Then he saw her, holding Lastel's hand, to which the prosthetic thumb of his disguise was firmly attached. A signal bade Janni await him; he did not have to look back to know that the Stepson obeyed.
Cime was blond, tonight, and golden-eyed, tall in her adept-chosen robe of iridescent green, but he saw through the illusion to her familiar self. And she knew it. "You come here without your beloved armaments or even the god's amulet? The man I used to know would have pulled rank and held on to his weapons."
"Nothing's going to happen here," he murmured, staring off over her head into the crowd looking for Niko; "unless the message I received was in error and we do have a problem?"
"We have no problem-" glowered Lastel/ One-Thumb.
"One-Thumb, disappear, or I'll have Janni, over there, teach you how to imitate your bar's sign." With a reproachful look that Tempus would utter his alias here, the man who did not like to be called One-Thumb outside the Maze lumbered off.
Then he had to look at her. Under the golden-eyed illusion, her char-and-smoke gaze accused him, as it had chased him across the centuries and made him content to be accursed and constrained from other loves. God, he thought, I will never get through this without error. It was the closest he had come to asking Vashanka to help him for ages. In the back of his skull, a distant whisper exhorted him to take his sister while he could ... that bush on his right would be bower enough. But more than advice the god could not give: "I have my own troubles, mortal, for which you are partly responsible." With the echo of Vashanka's last word, Tempus knew the god was gone.
"Is Lastel telling the truth, Cime? Are you content to face Askelon's wrath, and your peril, alone? Tell me how you came to half-kill a personage of that magnitude, and assure me that you can rectify your mistake without my help."
She reached up and touched his throat, running her finger along his jaw until it found his mouth. "Ssh, ssh. You are a bad liar, who proclaims he does not still love me. Have you not enough at risk, presently? Yes, I erred with Aske-lon. He tricked me. I shall solve it, one way or the other. My heart saw him, and I could not then be the one who stood there watching him die. His world beguiled me, his form enthralled me. You know what punishment love could bring me... . He begged me leave him to die alone. And I believed him... because I feared for my life, should while he died I come to love him. We each bear our proper curse, that is sure."
"You think this disguise will fool him?"
She shook her head. "I need not; he will want a meeting. This," she ran her hands down over her illusory youth and beauty, "was for the mage-lings, those children at the gates. As for you, stay clear of this matter, my brother. There is no time for quailing or philosophical debates, now. You never were competent to simply act, unencumbered by judgment or conscience. Don't try to change, on my account. I will deal with the en-telechy, and then I will drink even his name dry of meaning. Like that!" She snapped her fingers, twirled on her heel, and flounced off in a good imitation of a young woman offended b'y a forward soldier.
While he watched, Askelon appeared from the crowd to bar her path, a golden coin held out before him like a wand or a warding charm.
That fast did he have her, too fast for Tempus to get between them, simply by the mechanism of invoking her curse: for pay, she must give herself to any comer. He watched them flicker out of being with his stomach rolling and an ache in his throat. It was some little while before he saw anything external, and then he saw Nikodemos showing off his gift-cuirass to Janni.
The two came up to him wondering why it was, when everyone else's armaments had been taken from them, Niko, who had arrived in shabby duty-gear, had been given better than ever he could afford. Tempus drew slowly into his present, noting Molin Torchholder's over-gaudy figure nearby, and a kohl-eyed lady who might easily be an infiltrator from the Mygdon-ian Alliance talking to Lastel.
He asked his Stepsons to make her acquaintance: "She might just be smuggling drugs into Sanctuary with Lastel's help, but do not arrest her for trifles. If she is a spy, perhaps she will try to recruit a Stepson disaffected enough with his lot. Either of you-a single agent or half a broken pair-could fit that description."
"At the least, we must plumb her body's secrets, Stealth," Janni rumbled to Niko as the two strutted her way, looking virile and predatory.
With a scowl of concern for the Stepson to whom he was bound by ill-considered words, he sought out Torchholder, recalling, as he slid with murmured greetings and apologies through socialites and Hazard-class adepts, Niko's blank and steady eyes: the boy knew his danger, and trusted Tempus, as a Sacred Bander must, to see him through it. No remonstrance or doubt had shown in the fighter called Stealth's open countenance, that Tempus would come here against Askelon's wishes, and risk a Stepson's life. It was war, the boy's calm said, what they both did and what they both knew. Later, perhaps there would be explanations-or not. Tempus knew that Niko, should he survive, would never broach the subject.
"Torchholder, I think you ought to go see to the First Consort's baby," he said as his hand came down heavily on the palace-priest's be-baubled shoulder. Torchholder was already pulling on his beard, his mouth curled with anger, when he turned. Assessing Tempus' demeanor, his face did a dance which ended in a mien of knowing caution. "Ah, yes, I did mean to look in on Seylalha and her babe. Thank you for reminding me, Hell-Hound."
"Stay with her," Tempus whispered sotto voce as Molin sought to brush by him, "or get them both to a safer place-"
"We got your message, this afternoon, Hound," the privy priest hissed, and he was gone.
Tempus was just thinking that it was well Fete Week only came once yearly, when above him, in the pink, tented clouds, winter gloom began to spread; and beside him, a hand closed upon his left arm with a numbingly painful grip: Jihan had arrived.
6
Askelon of Meridian, entelechy of the seventh sphere, lord of dream and shadow, faced his would-be assassin little strengthened. The Hazards of Sanctuary had given what they could of power to him, but mortal strength and mortals' magic could not replace what he had lost. His compassionate eyes had sunken deep under lined and arching brows; his skin was pallid; his cheeks hosted deep hollows like his colossus's where it guarded an unknown sea, so fierce that folk there who had never heard of Sanctuary swore that in those stony caverns demons raised their broods.
It had cost him much to take flesh and make chase. It cost him more to remove Cime to the Mageguild's innermost sanctum before the disturbance broke out above the celebrants on the lawn. But he had done it.
He said to her, "Your intention, free agent, was not clear. Your resolve was not firm. I am neither dead nor alive, because of you. Release me from this torture. I saw in your eyes you did not truly wish my demise, nor the madness that must come upon the world entire from the destruction of the place of salving dreams. You have lived awhile, now, in a world where dreams cannot solve problems, or be used to chart the future, or to heal or renew. What say you? You can change it, bring sanity back among the planes, and love to your aching heart. I will make you lady of Meridian. Our quays will once again rise crystal, streets will glitter gold, and my people will finish the welcoming paean they were singing when you shattered my heart." As he spoke, he pulled from his vestments a kerchief and held it out, unfolded, in his right hand. There on snowy linen glittered the shards of the Heart ofAskelon, the obsidian talisman which her rods had destroyed when he wore it on his wrist.