As Jihan began to curse and rage and kick beneath him among the charcoal and the bricks, Critias and Strat and Ran-dal began the sacrifice of ox and oil, to pacify the god, while Ischade did whatever Ischade must do to release her wards.
Raping the Froth Daughter wasn't easy: She was as strong as he and just as agile.
He had counted on the lust they shared and the play-rapes in their past to turn her pique into passion and her body into an instrument he could play for best result.
And something of the sort transpired, though who raped whom, he wasn't certain, when they rolled half-naked in the ruins, unconcerned with anything about them, while a witch cast spells and soldiers spoke ancient rituals and Randal, the Tysian wizard, presided over a fiery sacrifice meant to set whatever lurked in Tasfalen's free at last.
Since Tempus was, in his way, that self-same sacrifice to Stonnbringer, father of Jihan, and since Jihan's legs were around him and her teeth sunk firmly in his neck, and since the god within him loved the rape-game and Jihan as well and since Jihan was by then wreaking enough havoc upon his flesh to make him glad the god was in him to bear the brunt of it, he missed the spectacle taking place across the street at Tasfalen's.
As a matter of fact, the fireworks inside his head as the god and he and Jihan and her father came together blotted out the simulacrum of last winter's pillar of fire, rising up to heaven from Tasfalen's home, which had been left unscathed then.
He was later told that, as it rose, the doors and windows of Tasfalen's flew open of their own accord and something fiery -something with huge bird's wings flew out. And flapped and circled high above the place where Tasfalen lived.
And disappeared into the smoke which billowed everywhere-too much smoke to credit to burned ox thighs and jugs of oil; smoke that went up from, or down to, the chimney of Tasfalen's house, as if the light spewing from every window was the light of something burning bright within.
But what burned in Tempus was a light unto itself.
Jihan was his match in all things physicaclass="underline" When they lay quiet, able to hear more than their own breathing and see more than their own souls, she whispered to him, with her head buried in his neck, "Oh, Riddler, what took you so long to come and reclaim me? How could you do this to me? And to Randal?"
"I'll take care of Randal. He'll understand. I want you, Jihan-I want you with me. I..." This was hard to say, but he had to say it, not just for Randal's sake, but for the sakes of all who put their faith in him. "I... need you, Jihan. We all do. Come north and east and everywhere with me-see this world, not just its armpit."
"But my father..." The Froth Daughter's eyes glowed red as the light he was just beginning to notice from across the street.
"Will he not honor his daughter's wish?"
And Jihan's arms locked around his neck in a grip not Tempus, or death itself, could brezk, and she pulled him down to her. "Then, Riddler, let us show Him that it is my wish."
He wasn't sure that, even with the war-god to help, he could manage to prove himself again so soon. But the god was, thanks be to Him, as insatiable as she, and, though Stormbringer began to rumble and to shake the ground in pique, so that soon they thrashed and rolled in a downpour that quenched the fire on the altar and the fire in Tasfalen's house, it was too late for Jihan's father to intervene.
Tempus had wooed Jihan, and won her, and there was nothing even Stormbringer could do to change the Froth Daughter's mind once it was made up.
Zip couldn't believe the trouble he was in, forced into an alliance with so many who had good reason to wish him dead.
Jubal's hawkmasks escorted him out to the Stepsons' barracks to show him around. At least he didn't have to live there-yet.
The deal was, as he understood it, that he spearhead some addled alliance made up of all his known enemies and some he hadn't known he had: One, a bitch named Chenaya, had more balls than half the mercenaries lounging on the white washed parade grounds and she'd made it clear that she didn't expect the pecking order to hold for long unless she was at the head of it.
Heads tended to get lopped off in Sanctuary, he'd told her, with an exaggerated bow and outstretched hand meant to indicate that she could precede him into any grave, anytime, anyplace.
But Chenaya was some sort of Rankan noble, and didn't realize he was being snide. She's just assumed he habitually bowed and scraped like any other Wrigglie, and let him hand her up into her fancy wagon, telling him she'd see him later.
He'd have felt better about all the changes ifJubal had said Word One to him about settling matters, man to man, or if the Rankan Walegrin hadn't looked at him as if Zip were a goat staked out to lure a wolf, or if Straton wasn't twice his weight and conspicuously absent when Zip was shown the ropes at the barracks.
Yeah, he could hold out in the one-time slaver's estate-turned-fortress. Yeah, it beat the offal out of Ratfall. But somehow, he didn't think he was going to live to move his rabble in here.
And he didn't think the 3rd Commando was going to quit this town, where it was the most powerful single element save gods, wizardry, and Tempus, once the Stepsons were packed off to the capital.
Sync was nobody's fool. And Sync was looking at him funny as the 3rd's commander whistled up a mount for Zip from the string herd and showed him how to put a warhorse through its paces.
It was a bright day, and the horse was sweating, and he was riding around the training ring with Sync like some Rankan kid with his daddy when the arrow whizzed by his head close enough to knick his ear.
He cursed, dove off the horse's wrong side, and rolled toward the fence while Sync bawled orders and men went running about in a fine display of concern.
Zip went after the arrow and found it.
If it wasn't the same one that had been aimed at Straton from a rooftop last winter, it was a perfect copy.
"That doesn't mean that Strat-or any of the Stepsons- are behind this," Sync said, a stalk of hay between his teeth, an hour later as they walked their horses and men came in, sweating and dirty, giving desultory reports of no progress and grinning at Zip, the only Ilsig in the camp, with cold amusement in their meres' eyes.
"Sure. I know. Probably somebody wants me to think it is. No sweat." And he half-believed what he was saying. If Strat wanted a piece of him, the Sacred Bander would take it with show and ceremony, lots of ritual, the whole exotic Band code enforced so that murder wouldn't be murder once it had been sanctified by the handy murderer's god.
They had an altar to that purpose, out back of the training arena.
Arrow in hand. Zip walked over there with his new horse, thinking about making some kind of statement by kicking the piled stones apart.
Then he changed his mind, swung up on the horse, and loped it out of there.
He didn't really care who'd tried to kill him. From the talk he'd heard while in the barracks, neither did the Stepsons: They were more concerned over walls and the weather.
He'd known that this whole business of putting him at the head of some cease fire coalition was just a roundabout way of executing him.
Ritual execution, political style, wasn't a nice way to die. But then. Zip had killed enough to know there wasn't one.
He rode all day, through the Swamp of Night Secrets, thinking about his chances slim-and his alternatives- none.
He was dead the minute he announced he wouldn't play the game; if he was dead a week or two later if he pretended to play along, that was a week or two of living he wouldn't have otherwise.
It wasn't a great shot, but it was the only one he had. He didn't have anywhere to run; he had too many enemies without Tempus added to the list. If he diverged from the "arrangement," he'd have no chance at all of surviving. It would be open season on Zip-for professionals.