Especially when, if he wasn't careful, he was going to become just like them. So here he had this altar, this god or whatever it was, this eater of sacrifices that never exactly said it could expiate his sins, wipe him clean, but surely must mean it. It was the thing in the altar with its red eyes that was making him believe there was some method to all his madness. It had a plan. It wanted Zip to infiltrate the Rankans and the Beysibs, to leam how to command and the weaknesses of their joint enemies. It was a living thing in there-or at least a real thing, which other gods weren't, as far as Zip could tell. It had wants and needs.
It wanted flesh and it needed blood and it wanted to move uptown and it needed Zip to be the militia commander to serve it.'He had to serve something. He couldn't justify what he and his little band of rebels were doing otherwise. He had to have a Cause and the red eyes in the altar, the slurping sound of fresh blood being drunk and the godlike belches after- wards, these were his Cause.
And only the river god knew what it wanted of Zip, but it did want him. Nobody had ever wanted him before. Then came, all at once, Kama and the Riddler and the river god and ... No, Kama had come before the god, but that didn't matter.
It mattered that he got the stones uptown. With a quill he marked each stone as he lifted it from the pile into his wheelbarrow. When the barrow was full, he could almost see into the heart of the altar.
But then he had to wheel the barrow up the slope, no easy task, and when he'd done that and given the stones to his boys to load on their ass- drawn wagon, someone came out of the gloom and hailed him.
"Yo," he called back, while motioning his boys to cover the stones in the wagon. "Who comes?"
One horse, out of the gloom; a single rider. He walked toward it, hand on his beltknife, his neck aprickle, back stiff.
Finally the rider answered, "Zip, it's me."
"Frog," Zip cursed under his breath. "Kama, stay there. The footing's tricky. I'll come up." He turned his head and said to his rebels, "Get down there, load the rest of the stones, take 'em where I told you. Careful to mark them and put them back just like they were. I'll catch up."
But he knew he wouldn't. And he knew the god was going to be angry, augh he didn't know what form the god's wrath might take. But then he thought he did: Kama was beautiful, sliding off her horse the diffuse light of a hidden moon. She always hit him that way, no atter how he told himself he didn't need the kind of trouble she repre- nted.
And she was trouble, in doeskin boots and leggings, smelling like new- own hay with trail dust in her hair. And all about her person, as clear her velvet thighs and firm breasts as in her face or her sweet breath, ere the indications of her class: her speech, her bearing, the gulf that as between them and never could be bridged, no matter how he tried. And he tried then again, wordlessly and desperately, as if laying her on her back in the mud was somehow going to do it. But it didn't. It never had, never would.
She laughed softly and accommodated him until urgency overtook her, but it was always the high-born girl with the velvet skin who was humming, who found him exciting for all the wrong reasons, who played with him casually when touching her was probably worth his life if Crit Molin found them.
So when she said, as she quivered, her mouth to his ear, "Strat's here with me, somewhere back there. Don't panic, just be quick," all his passion threatened to ebb, then exploded when her nails ran down his back.
"Damn you," he said, rolling over and off her, the best rejection he could manage and far too late.
"Stand in line for that," she chuckled, her fingers reaching for him, railing along him, tapping him intrusively with unspeakable truths. "It's been too long since we've done this."
He was staring up at the clouds which hid the moon like a translucent city wall. "Not long enough by half. Not when you're sleeping in with priests and commanders-in-chief. I'm a lowly watch officer, remember? I'm gettin' over you. Got something of my own now."
Like he hadn't, before. He bit his lip and almost looked away from her. But he couldn't. It was her damned body that did this to them both, every time. Riddler's daughter, enemy of the blood, twice his experience ind probably twice his brains. What did he think he was doing?
Then he thought he knew what she was doing: "Zip," she said in a ieductive tone he wished he'd heard long minutes earlier, "don't move that pile of stones. You don't know what you're disturbing. None of us to."
He sat bolt upright. "Now I get it. You ask nice, and Strat's along to ask nasty if I don't agree, right? Well, it's none of your business, Rankan whore." He jerked to his feet, fumbling with his pants. He couldn't see his fingers clearly and blinked fiercely, trying to lace himself together. "Don't come around me no more, hear? Not on your father's business or because one of your boyfriends thinks I need it. I don't. And I never will, not this way."
She was up, too, calling his name. He couldn't run from her, not from a woman where some of his boys might see. He remembered the time she'd nursed him back from the grave's edge, and the way she'd started all this, kissing him when he was too weak to do the sensible thing and bolt.
She liked 'em helpless, hurt, battle-scarred and war-weary, he knew. He couldn't figure what Molin had, but power was a legendary aphrodis- iac. And like her father, she spread it around.
He couldn't handle her. He kept wanting to treat her like a Ratfall girl -claim her, claim exclusivity with her. He had a comical vision of him- self sitting at some strategy table with her, all silked and leathered and shiny brass-plated in Ranke where her kind moved jade pieces represent- ing armies on marble mapboards. And jammed his hands in his pockets, walking hurriedly away.
"Zip," she called, catching up, reaching out, and he couldn't seem to jerk his elbow away. "We need you. /need you. And you owe me this-"
He stopped. He should have known it would come to that- "Right, we're all working together now and anyway, one time you saved my ass so I'm yours to command? No chance, lady. These're Ilsig matters, and you ain't one. Understand, or do I have to say it in Rankene?"
"I understand that you found some sort of talisman on the beach and that if you give it to that ... thing ... you've been feeding human flesh to, you might not be able to finish what you start. If you've got to move the stones, I'll make a deal with you."
He crossed his arms and looked down at her. At least he had that advantage: he was taller. He said; "Go on, let's hear it."
"I won't tell anyone about the altar, or what's in it, as long as no perceptible trouble comes from it, if you'll give me the talisman you were going to give to it."
"How do you find this crap out?" he blurted. "Is it Randal, your pet mage? You been following me? What?"
She just looked up at him, her eyes full of a surety and power that her little, female body shouldn't have been able to contain, let alone radiate. It was Tempus's blood in her, some more-than-human attribute, he was certain.
He said then, "No. I'm not doing anything like that. Why should I?" and turned to go back down the hill.
And Straton was there, on that freakish bay horse everybody knew about, come from nowhere, out of nothing, leaning on his saddlehorn, meaning his thumbnail with a glittering blade. There, right between Zip and the path down to the riverbank.
"Going somewhere, pud?" said Strat.
"Strat," said Kama, "I can handle this."
"I was just leaving," Zip replied.
"No you can't," said Strat to both of them. Then: "Zip, what she wants, you give her. What she ordered, you do. Or deal with me. Kama, there's something more important than piffles going on out there. Finish with your boy toy and let's get going."
Kama winced but held out her hand steadily and said to Zip, "Either give me the talisman, or Strat and I are going down there and crush five or six of those stones. Do you want to risk that, and what will follow if the three of us have a falling-out?"
Zip looked from the big fighter to the slight woman and saw a shared purpose there; an implacable, uncaring deadliness common among those ure that their Cause was worth serving. He had to leam to match their pirit. Until then, he'd never win against them.
He reached into his beltpouch and handed her the object a girl had bund in the seawrack. It hardly glittered. It wasn't even gold, just bronze. "Here, take it. And take out your lust somewhere else, from now on. I don't want to mess with you no more."
He heard Strat's raw titter as he stalked away, and it scratched blood from his soul- He wondered if the thing in the altar would consider the extenuating circumstances under which he'd lost its gift.
And what would happen if it did not.
Ischade's Foalside home was dimly lit, numinous. When they got there, Kama recognized Crit's gray horse and squeezed her eyes shut. No wonder Strat had come running to get her: Crit at Ischade's was naphtha too close to a torch.
"Gods, Strat, we both still love him, you know?"
"I figure," Strat agreed in an odd tone. "But he doesn't love us. Get him out of there, Kama. If I go in, it's just more trouble. She isn't going to take kindly to him sticking his nose in where it doesn't belong."
Kama was already off her horse, handing Strat its reins. "I know. You stay here, there's no use of you two getting into a brawl over this." Poised to sprint for the door, she turned back: "Strat, we have to get used to things the way my father left them. It hurts all of us. Crit didn't want this command. Not this way."