not condone or encourage it, but since they had given him their love and were probably doomed to the man for it-even as their original leader, Stepson, called Abarsis, had been doomed-Tempus felt responsible for them. His instructions and his curse had sent the gelded warrior-priest Abarsis to his death, and such fighters as these could not offer loyalty to a lesser man, to a pompous prince or an abstracted cause. Sacred Bands were the mercenaries' elite; this one's history under the Slaughter Priest's command was nearly mythical; Abarsis had brought his men to Tempus before committing suicide in a most honorable fashion, leaving them as his parting gift-and as his way of ensuring that Tempus could not just walk away from the god Vashanka's service: Abarsis had been Vashanka's priest.