strapped to the shaft by strips of cured human skin. From the tip jutted a stiff black spine. It was incongruous for Rann to carry such an artifact; one similar had been used on him by the Thailant savages to drug and capture him. Before a band of his bird riders could rescue him, the prince's genitals had been burned away by the tribal leman.
'No,' said Rann softly, shaking his head. 'It's not for you. It's for an experiment.' She forced her upper lip to curl into a sneer.
'Whatever you'll do to me, you'd best start now. You'll need most of tonight to make final preparations to oppose the new inhabitants of the Sky City.'
'You surprise me, Tonsho, you really do. I know how you dread the very thought of pain. And for that very reason I have come to personify all you fear most. It was, I grant, a factor in choosing you as Governor of Kara-Est. I judged that your fear would keep you in line. Yet you dared hire assassins a second time, knowing they would fail.' He touched the glass to his lips. 'That took spirit, Tonsho. I always judged you had great moral strength, but I didn't judge it could overcome your physical cowardice.'
'I had to do something.' She almost spat the words. 'You hold my people in bondage.'
'And how, as well,' he said quietly. She shrank back, seeking shelter among the velvet cushions. Her flesh crawled as she considered the way she had just spoken to Rann, whose pleasure was the pain of others, whose face was her most familiar nightmare, whose elegant hand held her fate like a palmful of sand. He had her in a horror as excruciating as any physical torment; and he took no notice.
'As for preparing for the city's defense,' he went on in a soft voice, 'there is to be none.' She stared blankly.
That's what I came to tell you. Get out. There won't be a Sky Citizen inside the walls of Kara-Est by the time the sun rises over Dyla. Kara-Est is doomed. For us to defend your city against Istu is to lose precious men. We can ill afford more losses.'
'But Synalon! She's a mighty sorceress! I've not forgotten how she summoned the greatest air elemental seen to smash our ships and how, against all nature, she brought forth a salamander and forced it to cast itself into the waterspout. Can't she use those magics against the City and the Demon?'
Rann threw back his head and laughed. To one who knew him better than Tonsho – who knew him only as a nightmare figure – it was a strident, rare sound. She merely winced. To her, Rann's laughter was a thing to fear.
'Synalon is a mighty sorceress,' he said when he had recovered himself, 'but her sister defeated her in a duel of magics. And that same day Istu cast Moriana from the City like a man puts out a tomcat at night.'
Her eyes narrowed until only wet yellow gleams of reflected lamplight showed beween the lids. 'Why do you tell me this?'
He leaned forward. Had this been anyone but the devil Rann, Tonsho would have said he had a look of… desperation.
'You are able. You took a crushed, conquered city and made it a functioning seaport again in a matter of weeks. You've a rare gift. In the days to come, humanity will need all such gifts it can muster, if we're to have the slightest chance of survival.' To her amazement, she laughed in his face. 'What do you care for humankind?'
'More than you might think, milady Governor.' His smile thinned. 'More than for the damned Zr'gsz, at any rate.'
'No, no, I can't believe this,' she moaned, grasping her temples with both hands and rocking back and forth. 'It's a trick.' She raised her pallid face, fear and uncertainty etched in the flesh. 'That's it! You trick me into abandoning my post so you'll have an excuse to put me to death.'
'If I wished to put you to death, do you think I'd need an excuse?' He was becoming exasperated. Only rarely did he argue. 'Or if I desired you removed from office, that I'd go to such lengths to manufacture one? Tonsho, all I'd need to do is spread the word that you had been negotiating with the Wildermen of Dyla to deliver your city to them. You'd soon be writhing at the post out in the Plaza, with the sorry collection of marionettes we've set to playing Deputies standing by bobbing their heads and applauding my wisdom and justice.'
He saw that he fought futilely against her adamantine fears. Such sorry stuff as reason would not dispel her image of him any more than Synalon's magic could turn the wrath of Istu away from Kara-Est. He stood, smoothing wrinkles in his midnight blue trousers. 'Good evening, Governor Tonsho,' he said.
'Highness.' He stopped. 'Now that you've failed to work your trickery on me, where do you go?' She all but giggled the words, giddy at her escape from pain and her imagined triumph over the wily prince.
'I've an appointment with Her Majesty to discuss tomorrow's events. I plan to tell her exactly what I told you. Perhaps she'll find it less amusing.' He bowed. 'I do hope your wit serves you equally well with Istu. Goodbye.'
'Do you jest, Rann?' Synalon spun from the window and faced him squarely. 'Evacuate?' She laughed, the sound evilly clinging to the very stone of the walls.
Standing by the door, Rann absently eyed the alabaster curve of her throat. Tonight the princess had arranged her hair in two raven wings standing upward and out from the sides of her head. On a woman with less beauty or presence – or less power held in dubious check – it would have looked ridiculous. On Synalon it stirred both lust and dread. Her slender body was wrapped in a gown of some gauzy stuff, more diaphanous than translucent, that showed the pink points of her nipples and the trim dark thatch between her thighs. Rann's tawny eyes, drifting downward now and again against his will, could almost pick out the fine tracery of blue veins on the flawless, milky skin, of breasts, belly, well-shaped legs. He knew she had dressed in this manner solely for him. Such was the game they played.
The black-haired enchantress stopped laughing and gave him a cool, appraising look.
'Come, Prince. Tell me what you really intend. How shall we face this menace?' He grimaced, as if she had made to strike him.
'I wasn't joking, Your Majesty.' On arriving in Kara-Est after the flight across the Quincunx lands, Synalon had resumed the title of queen, though of what she had failed to specify. From his unique position, Rann generally disdained to give her that title and addressed her as Highness. But now much rode on her good favor. If he could get it by feeding her vanity, he would do so.
'We are prepared for defense,' she said tolerantly. 'We have walls against ground attack, and our eagles fighting beside the Estil gasbags and rooftop engines will make short work of the skyrafts used by the stinking Hissers.' 'Very well. The Vridzish we may defeat. But not Istu.'
'No?' A frown clouded her fine features. 'I have meditated much since we were driven from my City. I have some new tricks, half-man.'
Ignoring the jibe, he shook his head and replied, 'Moriana defeated you, and she couldn't best Istu. Moreover, Istu had just awakened when she faced him. He had yet to come to his full power.' He slapped his gloves across the palm of his left hand. 'No, Your Majesty. If your sister could not defeat Istu, neither can you. We have no chance of defeating the Fallen Ones.' 'But my own powers.. .'
'How much of the powers you've come by of late have been through the dispensation of the Dark Ones? I doubt they will allow you to muster strengths which they have lent you against their sole begotten son.'
She folded her arms. Mad blue sparks danced in her eyes and crackled in the roots of her dark hair.
'Would you have us skulk away in the night then, cousin? Come, I thought you were a man in spirit, if not in flesh.'
The scars at eyes and mouth turned white with strain. 'We would only throw our lives away.'
'What of it?' she demanded, head held high. Blue flames raced along the wings of her hair. 'If it's our lot to go down to defeat before these inhuman scum, then we shall die fighting, as befits the Skyborn! Let the groundlings flee, if they wish.'
'While we live there's always a chance of finding some way to win,' Rann said doggedly. 'Felarod did, after all.'
'Damn Felarod!' she spat. 'That creature!' As a devotee of the Dark, Synalon had always despised the man who had undone the Lords of Infinite Night before.
'His enemies are now our own, cousin,' Rann pointed out. 'But if you hold him in such contempt, why not seek a way to do him one better?'
She smiled and turned away, the gown swirling like mist around her long, sleek legs. Below her spread the glimmers of the seaport city, red torches, yellow lamps, green lanterns bobbing at the corners of ships out in the harbor. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked. The wind had veered to come up from the fens with the thick,
