Still, when she asked him questions he only stared back at her in silence: Tempus's plans and state of mind were things he knew little of; he couldn't have stopped this if he'd wanted to; he didn't know enough. But when at length, knowing it, he closed his eyes again, she came up close and pried them open, impaling his lids with wooden splinters so that he would see what made Janni cry.
They had staked the Stepson over a wild creature's burrow - a badger, he later saw, when it had gnawed and clawed its way to freedom - and were smoking the rodent out by setting fire to its tunnel. When Janni's stomach began to show the outline of the animal within, Niko, capitulating, told all he knew and made up more besides.
By then the girls had long since been silenced.
All he heard was the witch's voice; all he remembered was the horror of her eyes and the message she bade him give to Tempus, and when he had repeated it, she pulled the splinters from his lids ... The darkness she allowed him became complete, and he found a danker rest-place than meditation's quiet cave.
In Roxane's 'manor house' commotion raged; slaves went running and men cried orders, and in the court the caravan was being readied to make away.
She herself sat petulant and wroth, among the brocades of her study and the implements other craft: water and fire and earth and air, and minerals and plants, and a globe sculpted from high peaks clay with precious stones inset.
A wave of hand would serve to load these in her wagon. The house spells' undoing would take much less than that - a finger's wave, a word unsaid, and all would be no more than it appeared: rickety and threadbare. But the evening's errors and all the work she'd done to amend them had drained her strength.
She sat, and Niko, in a corner, propped up but not awake, breathed raspingly: another error - those damn snakes took everything too literally, as well as being incapable of following simple orders to their completion.
The snakes she'd sent out, charmed to look like Stepsons, should have found the children in the streets; as Niko and Janni, their disguises were complete. But a vampire bitch, a cursed and accursed third-rater possessed of meagre spells, had chanced upon the quarry and taken it home. Then she'd had to change all plans and make the wagon and send the snakes to retrieve the bait - the girls alone, the boys were expendable - and snakes were not up to fooling women grown and knowledgeable of spells. Ischade had given up her female prizes, rather than confront Nisibisi magic, pretending for her own sake that she believed the 'Stepsons' who came to claim Tamzen and her friends.
Had Roxane not been leaving town this evening, she'd have had to wipe the vampire's soul - or at least her memory - away.
So she took the snakes out once more from their baskets and held their heads up to her face. Tongues darted out and reptilian eyes pled mercy, but Roxane had forgotten mercy long ago. And strength was what she needed, which in part these had helped to drain away. Holding them high she picked herself up and, speaking words of power, took them both and cast them in the blazing hearth. The flames roared up and snakes writhed in agony and roasted. When they were done she fetched them out with silver tongs and ate their tails and heads.
Thus fortified, she turned to Niko, still hiding mind and soul in his precious mental refuge, a version of it she'd altered when her magic saw it. This place of peace and perfect relaxation, a cave behind the meadow of his mind, had a ghost in it, a friend who loved him. In its guise she'd spoken long to him and gained his spirit's trust. He was hers, now, as her lover-lord had promised; all things he learned she'd know as soon as he. None of it he'd remember, just go about his business of war and death. Through him she'd herd Tempus whither she willed and through him she'd know the Riddler's every plan.
For Nikodemos, the Nisibisi bondservant, had never shed his brand or slipped his chains: though her lover had freed his body, deep within his soul a string was tied. Any time, her lord could pull it; and she, too, now, had it twined around her pinky.
He remembered none of what occurred after his interrogation in the grove; he recalled just what she pleased and nothing more. Oh, he'd think he'd dreamed delirious nightmares, as he sweated now to feel her touch.
She woke him with a tap upon his eyes and told him what he was: her pawn, her tool, even that he would not recall their little talk or coming here. And she warned him of undeads, and shrivelled his soul when she showed him, in her mirror-eyes, what Tamzen and her friends could be, should he even remember what passed between them here.
Then she put her pleasure by and touched the bruised and battered face: one more thing she took from him, to show his spirit who was slave and who was master. She had him service her and took strength from his swollen mouth and then, with a laugh, made him forget it all.
Then she sent her servant forth, unwitting, the extra satisfaction - gleaned from knowing that his spirit knew, and deep within him cried and struggled giving the whole endeavour spice.
Jagat's men would see him to the road out near the Stepsons' barracks; they took his sagging weight in brawny arms.
And Roxane, for a time, was free to quit this scrofulous town and wend her way northward: she might be back, but for the nonce the journey to her lord's embrace was all she craved. They'd leave a trail well marked in place and plane for Tempus; she'd lie in high-peak splendour, with her lover-lord well pleased by what she'd brought him: some Stepsons, and a Froth Daughter, and a man the gods immortalized.
It took until nearly dawn to calm the fish-faces who'd lost their five best ships; 'lucky' for everyone that the Burek faction's nobility had been enjoying Kadakithis's hospitality, ensconced in the summer palace on the lighthouse spit and not aboard when the ships snapped anchor and headed like creatures with wills of their own towards the maelstrom that had opened at the harbour's mouth. Crit, through all, was taciturn; he was not supposed to surface; Tempus, when found, would not be pleased. But Kadakithis needed counsel badly; the young prince would give away his imperial curls . for 'harmonious relations with our fellows from across the sea'.
Nobody could prove that this was other than a natural disaster; an 'act of gods' was the unfortunate turn of phrase.
When at last Crit and Strat had done with the dicey process of standing around looking inconsequential while in fact, by handsign and courier, they mitigated Kadakithis's bent to compromise (for which there was no need except in the Beysib matriarch's mind), they retired from the dockside.
Crit wanted to get drunk, as drunk as humanly possible: helping the Mageguild defend its innocence, when like as not some mage or other had called the storm, was more than distasteful; it was counterproductive. As far as Critias was concerned, the newly elected First Hazard ought to step forward and take responsibility for his guild's malevolent mischief. When frogs fell from the sky, Straton prognosticated, such would be the case.
They'd done some good there: they'd conscripted Wrigglies and deputized fishermen and bullied the garrison duty officer into sending some of his men out with the long boats and Beysib dinghies and slave-powered tenders which searched shoals and coastline for survivors. But with the confusion of healers and thrill-seeking civilians and boat owners and Beysibs on the docks, they'd had to call in all the Stepsons and troops from road patrols and country posts in case the Beysibs took their loss too much to heart and turned upon the townsfolk. .