Strat was out at Ischade's, where he shouldn't be but mostly was at night, just taking off his clothes when the damned door to her front room opened with a wind behind it that nearly doused the fire in her hearth.
Accursed Haught, her trainee, stood there, arch mischief glowing in his eyes. Strat hitched up his linen loinguard and said, "Won't you ever learn to knock?" feeling a bit abashed among Ischade's silks and scarlet throw pillows and trinkets of gem and noble metal-the woman loved bright colors, but never wore them out of doors.
Woman? Had he thought that, said it to himself? She wasn't exactly that, and he'd better remember it. Haught, once slave-bait, looked at Strat and through him as if he didn't exist as he entered and the door closed behind him of its own accord.
"Best remember that you're mortal, Nisi boy. And that respect is due your betters, be you slave or free," Strat warned, looking at his feet where, somewhere in a confusion of cushions, his service dagger lay buried. Best to teach this witch's familiar some manners before he'd have to do worse. -
But behind him he heard a stirring and a soft step as sinuous as any cat's. "Haught, greet Straton civilly," came her voice from behind him and then her hand was on his spine, pouring patience into him where patience had no right to be.
"Damned kid comes and goes like he owns the-"
Haught was abreast of him, then, speaking to the necromant beyond. "You'd want this warning, if you weren't so busy. Want to be ready. Trouble's on the way."
Then something unspeakable happened: Ischade, hushing the Nisi ex-slave, came round Strat and did something to the other man, something that included not quite touching him but circling him, something Strat didn't like because it was intimate and didn't trust because he could tell that information was being exchanged in a way he didn't understand. Abruptly, the creature called Haught turned in a flare of cloak and arrogance and the door opened wide, then shut again behind him, leaving candles flickering huge shadows upon the wall and a chill in the air Strat was expecting Ischade to dispell with a caress.
But she didn't. She said, "Ace, come here. Before the fire. Sit with me."
He did that and she cuddled by his knee in that way she had, so much a woman then that Strat could barely refrain from pulling her onto his lap. She looked up from under the darkness that veiled her and her eyes clamped on his: "What I am, you know. What I do, you understand better than many. What life Janni has with me, his soul has chosen. Someone is going to come here, and if you don't tell him all of that, the result will not sit well with you. Do you understand?"
"Ischade? Someone? A threat to you? I'll protect you, you know-"
"Hush. Don't promise what you'll not deliver. This one is a friend of yours, a brother. Keep him from my doorway or, despite what I'd like to promise you, he'll become a memory. One that will hang between us in the air forever." She reached up toward his face.
He jerked his head back; she lay her head upon his knee. He couldn't tell if she was crying, but he felt as if he would, so sad was she and so helpless did the big Stepson feel.
An hour later, outside her door, stationed like a sentry, he began to wonder if her creature hadn't lied. Then his big bay, tied at her low gate, let out a challenge and some horse answered from the dark.
Sword drawn, he sidled down to calm the beast, wondering what in hell he was supposed to do about something she hadn't explained, when a darkness separated from the midnight chill and a tiny coal, red-hot, seemed to bobble toward him in midair.
Closer it came, until the soft radiance of Ischade's hedges caught its edges and he made out a mounted man smoking something-pulcis, by the smell of it, laced with krrf and rolled in broadleaf.
"Hold and state your business, stranger," Strat called out.
"Strat?" said a soft voice full of distaste and some measure of disbelief. "Ace, if it's really you, tell me something a man would have had to fight on Wizardwall to know."
"Ha! Bashir can't hold his liquor, is what-not even laced with blood and water," Strat responded, then added, "Stealth? Niko, is that you?"
The little coal of red grew brighter as the smoker inhaled and in its flare Strat could see the face of Nikodemos-bearded, but with scars showing like white tracks among the hair, just where those scars should be.
A surge of joy went through the Stepsons' leader. "Is Crit with you? The Riddler-is Tempus come back?" Then he sobered: Niko was the problem Ischade'd sent him out here to deal with. Now her distress, and her cautions, made good sense.
"No, I'm alone," came Niko's voice soft as a winter gust as sounds and the movement of the smoke's coal let Straton know the Sacred Bander was dismounting.
They had a bond that should have been deeper than Straton's with Ischade-that had to be. Straton considered alternatives as Niko tied his Askelonian to the fence on the other side of Ischade's gate from where Strat's bay was tethered, and vaulted over the hedge, then grinned: "Not good form to enter a witch's home through a portal she's chosen. How'd you find out about this? No matter-I'm glad to have your help, Ace. Janni's going to be, too."
So that was it-Janni. All Straton's mixed feelings about Ischade's minions roiled around in him and kept him speechless until he realized that Niko was reaching over the fence to get a bow and bladder of naphtha and rags from his horse's saddle.
"Niko, man, this isn't the time or the place for the talk we've got to have."
Stealth turned and as Strat bore down upon him, the Bandaran fighter said, "Strat, I've got to do this. It's my fault, in a way. I've got to free him."
"No, you don't. From what? For whom? He's fighting a war he still has a stake in-fighting it his way. I've fought beside him. Stealth, things are different here from the way they were upcountry. You can't make any headway without magic on your-"
"Side?" Niko supplied the missing word, his face glowing red from the coal of the smoke between his lips. Then he dropped the smoke and ground it under his heel. "Got a girlfriend, do you, Straton? Crit would beat your ass. Diddling around with magic. Now either help me, as your oath demands, or step aside. Go your way. I owe you too much to make an issue of what's right and wrong between us." Niko's hand went to his belt and Straton stiffened: Niko was an expert with throwing stars and poisoned metal blossoms and every kind of edged weapon Strat knew enough to name. The two were thought to be, by Banders, of nearly equal prowess, though Strat's was fading as he aged, Niko's coming on.
"Whatever I'm doing. Stealth, is worse than what you've done? Don't I remember some fight up at the Festival, one in which you protected the Nisibisi witch from a priestess of Enlil?"
That stopped Niko's hand, about to lever a bolt to ready in his crossbow. "That's not fair, Ace."
"We're not talking fair-we're talking women. Or womanish avatars, or whatever they are. You leave this one alone-she's on our side; she's fought with us, for us ... saved Sync from Roxane, for one thing." Suspicion leaped into Straton's mind, suspicion enough to chase the memory of Janni's tortured shade. "Roxane didn't put you up to this, did she? Did she, Stealth?"
Niko, a flint in one hand, naphtha bladder in the other, paused with the bladder poised above the rags on his arrow's tip. "What difference does that make? What's going on here, anyway? Randal's disappeared and no one's looking for him? You're sleeping with a necromant and no one gives a damn?"