Not that murder was uncommon in Sanctuary, or squalor. The Maze, now that Niko knew it like his horses' needs or Janni's limits, was not the town's true nadir, only the multi-tiered slum's upper echelon. Worse than the Maze was Shambles Cross, filled with the weak and the meek; worse than the Shambles was Downwind, where nothing moved in the light of day and at night hellish sounds rode the stench on the prevailing east wind across the White Foal. A tri-level hell, then, filled with murderers, sold souls and succubi, began here in the Maze.
If the death squads had confined themselves to Maze, Shambles, and Downwind, no one would have known about them. Bodies in those streets were nothing new; neither Stepsons nor Rankan soldiers bothered counting them; near the slaughterhouses cheap crematoriums flourished; for those too poor even for that, there was the White Foal, taking ambiguous dross to the sea without complaint. But the squads ventured uptown, to the east side and the centre of Sanctuary itself where the palace hierophants and the merchants lived and looked away from downtown, scented pomanders to their noses.
The Unicorn crowd no longer turned quiet when Niko and Janni entered; their scruffy faces and shabby gear and bleary eyes proclaimed them no threat to the mendicants or the whores. Competition, they were now considered, and it had been hard to float the legend, harder to live it. Or to live it down, since none of the Stepsons but their task force leader, Crit (who himself had never moved among the barracks ranks, proud and shining with oil and fine weapons and finer ideals) knew that they had not quit but only worked shrouded in subterfuge on Tempus's orders to flush the Nisibisi witch.
But the emergence of the death squads had raised the pitch, the ante, given the matter a new urgency. Some said it was because Shadowspawn, the thief, was right: the god Vashanka had died and the Rankans would suffer their due. Their due or not, traders, politicians, and moneylenders - the 'oppressors' - were nightly dragged out into the streets, whole families slaughtered or burned alive in their houses, or hacked to pieces in their festooned wagons.
The agents ordered draughts from One-Thumb's new girl and she came back, cowering but determined, saying that One-Thumb must see their money first. They had started this venture with the barman's help; he knew their provenance; they knew his secret.
'Let's kill the swillmonger. Stealth,' Janni growled. They had little cash - a few soldats and some Machadi coppers - and couldn't draw their pay until their work was done.
'Steady, Janni. I'll talk to him. Girl, fetch two Rankan ales or you won't be able to close your legs for a week.'
He pushed back his bench and strode to the bar, aware that he was only half joking, that Sanctuary was rubbing him raw. Was the god dead? Was Tempus in thrall to the Froth Daughter who kept his company? Was Sanctuary the honeypot of chaos? A hell from which no man emerged? He pushed a threesome of young puds aside and whistled piercingly when he reached the bar. The big bartender looked around elaborately, raised a scar-crossed eyebrow, and ignored him. Stealth counted to ten and then methodically began emptying other patrons' drinks on to the counter. Men were few here; approximations cursed him and backed away; one went for a beltknife but Stealth had a dirk in hand that gave him pause. Niko's gear was dirty, but better than any of these had. And he was ready to clean his soiled blade in any one of them. They sensed it; his peripheral perception read their moods, though he couldn't read their minds. Where his maat - his balance once had been was a cold, sick anger. In Sanctuary he had learned despair and futility, and these had introduced him to fury. Options he once had considered last resorts, off the battlefield, came easily to mind now. Son of the armies, he was learning a different kind of war in Sanctuary, and learning to love the havoc his own right arm could wreak. It was not a substitute for the equilibrium he'd lost when his left-side leader died down by the docks, but if his partner needed souls to buy a better place in heaven, Niko would gladly send him double his comfort's price.
The ploy brought One-Thumb down to stop him. 'Stealth, I've had enough of you.' One-Thumb's mouth was swollen, his upper lip crusted with sores, but his ponderous bulk loomed large; from the corner of his eye Niko could see the Unicorn's bouncer leave his post and Janni intercept him.
Niko reached out and grabbed One-Thumb by the throat, even as the man's paw reached under the bar, where a weapon might lie. He pulled him close: 'What you've had isn't even a shadow of what you're going to get, Turn-Turn, if you don't mind your tongue. Turn back into the well-mannered little troll we both know and love, or you won't have a bar to hide behind by morning.' Then, sotto voce: 'What's up?'
'She wants you,' the barkeep gasped, his face purpling, 'to go to her place by the White Foal at high moon. If it's convenient, of course, my lord.'
Niko let him go before his eyes popped out of his head. 'You'll put this on our tab?'
'Just this one more time, beggar boy. Your Whoreson bugger-buddies won't lift a leg to help you; your threats are as empty as your purse.'
'Care to bet on it?'
They carried on a bit more, for the crowd's benefit, Janni and the bouncer engaged in a staring match the while. 'Call your cur off, then, and we'll forget about this - this once.' Niko turned, neck aprickle, and headed back towards his seat, hoping that it wouldn't go any further. Not one of the four - bouncer, bar owner. Stepsons - was entirely playing to the crowd.
When he'd reached his door-facing table, Lastel/One-Thumb called his bruiser off and Janni backed towards Niko, white-faced and trembling with eagerness: 'Let me geld one of them. Stealth. It'll do our reputations no end of good.'
'Save it for the witch-bitch.'
Janni brightened, straddling his seat, both arms on the table, digging fiercely with his dirk into the wood: 'You've got a rendezvous?'
'Tonight, high moon. Don't drink too much.'
It wasn't the drink that skewed them, but the krrf they snorted, little piles poured into clenched fists where thumb muscles made a well. Still, the drug would keep them alert: it was a long time until high moon, and they had to patrol for marauders while seeming to be marauding themselves. It was almost more than Niko could bear. He'd infiltrated a score of camps, lines and palaces on reconnaissance sorties with his deceased partner, but those were cleaner, quicker actions than this protracted infiltration of Sanctuary, bunghole of the known world. If this evening made an end to it and he could wash and shave and stable his horses better, he'd make a sacrifice to Enlil which the god would not soon forget.
An hour later, mounted, they set off on their tour of the Maze, Niko thinking that not since the affair with the archmage Askelon and Tempus's sister Cime had his gut rolled up into a ball with this feeling of unmitigated dread. The Nisibisi witch might know him - she might have known him all along. He'd been interrogated by Nisibisi before, and he would fall upon his sword rather than endure it again now, when his dead teammate's ghost still haunted his mental refuge and meditation could not offer him shelter as it once had.
A boy came running up calling his name and his jug-head black tossed its rust nose high and snorted, ears back, waiting for a command to kill or maim.
'By Vashanka's sulphurous balls, what now?' Janni wondered.