Guardian's Road: Deception

[aithne]

Ah, Athens! The center of the world (so any Athenian will tell you), a center of knowledge rivaled only by a few other places (so the librarians will tell you), the beating heart of a nation so strong that it is nigh-unbeatable (so the king will tell you), and a city where sin, vice, and murder in the streets are so rampant as to be mere background noise (so the whores and the bullyboys will tell you).

I liked the place immediately, of course.

Shops, homes, vendors crying out their wares, packs of children running in the streets, mangy yellow dogs barking and howling, men in creaking armor and magnificent helmets watching it all: this was Athens. Crowded, dirty, beautifully alive. It made Knossos look positively staid. "Is that a bear?" I murmured to Melitta as we got off the ferry and were swept into the seething crowd at the docks.

"I can't tell, are all Greeks this tall?" grumbled my love. She was sticking close by me, and I was keeping one eye on her, hoping not to get separated in the crowd.

"All the one's I've met are. Yes, that's a bear, in a cage. Wonder who's taking him? Oh, look, Obelia's ship." I ducked down a bit, hoping nobody was looking our way. We were washed up onto one of the side streets nearest the docks, and walked briskly uphill, looking for a place to talk.

We found a tucked-away corner, and set our bags down. "Nestor's here, right enough. Any ideas where he'd head? I don't think there's a Wazet Temple here, but there must be somewhere the ambassadors stay."

I'd dropped to my heels, my back to the white stone wall, and Melitta dropped down beside me. She shook her head. "If he is going to assassinate the king, he would become something so unlike he really is as to be a totally different person. First lesson in the Wazet temple. He will travel the places, that most paladins wouldn't. The places of prostitution, drug addicts and vices." She frowned. "But we have to consider the target. So being the king, if you were trying to get close to him, what would you do?"

I shrugged. "Try to infiltrate, to get close to somewhere I could hit him from. Me, I'd try to get hired on as one of the guards. Or perhaps a food taster or body servant of some sort."

"Using a poison in the food, no, the man probably has food tasters. I think he would try the bodyguard angle first. Now what did the paper say exactly?"

"It said that it was going to be in late summer of the year of King Minos. The Greek king's going to be attacked by a Wazet paladin. He'll fail, but he'll be linked back to the ambassador. By failing, I assume they mean he'll die."

"So based on that, he may well just come in swinging, knowing it's a suicide mission."

"And once he's dead, they'll figure out he's a Wazet paladin. Do your paladins gave the same sorts of tattoos that the priestesses do?" I didn't ever remember seeing a Wazet paladin without either armor or a shirt on.

"Yes, they do." She glanced down at her own chest, seemingly reflexively, though her tattoos were covered by her dress. "He may not even be trying to kill the king, he may just be trying to start the war."

That was a nasty thought. "Right. Charge in, get killed by the guards, and once they figure out who he works for, the king assumes he's acting on Obelia's orders."

"And it's all over. So we have to find Nestor and kill him before that happens."

I wished we could bring in Obelia or Zarek in on this, but I knew Zarek would probably try to kill me as soon as he figured out who I was, and Obelia knew Melitta's face and would not be particularly happy with her right now. Of the two, we probably had a better chance to not killed right away with Zarek, but from what I remembered about the Son of Porta, he was quite traditional. Though, I had to admit, working with Obelia showed at least a little flexibility. I scratched my head. "So, we're going to have to find one paladin who knows how to hide."

Melitta nodded, but her attention had been caught by something happening across the street. "What do you think they are doing?"

"Good question," I said. I stood to get a better look. Men in the armor of the king's guard were putting up painted wooden signs. The one they'd just finished securing to the wall was legible from here once they'd gotten out from in front of it, and I whistled low as I saw it. There was a festival in honor of birth of the King's grandson set for four days from now, and it would start with a parade at the main square and leading to the Acropolis. The king would be showing off his new grandson, it seemed. If I remembered Athenian politics correctly, this was his first grandson, and might well be his heir if the king lived long enough. "I think I know where we can find Nestor," I said as I dropped back to my heels.

"Yep, at the main square in front of a lot of people in a few days."

"Now, if I were going to try something like that, I'd spend a bit of time in the place I was going to try it in before I did so. He's going to stop and case it, probably." I'd want to know angles of approach, escape routes, where people would be the thickest, where cover was going to be found.

"Yes and probably sooner than later. Let's see if we can find a hotel that over looks that square, might be pricy, though."

I tried to remember how much money we had, and was left only with the suspicion that we were going to run out soon. "We're going to have to figure out how to get some more money, sometime soon."

Melitta looked at me, and I saw a look in her eyes that I was beginning to recognize; a challenge of sorts, but what sort of challenge had yet to be seen. "How's your sense of good and evil?" she asked.

It was one of the powers Porta granted her Guardians, though it was less useful than one might suspect; every human was a mix of both, and it was rare to come across someone who was much more one than another. I shrugged. "Pretty dependable. Why?"

"How about your morals?"

I gave her a dark look. "You're not suggesting what I think you're suggesting, are you?"

Melitta raised one shoulder in a half-shrug. "We find a pimp that is really evil, kill him and give half the money to the prostitutes to get out of the situation and keep the other half for ourselves. As a general rule, they always carry lots of money. That's my suggestion, if that is what you thought."

"Yes, that was about what I was thinking." I sighed. "While I'd like to protest that I'm a Guardian, not a vigilante, we are going to need the money."

"Two birds, one stone, one less evil in the world and you atone for it by giving out half the money. Best of many worlds, really."

There was something wrong with that, but seven years as a Guardian hadn't given me the words to explain what it was, only a sense that there was definitely something awry with that logic. "There's a few fine points of honor there, but I will think about it."

"Just a suggestion. We've got some relics. We could sell those."

I grimaced. "And lead Obelia right to us."

"That was my thinking. That's it about it for me. Your turn?"

I thought, carefully. There were so many ways to turn a coin in a city like Athens, but all of the honest, or even somewhat honest, ways to do so didn't pay particularly well or particularly quickly. "I'm afraid the killing bit's going to be the easiest and quickest. I could hire on somewhere as a bodyguard, but I don't think we have that kind of time."

Melitta gave me a small smile. "Nor do I. Feel like a walk on the dark side of town?"

"Let's go, and see what we can see."

"Just let me know when you find the largest evil source," she said, and got up from where she was leaning against the wall, shouldering her bag. I followed, concentrating, opening myself to the natures of the people around me.

I hate using that particular ability. I always have. It hurts, for one. Both pure good and pure evil are like a sword to the chest, though different styles of sword. Mixtures of fair and foul in people's natures dull the swords, and you grow fond of the blessed balance that most people spend their lives in. What we term good and evil seems to be a sort of accretion of your words, deeds, thoughts, intentions; the impact you have on the world around you, how you twist the air around you as you walk by.

I hate it not only because it hurts, but because it seems like reading secrets I'm not meant to know; I didn't really want to know that the thin young woman with a face mottled with bruises read far more evil than good, and that one of the soldiers that marched past us down the street as we walked held something painfully serene inside of him. And as we walked down into one of the worst neighborhoods Athens possessed, the presence of human evil thickened perceptibly. It was always the same. The worst places were always the slums and the places where the rich met and did deals. Different kinds of evil. Same pain.

We wandered into neighborhoods that got progressively worse and worse. After an hour or so, after night fell, I felt a sharp stab as we heard a scuffle ahead, a man's voice raised in anger, a woman's voice screaming. "There," I said, and strode forward. The light from nearby windows illuminated the scene--a burly man beating a woman. She was curled up, screaming as he kicked her, and though there were people on the street, all were looking the other way.

"Feel better if you axe him or should I?" Melitta asked as she broke into a trot beside me.

"I'll get him. Grab the girl, make sure she's all right," I said, focusing on my target. He had a good sword, but how he moved told me it was just for show. He was strong, but that wasn't going to be a problem. I grabbed his shoulder, pulling him away from the girl, and he swung around with an ugly light in his eyes. I didn't waste my breath on talking to him, just grabbed him when he lunged for me and slung him into a nearby alley. I loosed the new Kyrith from my back--I wasn't trusting my two-axe technique enough yet to use it in a fight--and went after the guy.

He pulled his sword, but that was about all I allowed him to do. Kyrith, smug and sure, buried herself in the man's neck, cleaving downward and into his chest. In the dim light, I could only see his outline and his eyes, stunned. Then he fell, and died.

I looked at the crumpled body and wondered what, exactly, I was becoming. Then I wiped his blood off Kyrith using his shirt.

Melitta darted around me, and squatted next to the body. She cut two pouches off of him, and said, "The girl's all right. Come on." She went out to the street, opened and looked inside both pouches. She closed them both and tossed one to the wide-eyed girl who stood watching us. "Go home, get out of this life," she told the girl, and her voice was abrupt but not unkind.

I nodded to the girl. "Do as she says." To Melitta, I said, "Let's go," and offered my arm. She took it, and we walked in silence away from the scene.

After a block or two, Melitta said, "That was a nice thing to do. He was going to kill her, if it helps."

I took a long breath. "It does. Let's just hope that none of his friends try to avenge him."

"Friends, that one? Doubt it. She was already bleeding on the inside. I had to use a great deal of healing on her to even bring her back to normal. On the other bright side, we have a good year's worth of gold--and so does she." My love looked up at me, seeming to try to gauge my mood. "Feels kind of good somehow, to me anyway." She looked down and away. "Maybe not you."

"It's the whole personal gain thing, really. But, I suppose, this gold might help us keep peace in this part of the world a little longer, and that's a worthy goal. Still, right action, wrong reasons, and I just feel a bit dirty, is all. Anyway. Shall we wash up and go see if we can find a place overlooking the square?"

"Certainly," she said. We found a fountain and washed the blood off of our hands--Melitta had gotten hers bloody while healing the girl. As we walked toward the square, Melitta said, almost hesitantly, "You know, there is something that the Wazet priesthood has, that might help you. When people come back from assignments--"

"Assassinations," I said.

"Those, too. Anyway. When they come back, before they come back into the Temple, a priest meets them somewhere and washes them. We use it for the small sins, the necessary evils, and ask forgiveness of the Goddess for taking on the small sin in order to help the greater good. I've both done them, and had them done to me. It does help."

I'd meant what I said before, that I felt somehow soiled by what I'd done, and the knowledge that I'd chosen to do it. "The Porta Temple doesn't tend to have a lot of need for that one," I said.

"Oh, you people," Melitta said. "Instead, you whip yourselves bloody when you get guilty over things." I gave her a dark look, and she shrugged. "You might not have any scars, Theron, but there's a certain quality that skin gets when it's injured and healed over and over again. Washing seems a bit gentler, doesn't it?"

I took a long breath. "It does. Well, it might help, and it certainly can't hurt. Do you need anything special for it?"

"Not really. Just some warm water, a cloth, some salt, and a couple of snakes. Though," she said, considering my imperfectly hidden look of horror, "the snakes are really just decoration, I can leave them out."

I laughed, and we went to find a hotel that had rooms overlooking the square. We did find one on the third floor of one of the buildings that surrounded the square. It was a large and airy room, with comfortable furnishings. We checked out the view, and saw that there were few people moving round the square at this hour. Beggars slept in doorways, dogs trotted through the square, but nothing was really going on.

I let Melitta sleep while I kept watch that first night. It was more difficult than I'd expected to have her sleeping in the same room and not go to her, curl around her, and fall asleep myself. She woke before sunrise and coaxed me away from the window and into bed with her, and after we were done with some very pleasant pastimes, we talked a bit more about that ritual she'd mentioned. She told me what it involved, and I thought about it and suggested some changes, things that would make me feel a bit more at home.

And as the morning light began to pour into the windows, we began.

I was naked in the light, and Melitta, for once all business, began her chant, calling on the Goddess, asking for her attention. She washed me with salt-touched water and a cloth, every inch of my skin, the touch of the cloth tingling just slightly with the power she was calling on. I could feel the regard of the Goddess on us, just a bit of divine presence, and it was indistinguishable from when I could feel Porta's attention.

Melitta started washing with my face, and ended at my feet, and when she was done she was crouched at my feet, looking up at me, closing her mouth on the last syllables of her prayer. The air still felt heavy with power, and without thinking I knelt, took her face in my hands, and kissed her.

We ended up entwined on the floor, with the power still on and in us, and our lovemaking became a celebration, a small ritual in itself. And afterwards, I did feel clean, the blood washed from my hands and the stain from my soul, forgiven.

The stone floor was cold, and though I would have gladly stayed there forever, there were things that we needed to do. "To bed with you," Melitta said. "I'll watch for a while."

So we passed the next two days, sleeping in shifts. One of us would be at the window while the other was sleeping or out getting food to bring back, and we would sometimes watch together, snuggled up in two chairs in front of the window. The beggars all began to look quite familiar, and we got very used to the pattern of life in and around the square.

One of my excursions was to one of the markets nearby. This was a good neighborhood, and the market had some very nice things in it. I was looking for something for Melitta; I had no idea what exactly it was I was looking for, but I hoped I'd know it when I saw it. I stopped at a display of golden bracelets, my eye caught by one with a snake motif. But it seemed subtly wrong, and I shook my head and moved on.

A necklace was out of the question, of course; she wore her holy symbol and only that around her neck. Something bright for her hair might work, but it would need to be something very versatile, and I wasn't sure of my ability to pick something out that was just right. Earrings might work, but I hadn't seen any that were really to her taste here.

Then I spied it, sitting in a neglected corner of a vendor's tray. It was an arm-band made of a coppery metal, and it drew my eye and kept it. The band had three coils, the coils thin enough to for delicacy without losing strength, and the ends were fashioned into the shapes of what might have been wolves, or maybe dragons. The vendor named a price for it that was quite low, and I bargained him down a bit and for a couple of extra coins got him to throw in a pretty comb, as well.

The moment to give Melitta either of these items hadn't come quite yet, but it soon would, and I didn't know when I was going to get another chance to look at things for her by myself. I returned to our rented room that afternoon quite pleased with myself, and took up my post by the window.

It was late that night that I saw him, a cloaked figure out of place in the dark square. The person was wearing a cloak, which was strange because it had been a scorcher today and the stone of the square was still radiating heat, and by the width of the shoulders was probably male. The air was wet and heavy, and there was very little breeze.

"Melitta," I said in a low voice. She was on the bed, dozing, and woke at my voice. "I think we have our guy."

She came out of bed, and looked where I'd indicated. She nodded. "Just a second--" She moved purposefully to her packs, rummaged briefly, and came out with something in her hand. She hung herself halfway out the window and slung the object--I could see now that it was a dart--at the cloaked man. It struck him in the back and I could see him jerk, then reach around to grab the dart. He staggered then, and went to his knees. He attempted to get up, but was unsuccessful.

"I would go get him if I were you," Melitta said.

I was already up and across the room. "On my way," I said. There was a back way in and out of this building that was rarely used, and I went down it. I pretended concern, sliding my shoulder under his arm, and escorted the increasingly limp man out of the square. I ended up slinging him over my shoulders to carry him up the stairs, and he was a warm weight on my shoulders. He was a big guy, heavier than me, all muscle.

I got him into the room, and Melitta closed the door after me as I laid the guy down on the floor. She came over and pulled the guy's hood back. "Well damn, that's not Nestor, but it is a Wazet paladin."

"Another one? Maybe this one's with Obelia."

"Looks like it," she said thoughtfully. "He will probably do."

"How long until he wakes up?" I asked.

She nudged the knight with her toe. "He is awake, just can't move, he can talk, though."

The knight opened his eyes, apparently figuring his cover was blown. "Ah," I said, pulling a chair over to him. "So. What were you doing down there just now?" The guy just scowled at me, and I rolled my eyes slightly. "Look. You can either take my word for it that the Wazet priestess right here wants you to talk to me, or I can hurt you until you can't help yourself. Your choice."

The knight's eyes darted over to Melitta, and widened as she pulled the collar of her shirt down to show him the heads of the snake tattoos on her chest. She said, smiling, "Besides, you don't have much time for the antidote."

He gave her a long look, and then said, "Fine, scouting the square for where the Greek king is going to be standing."

"And once you figured that out, what were you going to do with the information?" I asked.

"I was to bring it back to Nestor with square dimensions and routes of escape." He wasn't happy, but neither would I be in his situation. Melitta stood and began to pace around the room.

I asked, "He's the one coordinating an attack?"

"Yes."

"Do you know whose orders he's under?"

"Obelia, I assume, or it was a direct order from the Wazet temple in Knossos."

In other words, he had no idea. "Hm. How many more people does Nestor plan to involve in the attack?"

He paused before he answered. "We are twelve on the boat. Only myself, Nestor and two others were honored for this mission."

"And where could we find Nestor, at the moment?"

"He is staying near with a friend near the palace." He breathed in, stuttering a bit. I wondered just how much longer he had, but didn't dare ask right now.

Instead, I asked, "Does he expect you to report back tonight?"

"By dawn."

I looked down at him, weighing my options. "So. If we give you the antidote, can we trust you not to turn around and try to kill us?"

"Your priestess outranks Nestor, so if she orders me to, I will remain silent."

Melitta was across the room now, standing by the window, her arms crossed and an unreadable expression on her face. I looked at her inquiringly, wondering if she thought we could trust him. She crooked her finger at me, beckoning, and I rose and went to her.

She stood on her tiptoes and murmured into my ear, "There is no antidote."

The words were a shock, and on the heels of the shock was understanding of why she hadn't told me this. Into her ear, I asked, "How long does he have?"

"A few minutes," was the answer. I nodded and went back to the knight.

"Could you tell me how to get to where Nestor is staying?" I asked him.

"Three blocks north, two east, marble building." His breath was coming harder now, and he closed his eyes.

Melitta had crossed to her bag and pulled out another dart filled with liquid. She went to sit by the knight's head, and with a gentle hand she brushed the dark hair away from his forehead. "Here you go, you will fall asleep and when you wake up, you will be home." She glanced up at me. "Anything else before I give him the antidote?"

"No, go ahead."

The knight had opened his eyes again, and was looking up at Melitta. It was at that moment that I understood something about the Wazet temple, about the way the knights and the priestesses interacted. There was trust and only trust in his eyes. He believed, truly believed, that Melitta was going to take care of him, give him an antidote, make him better. The thought that she might be lying didn't appear to cross his mind.

She jabbed the dart into the big vein in his neck and watched as it emptied. She hummed under her breath as she did so, a lullaby, and she kept her hand on his forehead until his breathing eased, and he fell deeply asleep. Then she said, without looking up at me, "He's dead in about a minute. Wait."

I did wait, and his breathing slowed and then stopped. Melitta pulled his hood back over his face. "I'll haul him out and find somewhere to stash him," I said. "And then we need to go pay a visit to Nestor. He's staying with a friend--did he mention this friend to you?"

Melitta shook her head. "Nope, but we have spies in the government. Probably one of those."

"Wonder if he's going to try to kill us on sight, as well. We need some answers from him, like who's giving him his orders--or who he thinks is giving him his orders."

"Well we know for sure it's not Obelia. That makes me think that it's probably Knossos."

"That's what I'm thinking. Or that's who he thinks it is, anyway." I came over and began to wrap the unfortunate knight tightly in his own cloak. "Though I suppose the Wazet temple in Knossos might have a reason for wanting the Greek king dead. We'd be safer for a bit if he were. But since we know he's going to fail, it's going to set off events we don't want."

Melitta stood, going to put the used dart back in her things. "So is he planning to fail or does he just screw this up? Scouting and bringing in three others doesn't sound like he is trying to fail."

I looked down at the body at my feet. "I have another theory. What if the Greek king knows he's coming?"

"Possible, set up somewhere?"

I nodded. "If the king's our collector, and wants an excuse to start making trouble with Crete, if he's the one behind the orders, he'd know when Nestor was going to attack."

Melitta came over and dropped into the chair I'd used when I was questioning the knight. "Who would have told him?"

I shrugged. "Someone in the Wazet temple, maybe. Or maybe one of your spies is a double agent."

"That's possible, and even probable."

"Here's a theory: an agent passes back information that makes the temple in Knossos decide he needs to be taken out. The spy feeds them information about what might be the best time and place to attack--and then warns the Greek king." I paused, thinking about it. "Knossos orders Nestor to go spearhead an attack, but there's going to be more resistance than he expects."

Melitta's voice was thoughtful. "The renegade Obelia gets blamed for it."

"And Greece has an excuse to start harassing our ships."

I glanced at her, and she gave me a sharp smile. "You got it."

"Unfortunately, I don't think she would believe us. Nestor might be reasonable, though."

"Maybe, if you can get him to talk and not try to kill you on sight."

I chuckled. "That's going to be a good trick. Getting past the first couple of minutes is going to be the hard part. We could just question and kill him, but it seems like a waste, really. He's not a bad person, just someone given bad orders."

"I have other poisons but he is probably immune to most of them. The only one he is not, is the one that I gave this guy." She nudged the body with her bare toe. I thought that maybe a shadow passed briefly over her face, but the expression was so brief that I thought I might have been mistaken.

I looked down at the body. "So I'd have to hit him just hard enough to disable and not kill him. Which can be done. That friend he's staying with is an unknown quantity, though."

"Probably the spy passing the information in the first place. Might be best if we could get them both."

"We need to find out who this person is. From the address, someone quite rich, or else close to the king somehow. Or we could just go in and hope for the best. Nestor's going to know something's wrong by dawn."

She nodded and said, "We should leave now and see if we can find out how important this guy is. He may have more security than we can deal with."

"Probably a good idea. Let me deal with this guy here, and we can go." I shouldered the body. He was still warm, which made for an odd experience. I carried him through the quiet streets of Athens, to a place about a mile and a half away. I laid him down in an alley and buried him under some debris I found nearby. An undignified end for a man who, like me, had probably tried hard to live a good life, to be a good person.

I hadn't even asked his name. I wondered if Melitta knew it. Otherwise, I was going to have to remember him in my prayers as one of the nameless ones. There were a number of those, men who had offered harm to me or to one of the priestesses, and paid for the presumption with their lives. Twenty-three nameless ones, total. Thirty-seven with names.

I wondered if they would ever start to blend together, if one death would ever seem just like the next. I hoped not. It seemed important, somehow, to remember that those lives I took and the blood that Kyrith drank belonged to men and women who had names, lives, families.

I thought about it hard on the way back. The blood wasn't exactly on my hands this time, but I wondered at Melitta's cold-bloodedness about betraying someone who was one of her own like that. I knew that she was who she was, and she made no apologies for it. I didn't have too many illusions about this woman I loved; she'd carefully removed each one as she'd found it. I'd known what and who she was when I'd fallen in love with her: a killer, as much of a killer as I was, and with very different attitudes towards her work than I had towards mine. And, to be fair, she gave far more life than she took; she was as skillful a healer as I'd ever seen. My own little healing gift was almost nothing compared to hers.

In the end, that might be the difference between us. We Guardians had a reputation for killing first and asking questions later that was entirely deserved, and I was as guilty of that as any of us. I had nothing to give back to the dead by my prayers.

I was still thinking about it when I joined Melitta, and we went to go see if we could find Nestor. It was about two hours until dawn, and there were very few people out and about. We passed by the house in question, and I noted two very discreet guards, one on the roof and one posing as a beggar by the front door. We walked by, looking like we were on our way somewhere, and once we were out of earshot I asked Melitta, "What do you give for our chances of Nestor not trying to kill us on sight?"

"One in ten," she said after a moment of thought. "He is very distrustful of Guardians of Porta. He didn't say anything about my sleeping in your quarters, but he didn't have to."

"If we could just talk to him for a few minutes, let him know that he's probably compromised, he might change his mind about what he's going. Then again, he might not. Those guards shouldn't be a problem for me to deal with, but I likely can't deal with both them and Nestor at the same time." I shook my head. "I'd like to just walk up, knock on the door, and ask to talk to him, but that might well get us killed."

"Very well might get you killed. He has to come out of there sometime. He might be more approachable on the street."

"He's probably going to go out looking when his man doesn't check in. It's what I'd do, at least. We might be able to catch up with him then. I saw a place we could watch the house from without being seen. I think it's best to go this way to get to it." I turned a corner. "Just out of curiosity--did you mention to Nestor where we were going?"

Melitta shook her head. "Not that I can recall."

I'd been afraid of that. "Iona, the Porta cleric, knew, because she was with me when I found the relics. She's the one that had to tell them where we were going. Just a thought, nothing we can do about it now. I only wonder why she was referred to by Panos as a serpent."

"Plant," she said. "There are many in the Porta ranks."

"Serious? Well, that explains it, then." It was not a thought I liked, but it was something I'd begun to suspect. "You folks have spies everywhere, seems like. Wonder if the Porta priesthood does as well. They don't tell the Guardians, if they do."

"They feed information to us. At the low ranks, you can't tell who's a Wazet priestess and who's a Porta. Porta tends not to put out a lot of spies, because we don't see many, so either they are really, really good and we don't see them, or they don't have that many. It's a debate in the Wazet temples."

"I'm guessing that they don't have that many. That's generally not how our minds work. But things may be different among the upper ranks of the priestesses."

"It's very possible that you do and they are so elite we can't identify them. That's my personal theory, but I tend to err toward assuming they have something and being prepared for it rather than getting blindsided."

I nodded. "True enough. All right, up here."

The niche I'd spotted was just large enough for the two of us to curl up in together. We waited and watched, and about an hour after dawn we saw the front door open and Nestor come out. The "beggar" who had been pretending to sleep beside the front door slipped inside as the door was closing.

Melitta and I eased ourselves out of our hiding place, and went to follow Nestor. After we were out of sight of the house, Melitta and I more or less just fell in beside him. "Morning, Nestor," I said, my tone matter-of-fact.

He didn't stop walking, but he did look at me with surprise. "You. Are still alive?"

"Looks that way. Am I not supposed to be?"

"I had heard the Siren was lost out of the port of Agia Marina. I assumed you were on board."

I felt a shock go through me at Nestor's words. "Ah, damn. No, we weren't. We have some information for you. Your choice what to do with it."

He raised an eyebrow. "Please do tell."

"The attack you're planning is going to fail. We believe you've been compromised--or whoever gave the orders to you has. The attack is going to cause a lot more problems than it solves, more or less."

He gave me a look. "Is that why my guard hasn't reported back?"

"Yes, it is."

Nestor's jaw was set, and his face stony. "If he has been compromised they will have tortured him until he broke. Then all the plans are out the window. My orders came from the temple in Knossos, but they told me not to tell Melitta."

"I assume because they knew about her association with me."

He nodded. "And she is probably under suspicion of being a Porta spy, or a turned agent." We'd slowed, and around us Athens was waking for the day. Nestor looked at me, his brow creased. "Why do you tell me? I would have been killed, and that would be the end of it."

"Because if you do this, relations between the Greeks and the Minoans will sour, and Wazet ships will start being attacked. As far as we can tell, the Greeks are looking for a reason and an opportunity to invade. We need more time before they do."

Nestor looked down. "Then I am damned either way. Fail and be killed or try and be killed."

"There is a chance that we will be able to fight off the Greeks, when the attack comes, but that requires that there not be war between the Porta and Wazet sects. And there are several people out there working to start that war." I shrugged. "We may all be damned, but I for one am not planning to go quietly."

"Ah the larger picture, I was thinking more personally," he said, shrugging. "The temple told me if I fail, that they would make sure that I and my family were to be put to death. I have to try."

I understood now the situation he was in. "Like I said, your choice. I have something you ought to read, though." I nodded at an alley we were passing. "This isn't the sort of thing that should be looked at in public."

Nestor nodded, and we stepped into the alley. Through Kyrith, I asked Melitta silently, Do you have any more of that poison we used on the other? She nodded shallowly. I hate to use it on him, I like the guy. But I think killing him is the only way to stop this. He's in a bad corner.

Going to let him read the scroll first?

Yes, maybe he'll change his mind. We reached the back of the alley, and I pulled out the ivory scrollcase and handed it to Nestor. He held it to the light and began to read.

When he was finished, he shook his head slowly. "There is no way out for me, but there might be a way out for the Wazet temple."

"What's that?" I asked.

"I will need to strip out of all my Wazet regalia, I will need to burn off my tattoos and then continue as before. I will become Greek, and if I am compromised, I will be killed, but they will think me Greek and not Minoan."

"And so the blame wouldn't fall on the Temple."

"No, and not on the Minoans either. If I succeed, one dead Greek king might delay the coming war."

"True enough. Well, good luck." To Melitta, I said silently, I think he has a solution there. We can see how this plays out.

She didn't make a face, but I could hear the doubt in her silent voice. For now.

"I will need help and healing with the tattoos, if I can call upon Melitta to help ease the pain?"

I glanced at her and asked, "You willing?" She nodded. "All right. Where do you want to do this?"

"Somewhere that screaming will not be out of place."

I remembered a place where a man had beat a woman nearly to death and nobody had even blinked. "There are places in the poorer sections of town that will do."

"Find a big piece of flat metal. Heat that axe and using to burn off the tattoos will only cause axe burns. Just as telling as the tattoos. Acid, if you can find it, might be easier." He was talking only to Melitta now. "We will need to talk more in private."

"We'll meet you in an hour--do you know where the broken statues are?"

"The corner across from the Neptune fountain? Yes."

"We'll meet there, and go find somewhere to do this." We parted then, and went to the temple district to find some acid and a few other items we thought we might need. We found a room, one that was small and apparently hadn't been cleaned since it was built. The mattress on the rickety bedframe rustled all on its own, and I could swear that I saw it move out of the corner of my eye.

It was exactly the place we needed. Nobody would mind a few screams; worse was probably heard every night. "Are you going to need to be held down, Nestor?" I asked the knight.

He shook his head. He looked slightly ill; so would I, at the prospect of what he was about to have to do. "No, but something to bite would be good."

"I picked this up, thinking that." I tossed him what amounted to a polished stick that I'd picked up when we'd been buying poison. It had a few carvings on it, and evidently had some sort of ritual use, but it was the right size for biting.

He looked down at it, nodded, and then stripped without comment to his skin. The tattoos on him were extensive, but very different from Melitta's. Where her twin snakes were twined down her body and her legs, Nestor's were largely in the pattern of a shield on his chest. Tendrils wrapped around to his back, curling into a coil in the small of his back.

This was not going to be pleasant, for any of us.

I poured acid in a slow, careful stream over his chest, trying to miss some of the more delicate flesh. The skin would have to burn all the way off in order to obscure the tattoos, and that was an extremely painful prospect. Once the skin was gone, Melitta would follow it with healing, replacing the wound with knotted scar.

Once we were done, I asked, "Do you want us to stay?"

"I have some things that I need to tell Melitta. You might as well stay and hear it," he said to me. He turned his attention to Melitta. "The place that I was staying is the house of a merchant named Attis and his wife Vesna. They are spies for the Wazet temple, but I think they work for someone else. I surprised them, the day I came into Athens. They thought I was dead on the Wazet ship. They had people in a room, that I didn't see all that well, but they talked about the book of Phoena and her prophecies. They called themselves Xia."

"Strange," I said. "You read a page from the book of Phoena, earlier. What were they saying about it?"

"They were searching for more pages. And that they had copied and burned the originals, for some reason."

Melitta was watching, letting me talk. She'd been quiet all morning, a silence which I wasn't sure what to make of. I said, "That's strange. It argues that there's something more to the pages than meets the eye. Had you ever heard of this Xia before? I haven't."

"No, it is ancient Greek for Trust. I had to go ask a transcriber."

"Well, we knew that there was a mysterious group of people tracking down the pages. There are a few pages left that describe the future, but we don't know who has them--or if they've even been found."

"They have found a great deal of old ones. Earthquakes, assassinations, the rise of the Minoans, the Greeks but they have very few future events, from what I could overhear."

I leaned against the wall, crossing my arms. "Those pages are still out there, then. Even the older pages are dangerous. Supposedly, there's a weapon in one or more of them."

"Or all of them combined. They were very angry about something as well. I think they got robbed." He touched the scarring on his chest gingerly, and winced.

"Really? What were they saying about it?"

"I couldn't hear much, but it sounded like they had recovered all the old pages from the book, and then it got stolen. It's been redistributed, and they are having to collect them all over again."

"Odd, that," I said. "Wonder who got it away from them?"

"I don't know. Another spy? A thief?"

"Someone working to oppose them, is all we can really tell. After all, who would steal it and then distribute the pages again, if it wasn't someone who wanted to make them mad?"

"Personal vendetta?"

"Possibly, or possibly something a bit bigger than that. Without knowing what this group is up to, it's impossible to say."

"But I thought you should know," Nestor said. He rolled his shoulders experimentally; the scar was beginning to fade to white. It really didn't look pretty at all; it looked like he'd gotten hit by one of those spitting dragons legend said used to live in the waters of the sea.

I nodded. "Thank you, it's very useful information."

He had gotten up and out of the chair, and was pulling on the pieces of his armor. "Tomorrow, you can stay away from the square or be there about noon."

"Good luck," I told him, and I meant it. I had no illusions that Nestor wasn't going to die tomorrow. It was a sad waste of a good knight, but sometimes good men died in stupid actions. It was just life, was all.

"And to you," he said, and left us. I listened to his footsteps retreat down the hall and away.

"I have this urge to watch and see what happens, but maybe that's just morbid of me," I said to Melitta.

She came over to me from where she had been standing by the window. "Might not be that morbid. If he fails and a priestess of Wazet happens to heal an injured king..."

I raised an eyebrow. "Might be useful, after all."

"Long shot, but maybe worth the effort to go see."

"I think so," I said. "It sounds like both Temples have reason to think we're dead."

"It does, might be easier that way," she said.

I shook my head slowly. "Though, damn, poor Neoma. Even if she lived, she's lost her ship."

"Could be misinformation as well. Who knows, at this point?"

"True enough, and there's no way to know."

Melitta grinned and closed the small distance between us, and slid her hand under my tunic and downward. "Just checking for Xia tattoos," she said, as her fingers reached one of her favorite parts of my anatomy.

I grinned, and bent my head so I could take her earlobe gently between my teeth. "Mmm. So, are you a Porta spy?"

"Feel free to look," she said, grabbed my hand, sliding it up under her dress. "Starting here."

I curled my fingers, found wetness amongst the soft hair, slid a finger up into it to the accompaniment of a soft moan from Melitta. I did indeed conduct a quite thorough examination, there in that seedy room.

It was a good few hours later by the time we left the room and took our leave of the neighborhood. We kept our heads low for the rest of the day, and the next day about noon we took our place among the crowd in the square, waiting for the king to appear.

He did, on a platform carried by naked men, holding his grandson high for all to see. He was a well-favored man, with the classic Greek nose, wearing rich robes. We were in the middle of the crowd, clapping and cheering with the rest, though I was keeping an eye on escape routes in case it turned into a riot.

The sun was high when the first sign of trouble came in the form of an arrow winging through the air, the sound of its release covered by the noise of the crowd. We began moving forward, against the crowd that panic was beginning to take hold of. I had my hand on Melitta's arm, making sure she didn't get jostled away from me by the crowd.

I wondered--ah, there he was! The men carrying the platform had set it down, and I could see Nestor, sword drawn, shoving his way through the crowd towards the king. Arrows were flying from the bodyguards, and Nestor was hit by several, but he pulled out a large sword and began to carve his way to the king.

He was bleeding heavily as he engaged the bodyguards, killing two before he took a sword to the back and fell. Several of the bodyguards plunged their swords into him after he fell.

The crowd had gone into a screaming panic. I kept a tight grip on Melitta as we plunged forward through the crowd. I expected to see people tending the king, but all of the priests around him had been killed. Which was strange, because some of them had been behind the king.

We had too many dead bodies, and not nearly enough people to have caused them. Melitta pulled herself out of my grip, going forward and shouting that she was a healer, as I scanned the crowd, looking for people out of place.

There. Several people moving rapidly through the crowd. I would never be able to catch them and I didn't want to get too far away from Melitta. I tried to see their faces, but their backs were to me. One turned back to look, and I saw her face, stamping her features on my memory so I would recognize her if I saw her again.

Melitta was crouched by the king, looking up on me with a questioning look, like, Do I heal him? I thought about it for a moment, then nodded. She pulled the arrow out--it had impacted into his chest, and if it hadn't hit his heart it certainly had gone into his lung. She healed him a little, just to stabilize him, and as I made my way towards her, she unfastened the ties of her dress at the shoulders to expose her breasts and the Wazet tattoos on her chest. She then closed her eyes and pulled down enough power to heal him all the way.

The king sat up, coughing, and was almost immediately whisked away by his remaining bodyguards. Melitta wiped her hands on her dress, looking pleased with herself. She came over to me, and asked, "Would you tie me up again?"

I raised the top of her dress up and began to tie the dress's ties up once more. "Of course. And I'll fasten up your dress, too."

She purred, and once I finished with that we turned to go. A man who appeared to be the head of the king's bodyguards stopped us. "Please stay. The king would like to thank you in person later."

I nodded, and tried to look like I was settling in to wait. Low, I said, "Probably would look suspicious if we left, wouldn't it."

She shrugged. "Probably but we can, I don't think they would notice. We can always show up later at the palace if you think it gains us something."

I weighed the benefits. "Might be able to figure out if this king is our collector. Might also let whatever spies are in the palace know we're alive."

"That might be the biggest problem. Better go. Did you get a good look at the girl?"

I smiled briefly. "Enough that I'd know her if I saw her again."

She slapped me on the shoulder. "I figured."

"Never said I'd stop looking," I said, and grinned. "Let's go. I have a hunch, let's see if I'm right."

We took the direct route there, finding the place where we'd hidden to watch the house before. An hour later, and now without all of the clothing they had been wearing, the woman I'd seen before and three men came down the street and entered the house.

"What I wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall in there at the moment," I muttered.

"I know, not much we can do from here. At least we know where she lives."

"And probably her name--I'd guess that's Vesna."

Melitta nodded. She was pressed up against me, her body warm against mine. "So would I. They really want him dead, for some reason. Think that the person that robbed them was the king?"

"Might be," I said. "Which would be why they wanted him dead. He might not even be the collector, just someone who got his hands on the book."

"Or found out about the weapon and wanted it for himself."

"But who would he redistribute it?" I asked. "If it was just missing, he'd be my first suspect. But because the pages are scattered again, I'm thinking it's someone who has an interest in that weapon not being found."

"It could be that too. Maybe he wanted to destroy it. Probably not, but a slim possibility."

I twisted my mouth. "Have you ever known of a king who would throw away something that would be an advantage over other nations?"

"Nope, I know it was a long shot."

"Well, at least we have a name for this group. We should take a wander through the temple districts here and see what the relics dealers have for sale. We might be able to find out who the collector is. Might be easier just to try to sell one of ours, but Obelia would probably come after us in a hurry. Zarek, too, if he's in town."

"Possibly, what do you want to do about Xia? We need one of them, and the answers to some of these questions could be answered."

"We do need to lay hands on one of them. Any of them would probably work, though I'm guessing that either Attis or Vesna would be the best candidate," I said, thinking about it.

"They wouldn't have brought her if she didn't fight well. I think she will be a handful. That said, she may still be the weakest point, but Attis may have more personal weaknesses."

"Likely. We can watch the house for a bit and see if we can figure out if they have any routines we can exploit." Melitta nodded and leaned against me, and we settled in to watch for a time.

If we could find a pattern, we could exploit it. Watching would keep us out of sight, and with any luck, word of the fact that we were still living wouldn't reach those who might be looking for us.

This was getting deeper by the day. I just hoped that it wouldn't swallow the two of us whole.