Songs of the Dancing Gods (20 page)

“You’re sure they actually exist?” Marge asked him.

“Now I am. It was hard-won information, I assure you. I actually had to free a demon who was bound to me indefinitely to get it.”

Joe frowned. “Then that means Sugasto’s probably been tipped that you know. Oh, boy!”

“We have to assume it. At least, a few days ago the word started going out to find and capture you and Tiana at any cost and offering any reward. You can see why I’m so paranoid about you avoiding all detection. The fact is, though, they’ll soon be combing every home and tree for you down here, while you’ll be up there. That is one reason I decided that it might as well be you that goes for it. That, of course, and the fact that you have the long-standing grudge and are the best qualified. And you alone really have the right to do what must be done. Remember, the Rules bind bodies, not souls, as we all know. Higher law applies in that area. Even though the souls are wrong, the bodies stolen, this is still regicide.”

He had a point. If Ti was a slave because her body said she was, and he was a warrior-mercenary for the same reason, then whoever was Tiana’s body really was a highborn, qualified to be a monarch! As was the guy wearing his old body, by right of marriage and deed.

“He’ll think of that, too,” Joe pointed out. “And he’ll know that nobody entitled to ice them is capable of it, except us.”

“Sugasto won’t think of it,” Ruddygore said. “He’s always been sloppy on that sort of detail.”

“But the Dark Baron would think of it,” Marge noted.

“Yes, he would. But, remember, the Baron betrayed him the last time they formed an alliance. I feel certain that Sugasto would never trust the Baron again. Not on equal terms, anyway. Can you imagine Esmilio willing to subordinate anything, let alone something as monumental as this, to anyone?”

“He’d be plotting to overthrow the little twerp and take over this operation himself,” Marge agreed. “Okay. Point granted. But I still don’t like him loose.”

Joe yawned. “I think we pretty well have what we can get at this point. I’d better get some sleep if I want to make any time tomorrow.”

“Yes, Joe, good-night,” Ruddygore said in a clear dismissal.

“I’m heading back for town,” Marge told them. “Joe can protect me tomorrow morning!”

Ruddygore caught her eye and gestured for her to linger. She understood, nodding, and they wrapped up everything. First Joe, then Poquah, left. Marge went over and closed the door behind them, then turned to the sorcerer. “So what’s the conspiracy?”

“No conspiracy—now. I’m afraid I’ve just had to undo one in a good cause. What would you say if I told you that Mia is not Tiana? That Tiana actually died at the hands of the Baron back on Earth?”

“I’d say you were feeding me baloney to try and keep Joe and me from being pissed off at the destruction of one of the neatest women this world ever produced.”

He sighed. “I can prove it to you rather simply. Tiana could read Husaquahrian. Not merely the formal language, but many of its dialects and several other languages as well. She also was schooled, as you may remember, in Switzerland. She spoke, read, and wrote German, French, and Italian with ease and English rather well, too. Mia is totally illiterate now in any tongue, has a reasonable speaking knowledge of English because that was supplied in the plot, but none of the other languages, and she can’t really read English, either.”

“Big deal. The Rules account for that.”

“No they don’t. Ask anyone. Not just my staff, anyone. Marge, there is no Rule prohibiting slaves from learning to read or write. Some, although not very many, can. And Mia was illiterate from the start—she couldn’t handle looking up the relevant passages on herself shortly after they returned here, long before even the Rules would have wiped it out, if such Rules existed. Mia doesn’t know how to read or write or any of those other languages or an awful lot that Tiana knew because Mia is not Tiana, she is really Mia, a former palace slave to Tiana.” Quickly, he sketched in the same scenario that he’d given to an unknowing Mia and Joe.

“Wait a minute! She sure as hell seemed like Tiana to me back on Earth, and she sure convinced Joe!”

“I know. I’m afraid I was partly responsible format. I spotted it right away, of course, and in the course of removing the Baron’s nasty little time bombs inside her, I realized that she could pull it off, allowing for the nature of Husaquahr and the Rules. I warned at the start that she’d be a dancer or courtesan, the former usually and the latter always slave jobs. I knew even then that the moment she returned to Husaquahr the Rules would take the path of least resistance and return her to her former status. Everything else they would blame on the Rules. Even she thought she was Tiana, and I helped that out a bit. Joe needed the time, he needed Tiana, for the wilderness period with Ir-ving. Now I have started the unraveling. Within a few days, a week at most, both she and Joe will realize the truth.”

“But—why!”

“Because at this point Tiana is the last person Joe needs. Not merely to avoid slipups, but suppose they do have a chance at the bodies? Could Joe really destroy the body of his wife, the woman he loved? Could she! There was no other choice. I’ve been letting it come off in stages, and I held off the full impact of the Rules with her as long as possible, but what was once a positive is now a negative. She is a very bright, talented, capable woman who is still an asset. But she is not the one anyone, even she, thought she was.”

“Wow! If you’re not pulling another of your scams, that’s heavy stuff!”

“Marge, I am not. I just wanted you to know ahead of time. It will make things easier later.”

“Yeah, well… Wow!”

“Remember, too, by the way, that she’s still a were. They both are. Joe saw to that. They had it on the road. I understand that Irving was, in his vernacular, pretty ‘freaked out.’ That’s an occasional problem, but, as you know, a valuable tool if used.

Keep it in mind. Joe will have enough to handle, so I’m counting on you as guide and adviser.”

She nodded, still stunned. “Yeah, I’ll do what I can, as always. Still, I said we couldn’t get away with it forever. Now you’re telling me that Ti’s paid the bill, and Joe’s got his own curse down the pike. Why does that make me feel like target number one in this business?”

Ruddygore shrugged. “These things pile up over time, but things like that are not inevitable. You have the same odds now you always did. You know about Joe, then?”

She nodded. “He told me. I guess he had to tell somebody.”

“Well, he might not have told you that, if and when it happens, he wouldn’t lose his mind and his memory any more than you did. It’s not as bad as that. It won’t be like the last time.”

“Yeah, but a big macho male stuck as a wood nymph isn’t gonna have a happy time. At least he’ll do damned near anything to stay alive as he is.”

“But that is also his Achilles’ heel. He might hold back, he might hesitate when he should strike. That’s another thing to watch out for.”

“Boy, you’re really loading the dice on this one, aren’t you?” she said glumly. “And, it seems to me, you’re loading it against your own side.”

CHAPTER 7

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

Places shall take on the atmosphere and attitude of their rulers. Evil pervades the very rocks and trees and air where it resides. And, if allowed to fester, killing the good, it will remain so long after the rulers have departed. —The Books of Rules, III, 97(a)

SAYING FAREWELL TO IRVING WAS GUT-WRENCHING, BUT JOE at least had the honest conviction that the boy had not been in better hands in his life.

They were barely out of sight of Terindell, though, taking the northern river route, when he realized how much he missed the rest of the old company and how, for the first time, really, on one of these missions, he was essentially alone. If it weren’t for Marge’s happy appearance, he thought, it might drive him nuts, but the Kauri wasn’t any company to speak of during the day. Instead, she just sprawled out on top of the bedrolls on the packhorse, sound asleep, mostly concealed under a thin wrap so that the sight of one of the fairies out cold didn’t attract too many curious stares or, worse, give the wrong impression.

The road went almost immediately inland, skirting places like the Circe’s lair and the Glen Dinig, domain of the great witch-queen Huspeth, heading first to the city of Machang on the River Rossignol, from whence roads went in all directions.

Joe missed most of all the company of the old Tiana, who had been more than wife, but also companion and equal, lover and confessor. The change in her had bothered him about as much as it had seemed to bother her, and now he couldn’t keep from wondering just how much of a change there was and how much he’d overlooked. Even in the months in the High Pothique wilderness, he’d been preoccupied with Irving and had tended to overtook things that now seemed to leap out at him. He’d blamed much of it on the Rules, of course, but now other things started bothering him. How had she learned to dance so well so quickly? Even he had needed to be trained by Gorodo; only the fairies got their skills by instinct. The fact that he was inclined to enjoy swordplay and combat skills hadn’t meant he hadn’t had to learn them and practice, practice, practice. Tiana had always been clumsy, even at formal dances; who had taught her those erotic moves and gyrations? For that matter, she’d lately shown some skill as a seamstress, barber, maid, and other such jobs that she’d never shown any knowledge of or interest in before.

The Baron had Tiana briefly on Earth, hadn’t he?

The thought came almost immediately, and he could not get it out of his head. What if this girl really wasn’t Tiana at all?

For Mia, riding behind him on her horse while keeping the packhorse in the rear in line, the same logic and questions had gnawed even further at her. More bothersome than the skills she did have were the memories she did not. Tiana had gone to school on Earth, in Switzerland, one of the countries there, but she had no memory of the schooling, or the country, or even where it might be. She didn’t even remember being a mermaid, as they’d reminisced, or anything between the palace life and the night they defeated the Baron. Even the palace memories were odd, as if she were someone else, watching Tiana rather than being her.

Memories long suppressed, strange memories but familiar ones, now came to the fore. Of all those kids jammed in a one-room hovel, of playing naked with other dirty kids in a town square, of running away at age eleven when her mother died in childbirth, determined that it would not happen to her. Of reaching a big city and being befriended by a man who was at the start very nice, but who later taught her to dance with the other girls for crowds of leering men, renting out her young body to some of them, and, finally, being arrested, where a kindly woman Procurator listened sympathetically to her life story and sentenced her to be a slave, ward of the state, and trained as a maid … Of being in the palace after Joe and Tiana left, of men in black who’d seized her, to awaken in a strange place on a strange world … Of seeing her Highness helpless, in some room …

It hit her all at once with a force that almost knocked her off the horse. By the gods! I have been mad! I am not Tiana! I am the slave Mia!

After the initial shock wore off, though, the realization brought not horror and regret but a sense of peace in her mind. She was not forced into slavery, she was simply now returned to her proper role and self! It was all right, then! No more inner struggles, no more anguish. Instead, she felt great pride in herself, that she, a mere ignorant whore turned slave, had managed to fool even Joe into thinking she was of the blood royal. And, for those few months, she’d had him, essentially as an equal, something beyond even the most impossible, wild dreams of one such as her. It was over now, she knew, but if she died tomorrow, it still would be enough.

The trouble was, how to tell him! She decided that she could not; it would embarrass him. But, if he suspected at some time, if he asked, then she would admit the truth.

It took ten hours to reach Machang, a pretty big city by Husaquahrian standards, teeming with life and busy people, its huge bridge at the northern end dominating the skyline and marking the end of navigation on the Rossignol.

They selected a low-rent hostelry near the riverfront for their night’s lodging, first going into a back alley and awakening a still slightly groggy Marge, telling her where they’d be, and letting her manage to fly up to the rooftops to finish her slumbers.

Mia helped unload, then unpacked, got the room ready as much as she could, then went back down to arrange to stable the horses. She felt buoyant, giddy, almost supercharged, like a whole new person, free to act and think like a teenager again.

Joe plopped down on the bed, feeling tireder than he knew he should, simply because of the monotony of the ride. And there were weeks and weeks of this to come, with the climate, both real and political, turning worse as they went.

Marge tapped outside his third-story window and he got up and raised it fully to let her in. He was glad to see her. “Any trouble finding me?”

“Naw. Really freaked out a couple folks who saw me peekin’ in, but most of ‘em were doin’ anything but lookin’ out the window.” She grinned evilly. “You may be the only person in this joint who’s here to sleep.”

“I think I’d be a little too conspicuous staying in one of the fancy places. Besides, I couldn’t even dress for dinner.”