Soul of the City Part 4

But it didn't please him, not at the price Niko always seemed to pay for others'

folly.

Sometime in that interval, because Niko was conscious and could hear, Tempus affirmed and renewed their pairbond so that he had a rightside partner once again. And so that Niko, should it matter, would know that he was not alone.

Down by the White Foal Bridge, the gathered Stepsons waited: Kama was there, with a dozen hand-picked fighters from Sync's 3rd Commando.

It made Crit uncomfortable to command the Riddler's daughter's unit, so he gave them the periphery, made them the watch guards, kept what distance from her he could.

Strat, on the other hand, was comfortable with everything coming out of the dark that evening-with his bay horse, with paired Stepsons riding up, holding torches, with Ischade's whispered council, with men who once were Stepsons and now were no longer men-men who stayed in shadows when Crit looked at them straight on.

Strat had "explained" about Stilcho and Janni and Ischade's talent for raising uneasy dead. Strat said it was a favor she did them, a gift to those who'd died with their honor blighted.

Crit hadn't argued-there wasn't time. Strat was addled, bewitched, and if he got through this he was going to beat some sense into the big fool as soon as possible, do something final about Ischade or make her loose her hold on Strat.

If- Something puffed and popped and Crit's horse shivered. Looking to his right, Crit saw Randal, the Stepsons' warrior mage, decked out in Niko's armor.

"Greetings, Crit. I heard you'd like some help." The flop-eared mage looked older, more fearsome tonight in dream-forged battle gear. He caught Crit staring at his cuira.s.s. "This?" Randal touched his chest. "It's Niko's, still. Just a loan. We ... have an understanding, but no pairbond." The freckled face aped a smile (hat was wan in torchlight as his horse reared and Crit realized it wasn't quite a horse at all-it was definitely transparent, though horselike in every other respect.

"Help. Right. Well, Randal, you know the Riddler's orders, if you're here. Any advice? Or should we ride right in there, storm the place, b.u.m it to the ground?"

At his knee came a touch as soft as a b.u.t.terfly landing. "I told you, Critias, just walk right in and take it-walk in by my side, if you will.... She's not at home and, if my guess is right, quite indisposed."

Crit looked from Ischade to Randal for confirmation. Randal nodded. "That's my best guess as well." The mage scratched one ear. "Only, I'll go in with Ischade.

Roxane's my enemy, not yours-at least not so much so. And you don't trust Ischade ... no offense, dear lady."

"None taken. Yet," said the woman whose head reached only to Crit's knee, but who seemed taller than anyone else about.

Strat rode up, concerned, looking at Crit as if to say, 'You'd better not start trouble now, partner or not. Don't push your luck.'

"I'm going," Crit said. "I have my orders."

"Into a witch's house?" Strat shook his head. "You may be my partner, but these are my men, until we've worked things out. We needn't risk them, or you. We've got friends to deal with magic who deal with it routinely. Ischade. Randal.

Please be our guests-" As he spoke, Strat bowed in his saddle and, one hand outstretched in a sweeping gesture, motioned the mage and the necromant to precede the fighters up the cart-track to Roxane's house. And as his gesturing hand neared Crit's horse, it s.n.a.t.c.hed a rein, and held it.

"Strat," Crit warned. "You're pushing matters."

"Me? I thought it was you, mixing in what you don't yet understand."

"Let go of my horse."

"When you let go of your anger."

"Fine," Crit sighed, holding up empty hands and feigning a smile. "Done."

Strat stared a moment at him, then nodded and freed the horse. "Let's go, then... partner?"

"After you, Strat. As you say, you're in command-at least till morning."

Inside Roxane's Foalside home was a smell like burning feathers and a glow as if the whole place smouldered.

Ischade was well aware that any instant, the premises might burst into flame.

She said so to Randal.

They'd never worked this close, the Tysian Hazard and the necromant.

It was an eerie feeling, especially when Randal drew his kris, a recurved blade, and said, "It directs fire. Don't worry, Ischade. I didn't fight the Wizard Wars for nothing," in his tenor voice.

They walked over boards that creaked as if the place had been abandoned for eternity and Ischade's neck grew cold with trespa.s.s.

Randal said, waxing more the fighter with a woman watching, more the expert First Hazard of the Mageguild with a famous witch pacing by his side, "I'll open the rent where she keeps it, get it out for you. But you'll have to destroy it.

I can't."

"Can't?" she said, disbelieving.

"Shouldn't, really. You see, I've got one of my own. I wouldn't want it to think I'd turned hostile. You should understand."

She did.

It was odd to work so closely with a rival mage of rival power. She wondered if there would be a price.

And there was, of sorts, though it did not fall on them directly.

When Randal had made the requisite pa.s.ses with his hands and a flap in s.p.a.ce fell down and the globe lay revealed, Ischade's soul wrenched: she loved beauty, baubles, precious trinkets, and the power globe was all of those and more. It was the most beautiful, potent piece she'd ever seen. If not for Randal, here and witness, even despite Strat she would have claimed it for her own.

When he got it out, the floorboards creaked and the roof above began to smoke.

She could see that it singed him and that he'd expected that, now with the timbers above flaring like tarred torches.

In the ruddy light. Randal knelt down, and she did also, and he told her what words to speak.

Then he said, "Reach out and set it spinning-just a push with your palm will do."

As she touched the globe, Ischade felt a shock more intense than any she'd known for ages-this was not a matter of raising dead or ordering the lives of lesser mortals. This was a matter of power great enough to flout the G.o.ds.

And there was a bite to all Nisi magic, a corrosion different from her own. She rocked back upon her heels, nearly mesmerized herself though nothing less could have done it to her.

Randal pulled unceremoniously at her elbow. "Up, my brave lady. Up and out before the beams fall down and roast us or she... comes back... somehow."

And then Ischade realized that her sense of Roxane's presence might be more than just echoes from the globe.

Quick as smoke she got her feet under her and ran, Randal beside her, toward an open window.

Once they'd scrambled through, there was a roar as deep as any dragon's and the whole house burst apart in flames.

And in the middle of the blaze Ischade could see the globe, still spinning, spitting colored fire of its own and spouting tongues of purer fire that licked up towards the heavens.

Horses thundered, coming near.

Strat was there, lifting her up onto the bay's rump as if she were a child, and Crit did the same for Randal.

Neither asked if the task was done. All could see the globe, spinning brighter, whirling larger, consuming the lesser flame of burning wood and stone and thatch and blazing like a star.

The horses were glad to be reined back; the heat was singeing. You couldn't hear a word or even the trumpets of mounts who hated fire as they reared and walked backwards on hind legs.

For it seemed, as the house collapsed, that the sky itself caught fire. Demons of colored light slunk through that wider blaze and slipped away.

Wings of lightning beat against the firmament where a rising sun was dwarfed to dullness by their light.

And down from purple lightning and clouds that came together, combusting to form a great cat-thing with h.e.l.l-red eyes who swiped at it as it came, flew an eagle.

A flaming eagle, descending from the sky, chased by a giant cat of roiling cloud so black it swallowed all the heat, as if a house cat chased a sparrow in the dwelling of the G.o.ds.

The bird plummeted, wings bent. The cat struck, sent it spinning, struck again.

A scream like heaven rending issued from one, a growl like h.e.l.l's bowels settling came from the other.

And the bird tumbled, then righted, then darkened and streaked, shrinking, into the lessening flame that had been the witch's house.

Ischade saw that bird dive among the timbers where a Globe of Power was now melted, fragments of white hot clay and parboiled jewels, and take a fragment in its beak and speed away.

When she looked away, she saw that Randal, face beaded with sweat and freckles standing out black as soot, had seen it too.

The mage gave an uneasy shrug and smiled bleakly. "Let's not tell them," he whispered, leaning close. "Maybe it's not ... her."

"Perhaps not," Ischade replied, looking up at the smouldering sky.

The morning after the sky caught fire, Tempus was sitting with Niko when Randal came to call.

"I'll see to him. Commander," said the mage, who touched his kris, from which healing water could be wrung.

Jihan had applied the powdered placenta of some unlucky cat, and Niko's eye was healing.

But these wounds would take a while, even with magic to help them.

And beside the stricken fighter, in the nursery, two children lay in sleep from which no one had yet managed to rouse them.

That, Tempus knew, was really what Randal must do here. But he had to say, "Stealth and I have reaffirmed our pairbond. Can you tend him in good conscience, with a minimum of magic?"

Randal himself had once been paired with Stealth, at the Riddler's order, and loved the western fighter still.

The mage looked down, then up, then squared his shoulders. "Of course. And the children, too... if I have- their father's permission?"

"Ask the G.o.d that; he's the stud, not me," Tempus snapped and stormed out.

He had a woman to rape to placate the G.o.d within him, a necromant to thank in person, and a welcome to prepare for Theron, emperor of Ranke, when he arrived.

But Jihan found him before he could find a likely wench on the Street of Red Lanterns. Her eyes were glowing and she squeezed his arm and wanted to know, "Just what kind of houses are these?"

He had half a mind to show her, but not the time: she'd come to get him to mediate between Crit and Strat in matters of command and to ask whether they could all attend a "fete for returning heroes" being given by friends of Ischade's who lived uptown, and whether he'd noticed anything strange about Strat's bay horse.

And since he had troubles enough of his own, and Jihan was one, he agreed to come with her, gave permission for the Band and Stepsons to attend the fete, and lied about the horse, saying he hadn't noticed anything strange about it at all.

DAGGER IN THE MIND.

C. J. Cherryh

"My lady-" Stilcho said, ever so quietly. The dead Stepson hesitated in the doorway of the back room of the riverhouse. Hesitated longer. Ischade sat in the chair before the fire with her hands clasped between her black-robed knees and gazed there, the fire leaping and casting light on her face, on the bright scatter of cloaks and trinkets that made the house like some garish carnival.

And Ischade, a darkness in it, fire-limned. The wind rushed in the chimney. The fire roared up with a dizzy sibilance. The candles burned brighter so that Stilcho flinched back. Flinched and flinched again in the other direction, for he encountered a body behind him and a hard hand on his shoulder.

He turned and looked by mistake straight into Haught's dark Nisi eyes. A muscle jumped in his jaw. His throat grew paralyzed. Haught's grip burned him, numbed him; and there was no sound in all the world but the roar of the fire and no sight in the world but Haught laying a cautionary finger to his lips and drawing him away, quietly.

Back and back into the tangle of silks and drapes and shadow that was that over small room he shared with Haught.

And in this privacy Haught seized his shoulders and put his back to the wall, in the slithery touch of the silken hangings. Haught's eyes held his like a serpent's.

"Let me go," Stilcho said. The voice came through jaws that tried to freeze, that tried to turn to the cold unburied meat and bone that they were without Her influence. No pain, no agony. Just a dreadful cold as if something very solid had come between him and his life-source. "L-let me g-g-go. She s-said-" You weren't to touch me with magic-that was the part that stuck behind his teeth.

There were just the eyes.

"Hear it?" Haught asked. "Feel it, dead man? She's worried. She's unweaving her magics. Souls are winging back to h.e.l.l tonight. Do you feel yours slipping?"

"Get your ha-hands from me."

Haught's hands slid up his shoulders and held there. "She's forgotten you tonight. I haven't. I'm holding you, Stilcho. /. And I can peel you like an onion. Or save your wretched soul. Do you feel it now?"

"Ish-"

Haught's grip tightened, that of his hands and that on his soul. The paralysis grew, and Haught's voice sank deeper and deeper, so that it was not sound at all, only the dazzle of winter cold, was snowflakes falling on dark wind.

The Queen of Death is dethroned. Power is free tonight. Fragments of it drift on the winds, sift through the air, fall on the earth.

It slays the dead.

It casts down the powerful.

Stilcho shivered, his living eye widened and the dead one saw abysses.