The Lady (9 page)

He wasn't half so optimistic as he tried to sound. Holla was going to—Gaguush was going to kill him, getting Holla-Sayan into this.

On the other hand, Holla seemed to have managed most of it himself.

“Let's go, then,” Hadidu said. “Talfan, get Shemal ready to travel. Send him to—to someone. I don't want to know who. Send your daughters. Get them all away again, over the wall to some manor on the southern road where we have friends, up to the mining towns, anywhere out of here, and
don't tell me
. Do it now, start now. We can't fight this war with hostages against us so readily to hand. And if the temple takes me, and you somehow survive—don't bring my son up to this. If the temple takes me, let it be over.”

Her lips thinned, but she nodded. “Auntie can take them, like last time. I won't know where. The baby stays with me.”

Hadidu didn't suggest Talfan go too. Varro didn't suggest that it was maybe his job to order his children's comings and goings and take thought for their protection. He just nodded, obedient as the rest.

“I'm going down to Ilbialla's tomb,” Hadidu said. “Varro, find your friends. Jugurthos and I need to talk to them.”

Varro slipped out the Sunset Gate into the eerily quiet dusk of the suburb, where bonfires burned at many intersections and people lurked, guarding against they hardly knew what, with the native Marakanders mostly barricaded in their houses. Not good. He asked wary questions and hunted the demon and the Blackdog down eventually, in Master Shenar's caravanserai, licking their wounds, figuratively speaking.

No sign of the devil Vartu.

Holla-Sayan was watching a Northron camel-leech putting stitches into Mikki's bare and impressively hairy chest. And the damned great Red Mask killing, bear-riding wizard turned out to be the absolute last person Varro would ever have thought to see slumped asleep against his friend's shoulder.
Ivah
. She'd bespelled and abducted Pakdhala to hand her over to the devil of Lissavakail, she'd had her
noekar
-woman kill Bikkim, and only Vartu's devilry had saved him, she'd—Holla-Sayan knocked him down without stirring from the bench where he sat, when Varro swung his fist to rearrange the Tamghati traitor's pretty little face.

“Bastard,” he said mildly, picking himself up, keeping his distance, but Holla-Sayan didn't seem inclined to move farther, and the girl slept on, steadied by Holla-Sayan's arm about her.

Holla-Sayan said nothing in retort, which Varro figured was a bad sign. And he had that dangerous look, a fire behind his eyes that wasn't Varro's perception breaking out into poetry. Sliding into the mad dog's view of things, a view which was a bit simplistic, to put it mildly. Varro had his suspicions that the Blackdog's world broke down into
mine
and
enemy
. Best not to put yourself into the latter category. He settled down on the floor, arms wrapped around his knees, non-threatening as he could be.

“All right,” he said. “Be that way.”

Holla-Sayan rubbed his face, some sanity returning, maybe? “Leave her alone.”

“Why?” There, a simple, mild question. That wasn't threatening, was it?

“Because she was carrying Nour.”

“
Nour
.” Hadidu's brother-in-law. Caravaneer. Secret wizard, Varro now knew. Taken by the Lady when the coffeehouse burned, and therefore dead.

Not dead?

“Kharduin's bringing him back. We took him away up the cliffs, when the Lady came after him. He's—he'll live. I think. Maybe.”

“He'll live,” Mikki rumbled. The camel-leech sat back on her heels, shrugged at him.

“Best I can do. Sorry.”

The demon's white skin, untouched by sun, had a sheen of sweat, but he hadn't flinched from the needle, only baring his teeth once or twice in a grimace of pain. He leaned back against the wall and sighed. “It'll do. I heal quickly. What did you want, Varro?”

It wasn't he who wanted anything, but Talfan and Hadidu, who wanted—who dreamed. Peaceful folk who'd never faced so much as a bandit raid, who'd never seen a battle, not even the one fought at their very gates this past day. And they were going to overthrow a goddess who was really a mad devil? He didn't want to be trying to bring up four girls alone, a widower on the road. Marakanders talked and talked. He wasn't sure they were good at much else. They needed—someone to show them what to do next.

“Holla-Sayan, really—did the Lady flee you? Really? Because you've started something and they're all going to die, my wife and her friends who've been waiting for some never-come day when they'll overthrow the Lady, unless you finish it.”

“I didn't—”

“You did. The Lady's never left the city before. I don't think she's ever sent Red Masks beyond the city walls before, except for this expedition east to Praitan they're talking of. All this death and burning out there today, that was her looking for you, wasn't it?”

“She was looking for Ivah and Nour.”

“Same thing. You're the one took them from her, ya?”

“You'd have left them to die?”

“What were you doing in the temple in the first place? No. Never mind. I don't care. But you began this, and you can't just skulk off to the deserts pretending you didn't and leave us to—”

“What
us?
”

“Talfan. My wife. She's, look, you know how Attalissa's temple went underground when Tamghat came? Same thing here. But they were all children. A couple of youths hardly men and a handful of children, hiding and keeping faith with their gods best they could. Waiting for the Old Great Gods alone knew what. And now they think it's come, the time. In you. They've seen that the Red Masks can be faced and killed, they've seen the Lady run, and they're going to follow through on it. But if you abandon them, they're all going to die. You did all that, out there—” Varro waved a hand towards the door, “—for
Ivah
? Then you can't leave decent folk to be murdered by the Lady for something you've done.”

“I can't kill the Lady, if that's what you're asking.”

“She fled you.”

“She didn't need to.”

“She obviously doesn't know that. Look, you know what they're thinking now, Talfan and Master Hadidu, the priest of Ilbialla? They're thinking that we—they—have the gods on their side. The Old Great Gods have given them a sign that their time has come.”

“You're not serious! You can't tell them that.”

“I don't need to. The great wizard—” his lip curled at Ivah, “—and her demons have proven it. You're a demon now, by the way.”

Holla-Sayan just shut his eyes. The man looked done in. Well, he'd come through the thick of the past day's battle and been fighting Red Masks in the temple before that. And even Ivah—no, Varro did not, would not pity her. But she looked pathetic. She was wrapped in a too-large coat, snuggled into Holla-Sayan's side like a child to her parent, only a bit of face poking out, ragged-nailed hands clenched up tight on her lap. She looked aged and frail, the golden-brown of her skin grey-hued and lined, marked with dark scabs from earlier injury, wisps of her once-wealth of midnight hair now cropped and clinging.

The real demon watched him watching them, black eyes thoughtful.

“Ivah is Ghatai's daughter,” Mikki said softly. “Did you know?”

Tamghat's daughter? That shocked Varro. “It's no excuse,” he protested. “She tried to murder my friend. She had her hearth-woman cut his throat.”

“I know. But it is an explanation. Now she leaves her father behind and grows into something else.”

“Does that make her a devil too?” Better to cut her throat now, while she slept helpless, in that case.

“I doubt it.”

Holla-Sayan opened his eyes. Ah, damn his tongue for a fool's, Holla'd finally succeeded in getting barren Gaguush in a family way, right. That's all he needed, to be talking of unnatural halfbreeds and making the man fear she'd give birth to puppies. Varro eyed Mikki, whose father had been human, his mother a bear-demon. That . . . no, he didn't want to picture how that came about.

“What do you want?” Holla-Sayan asked.

“Go talk to Master Hadidu. He sent me to find you, to ask you to come to him. Talk to him, before you decide to pretend all this is nothing to do with you, all right?”

“And what's your place in it, Varro? You weren't out in the suburb today.”

“I didn't know! They shut the gates, remember? I was in the city.” But that was what Talfan would be thinking of him, too, no matter that he had been where he belonged, with her. People had fought the Lady, and he hadn't been among them. “But I've been thinking, I have an idea—I need to talk to some people.”

And here came one of them, Master Kharduin, surely. Varro knew of him by reputation. Wealthy in camels, trading in silks and spices and drugs of Nabban, master of a gang that travelled hard and fast, taking branches of the eastern road others did not dare. Possibly because he was allied with the lawless folk that plagued the badlands. He was a burly, black-haired man with the gleam of gold in his ears and a beard that curled like a ram's fleece, blue-eyed and brown-skinned. An exile of the eastern deserts, they said he was, a chieftain's warleader outlawed from his tribe for some grave crime or betrayal that varied with the gossiper, but there were always such stories about anyone who drew the interest of the road. Even a western road man like Varro had heard those stories of Master Kharduin. Lots of speculation about the meaning of the black scorpions tattooed on the insides of his wrists, which matched those on the backs of his partner Nour's hands. No tribe's markings of west or east. Some brotherhood of outlawry, some secret vow of death to be fulfilled . . . probably the scorpions signified nothing more than some personal bond or lovers' whimsy. Whatever Kharduin had been or done—and maybe it was nothing more than leave his home for the caravans and make a success of it—the caravaneers respected him and the Marakanders likewise. If Varro could persuade him to Talfan's cause and Talfan's gods . . .

Maybe he wouldn't have to do that much persuading. It was surely Nour's cause, Nour's goddess, even more than Talfan's, given his close kinship with Hadidu the priest, foster-brother and brother by marriage. The pair of grim, dusty, silent men who came with Kharduin were carrying what Varro first thought was a bier of spears and blankets between them. On it lay Nour, whom he had met once or twice at the coffeehouse, though he hadn't known him for a wizard. The Marakander caravaneer looked dead, his face gaunt, grey, and hollow about the eyes, his lips cracked and scabbed, but he breathed.

Ivah woke as suddenly as if someone had called her name, stumbled to her feet and went to Nour with only a brief, vague look at Varro, as if she didn't even remember him.

“He's doing better,” she said, like a prayer.

If that was better. . . . She lifted the blanket from over his chest, touched the hand of his linen-wrapped left arm. Scarlet blood seeped through the bandage. The camel-leech craned to look as well. “Much better,” the Northron woman agreed. “That's clean. The swelling's down. I thought the skin of his fingers was going to burst when you first brought him in. Hah, I'll take a demon's blessing over surgeons, any day.”

Mikki smiled faintly.

“Upstairs,” Kharduin said, looking past Varro with little more interest than Ivah had spared him. “Get him to bed. If he wakes up, get some broth into him. Lord of Forests, would you . . . ?”

“I'll sit with him,” Mikki said.

They all ended up climbing the stairs together, Holla making an unnecessary point of keeping himself between Varro and Ivah. Mikki was stark naked and nobody seemed to mind. The women politely didn't even look. Since someone had to do the decent thing, Varro ducked into the first open door he saw and snitched a blanket. Not even Kharduin's broad shoulders matched Mikki's; no one's coat or caftan was going to hide anything. Mikki took it with grave thanks and a wink, and twisted it around his hips as a kilt of sorts.

Varro gave Master Kharduin time to get his partner settled, to take a swallow of tea, before putting himself forward.

“Master Kharduin,” he said. “You don't know me, but my wife's the apothecary Talfan, a good friend of Master Hadidu of the Doves, and of Captain Jugurthos of the Sunset Gate.”

That got his attention, ya. Practically made him family, didn't it, since Kharduin and Nour weren't partners merely in business?

“You know what they're up to, those two, and Nour?”

A nod.

“You can guess what they're thinking, with what's gone on out in the suburb, Red Masks destroyed and the Lady fleeing and all. But what odds they let the moment slip? They're city folk, even the soldier. Talkers.”

“Gods, Varro, and you're not?” Holla-Sayan muttered. “Your tongue's hinged in the middle.”

“If we can take what's begun and push it further . . .”

“No,” said Holla-Sayan. “I can't kill the Lady. Mikki can't kill the Lady. Moth is lost, the gods of the city are lost—”

“Hear him out,” said Kharduin. He squatted by the bed, hands laced together, watching Varro's face. “It might not be your fight, Blackdog, but it's become most definitely mine.”

Revenge, he understood. Varro took a breath, carefully didn't look at Holla-Sayan, who might believe himself when he said the Lady had no cause to fear him, but Varro didn't need to. She had run. What more proof did they need? And Holla wasn't a man to turn his back on his friends.

“So,” he said. “Here we are, with the suburb and the Marakanders ready to start fighting one another, two stupid gangs quarrelling over whose camels drink first, and desert raiders sitting up the hill watching, right?”

Kharduin raised an eyebrow.