The Dead of Winter- - Thieves World 07 (4 page)

When he woke, he washed his face with water from an ice-crusted bedside pot, scratched his two-months growth of beard and decided not to shave it, then went down to the common room to eat and get a brief.

The guild hostel's common room was unchanged-wine-dark even in morning, quiet all and every day. On its sideboard stood steaming bowls of mulled wine and goat's blood and, beside, cheese and barley and nuts for men who needed possets in the morning to brace them for hard work to come.

These days, in Sanctuary, the meres were eating better -a function, Niko determined from the talk around him as he filled a bowl, of their new regard and esteem in a town coming apart at its seams, a town where personal protection was a commodity at an all-time high. There was lamb on the sideboard this morning, a whole pig with an apple in its mouth, and fish stuffed with savory. It hadn't been this way when last Niko'd worked here-then the meres were tolerated, but not sent goodies from the Palace and from the fisherfolk or from the merchants. It hadn't been this way, before.... He ate his fill and got his brief from the dispatching agent, who sketched a map of faction lines which divided up the town.

"Look here. Stealth, I'll only tell you once," the dispatching agent said intently. "The Green Line runs along Palace Park; above it are your patrons-the Palace types, the merchant class, and the Beysibs ... don't tell me what you think of that. The Maze's surrounded by Jubal's Blue Line; you'll need this pass to get in there." The dispatcher, who'd lost one eye before Niko had ever set foot in Sanctuary, pulled an armband from his hip pocket and handed it to Niko. The band was sewn from parallel strips of colored cloth: green, red, black, blue, and yellow. Niko fingered it, said, "Fine, just don't call me Stealth in here-or anywhere. I need to sniff around before I make my presence known," and tied it on his upper arm before he looked questioning-ly at the dispatcher. The old soldier in patched off-duty gear said, "You're on call to the Green Liners, remember, no matter what name you choose. The red's for the Blood Line: that's Zip's PFLS-Popular Front for the Liberation of Sanctuary. Third Commando's backing that lot, so unless you've friends there, be careful in Ratfall, and in all of Downwind-that's their turf. The Blue Line follows the White Foal-those two witches down there, Ischade and the Nisibisi witch-bitch, have death squads to enforce their will, and Shambles Cross is theirs. The Black Line's round the Mageguild-the quays and harbors, down to the sea; the Yellow Line your own Stepsons threw up out west of Downwind and Shambles. You need any help, son, take my name in vain."

Niko nodded, said, "My thanks, sir. Life to you, and-"

"Your commander? Tempus? Will he follow? Is he here?" The eagerness in the dispatcher's voice gave Niko pause. Stealth's caution must have showed in his face, for the rough-hewn, one-eyed mere continued: "Strat's reclaimed the barracks for the Stepsons, but it was bloodier than a weekend pass to hell. We'd like to see the Riddler-nobody lessor's going to straighten this season's mess out."

"Maybe," Niko said carefully, "after the weather breaks-it's snow to your horse's belly upcountry by now." He wasn't empowered to say more. But he could ask his own question now. "And Randal? The Tysian Hazard who came downcountry with the advance force? Seen him?"

"Randal?" The bristling jaw worked and Niko knew that he wasn't going to like what he was about to hear. "Strat was asking for him, three, four times. Seems he was spirited right out of the Mageguild-or left on his own. You never know with wizards, do ya, son? I mean, maybe he up and left. It was right after the sack ofJubal's old-of the Stepsons' barracks, and it was so bad Strat took to sleeping here with us until they got the place cleaned up."

"Randal wouldn't do that," Niko said under his breath, rising to his feet.

"What's that, soldier?"

"Nothing. Thanks for the work-and the advance." The mercenary, who was older than he looked, even with a beard to point up hard-won scars, patted the purse hanging from his swordbelt. "I'll see you after a while." Stealth needed to get out of there, ride perimeters, make sense of the worsened chaos in a town which had been as bad, last time he'd been here, as Niko would have thought a town could be.

And that got him to thinking, as he tacked up his horse and led it snorting into the sulky air of a late dawn only a week shy of the year's shortest day, about the last tour he'd done here.

Two winters ago. Stealth, called Nikodemos, had lost his first partner in Sanctuary-the man he'd partnered with according to Sacred Band rules for better than a decade had been killed here. It had hurt like nothing since his childhood servitude on Wizardwall had hurt; it had happened down on Wideway, in a wharfside warehouse. Return to Sanctuary was bringing back too many memories, unlaid ghosts and hidden pain. The following spring, still here as part ofTempus's cohort of Stepsons, he'd lost his second partner, Janni. He'd lost Janni to the Nisibisi witch. Death's Queen, and left then, quit Sanctuary for cleaner wars, he'd thought, up north.

In the north he'd found the wars no cleaner-he'd fought Datan, lord archmage of Wizardwall, and Roxane on Tyse's slopes and up on the high peaks where he'd spent his youth as one of the fierce guerrillas called Successors, led now by his boyhood friend, Bashir. Then Niko had fought beside Bashir and Tempus, his commander, against the Mygdonians, venturing beyond Wizardwall to see what no man should see-Mygdonian might allied with renegade magic so that all the defenders Tempus arrayed against them were, by default, pawns in a war of magic against the gods.

After that campaign, he'd taken part in the change of emperors that occurred during the Festival of Man and then, tired to his bones of war and restless in his spirit and his heart, he'd taken a youth-a refugee child half Mygdonian and half a wizard-far west to the Bandaran isles of mist and mysticism where Niko himself was raised, where he'd learned to revere the elder gods and the elder wisdoms of the secular adepts, who saw gods in men and men in gods and had no truck with such young and warring deities as Ilsigi and Rankan alike brought alive with prayers and sacrifice.

Yet all the blood he'd spilled and honors he'd won and tears he'd shed, far from Sanctuary, fell away from him as soon as he'd saddled his sable stallion in the stable behind the mercenaries' guildhall and gone venturing in the town. For there was one thread of continuity, one sameness Niko's maat sensed in Sanctuary that had been with him since last he'd served here as one of Tempus's Stepsons and-with the exception of his time in far Bandara-had been with him ever since as it was with him still: Roxane, the Nisibisi witch. Sidling through the upscale crowd in the Alekeep to find the owner, a man Niko had known well enough to court his daughter when he'd been stationed here before and a man who had a right to know that the daughter's shade, long undead under the witch's spell, had finally been put to rest by Niko's own hand, the fighter called Stealth was suddenly so aware of Roxane that he fancied he could smell her musk upon the beerhall's air.

She was here, somewhere. Close at hand. His maat told him so-he could glimpse the cobalt-shining trails of Roxane's magic out of the corner of his inner eye the way some lesser man might glimpse a stalker's shadow in his peripheral vision. Niko's soul had its own peripheral vision in the discipline of transcendent perception, a skill which let him track a person or sense a presence or gather the gist of emotions aimed his way, though he could not eavesdrop on specific thoughts.

The Alekeep was freshly whitewashed and full of determined revelers, men and women whose position in the town demanded that they show themselves at business as usual, undisturbed by PFLS rebels or Beysib interlopers or Nisibisi wizardry. Here Rankan Mageguild functionaries in robes that made them look like badly-set tables hobnobbed with caravanners and Palace hierophants all intent on the same end: safety for their business transactions from the interference of warring factions; safety for their persons and their kin from undeads and less numinous terrorists; safety-it was the most sought after commodity in Sanctuary these days.

Safety, so far as Niko was concerned whenever he came out of Bandara into the World, was beside the point. In his cabin on its cliff he could be safe, but then his gifts of maat and his deep perceptions were turned inward, useful only to the student, not, as they were meant, carried by him abroad in the World to turn a fate or two or stem a tide gone too far in any one direction. Maat forced its bearer out, among its opposite, Chaos, to set whatever imbalances he could to rights. It always hurt, it always cost, and he always longed for Bandara when his strength was spent. But, when he was home, he always grew restless, strong and able, and so he'd come out again, even into Sanctuary, where Balance was just an abstract, where everything was always wrong, and where nothing any man-or even demigod like Niko's commander Tempus-could do would bring even an intimation of lasting peace. But peace, Niko's teacher had said, was death. He would have it by and by.

The witch, Roxane, was death also. He hoped she couldn't sense him as clearly as he could her. Though he'd been at pains to keep his visit here a secret from those who'd use him if they could, Niko was drawn to Roxane like a Sanctuary whore to a well-heeled drunk or, if rumor could be believed, like Prince Kadakithis to the Beysa Shupansea.

Not even Bandara's gravel ponds or deep seaside meditation had cleansed his soul of its longing for the flesh of the witch who loved him. So he'd come down again to Sanctuary, on the excuse of answering Randal's ephemeral summons. But it was Roxane he'd come to see. And touch. And talk to. For Niko had to exorcise her, take her talons from his soul, cleanse his heart of her. He'd admitted it to himself this season in Bandara. At least that was a start. The lore of his mystery whispered that any problem, named and known, was soluble. But since the name of Niko's problem was Roxane, Stealth wasn't sure that it was so.

Thus, he must confront her. Here, somewhere. Make her let him go. But he didn't find her in the Alekeep, just a fat old man with a wispy pate who'd aged too much in the passing seasons, who had a winter in his eyes with more bite to it than any Sanctuary ever blew in off the endless sea. The old man, when Niko told him of his daughter's fate, simply nodded, chin on fist, and said to Niko, "You did your best, son. As we're all doing now. It seems so long ago, and we've such troubles here...." He paused, and sighed a quavery sigh, and wiped red eyes with his sleeve then, so Niko knew that the father's hurt was still fresh and sharp.

Niko got up from the marble table where he'd found the father, alone with the night's receipts, and looked down. "If there's ever anything I can do, sir anything at all. I'm at the mercenaries' guildhall, will be for a week or two." The old barkeep blew his nose on the leather of his chiton's hem, then craned his neck. "Do? Leave my other daughters be, is all." Niko held the barkeep's feisty gaze until the man relented. "Sorry, son. We all know none's to blame for undeads but their makers. Luck go with you. Stepson. What is it your brothers of the sword say? Ah, I've got it: Life to you, and everlasting glory." There was too much bitterness in the father's voice for Niko to have misunderstood what remained unsaid.

But he had to ask. "Sir, I need a favor-don't call me th at here, or anywhere. Tell no one I'm in town. I came to you only because ... I had to. For Tamzen's sake." That was the first time either man had used the name of the girl who'd been daughter to the elder and lover to the younger, a girl now safe and peacefully dead, who hadn't been for far too long while Roxane had made use of her, and other children she'd added to her crew of zombies, children taken from among the finest homes of Sanctuary and now buried on the slopes of Wizardwall. He got out of there as soon as the old man shielded his eyes with his hand and muttered something like assent. He shouldn't have come. It had done the Alekeep's owner harm, not good. But he'd had to do it, for himself. Because the girl had been used by the witch against him, because he'd had to kill a child to save a childish soul. He wondered whether he'd expected the old man to absolve him, as if anyone could. Then he wondered where he'd go as he stepped out into the Green Zone streets and saw torches flaring Mazeward-tiny at this distance, but a warning that there was trouble in the lower quarter of the town. Niko didn't want to mix in any of Sanctuary's internecine disputes, to be recruited by any side-even Strat's-or even know specifics of who was right and wrong. Probably everyone was equally culpable and innocent; wars had a way of blotting out absolutes; and civil wars, or wars of liberation, were the worst. He wandered better streets, his hand upon his scabbard, until he came to an intersection where a corner estate had an open gate and, beyond, a beggar was crouched. A beggar this far uptown was unlikely.

Niko was just about to turn away, reminding himself that he was no longer policing Sanctuary as a Stepson on covert business, but here on his own recognizance, when he heard a voice he thought he knew.

"Seh," said a shadow separating itself out from shadows across from where the beggar sat. The curse was Nisi; the voice was, too.

He stepped closer and the shadows became two, and they were arguing as they came abreast of the beggar, who stood right up and demanded where they'd been so long.

"He's drunk, can't you see?" said the first voice and Niko's gift gave him a different kind of light to place the face and find the name he'd known long since.

The first speaker was a Nisi renegade named Vis, a man who owed Niko at least one favor, and might know the answer to the question Niko most wanted to ask: the whereabouts of the Nisibisi witch.