The Warslayer(17)

It was dark inside the vardo, though the light of dawn was seeping through the chinks in the closed shutters. She bundled the bedding up off the floor, and found that the bed-benches folded back. With three of them pegged out of the way and the fourth holding the bed-gear, she had a little more room to maneuver. She groped for the hanging lantern in the middle of the ceiling—she'd rung her head on it more than once the night before—and took it down, setting it atop the tall chest at the front wall, next to her purse and tote-bag. She rummaged around in her purse, locating first a flashlight key-card and then a disposable lighter, both stamped with the show logo. After a few tries, she got the lantern lit, then sat down on the remaining bench.

What am I supposed to do? What in God's name am I supposed to do?

She hadn't felt this inadequate in years. You trained for years for the Games, but once you got there, you had one chance to do your best, and a thousand bad-luck things might happen. In television there was a different kind of pressure: you got as many tries as you needed to get it right—or nearly—but each try cost money, and there was so many peoples' livelihood riding on one person's ability that every failure hurt.

This was like an unholy amalgam of both. Everything was riding on what she did. And there was one chance to get it right, and no ground rules.

That isn't true. That can't be true. I wouldn't be here if that were true, she told herself desperately.

No matter that the Allimir mages had made an error in contacting her in the first place, the fact remained that a power greater than theirs had brought her here. Important Great Powers didn't make wrong choices of that magnitude (she hoped), so either they'd picked the right person for the job, or the job itself wasn't so much of a muchness. Left to herself, Glory would happily have chosen Option B—but she thought about the flayed stallion again, and shuddered. No matter that she thought the Allimir twitchy and sometimes outright weird: there was some sort of monstrous monster out there on the plains of Serenthodial the Golden.

But was there? Maybe it was disease. Maybe it was underachieving army ants. Maybe. . . .

It was almost a relief when Belegir finally knocked on the door.

"Slayer? Are you within?"

Glory opened the door, wincing slightly at the dawn light. Belegir was standing there in his long pink robe, looking very much as if he hadn't slept for the last several years.

"Wozzer?"

"We must depart now for the Oracle, if we are to reach it before nightfall," Belegir said. He regarded her civilian clothes dubiously.

"Right." She could take a hint. "I'll change."

She closed the door again and picked up her armor.

Getting kitted out had all the charm of trying to put on a diving suit in a phone booth, but she managed. She rolled up her jeans, T-shirt, and sweatshirt into a tight wad, preparing to stuff them into the tote-bag duffle, and hesitated. Something was missing.

The makeup. The painted mask that turned her from Glory McArdle, ordinary person, into the hieratic Vixen, scourge of evildoers. It was silly, but she just didn't feel like Vixen without the war paint. And though it felt very much like unlawful impersonation, she suspected the best thing all round was to at least seem to be the hero they'd ordered. She set the clothing aside and rummaged in her bag again.

The pancake went on in a few swipes, covering plain Glory McArdle's pale-gold freckles. Then mascara, the soft kohl crayon around her eyes, then more mascara. Last of all, a good slather of blood-red lipstick. It was hard to manage with the tiny mirror and the dim light, but she'd done this so many times over the past months that it was almost second nature now. As she worked, she felt the Vixen persona settle into place, a soothing ghost.

When she was finished, she bared her teeth at the compact mirror and admired the effect before stowing everything away all right and tight. She stuffed everything into the tote, slung the bag over her shoulder, and picked up Gordon and her sword.

"Easy money," she muttered under her breath, and pushed open the door.

Belegir was still patiently waiting.

She stepped down onto the grass and looked around, then swung her sword up over her shoulder and into its sheath with a practiced flourish. It had taken her and Bruce, the swordmaster, hours to perfect that little gesture, but she had to admit it was damned impressive.

"Where's everyone else?" she asked. Belegir looked blank. "The rest of the people going to the Oracle—you know, the armed escort?"

Considering how terrified they all were of the Warmother, she'd thought Belegir would be bringing the biggest army he could field, or at least bringing his co-Mages Englor and Helevrin.

"It is only we two," Belegir explained. "The others remain to aid our people. We have no 'armed escort' to offer you, Slayer. The Allimir are a peaceful people—"