"No," he replied, genuinely puzzled. "Jihan, are you saying I was unfair?"
"Only arcane, weighting the scales to your side. Love without feeling, mind caress, spell-excitation. ... I am new to flesh. I hope you are well chastized and repentant," she giggled, just briefly, before his words found her ears: "I warn you, straight-out: those who love me die of it, and those I favor are fated to spurn me."
"You are an arrogant man. You think I care? I should have struck you more viciously." Her flat hand slapped, more than playfully, down upon his belly. "He-" she meant Askelon "-cannot spare me any of his substance. I do this for him, that he not look upon me hungry for a man and know shame. You saw his wrist, where she skewered him...."
"I don't fancy a gift from him, convenient or no." He was going to pull her up beside him, where he might casually get his hands around her fine, muscular throat. But she sat back and retorted, "You think he would suggest this? Or even know of it? I take what I choose from men, and we do not discuss it. It is all I can do for him. And you owe me whatever price I care to name-your own sister took from me my husband before ever his lips touched mine. When my father chose me from my sisters to be sent to ease Askelon's loneliness, I had a choice-yea or nay-and a year to make it. I studied him, and felt love enough to come to human flesh to claim it. To become human-you concede that I am, for argument's sake?"
He did that-her spectacular body, sheathed in muscle, taut and sensuous, was too powerful and yet too shapely to be mortal, but even so, he did not critique her.
"Then," she continued, rising up, hands on her impossibly slim waist, pacing as she spoke in a rustle of armor-scales, "consider my plight. To become human for the love of a demiurge, and then not to be able to claim him....It is done, I have this form, I cannot undo it until its time is up. And since I cannot collect satisfaction from her-he has forbidden me that pleasure-all the powers on the twelfth plane agree: I may have what I wish from you. And what I wish, I have made quite plain." Her voice was deepening. She took a step toward him.
He objected, and she laughed, "You should see your face."
"I can imagine. You are a very attractive . . . lady, and you come with impeccable credentials from an unimpeachable source. So if you are inexperienced in the ways of the world, brash and awkward and ineffective because of that, I suppose I must excuse you. Thus, I shall make allowances." His one hand raised, gestured, scooped up her loinguard and tossed it at her. "Get dressed, get out of here. Go back to your master, familiar, and tell him I do not any longer pay my sister's debts."
Then, finally, she came at him: "You mistake me. I am not asking you, I am telling you." She reached him, crouched down, thighs together, hands on her knees, knees on what had once been Jubal the Slaver's bed. "This is a real debt, in lieu of payment for which, my patron and the elementals will exact-"
He clipped her exactly behind her right ear, and she fell across him, senseless.
Other things she had said, earlier in passion, rang in his head: that should he in any way displease her, her duty would then be plain: he and Vashanka could both be disciplined by way of the child they had together begotten on one of Molin Torchholder's temple dancers.
He was not sure how he felt about that, as he was not sure how he felt about Askelon's offer of mortality or Vashanka's cowardice, or the positives and negatives of his sister's self-engendered fate.
He gave the unconscious woman over to his Stepsons with instructions that made the three he had hailed grin widely. He could not estimate how long they would be able to hold her- however long they managed it, it had better be long enough. The Stepson who had come from seeking Niko in Sanctuary found him, garbed for business, saddling a Tros horse in the stables.
"Stealth said," the gruff, sloe-eyed commando reported: " 'She said stay out of it, no need to fear.' He's staying with the archmage, or whatever it is. He's going to the Mageguild party and suggests you try and drop by." A feral grin stole over the mercenary's face. He knew something was up. "Need anybody on your right for this, commander?"
Tempus almost said no, but changed his mind and told the Stepson to get a fresh horse and his best panoply and meet him at the Mageguild's outer gate.
5
There was a little mist in the streets by the time Tempus headed his Tros horse across the east side toward the Mageguild-nothing daunting yet, just a fetlock high steaminess as if the streets were cobbled with dry ice. He had had no luck intercepting his sister at Lastel's estate: a servant shouted through a grate, over the barking of dogs, that the master had already left for the fete. He had stopped briefly at the mercenaries' hostel before going there, to burn a rag he had had for centuries in the common room's hearth: he no longer needed to be reminded not to argue with warlocks, or that love, for him, was always a losing game. With his sister's scarf, perhaps the problem of her would waft away, changed like the ancient linen to smoke upon the air.
Before the Mageguild's outer wall, an imprudent crowd had gathered to watch the luminaries arriving in the ersatz-daylight of its ensorceled grounds. Pink clouds formed a glowing canopy to the wall's edge-a godly pavilion; elsewhere, it was night. Where dark met light, the Stepson Janni waited, one leg crooked over his saddlehorn, rolling a smoke, his best helmet dangling by his knee and his full-length dress-mantle draped over his horse's croup, while around his hips the ragged crowd thronged and his horse, ears flattened, snapped at Ilsigs who came too near.
Tempus' gray rumbled a greeting to the bay; the curly-headed mercenary straightened up in his saddle and saluted, grinning through his beard.
He wasn't smiling when the Mageguild's ponderous doors enfolded them, and three junior functionaries escorted them to the "changing rooms" within the outer wall where they were expected to strip and hand over their armaments to the solicitously smirking mages-in-training before donning preferred "fete-clothes" (gray silk chitons and summer sandals) the wizards had thoughtfully provided. Askelon wasn't taking any chances, Tempus thought but did not say, though Janni wondered aloud what use there was in checking their paltry swords and daggers when enchanters could not be made to check their spells.
Inside the Mageguild's outer walls, it was summer. In its gardens-transformed from their usual dank fetidness by artful conjure into a wonderland of orchids and eucalyptus and willows weeping where before moss-hung swamp-giants had held sway over quickmires-Tempus saw Kadakithis, resolutely imperious in a black robe oversewn with gems into a map of Ranke-caught-in-the-web-of-the-world. The prince/governor's pregnant wife, a red gift-gown splendid over her child-belly, leaned heavily on his arm. Kitty cat's approving glance was laced with commiseration: yes, he, too, found it hard to smile here, but both of them knew it prudent to observe the forms, especially with wizards....
Tempus nodded and walked away.