The Lady (12 page)

They did come, a tentative few, then a surge. The murmur started. The old man's words.
A wizard. The Lady, murdering decent tradesfolk with her own hands. A devil. She was a devil. Enough. It's enough. It cannot go on, not now. The wizard has shown the way. Without the Red Masks, the temple is nothing. We can fight them, at last. Captain Jugurthos
. He heard his own name.
Barraya. Those Barrayas
. His father's name.
Petrimos. You remember. Petrimos. And Elias, too. They didn't bow down to the temple . .
.

“Warden of the City . . .”

“Warden Jugurthos . . .”

“The Barraya . . .”

“But the senate—?”

“Damn the senate!” a woman cried.

Something thumped, three times, drumming. A stick on the roof of a carrying-chair? An old voice creaked shrill. “Family Sessihz affirms it. Jugurthos Barraya shall be Warden of the City, till the Lady is defeated and the true gods and law restored.” A fit of coughing, but someone had heard, and that shout was carried through them like a wind-wave through the barley,
The Sessihz for Jugurthos, the senate is here, the senate for Jugurthos
, which hardly followed from one old man's vote, if you could even call it that, in such a time, in such a place. The coughing ended in spluttering and another creaking gasp. “What does it matter? I might as well die grandly as choke to death in my bed. Fool boy. Fool boys, both of you. Do you have any plans to get yourselves and all these fools who follow you alive past the dawn?”

But there was another cry going around. “Senator Demrios of the Xua for the Warden. Senator Shiwasa of the Xua for the Warden, Family Xua for Jugurthos!”

Senator Beni laughed, and coughed, and choked, and flailed his curtains aside to lean out on the door, like some disturbed tortoise peering from its shell. His once-plump face fell in sallow folds, dry as parchment, looking like a touch would tear it, more a corpse than the Red Mask woman. “I'll bring the Family to heel, for what anyone ever listens to Sessihz. I'll see what other fools I can round up for you. I'm dying. What do I have to lose?”

Jugurthos bowed. Hadidu gave a solemn nod that somehow looked like a blessing. The old man cackled and let his curtains fall back. A scrawny arm, hand heavy with rings, appeared, waved the chairmen around, and the whole equipage turned to take its leave. “See you die at least as well as your parents, young fools.”

“Oh, gods,” said Hadidu.

Jugurthos wished that uppermost in his mind was not, now, the memory that though a Warden of the City had more or less absolute power for the duration of the crisis of his appointment, his or her handling of that crisis would be judged by the senate, afterwards. Wardens of the City had been exiled before now, if they were found, after the fact, to have been deficient in achievement or otherwise unsatisfactory in their handling of their powers. Or they had been arrested and executed, or assassinated, when disinclined to give them up again. Jugurthos shook his head and grinned. “I should live so long.”

“What?” asked Hadidu. He croaked almost as badly as old Beni and leaned on Jugurthos now, muttering, “Gods, gods, Old Great Gods, don't you ever make me do that again, Ju. Don't.”

Jugurthos gave him a hasty one-armed embrace. “You were—Ilbialla can't be dead, Hadi, she must be still aware, somehow, in her prison, reaching out to touch you. I've never heard words of such power—I'd strip the gate of every man and woman in my command and storm the temple this minute, if you told me to.” All five patrols of them. They were all fools.

Hadidu sank down on his heels, head on his knees, arms wrapped close. “Don't be an idiot. Find me some water. I'm dry as the desert. And for Ilbialla's sake, tell them
something
, give these people some orders, before we have a mob like the mob of the suburb in here.”

“We're all fools,” said Hassin, which was so much Jugurthos's own thought. “There'll be no storming of the temple gates. We can't get through the fire around the temple, and there's no way we could hope to put it out; there's no fuel left for it, and it's still burning. I went to have a look at it myself, before I came here. Saw a body, or part of one. Some boy didn't make it out of a house in time. He'd fallen. Just his head and shoulders, an arm. The rest was inside the fire. Gone. So are the houses that were there, just stone rubble and what looks like puddles of glass, if stone could turn to glass. The—the rest of the boy was a bit of white, might have been bone, just a streak of ash fused to the stone. That's all. We're not getting in through that, unless your wizard of the suburb can work another miracle. If she exists and is on our side at all. But the Lady'll be able to come out whenever she's good and ready, you can count on that.”

“So we need to be ready, when she does.” Jugurthos raised both hands over his head, stilling the folk who surged and jostled around the tomb, the nearest folk reaching to touch Hadidu's feet, his hands where he crouched above them, petrified again, Jugurthos thought, at the faces, the gaping mouths, the frantic eager hands.

But he was not without plans. He had planned, since he was a boy. If some flaw in the Lady's hold appeared in
this
way, then
that
, and if
that
, then
this
. . . . Sudden revelations of devilry and necromancy had not been in all those hypothetical exercises of planning, the substitute for the active revenge he could not take for his murdered parents, but he had his road before him now. A few steps of it, at least. Run. And swiftly, before anyone noticed there was nothing beneath his feet.

Warden of the City. That was several steps in itself. At least, if anyone in authority outside this square chose to acknowledge that declaration of the mob.

In the silence compelled by his upraised hands, he spoke again. Shouted. Orders. But he'd already given them to his own people before they ever left the fort.

Patrol-firsts began calling up the guards he had assigned to barricade and hold each of the five ward gateways. Not even a full patrol, just a couple of bodies for each, as a disciplined seed for what must grow larger. They shouted, inviting the younger men, the younger unmarried women, the folk who had come out half already tensed for action. The Lady wanted a militia? He had a militia, right here. He just needed to put himself at the head of it.

Captain Hassin leaned from behind. “Send your men meant for the Riverbend gateways to strengthen your watch on the Spicemarket and the Clothmarket walls. We don't need to have a border between us. Riverbend's mine. I'll raise what force I can and hold it for you. If I can.”

“Good. Go. We need to keep in close touch. Make sure you can trust your couriers.”

“You make sure no one gets a knife in the priest's back, Warden. He's the one the Lady will want dead, even more than you.” Hassin saluted and jumped down. Jugurthos nodded to Tulip, who followed Hassin off the tomb. In the darkness she left behind her by going with her lantern to keep an eye on the crowd pressing about Ergos, he and Hadidu slipped down unobserved.

Talfan, though, was watching for them. The Westgrasslander Holla-Sayan was still with her. He hardly seemed a demon, not that Jugurthos had ever heard of a demon in human form anyway. They were usually animals. This Holla-Sayan seemed only a man, younger than Jugurthos, filthy with dust and sweat and what Jugurthos now realized was drying blood, his coat black and stiff with it, too much to be his own.

“Master Hadidu.” He gave Hadi a nod that was not quite a caravaneer's hasty bow. “I'm to tell you your brother-in-law Nour lives.”

Hadidu swayed forward as if he would grab at the man, who raised an arm to fend him off, stepping back. “He escaped? How? Where is he?”

“With Kharduin. He's not well. He was imprisoned—you know Ivah?”

“Ivah's alive and with him? Thank the gods.”

The Westgrasslander's mouth twisted wryly. “Or something. Yes.”

It was a foul tale he told, of the slow death Nour and Ivah had been left to. Worse than execution by drowning in the well, or had that always been a lie?

“You should at least have brought Ivah with you,” Talfan said. She seemed to have rapidly gotten over her brief unease with the man. Or whatever he was. “We never knew she was a wizard, and one of such power and skill to boot. We need her here. If the Lady tries to break out of the temple—”

The look Holla-Sayan gave her was not exactly friendly. “She's been beaten and starved, and then she dragged Nour half-dead with Red Masks behind her, walked a mile through rubble and thorns and blister-vine nearly naked, fought temple guard, fought Red Masks, and fought your doubly damned Lady for you, wizardry to wizardry. She is
sleeping
.”

Talfan subsided.

He turned his attention back to Hadidu. “They're both safe enough for now with Kharduin. Both sleeping. I wish I were. Come to Shenar's caravanserai in the morning, if you can. I don't know about Ivah, but Nour's in no shape to be moved yet again. They had to carry him off up the cliffs to hide when the temple came.”

“Yes,” said Hadidu, and then, wearily, with a look at Jugurthos. “If I can. Tell him I will, if I can. I don't know what might be happening here. Tell him I'm safe, and Shemal, and all the rest of the household got away. He'll want to know.”

A nod. “You think you can take the city. Have you seen the temple?”

“The fire?” Jugurthos asked. “Only from a distance.” He hesitated. “Have you? And how did you get through the gate, armed? You weren't with the handful of outlanders I let pass.”
What fool of mine decided that was licence for any outlander with a sword?

There was
not
a spark of green fire in the man's glance at him and away, Jugurthos told himself, but the fine hairs of the back of his neck prickled, and he had to quash an impulse to take a step back. Talfan entirely failed to stifle her flinching, her hand protectively over the sleeping baby's head.

“I didn't come through the gate,” Holla-Sayan said. “And no, I haven't been to the temple. But I can smell it. You won't put that fire out. Neither will Ivah. It's not natural, and it's not wizardry.”

“What is it, then?” Talfan demanded. “It can't be any divine fire. She's no goddess. Everyone says, now, that she's a devil and—”

“Did it never occur to one damned soul in this damnable city to wonder, till now? A goddess ordering the murder of wizards?”

“You mean the wall of fire is devil's work,” said Hadidu, bringing them back to the point. “And you don't think a wizard can break it.”

“Yes.”

Talfan protested, “But Ivah broke the spell on—”

“The seven devils of the north were wizards. The spell the Red Masks could summon to flatten everyone with terror was human wizardry, but that wall of flame is most definitely not, and I haven't any idea how to bring it down.”

“Then we pen the Lady in and let her starve—let her temple-folk starve, until they desert her and it's the devil alone we have to deal with. Slay her. Somehow. It must be possible. I hear it's been done before. The Lake-Lord was a devil, one of the seven . . .” Jugurthos waited, but the man did not contradict that, “and he was slain.”

“Not by me, whatever you've heard,” the Westgrasslander said. Hesitated himself. “Talk to Mikki.”

“Who's Mikki?”

“The bear. He's sleeping, too. But Varro and Kharduin are,” he shook his head, “talking about taking over the Eastern Wall fortress. If you want to hold the city, you'll want that. Sitting here isn't a choice for you. The Lady's afraid, she's confused, taken by surprise. Unsure of herself. She won't stay that way. Time's only going to sap your strength, such as it is, and restore her nerve. Warden, is it?”

“Apparently.”

“Want some advice?”

“You have much experience with this sort of thing?”

The man's face went still, reflective. “You wouldn't think so. But I remember. I think.” A grin. “Varro's ideas are old and simple and born of tales. He set Kharduin's gang to collecting Red Mask and temple helmets and uniforms from the corpses we left out there, while Kharduin went to talk to the people they hope the suburb will listen to. If you want to stop
him
, do it now. If not—well, I think they may carry their plan through. Kharduin may be only a caravan-master, but he commands a lot of respect in the suburb. You're damning this folk to worse than anything the Lady's done yet if you back down and let her regain her footing, but you can't hold the city with a stronghold for the Lady sitting right next door. I doubt the Western Wall will hold long if the Eastern falls, but it's farther away. You don't need to worry about it for the next day at least. Any idea what the numbers are, at the Eastern Wall? I'm heading back out now.”

Take the Eastern Wall and its gate, now? Before he even knew if any captain but Hassin would join him? Running on a slope of scree, and the stones beginning to run beneath his feet, sweeping him—

“What are they doing?” Talfan asked, and turned, clutching her baby closer.

Jugurthos looked to see what had drawn her attention. People were kneeling by the tomb, or touching it, heads bowed as if they prayed. A focus, Jugurthos thought. A rallying point, a reminder and a promise, they would—Old Great Gods alone knew how—free their gods and restore the city. He could make it that. He would. He needed some such symbol, to hold the folk as one.

There, what Talfan has seen: a stirring, swirling among the people about the tomb. Gleam of lantern-light on an upraised sledgehammer. Holla-Sayan's head snapped about, and he roared, “No!” but the stonemason—Jugurthos knew those bulging shoulders, the man lived only a street over—brought the hammer swinging around at a cornerstone of the tomb.

Lightning seared his vision, and Jugurthos flung up a warding arm before his eyes. It had arced, not from the clear night sky but from the tomb itself. People cried out and scattered, but there was no second strike. Jugurthos ran, but there was nothing to do for the stonemason. He was manifestly dead, the cloth of caftan and shirt burnt away in a patch broad as a spread hand, and the skin beneath charred black and flaking in the lantern-light. The haft of the hammer, too, was charred, and the iron head lumpish and deformed.