The Stepson, guiding him to where Niko lay, said that the man who'd brought them wished to speak to Tempus. 'Let him wait for his reward,' Tempus snapped, and questioned the mercenary about the Samaritan who'd delivered the two Stepsons home. But the Sacred Bander had gotten nothing from the stranger who'd rapped upon the gates and braved the angry sentries who almost killed him when they saw what burden he'd brought in. The stranger would say only that he must wait for Tempus.
The Stepson's commander stood around helplessly with three others, friends ofNiko's, until the barber-surgeon had finished with needle and gut, then chased them all away, shuttering windows, barring doors. Cup in hand, then, he gave the battered, beaten youth his painkilling draught in silence, only sitting and letting Niko sip while he assessed the Stepson's injuries and made black guesses as to how the boy had come by green and purple blood-filled bruises, rope burns at wrist and neck, and a face like doom.
Quite soon he heard from Nikodemos, concisely but through a slur that comes when teeth have been loosed or broken in a dislocated jaw, what had transpired: they had gone seeking the Alekeep owner's daughter, deep into Shambles where drug dens and cheap whores promise dreamless nights, found them at Ischade's, seen them hustled into a wagon and driven away towards Roxane's. Following, for they were due to see the witch at high moon in her lair in any case, they'd been accosted, surprised by a death squad •armed with magic and visaged like the dead, roped and dragged from their horses. The next lucid interval Niko recalled was one of being propped against dense trees, tied to one while the Nisibisi witch used children's plights and spells and finally Janni's tortured, drawn-out death to extract from him what little he knew of Tempus's intentions and Rankan strategies of defence for the lower land. 'Was I wrong to try not to tell them?' Niko asked, eyes swollen half-shut but filled with hurt. 'I thought they'd kill us all, whatever. Then I thought I could hold out... Tamzen and the other girls were past help... but Janni -' He shook his head. 'Then they... thought I was lying, when I couldn't answer ... questions they should have asked of you - Then I did lie, to please them, but she ... the witch knew...'
'Never mind. Was One-Thumb a party to this?'
A twitch of lips meant 'no' or 'I don't know'.
Then Niko found the strength to add: 'If I hadn't tried to keep my silence I've been interrogated before by Nisibisi ... I hid in my rest-place ... until Janni - They killed him to get to me.'
Tempus saw bright tears threatening to spill and changed the subject: 'Your rest-place? So your maat returned to you?'
He whispered, 'After a fashion ... I don't care about that now. Going to need all my anger ... no time for balance anymore.'
Tempus blew out a breath and set down Niko's cup and looked between his legs at the packed clay floor. 'I'm going north, tomorrow. I'll leave sortie assignments and schedules with Critias - he'll be in command here - and a rendezvous for those who want to join in the settling up. Did you recognize any Ilsigs in her company? A servant, a menial, anyone at all?'
'No, they all look alike... Someone found us, got us to the gates. Some trainees of ours, maybe - they knew my name. The witch said come ahead and die up country. Each reprisal of ours, they'll match fourfold.'
'Are you telling me not to go?'
Niko struggled to sit up, cursed, fell back with blood oozing from between his teeth. Tempus made no move to help him. They stared at each other until Niko said, 'It will seem that you've been driven from Sanctuary, that you've failed here ...'
'Let it seem so; it may well be true.'
'Wait, then, until I can accompany -'
'You know better. I will leave instructions for you.' He got up and left quickly, before his temper got the best of him where the boy could see.
The Samaritan who had brought their wounded and their dead was waiting outside Tempus's quarters. His name was Vis and though he looked Nisibisi he claimed he had a message from Jubal. Because of his skin and his accent Tempus almost took him prisoner, thinking to give him to Straton, for whom all manner of men bared their souls, but he marshalled his anger and sent the young man away with a pocket full of soldats and instructions to convey Jubal's message to Critias. Crit would be in charge of the Stepsons henceforth; what Jubal and Crit might arrange was up to them. The reward was for bringing home the casualties, dead and living, a favour cheap at the price.
Then Tempus went to find Jihan. When he did, he asked her to put him in touch with Askelon, dream lord, if she could.
'So that you can punish yourself with mortality? This is not your fault.'
'A kind, if unsound, opinion. Mortality will break the curse. Can you help me?'
'I will not, not now, when you are like this,' she replied, concern knitting her brows in the harsh morning light. 'But I will accompany you north. Perhaps another day, when you are calmer ...'
He cursed her for acting like a woman and set about scheduling sorties and sketching maps, so that each of his men would have worked out his debt to Kadakithis and be in good standing with the mercenaries' guild when and if they joined him in Tyse, at the very foot ofWizardwall.
It took no longer to draft his resignation and Critias's appointment in his stead and send them off to Kadakithis than it took to clear his actions with the Rankan representatives of the mercenaries' guild: his task here (assessing Kadakithis for a Rankan faction desirous of a change in emperors) was accomplished; he could honestly say that neither town nor townspeople nor effete prince was worth struggling to ennoble. For good measure he was willing to throw into the stewpot of disgust boiling in him both Vashanka and the child he had co-fathered with the god, by means of whom certain interests thought to hold him here: he disliked children, as a class, and even Vashanka had turned his back on this one.
Still, there were things he had to do. He went and found Crit in the guild hostel's common room and told him all that had transpired. If Crit had refused the appointment outright, Tempus would have had to tarry, but Critias only smiled cynically, saying that he'd be along with his best fighters as soon as matters here allowed. He left One-Thumb's case in Critias's hands; they both knew that Straton could determine the degree of the barkeep's complicity quickly enough.
Crit asked, as Tempus was leaving the dark and comforting common room for the last time, whether any children's bodies had been found - three girls and boys still were missing; one young corpse had turned up cold in Shambles Cross.
'No,' Tempus said, and thought no more about it. 'Life to you. Critias.'
'And to you, Riddler. And everlasting glory.'
Outside, Jihan was waiting on one Tros horse, the other's reins in her hand.
They went first southwest to see if perhaps the witch or her agents might be found at home, but the manor house and its surrounds were deserted, the yard criss-crossed with cart-tracks from heavily laden wagons' wheels.
The caravan's track was easy to follow.
Riding north without a backward glance on his Tros horse, Jihan swaying in her saddle on his right, he had one last impulse: he ripped the problematical Storm God's amulet from around his throat, dropped it into a quaggy marsh. Where he was going, Vashanka's name was meaningless. Other names were hallowed, and other attributes given to the weather gods.
When he was sure he had successfully cast it aside, and the god's voice had not come ringing with awful laughter in his ear (for all gods are tricksters, and war gods worst of any), he relaxed in his saddle. The omens for this venture were good: they'd completed their preparations in half the time he'd anticipated, so that he could start it while the day was young.