At long last. Sanctuary had become what Tempus's fighters of the Sacred Band had long called it: well and truly damned. That this damnation had come from the greedy power plays of its low-lifes, rather than from the pillar of fire which had sprung from an uptown house to affront the heavens, didn't surprise Tempus.
The fact that no one in town save the weakened wizards and a handful of impotent priests knew the truth of it-how Sanctuary had destroyed its own manna and been deserted by the more prudent of its pantheon of gods-did surprise even the unflappable Riddler who now headed his horse into the storm and northeast toward the Maze.
He felt no twinge of nostalgia for the old days, when he'd ridden these streets alone as a palace Hell-Hound in Kada-kithis's employ, testing the prince's mettle for the Rankan interests who eventually chose Theron in Kadakithis's stead. But he felt a spark of regret when he passed the docks from which Nikodemos, his favorite among the mercenary fighters who followed him, had departed seaward, bound for the Ban-daran Islands with two godchildren who might have been Sanctuary's only hope.
As Niko might have been the only hope of a man who'd taken the name Tempus when he realized that his curse caused time itself to pass him by. But hopes were for Sanctuarites, the children of the damned, the dark Ilsigi whom Rankan and Beysib oppressors alike called Wrigglies, and for women touched with Nisibisi wizard blood who sucked purer blood in Sanctuary's steamy summer nights-for anyone but him.
Tempus was relieved of duty here, of all responsibility save what his conscience might impose. And it had brought him back here only to complete preparations under way since winter's end, when Theron had offered him a commission to explore the unknown east and immunity from prosecution to any he chose to hire for the venture.
So once again, and in the east during the trek to come, he would have his Stepsons, the Sacred Band of paired fighters and certain single mercenaries, and the 3rd Commando, Ranke's most infamous cadre, for company.
And if their imminent withdrawal from Sanctuary didn't signal and seal the town's doom, then Tempus hadn't outlived a hundred enemies and their legions. But that wasn't what made him hesitate, brought him down from the capital to ride once more through garbage-heaped streets where the lawless fought each other block by block in open revolt and man by man over matters of eye color and skin hue and heavenly affiliation.
He couldn't possibly care about Sanctuary's survival. The town itself was his enemy. Those who did not fear him for good reason, hated him on principle; those who did neither had left this dungheap long ago.
He could have left the withdrawal to Critias, the Stepsons' first officer, and to Sync, the 3rd Commando's line commander. He could have waited in imperial Ranke's palace with Theron, interviewing chart makers and seamen who told of dragons in the eastern sea with emerald eyes and of treasures in shoreline caves the like of which the Rankan Empire had never seen.
But neither Jihan nor her intended, Randal, understood that their betrothal was the result of a deal Tempus had made with Stormbringer, the Froth Daughter's father-a deal he'd struck in expediency and haste with a god known as a master trickster. Though deal it was, he was no longer certain it was prudent: He'd have use for both Jihan and Randal, the Stepsons' warrior-mage, on the eastward trek, and neither one could leave until the matter was decided.
So he was here, to yea or nay the thing, to make sure that Randal, a Sacred Band partner and one of his men, was not trapped in hell's own bowels against his will, and that Jihan's father did not blow storms of confusion in his daughter's eyes to keep her where He had chosen to abide.
He had come in disguise, as best he was able. His form was heroic in proportion and his face resembled that of a god once known in Sanctuary, but banished now: High-browed and honey-bearded, that face looked upon the gutted ways of the warehouse district with all the disgust three centuries and more of life could impart.
It was the face of Vashanka, now called the Hidden God, that Tempus wore tonight: Selfish and proud, full of war and death, it was the face of Sanctuary itself.
It made him feel at home here, as did the storm descending. In Sanctuary, self interest never flagged; his presence here upon pressing, private business, was proof of that.
Turning up Shadow Street toward the Maze, he saw deserted checkpoints of some faction who claimed everything from Lizard's Way to the Governor's warehouses as its own.
And because that faction was said to be Zip's Popular Front for the Liberation of Sanctuary (PFLS), as unpopular now as was Zip himself, Tempus reined the horse left on Red Clay Street to reconnoiter despite the gusts and darkening sky and thunderous promise of rain that made the Tros horse under him shiver and throw its muzzle skyward.
He'd never exchanged a civil word with Zip, whom some said had caused far too much of the springtime carnage- whom Crit said had attempted murder and tried to blame the affair on Tempus's own daughter, Kama.
And since the target of the murderous attack had been Straton, Critias's Sacred Band partner, the pair had teams out night and day, even in the midst of the Stepsons' preparations to withdraw-teams seeking to even the score with Zip's eyes and tongue: an old Band prescription for curing traitors.
Lighting flared, a sheet sky-wide that banished darkness even on Shadow Street, so that Tempus saw backlit figures skulking from garbage heap to doorway in his wake.
This was PFLS territory all right.
The rain that accompanied a peal of thunder so loud it made the Tros horse flatten its ears and lower its head cared nothing for whom it wet or whom it unmasked: Both Tempus and his horse were only desultorily disguised-the horse with berry juice and trail mud and its "rider with dyes no better.
The rain bounced fetlock high on cobbles and ran down the Riddler's oilskin mantle to his sharkskin-hiked sword, where it formed rivulets like spilled blood and just as red from the dye it washed.
The specter of the man and horse (both too large and too well muscled for Sanctuary's own, both streaming water red as blood and splashing it behind, as the man called the Riddler loped his horse, oblivious to the torrent and the spray the horse's hooves kicked up, down the center of Red Clay Street) was one to stop a superstitious heart and make a criminal seek cover.
Yet at the comer of West Gate Street, where the sudden downpour swept seaward to the wharves down the slope so deep and fast that rats and cats and pieces of less recognizable flesh were carried along in its currents as if the White Foal River had changed its course, three men stepped out from cover, barring his path, knee deep in water, crossbows drawn and blades unsheathed.
A crossbow, in this wind so fierce it blotted out the Tros's snorts of warning, and in a rain so dense no cat-gut or woman's-hair bowstring could be dry, would shoot awry.
Tempus knew it, and so did the three who stood there, daring him to ride them down.
He considered it, though he'd sought a confrontation, annoyed by the boys with sweatbands around their foreheads and weapons better than street toughs ought to have.
The Tros, having more sense and being a larger target, stopped still and craned its neck, imploring him with liquid eyes to remember why he'd come here, not just take an opportunity luck offered and waste it to vent some spleen and make his presence known.