On every corner, now, a mounted pair stood watch; beyond, the roads were desolate, unguarded. Crit worried that if diversion was some culprit's purpose, it had worked all too welclass="underline" an army headed south would be upon them with no warning. If he'd not known that yesterday there'd been no sign of southward troop movement, he confided to Straton, he'd be sure some such evil was afoot.
To make things worse, when they found an open bar it was the Alekeep, and its owner was wringing his hands in a corner with five other upscale fathers. Their sons and daughters had been out all night; word to Tempus at the Stepsons' barracks had brought no answer; the skeleton crew at the garrison had more urgent things to do than attend to demands for search parties when manpower was suddenly at a premium; the fathers sat awaiting their own men's return and thus had kept the Alekeep's graveyard shift from closing.
They got out of there as soon as politic, weary as their horses and squinting in the lightening dark.
The only place where peace and quiet could be had now that the town was waking, Crit said sourly, was the Shambles drop. They rode there and fastened the iron shutters down against the dawn, thinking to get an hour or so of sleep, and found Niko's coded note.
'Why wouldn't the old barkeep have told us that he'd set them on his daughter's trail?' Strat sighed, rubbing his eyes with his palms.
'Niko's legend says he's defected to the slums, remember?' Crit was shrugging into his chiton, which he'd just tugged off and thrown upon the floor.
'We're not going back out.'
'I am.'
'To look for Niko'! Where?
'Niko and Janni. And I don't know where. But if that pair hasn't turned up those youngsters yet, it's no simple adolescent prank or graduation romp. Let's hope it's just that their meet with Roxane took precedence and it's inopportune for them to leave her.' Crit stood.
Straton didn't.
'Coming?' Crit asked.
'Somebody should be where authority is expected to be found. You should be here or at the hostel, not chasing after someone who might be chasing after you.'
So in the end, Straton won that battle and they went up to the hostel, stopping, since the sun had risen, at Marc's to pick up Straton's case of flights along the way.
The shop's door was ajar, though the opening hour painted on it hadn't come yet. Inside, the smith was hunched over a mug of tea, a crossbow's trigger mechanism dismantled before him on a split of suede, scowling at the crossbow's guts spread upon his counter as if at a recalcitrant child.
He looked up when they entered, wished them a better morning than he'd had so far this day, and went to get Straton's case of nights.
Behind the counter an assortment of high-torque bows was hung.
When Marc returned with the wooden case, Straton pointed: 'That's Niko's isn't it - or are my eyes that bad?'
'I'm holding it for him, until he pays,' explained the smith with the unflinching gaze.
'We'll pay for it now and he can pick it up from me,' Crit said.
'I don't know if he'd ...' Marc, half into someone else's business, stepped back out of it with a nod of head: 'All right, then, if you want. I'll tell him you've got it. That's four soldats, three ... I've done a lot of work on it for him. Shall I tell him to seek you at the guild hostel?'
'Thereabouts.'
Taking it down from the wall, the smith wound and levered, then dry-fired the crossbow, its mechanism to his ear. A smile came over his face at what he heard. 'Good enough, then,' he declared and wrapped it in its case of padded hide.
This way, Straton realized, Niko would come direct to Crit and report when Marc told him what they'd done.
By the time dawn had cracked the world's egg, Tempus as well as Jihan was sated, even tired. For a man who chased sleep like other men chased power or women, it was wondrous that this was so. For a being only recently become woman, it was a triumph. They walked back towards the Stepsons' barracks, following the creekbed, all pink and gold in sunrise, content and even playful, his chuckle and her occasional laugh startling sleepy squirrels and flushing birds from their nests. .
He'd been morose, but she'd cured it, convincing him that life might take a better turn, if he'd just let it. They'd spoken of her father, called Stormbringer in lieu of name, and arcane matters of their joint preoccupation: whether humanity had inherent value, whether gods could die or merely lie, whether Vashanka was hiding out somewhere, petulant in godhead, only waiting for generous sacrificers and heartfelt prayers to coax him back among his Rankan people - or, twelfth plane powers forfend, really 'dead'.
He'd spoken openly to her of his affliction, reminding her that those who loved him died by violence and those he loved were bound to spurn him, and what that could mean in the case of his Stepsons, and herself, if Vashanka's power did not return to mitigate his curse. He'd told her of his plea to Enlil, an ancient deity of universal scope, and that he awaited godsign.
She'd been relieved at that, afraid, she admitted, that the lord of dreams might tempt him from her side. For when Askelon the dream lord had come to take Tempus's sister off to his metaphysical kingdom of delights, he'd offered the brother the boon of mortality. Now that she'd just found him, Jihan had added throatily, she could not bear it if he chose to die.
And she'd spent that evening proving to Tempus that it might be well to stay alive with her, who loved life the more for having only just begun it, and yet could not succumb to mortal death or be placed in mortal danger by his curse, his strength, or whatever he might do.
The high moon had laved them and her legs had embraced him and her red-glowing eyes like her father's had transfixed him while her cool flesh enflamed him. Yes, with Jihan beside him, he'd swallow his pride and his pique and give even Sanctuary's Kadaki-this the benefit of the doubt - he'd stay though his heart tugged him northward, although he'd thought, when he took her to their creekbed bower, to chase her away.
When they'd slipped into his barracks quarters from the back, he was no longer so certain. He heard from a lieutenant all about the waterspouts and whirlpools, thinking while the man talked that this was his godsign, however obscure its meaning, and then he regretted having made an accommodation with the Froth Daughter: all his angst came back upon him, and he wished he'd hugged his resolve firmly to his breast and driven Jihan hence.
But when the disturbance at the outer gates penetrated to the slaver's old apartments which he had made his own, rousting them out to seek its cause, he was glad enough she'd remained.
The two of them had to shoulder their way through the gathered crowd of Stepsons, astir with bitter mutters; no one made way for them; none had come to their commander's billet with news of what had been brought up to the gatehouse in the dawn.
He heard a harsh whisper from a Stepson too angry to be careful, wondering if Tempus had sent Janni's team deliberately to destruction because Stealth had rejected the Riddler's offered pairbond.
One who knew better answered sagely that this was a Mygdonian message, a Nisibisi warning of some antiquity, and he had heard it straight from Stealth's broken lips.
'What did that?' Jihan moaned, bending low over Janni's remains. Tempus did not answer her but said generally: 'And Niko?' and followed a man who headed off towards the whitewashed barracks, hearing as he went a voice choked with grief explaining to Jihan what happens when you tie a man spreadeagled over an animal's burrow and smoke the creature out.