Robert Asprin - Blood Ties

Then the Riddler remembered that this boy had had some little congress with Kama, Tempus's daughter, a woman who was as good a covert actor as Critias and as good a soldier as Sync.

The boy nodded a crisp assent, then added, "That's me, old man. What's this about? You didn't 'accidentally' cross our lines. We won't make peace with Jubal's bluemasks-or with that Bey-licking Kadakithis, who's sold the Ilsigs out twice over." The youth widened his stance and Tempus remembered what Sync had said of him: "The boy's got nearly enough balls, but they override his brains."

So Tempus responded, "No, not accidentally. I want to talk to you ... alone."

"This is as 'alone' as I'm likely to get with you-you're not half so fetching as your daughter."

Tempus locked his fingers firmly on his swordbelt, lest they cause trouble on their own, seeking a neck to wring. Then he said, "Zip... as in zero, nothing, zilch... right? Well, despite that, I'll give you a piece of wisdom, and a chance-because my daughter thinks you're worth it." That wasn't true-or at least he didn't think so; he'd never spoken to Kama about Zip: She'd earned the right to choose her own bed-partners, and more.

The flat-faced youth, standing in the rain, barked a laugh. "Your daughter lies in with Nisibisi wizards-or at least with Molin Torchholder, who's tainted with Nisi blood. Her idea of who's worth what ain't mine."

The rabble behind and around laughed, but uneasily. The Tros at Tempus's side pawed the ground and pulled upon its reins to loose them. He put out a hand to soothe the horse and a dozen blades or more cleared their scabbards with a snick audible even through the pelting rain, while the three crossbows he could see were centered on his chest.

"The wisdom is; Sanctuary is for lovers, not fighters, this season. Make peace among you, or the Empire will grind the lot into dust, and bury your flesh with corn to make it grow tall."

"Crap, old man. I'd heard you were tough-not like the rest," Zip spat. "But it's the same garbage I hear from them. Tell it to your troops-the Whoresons and the Turd Commando: They're the ones causing all the grief."

Tempus's patience was near an end. "Boy, mark me: I'll call them off you for a week-seven days. In it, you meet with the other factions and hammer out some agreement, or by New Year's Day, the PFLS won't be even a memory. Nor will you live even that long, to verify it."

There was a silence, and in it someone muttered, "Let's kill the bastard," and someone else whispered back, "We can't-don't you know who that is?"

Tempus peered through the downpour and watched the flat face before him, emotionless and cold with rain streaking down it. There was strength in the youth, like the Enlibar steel some had thought would make a difference here-but, like the steel, Zip's strength was too little and too late.

Ageless eyes shocked against mortal eyes too sure of their doom and unwilling to seek favor. But another thing passed between them: The weariness of the young fighter, hunted by too many and willing to die against sheer numbers and superior force of arms, had turned to hopelessness; that despair met its echo in the gaze of the fabled immortal who went from war to war and empire to empire, taking life and teaching the wisest something about the spirit's triumph over death.

Tempus, who had created, trained, and fielded the Stepsons, was offering a moratorium, some forgotten hope, where an ultimatum had been expected.

There was something in Zip's tone when the boy answered, "Yeah, a week. All right. All I can say is the PFLS will try-I can't speak for the others. It's got to be enough. Or-"

Tempus had to interrupt. A threat uttered in front of the youth's followers would be binding. "Enough, for you and yours. What they sow, they'll reap. You can come out of this with more than you expect. Zip-an imperial pardon, maybe a profession, and do what you do best for the good of the town you say you love."

"The town I'll die for, one way or the other," Zip murmured, because he'd understood what Tempus was saying and what had been unsaid in their met glance, and wanted the Riddler to know it, before he waved his men back without another word from Tempus.

It took only moments for the intersection where Red Clay Street met West Gate to seem deserted once again. It took no longer to mount the Tros and head it toward Lizard's Way.

Tempus was thinking, as he rode the Tros past a pile of refuse that undoubtedly hid at least one hostile youngster, that what Zip might gain, could he do the impossible and show progress toward peace-a coalition of rebel forces, a cease fire committee, or even a pacification program-was more than the boy's wildest dream: a home.

There were no forces to replace the Stepsons and the 3rd. The Rankan army garrison was just that-Rankan. The Stepsons' barracks, won at so great a cost in life and love five years past, would be deserted; the job the Sacred Band did, undone. There would be a handful of Hell-Hounds to stand against Theron's battalions, Beysib oppressors, and the crime-lords of the town.

If Zip would only let him, Tempus was going to solve a number of problems that had seemed insoluble only minutes before, and do the youth the only favor one man can do another: Give him a start on solving his own problems, a place to stand, a world to win-a fresh start.

If Tempus could keep his own people from killing the charismatic young rebel leader in the meantime. And if Zip knew a last chance when he saw one. And if, in Sanctuary, where hate and fear passed for respect. Zip hadn't made so many enemies that, no matter what Tempus did, the boy's assassination wasn't as sure as the next thunderclap of Stormbringer's welcome-weather.

When that thunderclap did come, Tempus was already cantering the Tros down Lizard's Way, headed for the Vulgar Unicorn, where a fiend named Snapper Jo tended bar and word could be spread fast, when a man had rumors he wanted on the wing.

Snapper Jo was a fiend of the gray-and-warty-skinned, snaggle-toothed variety. His shock of orange hair stood out every which way from his head and his eyes looked in both directions at once, causing distress to certain patrons who wondered which orb to fix on when they earnestly begged for credit or leave to pass upstairs, where drugs and women could be had.

Snapper's job of bartending in the day at the Vulgar Unicorn was his most prized accomplishment-save the winning of his freedom.

He'd been the summoned minion of Roxane, the Nisibisi witch called Death's Queen. But his mistress had freed him, after her fashion ... or, at least, she'd not come around lately to order him to this or that foul depradation.

The fact that Snapper thought of his former existence as a . witch's servant as depradacious was central to the fiend's new outlook on life. Here, among the Wrigglies and the mendicants and the whores, he was trying desperately for acceptance.

And he was managing.. No one teased him about his looks or shrank from him in fear. They were civil, in the manner of humans, and they treated him as an equal, to the extent that anyone here ever treated anyone else so.

And, in his heart of hearts, Snapper Jo wanted above all to be accepted by the humans-perhaps, someday, as a human. For was not humanity something in the heart, not on the surface?

Snapper Jo wanted to believe it so, in this weird inn where pop-eyed Beysibs were hated marginally more than blond and handsome Rankans, where dark skin and uneven limbs and snaggle teeth weren't disfigurements; where everyone was equally oppressed by the wizards from the Mageguild and the priests from uptown.

So when the tall, heroic man with the fearsome countenance, who seemed to be seeping blood-or bloody rain- from every pore, came in and spoke familiarly in a gravelly voice, saying, "Snapper, I need a favor," the day bartender drew himself up to his full height-almost equal to the stranger's-puffed out his spoon-chest, and replied, "Anything, my lord-except credit, of course: house rules."