Free The Lady by K. V. Johansen

him.”
    â€œOh,” said Tulip, visibly relaxing. “Right, then. Hadidu?”
    â€œUpstairs with the girls, grinding herbs for me. What’s—”
    â€œThe 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.”
    â€œThe 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.
    â€œThe 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.”
    â€œWe 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.
    â€œThat 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!”
    â€œBe 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.
    â€œThe Blackdog,” said his wife. “A demon servant of the goddess Attalissa—he really exists? He killed the Lake-Lord?”
    â€œUm,” 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.
    â€œAnd 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,