Part 38 (1/2)

Two weeks pa.s.sed, and we'd heard no word about the reinforcing units upriver. Worse, the Palace of War informed us that heliograph stations along the river were not answering signals.

Where was the army?

It was ugly riding the streets of Nicias. There was no more open violence, but only because no soldier or member of the government rode alone, but with a full escort. Bodies were still found in the streets at dawn.

It looked as if there were only two cla.s.ses left in the capital: the commoners, who held the streets in sullen anger, and the gentry, who huddled in their enclaves. The merchants, clerks, traders-all the middle levels of Nicias-seemed to have either vanished or joined the lower cla.s.ses, waiting for something to happen.

I started awake, hearing the chanting of many voices. Torchlight flared into my open window, and I rolled out of bed, naked, fully awake, reaching for the sword hanging from its sheath on the bedstead.

Mardn sat up, sleep-dazed.

”What is it?'

I didn't know, but I hurried to the window and peered out. Our rooms were on the third level of the tower, looking toward the city, away from the Palace of War.

The night was a sea of bobbing torches, the streets alive with marching men and women. I could hear bits of what they were chanting, but no more than a word here, a word there: ”Bread... peace... down with the Rule... voice of... people... Numantia... burn or live...” and through it a thin chorus: ”Saionji... Saionji... Saionji...”

Maran was beside me, wearing only the thin s.h.i.+ft she'd been wearing when I came to bed, exhausted from work, hours after she'd retired. She leaned out the window, elbows on the sill, fascinated.

”Can you feel it, Damastes?” she whispered. ”Can you feel it? The G.o.ddess is calling.”

It was just the roar of the crowd, but then it came to me,she came to me, the G.o.ddess, the destroyer, the Creator calling to my blood, and it stirred.

Powerful magic was abroad this night, and it moved me, and I wanted to go out, to be down there, amid the crowd, ready to rend and tear, then, from the ashes, to build a new realm, a realm of absolute freedom, where all that could be wanted was there for the taking.

Maran turned, and I saw her eyes gleam in the torchlight ”It's like Tenedos said,” she whispered. ”A new world. A new time. I can feel it, Damastes, I can feel it like the Wheel turns. Can't you?”

I could indeed, and it gripped me, seized me by the throat, and all the dark pa.s.sions rose high, and now there might have been drums out there in the night, or it might have been my pulse, but then it changed, and it was not Saionji's manifestation of Isa, six-headed war G.o.d, but rather Jaen, and my c.o.c.k rose hard, throbbing, painful.

I was behind Maran, pulling her s.h.i.+ft up above her waist, forcing her legs apart, and then I impaled her on my c.o.c.k, burying it in one thrust, and she whimpered and Jaen took her as well, and she thrust back against me and cried out I pulled back, until the head of my c.o.c.k was at her inner lips, then rammed forward, my hands finding her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, pulling her against me, and she screamed, scream buried in the crowd-roar outside, and again and again, each time thrustingKdeeper, reaching, tearing deeper into her body, into her soul, and I shouted as I came, gus.h.i.+ng hot, hot as the fires inside the earth that made Thak.

After a time, time came back, and I realized I was lying half-out the window across Maran, crus.h.i.+ng her against the sill.

”I'm sorry,” I said.

”Don't apologize,” she said. ”Just... give me a little warning next time. So I can put a pillow down.”

I slipped out of her, took her in my arms, and we stumbled back to the bed.

”I have the feeling,” she murmured, after we'd calmed, ”I'll be a little sore tomorrow.”

She stroked my chest.

”I think, my love, that what we just did is what I've heard called s.e.x-magic. Amiel loaned me a book about it once.”

Darkness touched me for a second. ”s.e.x-magic for who?” I asked. ”Who called it?”

”I don't know,” she said. ”But I've never felt anything like it. And^I don't know if I want to ever again. I feel like... like we were, not used, but part of somebody that's not us. No, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we were no more than someone's va.s.sal.”

The Tovieti's sorcerers? Thak himself?

Or-and the thought made me shudder-Saionji herself? Was the G.o.ddess of destruction out there, hanging over Nicias, smiling as she saw the order that had always been tremble?

I don't know if s.e.x-magic was cast that night, if others were grabbed and shaken by a spell, or if it was just MaraVs and my own sudden l.u.s.t.

But the next day Nicias shattered into chaos.

TWENTY.

The Fires of NiciasI here are many tales of what caused the riots. Some I say a peasant's child was ridden down by a n.o.ble- JL man's carriage, others that a young girl was brutally beaten by the wardens, others that it began in a drunken bar fight between some government clerks and some carters.

I don't doubt any of them, but I don't believe the city erupted over a single incident-the madness spread too rapidly. There'd been too many years of the poor being neglected and downtrodden, too many years with their leaders not leading, too many years of instability, and so the city was like a pile of dry wood that a burning ember is touched to there ... there ... there ... and the wildfire explodes.

The commoners ran rampant, burning, looting, beating, killing, and raping when they encountered an enemy, or simply someone who looked better off than they were.

The wardens fled to their stations and barricaded themselves in; the soldiers hid in the barracks; the rich cowered in their mansions; while the Rule of Ten and the Nicias Council met in emergency session and did nothing.

Again the disorders struck home. Rask, one of the Rule of Ten, Farel's comrade, simply disappeared, and no one knows*what became of him to this day. A mob sacked the Council Hall, happened on four of the city councilors, and tore them apart.

Scopas came to the tower to consult with Tenedos, and the seer told me what their conversation had been. Tenedos made the same suggestions he had before, and once again Scopas weaseled on taking such drastic steps. Perhaps, he said, since the commoners are mostly looting their own quarters, they should be let alone until their frenzy dies away.

Surprisingly, Tenedos agreed with what was happening, at least partially. ”Let the poor burn their tenements and slums,” he told me. ”When this is over, we'll be able to rebuild Nicias as it is supposed to look.” That callousness shocked me, but I think I was able to hide my reaction. ”But anyone who thinks this rising will run out of combustibles is a fool. The Tovieti, and Chardin Sher's agents, will make sure that will not happen.”

The insanity grew worse and worse.

Days pa.s.sed, and there was still no sign, nor word, of the soldiers who'd been summoned from the Frontiers. Tenedos tried casting a spell, but said nothing happened. It was, he said, like trying to peer through a dense fog. He said this could mean only one thing--sorcery, which meant the Tovieti were keeping the troops from the capital.

I'd had Tenedos use his emergency powers to move the Golden Helms, the Nineteenth Foot, and two other of the parade regiments into tents in Hyder Park, equidistant from our tower, the Palace of War, and the Rule of Ten's palace, for security and as an immediate reaction force. They whined about having to forsake their comfortable brick barracks. I suspected if the rioters left them alone, they'd be quite content to sit there polis.h.i.+ng bra.s.s and practicing empty roundelays on the parade ground until all Nicias was ashes around them. Instead, they rode, and walked, guard; and made short patrols through the city's major thoroughfares, complaining all the while. Terrible soldiers, but they were the only game in town. At least, I wryly thought, I probably didn't have to worry about any of the complainers being Tovieti-those would be most grateful for any chance to get close to Tenedos, the Rule of Ten, or the army staff.

It was a terrible time, and there were terrible sights.

I saw a screaming, drunken woman run into the middle of a square just as a column of the Helms rode into it. She was waving something I couldn't distinguish. But another soldier could, and a horseman spurred his horse into a gallop, his lance dropped into position, and the woman went spinning away, blood spattering the cobbles.

The soldier pulled his lance free, and came back to us, and by that time I had my sword out, and at his throat.

'Tell me one reason,” I said, ”you should not die for murder, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d!”

”Sir... you didn't see what she had in her hand. Sir, it was a man's jewels ... c.o.c.k an' all!” Paying no heed to my blade, he vomited suddenly. I could not kill him, but at least I told Troop Guide Karjan to deal with him later. Perhaps I should have slain the man. I don't know.

I told Maran some of what I saw in my daily rounds, but not about the emasculator. No woman of her youth should know about such evil. I just considered that thought, and realize how foolish it is. No one of any age orany s.e.x should be subjected to what we went through in those days.

After a week, the city was paralyzed. But that was not enough. Now the Tovieti moved out, smoothly taking command of the mob.

They didn't burn their own hovels anymore, but rather sent raiding expeditions into the rich parts of Nicias. Stores miles from the slums were ripped apart and fired. There was no doubt as to who was leading the rabble-bodies would be carefully left for the patrols to find, always with the yellow silk cord around their throats.