Only a woman sat behind the counter, pulchritudinous and vain, her neck hung with a wealth of baubles, her flesh perfumed. She knew him, and in seconds his nose detected acrid, nervous sweat and the defensive musk a woman can exude.
'Marc's out with the boys in back, sighting-in the high-torque bows. Shall I get him. Lord Marshal? Or may I help you? What's here's yours, my lord, on trial or as our gift -' Her arm spread wide, bangles tinkling, indicating the racked weapons.
'I'll take a look out back. Madam; don't disturb yourself.'
She settled back, not calm, but bidden to remain and obedient.
In the ochre-walled yard ten men were gathered behind the log fence that marked the range; a hundred yards away three oxhides had been fastened to the encircling wall, targets painted red upon them; between the hides, three cuirasses of four-ply hardened leather armoured with bronze plates were propped and filled with straw.
The smith was down on his knees, a crossbow fixed in a vice with its owner hovering close by. The smith hammered the sights twice more, put down his file, grunted and said, 'You try it, Straton; it should shoot true. I got a hand breadth group with it this morning; it's your eye I've got to match...'
The large-headed, raw-boned smith, sporting a beard which evened a rough complexion, rose with exaggerated effort and turned to another customer, just stepping up to the firing line. 'No, Stealth, not like that, or, if you must, I'll change the tension -' Marc moved in, telling Niko to throw the bow up to his shoulder and fire from there, then saw Tempus and left the group, hands spreading on his apron.
Bolts spat and thunked from five shooters when the morning's range officer hollered 'Clear' and 'Fire', then 'Hold', so that all could go to the wall to check their aim and the depths to which the shafts had sunk.
Shaking his head, the smith confided: 'Straton's got a problem I can't solve. I've had it truly sighted - perfect for me - three times, but when he shoots, it's as if he's aiming two feet low.'
'For the bow, the name is life, but the work is death. In combat it will shoot true for him; here, he's worried how they judge his prowess. He's not thinking enough of his weapon, too much of his friends.'
The smith's keen eyes shifted; he rubbed his smile with a greasy hand. 'Aye, and that's the truth. And for you. Lord Tempus? We've the new hard-steel, though why they're all so hot to pay twice the price when men're soft as clay and even wood will pierce the boldest belly, I can't say.'
'No steel, just a case of iron-tipped short-flights, when you can.'
'I'll select them myself. Come and watch them, now? We'll see what their nerve's like, if you call score ...'
'A moment or two. Marc. Go back to your work, I'll sniff around on my own.'
And so he approached Niko, on pretence of admiring the Stepson's new bow, and saw the shadowed eyes, blank as ever but veiled like the beginning beard that masked his jaw: 'How goes it, Niko? Has your maat returned to you?'
'Not likely,' the young fighter, cranking the spring and lever so a bolt notched, said and triggered the quarrel which whispered straight and true to centre his target. 'Did Crit send you? I'm fine, commander. He worries too much. We can handle her, no matter how it seems. It's just time we need ... she's suspicious, wants us to prove our faith. Shall I, by whatever means?'
'Another week on this is all I can give you. Use discretion, your judgment's fine with me. What you think she's worth, she's worth. If Critias questions that, your orders came from me and you may tell him so.'
'I will, and with pleasure. I'm not his to wetnurse; he can't keep that in his head.'
'And Janni?'
'It's hard on him, pretending to be ... what we're pretending to be. The men talk to him about coming back out to the barracks, about forgetting what's past and resuming his duties. But we'll weather it. He's man enough.'
Niko's hazel eyes flicked back and forth, judging the other men: who watched; who pretended he did not, but listened hard. He loosed another bolt, a third, and said quietly that he had to collect his flights. Tempus eased away, heard the range officer call 'Clear' and watched Niko go retrieve his grouped quarrels.
If this one could not breach the witch's defences, then she was unbreachable.
Content, he left then, and found Jihan, his de facto right-side partner, waiting astride his other Tros horse, her more than human strength and beauty brightening Smith Street's ramshackle facade as if real gold lay beside fool's gold in a dusty pan.
Though one of the matters estranging him from his Stepsons was his pairing with this foreign 'woman', only Niko knew her to be the daughter of a power who spawned all contentious gods and even the concept of divinity; he felt the cool her flesh gave off, cutting the midday heat like wind from a snowcapped peak.
'Life to you, Tempus.' Her voice was thick as ale, and he realized he was thirsty. Promise Park and the Alekeep, an east-side establishment considered upper class by those who could tell classes of Ilsigs, were right around the corner, a block up the Street of Gold from where they met. He proposed to take her there for lunch. She was delighted - all things mortal were new to her; the whole business of being in flesh and attending to it was yet novel. A novice at life, Jihan was hungry for the whole of it.
For him, she served a special purpose: her loveplay was rough and her constitution hardier than his Tros horses - he could not couple gently; with her, he did not inflict permanent harm on his partner; she was bom of violence inchoate and savoured what would kill or cripple mortals.
At the Alekeep, they were welcome. They talked in a back and private room of the god's absence and what could be made of it and the owner served them himself, an avuncular sort still grateful that Tempus's men had kept his daughters safe when wizard weather roamed the streets. 'My girl's graduating school today. Lord Marshal - my youngest. We've a fete set and you and your companion would be most welcome guests.'
Jihan touched his arm as he began to decline, her stormy eyes flecked red and glowing.
'... ah, perhaps we will drop by, then, if business permits.'
But they didn't, having found pressing matters of lust to attend to, and all things that happened then might have been avoided if they hadn't been out of touch with the Stepsons, unreachable down by the creek that ran north of the barracks when sorcery met machination and all things went awry.
On their way to work, Niko and Janni stopped at the Vulgar Unicorn to wait for the moon to rise. The moon would be full this evening, a blessing since anonymous death squads roamed the town -whether they were Rankan army regulars, Jubal's scattered hawk-masks, fish-eyed Beysib spoilers, or Nisibisi assassins, none could say.
The one thing that could be said of them for certain was that they weren't Stepsons or Sacred Banders or nonaligned mercenaries from the guild hostel. But there was no convincing the terrorized populace of that.
And Niko and Janni - under the guise of disaffected mercenaries who had quit the Stepsons, been thrown out of the guild hostel for unspeakable acts, and were currently degenerating Sanctuary-style in the filthy streets of the town thought that they were close to identifying the death squads' leader. Hopefully, this evening or the next, they would be asked to join the murderers in their squalid sport. '