Of course, given the stories about the 3rd's brutality and their provenance they'd been formed by Tempus long ago to quash just such a revolt as might be brewing in Sanctuary-the cure for Sanctuary's Beysib ills might well be worse than the disease.
Straton wasn't at all sure this was going to work. He hadn't seen Ischade, the vampire woman who lived down by the. White Foal, since before the war for Wizardwall, when he'd been an on-duty Stepson, with the whole cadre behind him and Critias beside him, and the only troubles in Sanctuary were sorcery and refractory death squads and the occasional assassination: all standard stuff.
Strat wished Crit was here, then slid off his horse before Ischade's oddly shadowed house and, crossbow at the ready, tethered his big bay horse outside. Crit would be along, one of these days. The whole unit was drifting in, a man here, a pair there; along with Sync's 3rd Commando, they had a good chance of putting things to rights-if they could just figure out what "rights" were. Sync thought they should put every Beysib in town on one big funerary pyre and give 'em to the gods, for starters.
Straton wasn't taking orders from Sync: with Crit still upcountry and Niko in transit with Tempus, Straton was in charge of the Stepsons, who wanted only to kill every idiot who'd made the unit designation "Stepson" a slur and a curse here while they'd been gone.
But Kama had prevailed on Strat to try enlisting the vampire woman's aid. Kama was Tempus's daughter; Strat still respected her for that-not for anything she'd done or earned, just for being his commander's progeny.
So he'd come back here, despite the fact that Ischade the vampire woman was more dangerous than a bedroom full of Harka Bey, to "invite" Ischade to the little party Sync and he were throwing at Marc's.
He'd probably have come anyway, he told himself: Ischade was dangerous enough to be interesting, the sort of woman you never forget once you look into her eyes. And he'd looked into them: deep, hellhole eyes that made him wonder what kind of death she offered her victims....
Nothing for it but to knock on the damn door and get it over with, then.
He pulled on his leather tunic and assayed the walk up to her threshold; as he did, the interior lights flickered and dimmed weirdly. The last time he'd been here, his eyesight had been bothering him. It wasn't, anymore, thanks to a benign spell cast during his northern sortie.
So he'd really see her, this time.
On her doorstep, he hesitated; then he muttered a prayer that consigned his soul to the appropriate god should he die here, and knocked.
He heard movement within, then nothing.
He knocked again.
This time, the movement came closer and the lights in her front windows winked out.
"Ischade," he called out gruffly, a dagger in hand to pick the lock or slice its thong or pound upon the wooden door with all his might, "open up. It's-"
The door seemed to disappear before him; off balance, for he'd been about to thump on it hard with his dagger's hilt, he took a stumbling step forward.
"I know," said a velvet voice coming from a wraithlike face cowled in inky shadows, "who you are. I remember you. Have you tired of giving death? Or have you brought me another gift?" Her eyes lifted up to his, her hood fell back, and yet, somehow, backlit in her doorway, her face was still in shadow.
Her eyes, however, were not.
Straton found himself forgetful of his purpose. He wasn't a womanizer; he wasn't an impressionable boy; yet Ischade's gaze was like some drug which made the world recede and all he wanted to do was look at her, touch her, brave the danger of her, and do to her what he was nearly certain none of the sheep she'd fed upon had ever managed to do.
He said, "Invite me in."
She said, "I have a visitor, within."
He replied, "Get rid of him."
She smiled: "My thought exactly. You will wait here?"
He agreed: "Don't be long."
When her door closed, it was as if a bond had broken, a leash been snapped, a drug worn off.
He found that he was shivering, and it wasn't anywhere near as cold in autumnal Sanctuary as it had been on Wi-zardwall; despite his shaking hands, there was sweat beading on his upper lip. He wiped it and regretted shaving for this court enterprise.
Either he was lucky, and she'd be sated by whatever meat she had in there, so that he could talk to her, convince her, make some sort of deal with her, or he was walking into serious trouble, without Crit or any of his team to get him out if he got in too deep.
About the time he was deciding that no one would ever think the worse of him if he just walked away from this one, left Ischade's stone unturned, and said she hadn't been at home, the door reopened and a delicate, white hand reached out to him: "Come in, Straton," said the vampire woman. "It's been a long time since one such as you has come to me."
Sync had saved the fabled crimelord Jubal for himself. The Sanctuary veterans he had on staff had warned him about the vicious squalor of Downwind, but he hadn't believed them.
Now he believed, but he believed more in his good right arm and the attractiveness of the offer he had to make.
This Jubal was black and stout as a gnarled tree, older than Sync had been led to believe by half, and sporting a fey blue hawkmask that would have bothered Sync more if the sycophants around the ex-slaver weren't verifying Jubal's identity by every deferential move they made.
The head bootlicker here was named Saliman; the hovel was reasonably commodious once you got inside, but the band of pseudo-beggars ranged around it would give Sync a strenuous afternoon if he had to cut his way through them to get out. He'd unbridled his horse as a precaution: if he whistled. Sync was going to have twelve hundred Rankan pounds of iron hooves and snapping jaws to back him up. 3rd Commando training told him he didn't need more than that: one man, one horse, one holocaust on demand.
Sync wasn't a politician; he was a field commander. But he wasn't in this Downwind potty to fight; he was here to talk.
Jubal, in a flurry of feathered robes, sat down on something very like a throne and said-in a muffled voice through his mask: "Talk, mercenary."
Sync replied: "Get rid of the mask and your playmates, and we'll talk. This is between us, or not at all."
Jubal responded, "Then perhaps it's not at all. But then you've wasted our time, and we don't like that. Do we?"
Ten scruffy locals made threatening noises.
"Look here, slumlord, are you in the pay of the Beysibs? If not, let's get serious. I didn't come here to give your staff combat lessons. If they need 'em, I've got trainers in the 3rd Commando who specialize in making silk purses out of sow's ears."
Three of the ten were edging forward. Jubal stopped them with a raised hand. From under the mask came what might have been a rattling sigh. "3rd Commando? Should I be impressed?"
Sync said, "I don't know what you're supposed to be, Jubal, in that damn feathered cape and mask. Is everybody in this town in drag?" He crossed his arms, thinking he should have sent a Sanctuary veteran to bring this black man in by the ear. He had to remind himself forcefully not to call Jubal a Wriggly to his face. It was a damned shame, having to join forces with an enemy you'd thoroughly beaten years ago-and on equal terms. The misfortunes of war were neverending.
"Not everybody," Jubal said, leaning forward.
The naked threat in his voice told Sync that he'd pushed just about as far as he could with this ex-gladiator cum slaver cum power player, so he changed tack: "That's comforting. Now, since you won't get rid of your bodyguards, even though it looks to me like you'd be safe enough defending yourself, I'm going to tell you why I'm here and we can have a democratic referendum on how much of a share in the profits your men here get, how much you keep, what everybody's got to do, and who else is-"