The Lady (10 page)

“We need to knock some heads together and remind them who the real enemy is.”

“And?”

“And we've got a stronghold of the Lady's folk cutting us off from the road east. Do we want that?”

Kharduin grinned. “Ah. The thought had crossed my mind, actually. Think we can do it?”

Nour woke up briefly while he and Kharduin were talking over one another, ideas flying. That gave Varro a means to shut up Holla's objections and insults of his intelligence, by sending him to Talfan and Hadidu with the apparently-not-dying man's messages. Hadidu had asked to speak to the Blackdog, Hadidu was the priest of a lost goddess; Holla-Sayan was, looked at a certain way, the priest of Attalissa, so could he refuse, holy man to holy man? And Hadidu didn't even yet know his brother-in-law lived, reason enough for Holla to make haste with that news—which, admittedly, Varro should have sent by someone the moment he heard it. Privately, Varro thought that Hadidu, so intense, so, ya, gods-touched, could persuade Holla, if anyone could, that he was needed in Marakand. Was meant to be in Marakand, to serve this. The Old Great Gods had put him in the way of becoming the Blackdog for some purpose, surely, and why think it had ended with Lissavakail? He made the mistake of voicing that last aloud.

“Not in all the cold hells,” Holla-Sayan snarled. “Don't you ever name the Old Great Gods so to me . . .” He rubbed a hand over his face, what had seemed real fury dying into confusion. But he shrugged and left with his message for Hadidu, making no more arguments.

Kharduin set out to round up a few respected gang-bosses and caravanserai-masters, and some leading Marakander men and women of the suburb as well. Rather him than Varro. Some of Kharduin's gang headed for the Gore to strip the collected Red Mask and temple-guard corpses, if they hadn't already been looted. Ivah had been put to bed by the camel-leech, who fussed over her as if she'd singlehandedly saved the city from all seven devils at once and flatly forbade Varro to conscript her for his scheme. Saved Varro having to say he'd as soon trust a real Red Mask to watch his back. He would have liked to have had Mikki along, but the demon had rolled in his blanket by Nour's bed and gone to sleep while they still debated.

He'd said he would go help strip the corpses, which was going to be no pleasant task, especially the mess the Blackdog and a bear were likely to have made of the Red Masks—though at least they wouldn't have bled, from what he'd heard—but first Varro borrowed a pony from the caravanserai yard. He would ride out to Rasta's caravanserai at the far western edge of the suburb to collect Red Geir's sword. And to let the boss know her giant, bone-crushing black monster coward dog of a husband was still in the land of the living, since he'd noticed how Holla-Sayan had been avoiding any suggestion he carry
that
message himself. Gaguush would find a leash for her dog for certain after this, dragging them all into another gods' war.

Holla was going to owe him for the shouting he was about to endure in his stead, indeed he was.

CHAPTER VI

They drifted from the houses, warily, defiantly. Bonfires burned in the market square, heaped at the far corners, and it was street guard who tended them. Anyone venturing within would be putting themselves against the light. But street guard with lanterns on poles stood around the goddess Ilbialla's tomb, and a handful of people had climbed atop its barrel-vaulted roof. A woman with another lantern, they could see, an officer with ribbons on his helmet, four archers, kneeling at the corners. And a man they ought to know, all who lived in the streets about the Sunset Market square. So they came. A few had been told he would be there. They had whispered it to others, rumour spreading fast as feet could creep from house to house in the curfew-empty streets.
The priest of Ilbialla
. So they came.

Jugurthos had thought they would.

The tomb of the goddess had brooded over the place where once stairs had descended to the well of Ilbialla since Jugurthos was a boy. It had been built in a night, by Red Masks, the folk of the neighbourhood had said. The cave of Gurhan among the folded gullies and ridges of the Palace Hill, Gurhan's Hill, had been sealed as well. The frieze beneath the eaves of the tomb, like the wall sealing the cave, was carved with a long, flowing line of script that no scholar could decipher, though Nour had taken furtive copies as far as Nabban and the imperial wizards of Nabban, seeking aid. Since the two tombs were built, the gods had been silent. Those who had tried, in the first day, to break up the stonework had died, but it could be touched safely if you didn't intend harming it. Children played stalking games around the tomb. Beggars and singers sat in its shade. Dogs marked it.

It made a fine podium, if you did not forget you stood on a curving roof.

Hadidu had his eyes shut. Praying, maybe, to a goddess who could not hear, who at best slept beneath their feet, sealed in the prisoning tomb, or at worst was beyond hearing any prayers ever again. But maybe he only sought for words. His lips moved, silently. Jugurthos put a hand on his shoulder and found him trembling. He spared a moment for a prayer himself, to gods that could not hear and the Old Great Gods, who did not intervene in such minor affairs of life—death and what came after being their province. Let Hadidu not faint from sheer nervousness, let him not fumble his words and hem and haw, let him, at the very least, stammer out something moving and to the point, before he dried up altogether and Jugurthos was forced to take over and present the arguments of their hastily sketched harangue. It would be better coming from a chosen of the goddess of this ward, even Hadidu admitted that, but being born to the priesthood did not make one an orator, and Hadidu had always been so shy . . .

Talfan was down there, in the front row of the faces looking up. Arms folded under the baby sleeping in her sling, Great Gods, what risk. But her outlander husband hadn't yet returned from the suburb to gainsay her and was thoroughly under her thumb anyway, and who else had the right to order her home? Eyes wide, intense. Beside her was one of the magistrates for Clothmarket Ward, a scarf pulled up to hide much of his face. To the other side a pair of armed men, two of the four bodyguards a senator was permitted. The senator, Beni Sessihz, lurked in his enclosed chair, with his other two guards and the four burly chairmen standing close about. He'd been old when Jugurthos was young, no blame to him for staying put now. He walked only painfully, and that with two sticks. But he'd come, and moreover put himself in the front, from which it would be difficult to flee if they were—interrupted. A lesser Family of the Twenty, Sessihz, but Beni himself still commanded some respect among the elders of the Families. He had been a scholar of the law and a magistrate in his younger days, was a survivor of the earthquake collapse of the senate palace dome that had killed so many of his colleagues. He was likewise a survivor, in his way, of the purge of the so-called rebel senators, which had followed not long after. Jugurthos's parents, both so newly risen to senatorial status, young elders of their respective branches of the Family Barraya after the earthquake deaths of their parents, had been leaders among those who dared speak out against the temple's arbitrary assumption of unprecedented powers. They were arrested by the temple guard and Red Masks whose disbanding they had called for and were executed without trial. Locked in iron cages in the palace plaza below the senate palace and library, to die of thirst and sun.

The bones were still there. Not the ghosts. Furtive charity had set them all free to take the road to the Old Great Gods, over time, as the temple watch grew disinterested. All it took was a handful of dust.

Senator Beni Sessihz had survived by not being there for that vote. Many who feared to assent but could not bring themselves to openly sanction the temple's formation of an illegal private army had done likewise. Jugurthos had come, perhaps not to forgive, but to understand those who had done so, as he left childhood rage behind.

Beni had never stepped aside from his place as senior-most elder of the Sessihz Family or given up his rights in the senate to some younger relation. He had defiantly abstained from any vote on any temple-prompted matter, or slept through the votes, or missed them altogether. Falling into his dotage, it was said, and had been for thirty years, a frail old man, a place-holding ghost of the past. Jugurthos had never thought so. The old man had turned up hard on the heels of the messenger sent to his house with the sealed testimony of the sandal-maker. There were others in chairs as well, a handful, senators or magistrates or the elderly heads of great merchant branches of the Twenty Families, but they all kept back beyond the bonfires, in the mouths of lesser streets, and the Family emblems on the curtains or the wooden doors of their chairs were one and all covered. Sensible caution, perhaps. There might be others, even more sensible, or younger and fitter, who had come afoot and anonymous. He hoped there were.

Word of this could go straight to the temple, but how it would get in through the circling wall of unnatural fire his scouts had reported, Jugurthos didn't know. No doubt the Lady would have her ways.

He had posted lookouts at the five gateways into Sunset from other wards. If the temple came in force they were done for, but maybe the folk would have time to scatter innocently to their homes. There were few actual gates left between wards to close. Tulip had suggested barricading the gateways with carts, but that would only let them control the day's traffic, not prevent any rush of temple guard. No point, tonight. Tomorrow . . . gates could be improvised. Some of the warehouses had great doors that might almost do.
And then?
He shoved that thought away. Hold this ward. And take the next. And—find that wizard of the suburb and her demons, all hung upon that. A power to put the Lady to flight? Old Great Gods, Ilbialla and Gurhan, speed Varro's search. Could the spirits of the mountains really have come to their aid?

A patrol of guards emerged from a northern street, and folk swirled away, fading into shadows. Jugurthos put himself in front of Hadidu, tensed to shove him down. He saw spears, no bows, a helmet crested with ribbons, the tension of his own guards about one of the fires, confronting this. But then one stepped back and nodded, and the new patrol came on. Tulip moved as if she would drop the horn-paned candle-lantern on its pole away over the side of the tomb, to leave them in darkness.

“No, wait.”

Only a five-man patrol, but the sixth, the officer, the short, stocky shape, Jugurthos knew, and then stepping deliberately into lantern-light, Hassin Xua of the Riverbend Gate pointed questioningly up at the roof of the tomb.

“Hah.” Jugurthos went to catch his reaching hand and help him haul himself up. “Hassin, you're mad, coming here.”

“I? You should have seen her, Jugurthos, smiling like she thought she scattered blessings with her gaze and soaked in the blood of folk of the suburb, all over her face like—like some barbarian war paint. That was no goddess. Is it true the Red Masks have been destroyed? Because if it isn't, we might as well cut our throats here and now and have—” He stopped, seeing what lay down to the other side of the tomb, the corpse, the old man sitting by it, the niece standing sharp and nervous over him, with the other folk of the suburb who had dared accompany the sandal-maker close about. The caravaneers were subdued and wary now, feeling themselves few and outnumbered for all they were armed, marked by their coats and braids as folk of the road. Such had beaten to death one of the magistrates of the suburb, in mindless vengeance for the Lady's attack. That word had come around, as the dusk fell. Hassin looked down at them, and his lips tightened.

“Master Hadidu of the Doves.” Jugurthos drew his attention back. “Hadidu, Captain Hassin of the Riverbend Gate Fort.”

Hadidu nodded. Hassin glanced over at the darkness on the eastern side of the square, the pit and rubble where the coffeehouse had stood. “Ah,” he said. “Yes. I had a fondness for your almond cakes. Forgive me—there was a little boy. Is he . . . ?”

Hadidu's petrified look broke into a smile. “My son. He's safe.” The smile died. “My brother, though, and my lodger . . .”

Hassin murmured his sympathy.

The Lady had made a mistake, allowing her temple guard to gossip of the outcome of their errand to the Doves. Not only the capture of two wizards, but the death in the fire of a priest of Ilbialla and his family. That, Jugurthos thought, was what had brought Hassin to him, not only horror at the Lady's deeds. The temple said there had been a priest of Ilbialla alive in secret, and then the city heard that for all the temple's efforts, the secret priest lived yet. Hassin was a native of Riverbend, which like Sunset had been Ilbialla's especial care. He would have been a young man on the day of the earthquake. Well old enough to remember his goddess and her priestess.

Yes, the word was out there, in the errant, twisting breeze of rumour.
Priest of Ilbialla . . . there was a priest of Ilbialla, still, all these years later.
And following that, tonight, like slow eddying in the depths of a pond,
There was a priest of Ilbialla, and he escaped. He lives. He calls us . .
.

Hadidu stirred. The market square was not filled, not nearly that, but the clusters of folk were numerous, and there were more than could be accounted for by the curious of the neighbourhood. Rumour spread, regardless of the curfew. Red Masks slain, the captain of Sunset brought proof.
Priest of Ilbialla, at the tomb of Ilbialla.
And,
There is a devil in the temple
.

“In the days of the first kings in the north,” Hadidu said abruptly, and stopped, stepping into Tulip's light. His voice shook only a little as he began again, more loudly. He folded shaking hands into the sleeves of his caftan, which gave him a look of calm assurance Jugurthos knew he did not feel. “In the days of the first kings in the north, the songs say, there were seven wizards, wise and powerful. And there were seven devils, who had escaped from the cold hells where the Old Great Gods had sealed them after the last great war in the heavens. Bodiless, they roamed the earth. And being bodiless, creatures with no bond to it, they could not be sustained by it. They hungered to be of the stuff of the world, as the wizards hungered for knowledge and power, and so a bargain was struck between the seven and the seven, that the devils would join their souls to the wizards' souls and share the wizards' bodies, sharing knowledge, and unending life, and power. But the devils deceived the wizards and betrayed them, taking the wizards' souls into their own and devouring them, taking their bodies for their own, becoming as gods upon the earth. In the end they were defeated, as the tales tell us, by the valour of humanfolk and the strength of the gods and goddesses and demons of the earth, with the aid of the Old Great Gods of the distant heavens. The seven devils were defeated, yes, but not destroyed. They were bound in eternal imprisonment upon the earth, dead and not dead within their graves, and they were guarded by gods and goddesses and demons. But the tales also tell that some, at least, have escaped. One, for certain, we know. He drove the human incarnation of the goddess Attalissa from her lake, scattered her priestesses, made her temple his own, and ruled her land as a tyrant in the body of a Grasslander warlord, powerful almost as a god himself. But he was defeated. You've heard this story also. The folk of the road tell it. Attalissa returned, with her guardian Blackdog at her side. Her priestesses emerged from hiding, her folk rose up and threw off the yoke of Grasslander tyranny, and the devil was destroyed.”