CHAPTER V

The lack of his sword nagged at Varro, like an itch that wouldn’t be eased. Red Geir’s sword, or so Holla-Sayan claimed that the devil Ulfhild Vartu had told him. It looked a kingly sword, that was certain, and old enough to have come over the sea with Red Geir. Cursed, Holla-Sayan also said, and told him to throw it away. They’d had a rare fight over it some months ago, and he had completely failed to knock Holla down, of course, but at least the Westgrasslander had left off nagging. Rocking the baby’s cradle with a booted toe, Varro bounced daughter number three on his knee, singing, as his father had sung to him:

A white horse, a black horse, a red horse for thee,
But mine is a grey horse, from over the sea.
There’s a moon on the towers and frost on the hill,
And when the wind blows, I can smell the sea still.

It was nonsense, and only Jasmel the eldest spoke any Northron, but the child shrieked and yelled, “Again, again, dada!”

Bread on the hearthstone,
Butter in the churn,
Honey in the beehive—

The door to the shop opened with a bang, and Watcher shot up barking. Varro swung little Iris to the floor and put himself in the connecting doorway between kitchen and shop, thrusting the clattering bead curtain aside. He felt naked without the sword, and he wasn’t obsessed with it, no matter what Holla said. Holla was more than a little prone to obsessions himself. When a man had a treasure, of course he didn’t like leaving it behind, even locked in the boss’s room at the caravanserai. Just like Talfan couldn’t stand it long, when she had sent the girls and the priest’s little boy away into hiding with allies among the Barraya family manors, back when the Lady first revealed herself and destroyed Hadidu’s house, executing his brother-in-law, the partner of Master Kharduin, who ran one of the more celebrated eastern road gangs. They’d thought they were about to be arrested and dragged off to death themselves, his wife and Hadidu and probably some others Varro didn’t know about. He’d arrived to find Talfan’s house dark and locked and, after climbing over the yard wall and kicking in the shuttered kitchen window in a bit of a panic, had discovered his wife, a baby, and Master Hadidu living in a second cellar he hadn’t even known existed.

But when several days went by and nobody came searching, and there was no rumour at all that anyone but Hadidu was under any suspicion, Talfan got word to her aunt, and the whole gang came creeping home, by some secret route over the wall in the night, as furtively as they’d left. Thank all the gods that were and ever had been. When a man came home after so long away, he wanted his family about him.

A girl—a pleasantly buxom girl—in a street guard’s grey tunic slammed the door closed and turned to drop the bar, panting for breath. She clutched a messenger’s white baton.

“Tulip!” Talfan said. “What’s wrong?”

“Not sure,” said Tulip, eyeing Varro. Appreciatively, he hoped, but she seemed more to be considering whether she should invent some intimate rash and send him back to the kitchen in male embarrassment.

“This is my husband, Varro, home from the road. Jugurthos knows him.”

“Oh,” said Tulip, visibly relaxing. “Right, then. Hadidu?”

“Upstairs with the girls, grinding herbs for me. What’s—”

“The Lady,” said Talfan. “Took a company of temple guard to the suburb. Red Masks. Started arresting wizards, or trying to. Someone started fighting back. Killing Red Masks. Some great wizard with demons and—” she shook her head, “maybe even the Blackdog of Lissavakail’s out there.”

“The Blackdog?” Varro raised his head sharply. “No. He wouldn’t—” He clamped his teeth together on the words. The women didn’t notice his interjection, too absorbed in their own excitement.

“The suburb’s rising and the Lady fled, Talfan, back to the temple and ordered the gates of the city shut, even against her own temple guard, any that didn’t make it back with her. People must have seen, Talfan, seen her fleeing from Riverbend Gate to the temple.”

“We heard the bells.”

The rhythmless clanging of the general alarm, Talfan meant. There had been a quick scurrying around the neighbourhood as people tried to find the cause, but it meant a general all-in curfew, and a patrol had come by, so everyone had retreated, to wait and breed their own rumours of Praitannec war and desert raiders.

“That won’t keep it quiet for long, and that’s not the worst of it. Or the best. I think Jugurthos is mad, but maybe he’s inspired. I don’t know. I knew who he was when I told him yes, that first night, I knew then what he dreamed, and I meant yes forever, not one night. I’m not running now. But Old Great Gods—he must be mad. We’re all damned.”

The street guard seemed as elated as she was fearful, though. Varro caught Iris as she tried to push past him, crying, “Auntie Tulip! Look! This is my dada!”

“Be a good girl and go get Uncle Hadi,” Talfan said. “Varro, you were at Lissavakail.”

He admitted as much, warily. He’d been juggling secrets longer than he cared to remember, a burden for a man well able to admit he loved a good story and that most of the pleasure was in the telling. But it was young Zavel, not he, who swaggered round the taverns with a nod and a wink and a dark hint about his friend. Varro didn’t boast of the Blackdog, and he never told the gang why he seemed to save so little from his own personal trade of Northron goods, letting his friends think it was all flung away through high living when he got home to Marakand or lost by a spendthrift wife. Perhaps she was that. His earnings bought apprenticeships for young wizards in the Five Cities, weapons that were stockpiled—somewhere, he didn’t know where. He’d have raged about his daughters being put as playthings on Talfan’s board, except, well, he’d known she was mixed into the forbidden worship of the old gods when he’d married her. Part of the bargain. But he wanted to take daughter number one to the road with him this time. She was old enough, and Gaguush could use the hands. Get her out of it, at least. Show her a larger, saner world.

“The Blackdog,” said his wife. “A demon servant of the goddess Attalissa—he really exists? He killed the Lake-Lord?”

“Um,” he said. “I think—well—he’s not a demon. Definitely not a demon.” Not anything so safe and natural and belonging to the world as a demon, though just what he was, Varro couldn’t guess. A mad spirit bound to a human host to serve the goddess Attalissa, except that, now, he wasn’t. Bound to serve, that was. Mad, yes, and unfortunately bound to a host Varro did not think was all that human anymore, love him like a brother though he might.

“And they say the Lake-Lord was one of the seven devils of the north. A human priest like a Red Mask, even with his goddess’s blessing on him, is nothing to that.” Talfan’s dark eyes were shining as if he’d brought her rubies. “The Blackdog killed the Lake-Lord. And now the goddess of the lake has sent him here? If we can rid ourselves of the Red Masks—”

“It was a bit more complicated, and it wasn’t—” Varro began.

“But the Red Masks aren’t priests; that’s the truth that’ll unravel all the lies—” cried the soldier.

“Tulip,” said Hadidu, grave in the kitchen doorway, a lean, hollow-eyed man, his black beard already greying about the mouth, though he couldn’t be any older than Varro, if that. Varro stepped aside for him.

Tulip launched into her tale—report—again.

Bare feet came pattering down the stairs.

“Mama—!”

“Not now, Jasmel.”

“But, Mama—”

“Not now, Ermina.”

“Mama, the temple’s on fire and the suburb now. We can see it from the roof.”

A general rush for the rooftop followed, Talfan pausing on the way to gather up the baby.

There was certainly a fiery glow to the northeast, though little haze of smoke. The smoke over the suburb also seemed mostly to have died away.

“Someone attacking the temple?” Tulip wondered aloud, but she seemed doubtful. “Jugurthos? No. He’s waiting for you before he does anything, Hadidu.”

“Hadidu can’t—” Talfan began.

Tulip raised a hand. “No one’s letting me finish. Hadidu, listen.”

Necromancy, that was what she told them of. Wizards murdered and enslaved as Red Masks, and a wizard capable of putting the Lady, goddess or devil, to flight. A monstrous dog and a wizard riding a demon bear.

“Er,” said Varro. “A bear? A northern bear, tawny-gold, not brown?”

“A golden bear, that’s what people said.”

“A woman?”

“The wizard’s a woman.”

Varro nodded. “And the Blackdog of Lissavakail?”

“That’s what they’re saying. You see what Jugurthos is thinking, Hadidu. The Lady is false; she’s a necromancer, no goddess. A devil, maybe, an incarnate devil. Ju thinks he can use this. Now, before the Lady rallies, whoever or whatever she is. The suburb’s ready to burn the city down to get at her, but if we can get them on our side, if we can raise the city for ourselves—Hassin at the Riverbend Gate will be with us—Ju has the testimony of the sandal-maker about his wife, proof of necromancy. He has the body. He thinks he can swing the other ward captains to our side and get the temple’s lapdogs out of the senate or call up a new one from the old family elders or something . . .”

“We can’t fight a devil,” Hadidu said. The gods are dead, he had said bitterly, only this morning. And he had wanted Varro to find some merchant’s company that would take him and his son south to the Five Cities, abandoning his goddess and the secrets he had been raised all his life to keep and serve.

“Lissavakail and Serakallash did fight a devil,” said Varro slowly. “And they won.” Was that hope, a little, like an uncoiling shoot of green, in Hadidu’s dark eyes? “We need to find the Blackdog.” Devils take all—devils, he was as mad as the rest of them. He should keep his mouth shut and drag his daughters off to the desert, with Talfan gagged on a camel till they’d gone too far to turn back. “I can. . . . Look, Talfan love, I’ve never told my friends your secrets, right? And I’ve never told you theirs.”

“What secrets?” asked Talfan.

Sorry, Holla. “You know my friend Holla-Sayan? Great Gods, you know his daughter Pakdhala?”

“The one who married and stayed in Lissavakail last year.”

“Her. Yes. Um. Pakdhala, ah, would be the goddess Attalissa of the Lissavakail. The lake, you know, not the town. Well, goddess of the town, too, of course.” Babbling. He should shut up now.

Talfan blinked. “In my kitchen?”

“Yes.”

“Playing with my girls?”

“Yes.”

“So Holla-Sayan . . . but he’s from the Western Grass.”

“Well, yes. And he’s the Blackdog regardless. I did tell you he was a bit mad,” he added defensively.

“All caravaneers are a bit mad,” she said. “You as much as any. Sweet Ilbialla, Varro! You brought the Blackdog to my house, a creature like that, in this city. The Red Masks can smell magic and you didn’t think to tell me—”

“I didn’t know! I didn’t know, then, not till last summer. And he’s not a wizard, he’s—”

“We need to find him,” said Tulip. “We need to find him now.”

“And contact whoever’s in charge of the uprising in the suburb,” Talfan said.

“I doubt anybody is. It’s just a mob, mad for revenge. Once they cool, maybe they’ll hear sense.” But Tulip sounded doubtful. “Maybe. Maybe we can find someone they’ll listen to. Jugurthos thinks so.” She eyed Varro, seemed to dismiss him. “Someone they respect. And the city’s going to be in the same state, unless someone takes charge quickly.”

“In that case we’d better make damned sure it’s Hadidu,” said Talfan.

“Hadidu?” Varro’s involuntary protest meant no insult to the man, but Hadidu? Priest, all right, he could accept that, but . . . Hadidu ran a coffeehouse. He baked pastries. He didn’t lead men.

“We need someone all the city can put their trust in,” said Talfan. “Otherwise we’re doomed. We’ll die arguing, fighting, city against suburb, Family against Family, till the temple gets its nerve back and we’re all in the cages, dying in the sun.”

Maybe Varro had nodded a bit too vigorous agreement with the last. Talfan scowled at him.

“You’re right in one thing, Talfan,” Hadidu said. “We can’t afford to have suburb set against city or caravaneers against Marakanders. Varro?” His voice dropped, becoming even quieter. “Can you find your friend?”

“The Blackdog’s hard to miss,” said Varro. “And Mikki—you did say a bear—he’s, um, well, demon, yes. Half-demon. He’s a half-blooded verrbjarn, and it’ll be night by the time we can get out there. You just need to look for a seven-foot-tall, yellow-haired Northron. That’ll be him. With a spooky sort of silver-blonde woman with eyes like ice and steel beside him, glowering at you. Find her, and that’ll be the end of your Lady, I imagine.” Though not the end of devils in their city. What did Vartu Kingsbane want, anyway?

He wasn’t half so optimistic as he tried to sound. Holla was going to—Gaguush was going to kill him, getting Holla-Sayan into this.

On the other hand, Holla seemed to have managed most of it himself.

“Let’s go, then,” Hadidu said. “Talfan, get Shemal ready to travel. Send him to—to someone. I don’t want to know who. Send your daughters. Get them all away again, over the wall to some manor on the southern road where we have friends, up to the mining towns, anywhere out of here, and don’t tell me. Do it now, start now. We can’t fight this war with hostages against us so readily to hand. And if the temple takes me, and you somehow survive—don’t bring my son up to this. If the temple takes me, let it be over.”

Her lips thinned, but she nodded. “Auntie can take them, like last time. I won’t know where. The baby stays with me.”

Hadidu didn’t suggest Talfan go too. Varro didn’t suggest that it was maybe his job to order his children’s comings and goings and take thought for their protection. He just nodded, obedient as the rest.

“I’m going down to Ilbialla’s tomb,” Hadidu said. “Varro, find your friends. Jugurthos and I need to talk to them.”

Varro slipped out the Sunset Gate into the eerily quiet dusk of the suburb, where bonfires burned at many intersections and people lurked, guarding against they hardly knew what, with the native Marakanders mostly barricaded in their houses. Not good. He asked wary questions and hunted the demon and the Blackdog down eventually, in Master Shenar’s caravanserai, licking their wounds, figuratively speaking.

No sign of the devil Vartu.

Holla-Sayan was watching a Northron camel-leech putting stitches into Mikki’s bare and impressively hairy chest. And the damned great Red Mask killing, bear-riding wizard turned out to be the absolute last person Varro would ever have thought to see slumped asleep against his friend’s shoulder. Ivah. She’d bespelled and abducted Pakdhala to hand her over to the devil of Lissavakail, she’d had her noekar-woman kill Bikkim, and only Vartu’s devilry had saved him, she’d—Holla-Sayan knocked him down without stirring from the bench where he sat, when Varro swung his fist to rearrange the Tamghati traitor’s pretty little face.

“Bastard,” he said mildly, picking himself up, keeping his distance, but Holla-Sayan didn’t seem inclined to move farther, and the girl slept on, steadied by Holla-Sayan’s arm about her.

Holla-Sayan said nothing in retort, which Varro figured was a bad sign. And he had that dangerous look, a fire behind his eyes that wasn’t Varro’s perception breaking out into poetry. Sliding into the mad dog’s view of things, a view which was a bit simplistic, to put it mildly. Varro had his suspicions that the Blackdog’s world broke down into mine and enemy. Best not to put yourself into the latter category. He settled down on the floor, arms wrapped around his knees, non-threatening as he could be.

“All right,” he said. “Be that way.”

Holla-Sayan rubbed his face, some sanity returning, maybe? “Leave her alone.”

“Why?” There, a simple, mild question. That wasn’t threatening, was it?

“Because she was carrying Nour.”

“Nour.” Hadidu’s brother-in-law. Caravaneer. Secret wizard, Varro now knew. Taken by the Lady when the coffeehouse burned, and therefore dead.

Not dead?

“Kharduin’s bringing him back. We took him away up the cliffs, when the Lady came after him. He’s—he’ll live. I think. Maybe.”

“He’ll live,” Mikki rumbled. The camel-leech sat back on her heels, shrugged at him.

“Best I can do. Sorry.”

The demon’s white skin, untouched by sun, had a sheen of sweat, but he hadn’t flinched from the needle, only baring his teeth once or twice in a grimace of pain. He leaned back against the wall and sighed. “It’ll do. I heal quickly. What did you want, Varro?”

It wasn’t he who wanted anything, but Talfan and Hadidu, who wanted—who dreamed. Peaceful folk who’d never faced so much as a bandit raid, who’d never seen a battle, not even the one fought at their very gates this past day. And they were going to overthrow a goddess who was really a mad devil? He didn’t want to be trying to bring up four girls alone, a widower on the road. Marakanders talked and talked. He wasn’t sure they were good at much else. They needed—someone to show them what to do next.

“Holla-Sayan, really—did the Lady flee you? Really? Because you’ve started something and they’re all going to die, my wife and her friends who’ve been waiting for some never-come day when they’ll overthrow the Lady, unless you finish it.”

“I didn’t—”

“You did. The Lady’s never left the city before. I don’t think she’s ever sent Red Masks beyond the city walls before, except for this expedition east to Praitan they’re talking of. All this death and burning out there today, that was her looking for you, wasn’t it?”

“She was looking for Ivah and Nour.”

“Same thing. You’re the one took them from her, ya?”

“You’d have left them to die?”

“What were you doing in the temple in the first place? No. Never mind. I don’t care. But you began this, and you can’t just skulk off to the deserts pretending you didn’t and leave us to—”

“What us?”

“Talfan. My wife. She’s, look, you know how Attalissa’s temple went underground when Tamghat came? Same thing here. But they were all children. A couple of youths hardly men and a handful of children, hiding and keeping faith with their gods best they could. Waiting for the Old Great Gods alone knew what. And now they think it’s come, the time. In you. They’ve seen that the Red Masks can be faced and killed, they’ve seen the Lady run, and they’re going to follow through on it. But if you abandon them, they’re all going to die. You did all that, out there—” Varro waved a hand towards the door, “—for Ivah? Then you can’t leave decent folk to be murdered by the Lady for something you’ve done.”

“I can’t kill the Lady, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“She fled you.”

“She didn’t need to.”

“She obviously doesn’t know that. Look, you know what they’re thinking now, Talfan and Master Hadidu, the priest of Ilbialla? They’re thinking that we—they—have the gods on their side. The Old Great Gods have given them a sign that their time has come.”

“You’re not serious! You can’t tell them that.”

“I don’t need to. The great wizard—” his lip curled at Ivah, “—and her demons have proven it. You’re a demon now, by the way.”

Holla-Sayan just shut his eyes. The man looked done in. Well, he’d come through the thick of the past day’s battle and been fighting Red Masks in the temple before that. And even Ivah—no, Varro did not, would not pity her. But she looked pathetic. She was wrapped in a too-large coat, snuggled into Holla-Sayan’s side like a child to her parent, only a bit of face poking out, ragged-nailed hands clenched up tight on her lap. She looked aged and frail, the golden-brown of her skin grey-hued and lined, marked with dark scabs from earlier injury, wisps of her once-wealth of midnight hair now cropped and clinging.

The real demon watched him watching them, black eyes thoughtful.

“Ivah is Ghatai’s daughter,” Mikki said softly. “Did you know?”

Tamghat’s daughter? That shocked Varro. “It’s no excuse,” he protested. “She tried to murder my friend. She had her hearth-woman cut his throat.”

“I know. But it is an explanation. Now she leaves her father behind and grows into something else.”

“Does that make her a devil too?” Better to cut her throat now, while she slept helpless, in that case.

“I doubt it.”

Holla-Sayan opened his eyes. Ah, damn his tongue for a fool’s, Holla’d finally succeeded in getting barren Gaguush in a family way, right. That’s all he needed, to be talking of unnatural halfbreeds and making the man fear she’d give birth to puppies. Varro eyed Mikki, whose father had been human, his mother a bear-demon. That . . . no, he didn’t want to picture how that came about.

“What do you want?” Holla-Sayan asked.

“Go talk to Master Hadidu. He sent me to find you, to ask you to come to him. Talk to him, before you decide to pretend all this is nothing to do with you, all right?”

“And what’s your place in it, Varro? You weren’t out in the suburb today.”

“I didn’t know! They shut the gates, remember? I was in the city.” But that was what Talfan would be thinking of him, too, no matter that he had been where he belonged, with her. People had fought the Lady, and he hadn’t been among them. “But I’ve been thinking, I have an idea—I need to talk to some people.”

And here came one of them, Master Kharduin, surely. Varro knew of him by reputation. Wealthy in camels, trading in silks and spices and drugs of Nabban, master of a gang that travelled hard and fast, taking branches of the eastern road others did not dare. Possibly because he was allied with the lawless folk that plagued the badlands. He was a burly, black-haired man with the gleam of gold in his ears and a beard that curled like a ram’s fleece, blue-eyed and brown-skinned. An exile of the eastern deserts, they said he was, a chieftain’s warleader outlawed from his tribe for some grave crime or betrayal that varied with the gossiper, but there were always such stories about anyone who drew the interest of the road. Even a western road man like Varro had heard those stories of Master Kharduin. Lots of speculation about the meaning of the black scorpions tattooed on the insides of his wrists, which matched those on the backs of his partner Nour’s hands. No tribe’s markings of west or east. Some brotherhood of outlawry, some secret vow of death to be fulfilled . . . probably the scorpions signified nothing more than some personal bond or lovers’ whimsy. Whatever Kharduin had been or done—and maybe it was nothing more than leave his home for the caravans and make a success of it—the caravaneers respected him and the Marakanders likewise. If Varro could persuade him to Talfan’s cause and Talfan’s gods . . .

Maybe he wouldn’t have to do that much persuading. It was surely Nour’s cause, Nour’s goddess, even more than Talfan’s, given his close kinship with Hadidu the priest, foster-brother and brother by marriage. The pair of grim, dusty, silent men who came with Kharduin were carrying what Varro first thought was a bier of spears and blankets between them. On it lay Nour, whom he had met once or twice at the coffeehouse, though he hadn’t known him for a wizard. The Marakander caravaneer looked dead, his face gaunt, grey, and hollow about the eyes, his lips cracked and scabbed, but he breathed.

Ivah woke as suddenly as if someone had called her name, stumbled to her feet and went to Nour with only a brief, vague look at Varro, as if she didn’t even remember him.

“He’s doing better,” she said, like a prayer.

If that was better. . . . She lifted the blanket from over his chest, touched the hand of his linen-wrapped left arm. Scarlet blood seeped through the bandage. The camel-leech craned to look as well. “Much better,” the Northron woman agreed. “That’s clean. The swelling’s down. I thought the skin of his fingers was going to burst when you first brought him in. Hah, I’ll take a demon’s blessing over surgeons, any day.”

Mikki smiled faintly.

“Upstairs,” Kharduin said, looking past Varro with little more interest than Ivah had spared him. “Get him to bed. If he wakes up, get some broth into him. Lord of Forests, would you . . . ?”

“I’ll sit with him,” Mikki said.

They all ended up climbing the stairs together, Holla making an unnecessary point of keeping himself between Varro and Ivah. Mikki was stark naked and nobody seemed to mind. The women politely didn’t even look. Since someone had to do the decent thing, Varro ducked into the first open door he saw and snitched a blanket. Not even Kharduin’s broad shoulders matched Mikki’s; no one’s coat or caftan was going to hide anything. Mikki took it with grave thanks and a wink, and twisted it around his hips as a kilt of sorts.

Varro gave Master Kharduin time to get his partner settled, to take a swallow of tea, before putting himself forward.

“Master Kharduin,” he said. “You don’t know me, but my wife’s the apothecary Talfan, a good friend of Master Hadidu of the Doves, and of Captain Jugurthos of the Sunset Gate.”

That got his attention, ya. Practically made him family, didn’t it, since Kharduin and Nour weren’t partners merely in business?

“You know what they’re up to, those two, and Nour?”

A nod.

“You can guess what they’re thinking, with what’s gone on out in the suburb, Red Masks destroyed and the Lady fleeing and all. But what odds they let the moment slip? They’re city folk, even the soldier. Talkers.”

“Gods, Varro, and you’re not?” Holla-Sayan muttered. “Your tongue’s hinged in the middle.”

“If we can take what’s begun and push it further . . .”

“No,” said Holla-Sayan. “I can’t kill the Lady. Mikki can’t kill the Lady. Moth is lost, the gods of the city are lost—”

“Hear him out,” said Kharduin. He squatted by the bed, hands laced together, watching Varro’s face. “It might not be your fight, Blackdog, but it’s become most definitely mine.”

Revenge, he understood. Varro took a breath, carefully didn’t look at Holla-Sayan, who might believe himself when he said the Lady had no cause to fear him, but Varro didn’t need to. She had run. What more proof did they need? And Holla wasn’t a man to turn his back on his friends.

“So,” he said. “Here we are, with the suburb and the Marakanders ready to start fighting one another, two stupid gangs quarrelling over whose camels drink first, and desert raiders sitting up the hill watching, right?”

Kharduin raised an eyebrow.

“We need to knock some heads together and remind them who the real enemy is.”

“And?”

“And we’ve got a stronghold of the Lady’s folk cutting us off from the road east. Do we want that?”

Kharduin grinned. “Ah. The thought had crossed my mind, actually. Think we can do it?”

Nour woke up briefly while he and Kharduin were talking over one another, ideas flying. That gave Varro a means to shut up Holla’s objections and insults of his intelligence, by sending him to Talfan and Hadidu with the apparently-not-dying man’s messages. Hadidu had asked to speak to the Blackdog, Hadidu was the priest of a lost goddess; Holla-Sayan was, looked at a certain way, the priest of Attalissa, so could he refuse, holy man to holy man? And Hadidu didn’t even yet know his brother-in-law lived, reason enough for Holla to make haste with that news—which, admittedly, Varro should have sent by someone the moment he heard it. Privately, Varro thought that Hadidu, so intense, so, ya, gods-touched, could persuade Holla, if anyone could, that he was needed in Marakand. Was meant to be in Marakand, to serve this. The Old Great Gods had put him in the way of becoming the Blackdog for some purpose, surely, and why think it had ended with Lissavakail? He made the mistake of voicing that last aloud.

“Not in all the cold hells,” Holla-Sayan snarled. “Don’t you ever name the Old Great Gods so to me . . .” He rubbed a hand over his face, what had seemed real fury dying into confusion. But he shrugged and left with his message for Hadidu, making no more arguments.

Kharduin set out to round up a few respected gang-bosses and caravanserai-masters, and some leading Marakander men and women of the suburb as well. Rather him than Varro. Some of Kharduin’s gang headed for the Gore to strip the collected Red Mask and temple-guard corpses, if they hadn’t already been looted. Ivah had been put to bed by the camel-leech, who fussed over her as if she’d singlehandedly saved the city from all seven devils at once and flatly forbade Varro to conscript her for his scheme. Saved Varro having to say he’d as soon trust a real Red Mask to watch his back. He would have liked to have had Mikki along, but the demon had rolled in his blanket by Nour’s bed and gone to sleep while they still debated.

He’d said he would go help strip the corpses, which was going to be no pleasant task, especially the mess the Blackdog and a bear were likely to have made of the Red Masks—though at least they wouldn’t have bled, from what he’d heard—but first Varro borrowed a pony from the caravanserai yard. He would ride out to Rasta’s caravanserai at the far western edge of the suburb to collect Red Geir’s sword. And to let the boss know her giant, bone-crushing black monster coward dog of a husband was still in the land of the living, since he’d noticed how Holla-Sayan had been avoiding any suggestion he carry that message himself. Gaguush would find a leash for her dog for certain after this, dragging them all into another gods’ war.

Holla was going to owe him for the shouting he was about to endure in his stead, indeed he was.