The Dead of Winter- - Thieves World 07 (6 page)

"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 ass. 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 damn?"

"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 butts. 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, compassion, even acknowledgment of a kindred soul.

"So you're the one. The special one. Nikodemos, over whom even the god 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 assurance 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."

"Pardon?" Torchholder was watching the half drunk Sacred Bander closely, looking for some sign. "We can do whatever the god demands, and we know you are pious and well disposed to-"

"Enlil," Niko interrupted firmly. "Gotta have a god around here, so I'm making it plain: Mine's Enlil, when I need one. Which is as infrequently as possible." Stealth's hand went to his belt and Torchholder froze in place. But Niko only patted his weaponbelt and brought the hand back to the table, where he propped his chin on it. "Weapons'11 do me, mosttimes. Other times ..." The Sacred Bander leaned forward. "You any good at fighting witches? I've got a friend I'd like to get out of one's clutches ..." Torchholder made a warding sign with practiced fluency before his face. "We'd like to show you something, Nikodemos called-"

"Ssh!" Niko said with exaggerated care, and looked around, right and left, before leaning forward to whisper. "Don't call me that. Not here. Not ever. I'm just visiting. I can't stay. Too much magic. Hurts, you know. Dead partners that aren't dead. Ex-partners that aren't ex.... Very confusing-"

"We know, we know," soothed the priest with wicked eyes. "We're here to help you sort it out. Come with us and-"

"Who's we?" Niko wanted to know, but two of Molin's cohort already had him by the armpits. They lifted the only mildly protesting fighter up and eased him out the door to where a carriage with ivory screens was waiting and, after some little difficulty, boosted him inside and closed the door. Niko, who'd been abducted more than once in his life, expected the carriage to jerk and horses to lunge and to be carried off into the night. He also expected to fight being bound hand and foot. And he expected to be alone in there, after that, or at least alone but for the company of guards. None of his expectations came to pass. Before him, on the other side of the carriage, were two children, one on either side of a harried looking woman who might once have been beautiful and whom Niko, who liked women, vaguely recalled: a temple dancer. The two children were hardly more than babes, but one of them, the fair-haired, sat right up and clapped his little hands. And the sound of those hands clapping rang in Niko's ears like the thunder of the god Vashanka, like the Storm God's own lightning that seemed to issue from the childish mouth as the boy began to giggle in joy. Niko sat back, slouched against the opposite corner of the wagon, and said,

"What the ... ?"

And though the child was now just a child again, another, deeper voice, rang in the Stepson's head, saying, Look on Me, favorite of the Riddler, and take word back to your leader that I am come again. And that 1 would take advantage of all you have to give before the little world that is thine suffers unto perishing. The boy from whose mouth the words could not have issued was saying, "Sowdier?

Hewo? Make fwiends? Fwiends? Take big ride? Water pwace? Soon? Me want go soon!" Niko, stone sober, sat up, looked at the woman sharply and then nodded politely, as he hadn't before. "You're that one's mother? That temple dancer-Seylalha, the First Consort who bore Vashanka's child." It wasn't really a question; the woman didn't bother to answer.

Niko leaned forward, toward the two children, the darker of whom had his thumb in his mouth and regarded Niko with round black eyes. The fair child smiled beatifi-cally. "Soon?" the boy said, though it was too young a child to be discussing anything as sensitive as Niko knew it was. He said, "Soon, if you're worthy, boy. Pure in heart. Honorable. Loving of life all life. It won't be easy. I'll have to get permission. And you've got to control-what's inside you. Or they won't have you in Bandara, no matter how they care for me."

"Good," said the fair child, or maybe just "Goo"; Niko wasn't sure. These were toddlers, the both. Too young and, if Niko's maat was right and a god had chosen one as His repository, too dangerous. Niko said to the woman, "Tell the priests I'll do what I can. But he must be taught restraint. No child can control his temper at that age. Both of them, then, must be prepared." And he pushed on the wagon's door, which opened and let the sobered fighter out into the blessedly cold and normal Sanctuary night.

Normal, except for the presence of Molin Torchholder and the little scribbler, whom the priest held by the collar. "Nikodemos, look at this," said the priest without preamble as if Niko were now his ally-which, so far as Stealth was concerned, he indubitably was not.

Still, the picture that the scribbler, who was protesting that he had a right to do as he willed, had scribed was odd: It was of Niko, but with Tempus looking over his shoulder and both of them seemed to be enfolded in the wings of a dark angel who looked altogether too much like Roxane.

"Leave the picture, artist, and go your way." It was Niko's order, but Torchholder let go of the bandy-legged limner, who hurried off without asking when or if he'd get his artwork back.

"That's my problem ... that picture. Forget you've seen it. Yours, if you want what the god wants, is to get those children schooled where they can be disciplined-by Bandaran adepts."

"What makes you assume I want any such-"

"Torchholder, don't you know what you've got there? More trouble than Sanctuary can handle. Infants-one infant, anyhow-with a god in him. With the power of a god. A Storm God. Can you reason out the rest?"

Torchholder muttered something about things having gone too far. Niko retorted, "They're not going any further unless and until my partner Randal-who's being held by Roxane, I hear tell-is returned to me unharmed. Then I'll ride up and ask Tempus what he wants to do-if anything-about the matter of the godchild you so cavalierly visited upon a town that had troubles enough without one. But one way or the other, the resolution isn't going to help you one whit. Get my meaning?"

The architect-priest winced and his face screwed up as if he'd tasted something sour. "We can't help you with the witch, fighter-not unless you want simple manpower."

"Good enough. As long as it's priest-power." And Niko began giving orders that Torchholder had no alternative but to obey.

On the dawn of the shortest day of the year, Niko had still not come back to Roxane.

It was time to make an end to Randal, whom she despised enough-almost-to make the slight dealt her by the mortal whom she'd consented to love less stinging. Almost, but not quite. If witches could cry, Roxane would have shed tears of humiliation and of unrequited love. But a witch shouldn't be crying over mortals, and Roxane was reconstituted from the weakness that had beset her during the Wizard Wars. If Niko wouldn't come to her, she'd make him notorious in hell for all the lonely souls his faithless, feckless self-interest had sent there.