Wisdom is to know the thought which steers all things through all things, a friend of his who was a philosopher had once said to him. The thought that was steering all things through Sanctuary was muddled, unclear.
That was the hitch, the catch, the problem with employing the supernatural in a natural milieu. Things got confused. With so many spells at work, the fabric of causality was overly strained. Add the gods, and Evil and Good faced each other across a board game whose extent was the phenomenal world. He wished the gods would stay in their heavens and the sorcerers in their hells.
Oh, he had heard endless persiflage about simultaneity; iteration - the constant redefining of the now by checking it against the future-; alchemical laws of consonance. When he had been a student of philosophy and Cime had been a maiden, he had learned the axiom that Mind is unlimited and self-controlled, but all other things are connected; that nothing is completely separated off from any other thing, nor are things divided one from the other, except Mind.
The sorcerers put it another way: they called the consciousness of all things into service, according to the laws of magic.
Not philosophy, nor theology, nor thaumaturgy held the answer for Tempus; he had turned away from them, each and all. But he could not forget what he had learned.
And none of the adepts like to admit that no servitor can be hired without wages. The wages of unnatural life are unnatural death.
He wished he could wake up in Azehur, with his family, and know that he had dreamed this impious dream.
But instead he came to Amoli's whorehouse, the Lily Garden. Almost, but not quite, he rode the horse up its stairs. Resisting the temptation, he reflected that in every age he had ever studied, doom-criers abounded. No millenium is attractive to the man immured in it; enough prophecies have been made in antiquity that one who desires, in any age, to take the position that Apocalypse is at hand can easily defend it. He would not join that dour Order; he would not worry about anything but Tempus, and the matter awaiting his attention.
Inside Amoli's, Hanse the thief sat in full swagger, a pubescent girl on each knee.
'Ah,' he waved. 'I have something for you.' Shadowspawn tumbled both girls off of him, and stood, stretching widely, so that every arm-dagger and belted sticker and thigh-sheath creaked softly. The girls at his feet stayed there, staring up at Tempus wide-eyed. One whimpered to Shadowspawn and clutched his thigh.
'Room key,' Tempus snapped to no one in particular, and held out his hand. The concierge, not Amoli, brought it to him.
'Hanse?'
'Coming.' He extended a hand to one girl.
'Alone.'
'You are not my type,' said the thief, suspicious.
'I need just a moment of your evening. You can do what you wish with the rest.'
Tempus looked at the key, headed off towards a staircase leading to the room which bore a corresponding number.
He heard the soft tread of Shadowspawn close behind.
When the exchange had been made, the thief departed, satisfied with both his payment and his gratuity, but not quite sure that Tempus appreciated the trouble to which he had put himself, or that he had got the best of the bargain they had made.
He saw the woman he had robbed before she saw him, and ended up in a different girl's room than the one he had chosen, in order to avoid a scene. When he had heard her steps pass by, stop before the door behind which the big Hell Hound waited, he made preclusive threats to the woman whose mouth he had stopped with the flat of his hand, and slipped downstairs to spend his money somewhere else, discreetly.
If he had stayed, he might have found out what the diamond rods were really worth; he might have found out what the sour-eyed mercenary with his high brow, suddenly so deeply creased, and his lightly carried mass, which seemed tonight too heavy, was worried about. Or perhaps he could have fathomed Tempus's enigmatic parting words: 'I would help you if I could, backstreeter,' Tempus had rumbled.
'If I had met you long ago, or if you liked horses, there would be a chance. You have done me a great service. More than that pouch holds. I am seldom in any man's debt, but you, I own, can call me anytime.'
'You paid me. Hell Hound. I am content,' Hanse had demurred, confused by weakness where he had never imagined it might dwell. Then he saw the Hell Hound fish out a snuffbox of krrf, and thought he understood.
But later, he went back to Amoli's and hung around the steps, cautiously petting the big man's horse, the krrf he had sniffed making him willing to dodge the beast's square, yellow teeth.
4
She had come to him, had Cime. She was what she was, what she had always been.
It was Tempus who was changed: Vashanka had entered into him, the Storm God who was Lord of Weapons who was Lord of Rape who was Lord of War who was Lord of Death's Gate.
He could not take her, gently. So spoke not his physical impotence, as he might have expected, but the cold wash of wisdom: he would not despoil her; Vashanka would accept no less.
She knocked and entered and said, 'Let me see them,' so sure he would have the stolen diamonds that her fingers were already busy on the lacings of her Ilsig leathers.
He held up a hide-wrapped bundle, slimmer than her wrist, shorter than her forearm. 'Here. How were they thieved?'
'Your voice is hoarser than I have ever heard it,' she replied, and: 'I needed money; there was this man ... actually, there were a few, but there was a tough, a streetbrawler. I should have known - he is half my apparent age. What would such as he want with a middle-aged whore? And he agreed to pay the price I asked, without quibbling. Then he robbed me.' She looked around, her eyes, as he remembered them, clear windows to her thoughts. She was appalled.
'The low estate into which I have sunk?'
She knew what he meant. Her nostrils shivered, taking in the musty reek of the soiled bedding on which he sprawled fully clothed, smelling easily as foul. 'The devolution of us both. That I would be here, under these circumstances, is surely as pathetic as you.'
'Thanks. I needed that. Don't.'
'I thought you wanted me.' She ceased unlacing, looked at him, her tunic open to her waist.
'I did. I don't. Have some krrf.' On his hips rode her scarf; if she saw it, then she would comprehend his degradation too fully. So he had not removed it, hoping its presence would remind him, if he weakened and his thoughts drowned in lust, that this woman he must not violate.
She sat on the quilt, one doe-gloved leg tucked under her.
'You jest,' she breathed, then, eyes narrowed, took the krrf.
'It will be ill with you, afterwards, should I touch you.'
Her fingers ran along the flap of hide wrapped over her wands. 'I am receiving payment.' She tapped the package. 'And I may not owe debts.'
'The boy who pilfered these, did it at my behest.'
'Must you pander for me?'
He winced. 'Why do you not go home?' She smelled of salt and honey and he thought desperately that she was here only because he forced the issue: to pay her debt.
She leaned forwards, touched his lips with a finger. 'For the same reason that you do not. Home is changed, gone to time.'
'Do you know that?' He jerked his head-away, cracking it against the bed's wooden headboard.
'I believe it.'
'I cannot believe anything, any more. I surely cannot believe that your hand is saying what it seems to be saying.'