The Dead of Winter Part 2

And yet Haught didn't push the beggar (moaning, "Whaddya mean, Haught, 's nothin' wrong with a little fresh air ...") at Niko or cast a spell, just said, "Years ago-the northern fighter, isn't it? Oh yes, I remember you. And so does someone else, I'd bet-"

Vis-too taut, planning something-interrupted, "What is it, soldier? Money? We'll give you money. And work for an idle blade if ... Remember you?" Vis took a step forward and Niko felt, rather than saw, eyes narrow: "Right, that's right. I know who you are. We owe you one, is that it? For saving us from Tempus's covert actors downtown. Well, come on in. We'll talk about it indoors."

"If," Haught put in on that silken tongue that made Niko wonder what he might be walking into, "you'll sheath that blade and treat our invitation as what it is ... a luxury. If you want to fight, we'll not be using bronze or steel in any case."

Niko looked between the two, still holding up their beggar friend, and sheathed his blade. "I don't want your hospitality, just some information. I'm looking for Roxane -and don't tell me you don't know who I mean."

It was Haught's laughter that made Niko know he'd found more than he'd bargained for: It sent chills screeching up and down his spine, so self-a.s.sured it was and so full of taunt and antic.i.p.ation. "Of course I know-me and my mistress both know. But don't you think, fighter, that by now Roxane's looking for you? Come in, don't come, wait here, go your way-whatever choice, she'll find you."

My mistress, Haught had said. Someone else, then, had taught him what Niko saw there-enough magic for it to be an attribute, not an affectation; real magic, not the prestidigitator's tricks that abounded in Sanctuary's third-rate Mageguild.

Niko shook his head and his hand of its own accord found his sword's pommel and rested there as he retreated a pace.

By then Vis was saying, "It's not a thing I'd seek, soldier, were I you. But we'll give you what we can to help you on your way to her. Yes, by all that's unholy, we'll surely give you that."

When Roxane, in her Foalside haunt, an old manor house refurbished from velvet hangings to weeds head-high in her "garden," heard a footstep belonging not to an undead or to one of her snakes-who occasionally took human form-outside her window, she went personally to see who her uninvited guest might be.

It was a Nisi type, a youth she'd never noticed, some local denizen with a trace of Nisibisi blood.

His soul was smooth and unctuous over customary evil; he was some familiar of another power here. He said, far back in the dark with wards springing up between them, "I've brought you something. Madam. You're going to like him. A gift from Haught, in case things go your way in the end."

Then there was a soft "pop" and the presence was gone, if it had ever been there. Haught. She'd remember.

Just as she was turning, a pebble skittered, a soft whicker cut the night. She blinked-twice in one night, her best wards violated, slit like cobwebs? She'd have to make the rounds tomorrow, set up new protections.

And then she concentrated on what was there: a horse, for certain; and a person on it, a person drugged and tied to its saddle.

A present from this Haught. She'd have to thank him. She went out into her garden of thornbush and nightshade, down to where the water mandrake threw poisonous tubers high along the White Foal's edge.

And there, in the luminous spill from the polluted river's waves, she glimpsed him. Niko, drugged to a stupor, or drunk-the same. Her heart wrenched, she ran three steps, then calmed herself. He was here but not of his own will.

Fingers working a soft and silken spell, she half-danced toward him. Niko was her beloved and yet her undoing lay within him. Seeing him was more the proof: She wanted to take him, cut his bonds away, heal him and caress him. Not the proper reaction for a witch. Not the proper motivation for Death's Queen. She'd sent for him, used Randal the mageling to lure him, but she dared not take him now, not use him thus. Not when this Haught was obviously tempting her.

Not when Roxane had a war on her hands, a war of power with a necromant called Ischade, a creature of night who might just have orchestrated this untimely meeting.

So, while Niko, bent over his horse's neck, slept on, she came up to the horse, which flattened its ears but did not move away, cut the bonds that held the fighter to his saddle, and said, before sending him away, "Not now, my love. Not yet. Your partner Janni, your beloved Sacred Band brother, is the thrall of the necromant Ischade-he lies in unpeaceful earth, is rousted out to do her foul bidding and wear her awful collar at night. You must free him from this unnatural servitude, beloved, and then we will be together. Do you understand me, Niko?"

Niko's ashen head raised and he opened his eyes-eyes still asleep, yet registering all they saw. Roxane's heart leaped; she loved the touch of his gaze, the feel of his breath, the smell of his suffering.

Her fingers spelled his fate: He would remember this moment as a true dream-a dream that, his maat would understand, bore all he needed to know.

She stepped forward and kissed him, and a moan escaped his lips. It was hardly more than a sigh, but enough of a sign to Roxane, who could read his heart, that Niko had come to her at last-of his own free will, to the extent that free will was possessed by mere men.

"Go to Ischade. Free Janni's spirit. Then get you both here to me, and I shall succor you."

She touched his forehead and he sat up straight. His free hands reined the horse around and he rode away- ensorceled, knowing and yet unknowing, back to his hostel where he could sleep undisturbed.

And tomorrow, he would do evil unto evil for her sake, and then, as he had never truly been, Nikodemos would be hers.

In the meantime, Roxane had preparations to make. She quit the Foalside, went inside, and looked in upon the Hazard Randal. Her prisoner was playing cards with her two snakes-snakes which she'd given human form to guard him. Or sort of human form-their eyes were still ophidian, their mouths lipless, their skin bore an ineradicable cast of green.

The mage, his torso bound to his chair with blue pythons of power, had both hands free and just enough free will left to give her a friendly wave: She had him tranquilized, waiting out the time until his death day-the week's end, come Ilsday, if Niko did not return by then.

A little saddened at the realization that, if Niko did come back, she'd have to free the mage-her word was good; it had to be; she dealt with too many arbiters of souls-Roxane waved a hand to lift the calming spell from Randal.

If she had to free him, she'd not keep him comfy, safe and warm, till then.

She'd let him suffer, help him feel as much pain as his slender body could.

After all, she was Death's Queen. Perhaps if she scared him long enough and well enough, the Tysian magician would take his own life, trying to escape, or die from terror-a death she'd have the benefit of but not the blame.

And in his chair, Randal's face went white beneath his freckles and his whole frame began to rock while, with every lunge and quaver, the nonmaterial bonds around his chest grew tighter and the snakes (stupid snakes who never understood anything) began querulously to complain that it was Randal's bet and wonder what was wrong as cards fell from his twitching fingers.

Strat was out at Ischade's, where he shouldn't be but mostly was at night, just taking off his clothes when the d.a.m.ned door to her front room opened with a wind behind it that nearly doused the fire in her hearth.

Accursed Haught, her trainee, stood there, arch mischief glowing in his eyes.

Strat hitched up his linen loinguard and said, "Won't you ever learn to knock?"

feeling a bit abashed among Ischade's silks and scarlet throw pillows and trinkets of gem and n.o.ble metal-the woman loved bright colors, but never wore them out of doors.

Woman? Had he thought that, said it to himself? She wasn't exactly that, and he'd better remember it. Haught, once slave-bait, looked at Strat and through him as if he didn't exist as he entered and the door closed behind him of its own accord.

"Best remember that you're mortal, Nisi boy. And that respect is due your betters, be you slave or free," Strat warned, looking at his feet where, somewhere in a confusion of cus.h.i.+ons, his service dagger lay buried. Best to teach this witch's familiar some manners before he'd have to do worse.

But behind him he heard a stirring and a soft step as sinuous as any cat's.

"Haught, greet Straton civilly," came her voice from behind him and then her hand was on his spine, pouring patience into him where patience had no right to be.

"d.a.m.ned kid comes and goes like he owns the-"

Haught was abreast of him, then, speaking to the necromant beyond. "You'd want this warning, if you weren't so busy. Want to be ready. Trouble's on the way."

Then something unspeakable happened: Ischade, hus.h.i.+ng the Nisi ex-slave, came round Strat and did something to the other man, something that included not quite touching him but circling him, something Strat didn't like because it was intimate and didn't trust because he could tell that information was being exchanged in a way he didn't understand.

Abruptly, the creature called Haught turned in a flare of cloak and arrogance and the door opened wide, then shut again behind him, leaving candles flickering huge shadows upon the wall and a chill in the air Strat was expecting Ischade to dispell with a caress.

But she didn't. She said, "Ace, come here. Before the fire. Sit with me."

He did that and she cuddled by his knee in that way she had, so much a woman then that Strat could barely refrain from pulling her onto his lap. She looked up from under the darkness that veiled her and her eyes clamped on his: "What I am, you know. What I do, you understand better than many. What life Janni has with me, his soul has chosen. Someone is going to come here, and if you don't tell him all of that, the result will not sit well with you. Do you understand?"

"Ischade? Someone? A threat to you? I'll protect you, you know-"

"Hush. Don't promise what you'll not deliver. This one is a friend of yours, a brother. Keep him from my doorway or, despite what I'd like to promise you, he'll become a memory. One that will hang between us in the air forever." She reached up toward his face.

He jerked his head back; she lay her head upon his knee. He couldn't tell if she was crying, but he felt as if he would, so sad was she and so helpless did the big Stepson feel.

An hour later, outside her door, stationed like a sentry, he began to wonder if her creature hadn't lied. Then his big bay, tied at her low gate, let out a challenge and some horse answered from the dark.

Sword drawn, he sidled down to calm the beast, wondering what in h.e.l.l he was supposed to do about something she hadn't explained, when a darkness separated from the midnight chill and a tiny coal, red-hot, seemed to bobble toward him in midair.

Closer it came, until the soft radiance of Ischade's hedges caught its edges and he made out a mounted man smoking something-pulcis, by the smell of it, laced with krrf and rolled in broadleaf.

"Hold and state your business, stranger," Strat called out.

"Strat?" said a soft voice full of distaste and some measure of disbelief. "Ace, if it's really you, tell me something a man would have had to fight on Wizardwall to know."

"Ha! Bas.h.i.+r can't hold his liquor, is what-not even laced with blood and water,"

Strat responded, then added, "Stealth? Niko, is that you?"

The little coal of red grew brighter as the smoker inhaled and in its flare Strat could see the face of Nikodemos-bearded, but with scars showing like white tracks among the hair, just where those scars should be.

A surge of joy went through the Stepsons' leader. "Is Crit with you? The Riddler-is Tempus come back?" Then he sobered: Niko was the problem Ischade'd sent him out here to deal with. Now her distress, and her cautions, made good sense.

"No, I'm alone," came Niko's voice soft as a winter gust as sounds and the movement of the smoke's coal let Straton know the Sacred Bander was dismounting.

They had a bond that should have been deeper than Straton's with Ischade-that had to be. Straton considered alternatives as Niko tied his Askelonian to the fence on the other side of Ischade's gate from where Strat's bay was tethered, and vaulted over the hedge, then grinned: "Not good form to enter a witch's home through a portal she's chosen. How'd you find out about this? No matter-I'm glad to have your help, Ace. Janni's going to be, too."

So that was it-Janni. All Straton's mixed feelings about Ischade's minions roiled around in him and kept him speechless until he realized that Niko was reaching over the fence to get a bow and bladder of naphtha and rags from his horse's saddle.

"Niko, man, this isn't the time or the place for the talk we've got to have."

Stealth turned and as Strat bore down upon him, the Bandaran fighter said, "Strat, I've got to do this. It's my fault, in a way. I've got to free him."

"No, you don't. From what? For whom? He's fighting a war he still has a stake in-fighting it his way. I've fought beside him. Stealth, things are different here from the way they were upcountry. You can't make any headway without magic on your-"

"Side?" Niko supplied the missing word, his face glowing red from the coal of the smoke between his lips. Then he dropped the smoke and ground it under his heel. "Got a girlfriend, do you, Straton? Crit would beat your a.s.s. Diddling around with magic. Now either help me, as your oath demands, or step aside. Go your way. I owe you too much to make an issue of what's right and wrong between us." Niko's hand went to his belt and Straton stiffened: Niko was an expert with throwing stars and poisoned metal blossoms and every kind of edged weapon Strat knew enough to name. The two were thought to be, by Banders, of nearly equal prowess, though Strat's was fading as he aged, Niko's coming on.

"Whatever I'm doing. Stealth, is worse than what you've done? Don't I remember some fight up at the Festival, one in which you protected the Nisibisi witch from a priestess of Enlil?"

That stopped Niko's hand, about to lever a bolt to ready in his crossbow.

"That's not fair, Ace."

"We're not talking fair-we're talking women. Or womanish avatars, or whatever they are. You leave this one alone-she's on our side; she's fought with us, for us ... saved Sync from Roxane, for one thing." Suspicion leaped into Straton's mind, suspicion enough to chase the memory of Janni's tortured shade. "Roxane didn't put you up to this, did she? Did she, Stealth?"

Niko, a flint in one hand, naphtha bladder in the other, paused with the bladder poised above the rags on his arrow's tip. "What difference does that make?

What's going on here, anyway? Randal's disappeared and no one's looking for him?

You're sleeping with a necromant and no one gives a d.a.m.n?"

"You stay around, and you'll find out. But I can guarantee you're not going to like it. I don't. Crit wouldn't. Tempus would bust all our b.u.t.ts. But he's not here, is he? It's you and me. And I'm bound to protect this ... lady, here."

"More bound to her than to me? Sacred-" Niko stopped and stared, his mouth half open, at something behind Strat, so that the big fighter turned to see what Niko saw.

On Ischade's doorstep, beside the necromant swathed in her black and hooded robe, was Janni-or what remained of Janni. The ex-Stepson, ex-living thing was red and yellow and showing bone; things glittered on him like fireworks or luminescent grubs. He had holes for eyes and too-long hair and the smell of newly-turned earth proceeded him down the steps.

Despite himself, Strat looked over his shoulder at Niko, who slumped against the waist-high fence, his eyes slitted as if against some blinding light, his crossbow pointing at the ground.

Strat heard Ischade murmur, "Go then. Go to your partner, Janni. Stay awhile.

Have your reunion." Then, louder, "Strat! Come in. Let them be alone. Let them solve it-I was wrong; it's between these two, not us."

And then, as Niko threw the bow up to his shoulder and took fluid, sudden aim at Ischade-before Straton could put himself between her and Niko's arrow, or even thought to move-Ischade was beside him, facing Niko with a look on her face Strat had never seen before: deep pain, compa.s.sion, even acknowledgment of a kindred soul.

"So you're the one. The special one. Nikodemos, over whom even the G.o.d Enlil and the entelechy of dreams contend." She nodded as if in her drawing room, sipping tea at some civil table. "I see why. Nikodemos, don't choose your enemies too quickly. The witch who sent you here has Randal-is that not a greater wrong, a deeper evil, than giving the opportunity for vengeance to a soul such as Janni, who craves it?"

Ischade waited, but Niko didn't answer. His gaze was fixed on the thing that shambled toward him, arms outstretched, to embrace its erstwhile partner.

Strat, were he the one faced with love from such a zombie, would have run screaming, or shot the bow, or lopped the head off the undead who sought to hold him.

But Niko took a deep breath that Strat could hear, so shuddering was it, dropped the bow, and held his own arms out, saying, "Janni. How is it with you? Is she right?"

And Strat had to turn away; he couldn't watch Niko, full of life, embrace that thing who'd once ridden at his side.

And when he did, Ischade was waiting there to take Strat's hand and cool his brow and usher him inside.

But no matter the depth of her eyes or the quality of her ministrations, this time Straton knew he had no chance of forgetting what he saw when a Sacred Band pair was reunited, the living and the dead.

Niko was drinking off his chill in the Ale keep, which opened with the rising sun, when he realized that somebody was drawing his picture.

A little fellow with a pot belly and black circles under his eyes, who was sitting in the beamed common hall's far corner, was looking at him too often, then looking down at a board he held on his lap.

Just the day barman was present, so Niko didn't try to ignore a problem in the making. He'd had too rough a night, at any rate, to have patience with anyone let alone a limner who didn't ask permission.

But when he was halfway to the other man, his intention clear enough, the day barman reached out a hand to stay him. "I'd not, were I you, sir. That's Lalo the Limner, who drew the Black Unicorn that came alive in the Maze and killed so many. Just let the scribbler be."

"As far as I know, I'm alive already, man," Niko said, knowing that his accursed temper had already slipped its bonds and that things would doubtless get worse before he got it in check again. "And I don't like having my picture scrawled on anything-walls, doors, hearts. Maybe I'll turn the tables and draw my sign on that fat, soft belly...."

By then, the little, rat-faced limner was scrabbling up, running for the door, his sketching board under his arm. Niko didn't chase him.

He went back to his table and sat there, digging in the wood with the point of his blade the way Janni used to do, thinking of the meeting he'd had and wanted to forget with a dead thing happy to fight beyond mortal battles at the bidding of the necromant, wondering if he should-or could-find a way to put Janni's soul to rest despite its a.s.surance that it was content enough as it was. Did it know?

Was it really Janni? Did the oath they'd sworn still obtain when one respondent wasn't a man any longer?

Niko didn't know. He couldn't decide. He tried not to drink too much, but drink dulled the picture in his mind's eye, and at nightfall he was still sitting there, trying unsuccessfully to get thoroughly drunk, when the priest known as Torchholder happened to come in with others of his perfumed breed, all with their curl-toed winter shoes and their gaudy jewelry.

Torchholder knew him, but Niko didn't have the sense to leave before the High Priest of Vashanka recognized the fighter who'd been with Tempus at the Mageguild's Fete two winters past.

So when the priest sat down opposite him, Niko raised his head from the palm on which he'd been propping it and stared owlishly at the priest. "Yeah? Can I help you, citizen?"

"Perhaps, fighter, I can help you."

"Not if you can't lay the undead, not a chance of it."