Subredil glanced at the fragment of moon sneaking a peek through a crack in the clouds. “Minutes to go.”
I grunted, nervous. It had been a while since I had been involved in anything directly dangerous. Other than wandering around the Palace or going to the library, of course. But nobody was likely to stick me with sharp objects there.
“Those clouds look like the kind that come right before the rainy season.” If they were, that season would be early. Which was not a pleasant thought. During the rainy season that is what it does, in torrents, every day. The weather can be truly ferocious, with dramatic temperature shifts and hailstorms, and thunder like all the gods of the Gunni pantheon are drunk and brawling. But mainly I do not like the heat.
Taglians divide their year into six seasons. Only during the one they call winter is there any sustained relief from the heat.
Subredil asked, “Would Sawa even notice the clouds?” She was a stickler for staying in character. In a city ruled by darkness you never knew what eyes watched from the shadows, what unseen ears were pricked to overhear.
“Uhm.” That was about as intelligent a thing as Sawa ever said.
“Come.” Subredil took my arm, guiding me, which was what she always did when we went to work at the Palace. We approached the main north entrance, which was only two-score yards from the service postern. A single torch burned there. It was supposed to show the Guards who might be outside. But it was situated so poorly it only helped them see the honest people. As we drew closer, someone who had sneaked in along the foot of the wall jumped up and enveloped the torch in a sack of wet rawhide.
The crude, startled remark of one of the guards carried clearly. Now, would he be incautious enough to come see what had happened?
There was no reason to believe he would not. The Royal Guards had had no trouble for almost a generation.
The sliver of moon vanished behind a cloud. As it went, something moved at the Palace entrance.
Now came the tricky part, making it look like we screwed up a sure thing by going in right at a shift change.
A sound of scuffling. A startled cry. Somebody else demanding what was going on. A rattle and clatter as people rushed the gate. Clang of metal. A scream or two. Whistles. Then within fifteen seconds, answering whistles from several directions. Exactly according to plan. In moments the whistles from the Palace entrance became shrilly desperate.
When first the idea was broached, there had been serious debate about whether or not the attack should be the real thing. It seemed likely taking the entrance would be easy. A strong faction, made up of men tired of waiting, just wanted to bust in and kill everybody. While that might have offered a certain amount of satisfaction, there was little chance Soulcatcher could be destroyed, and such wholesale murder would do nothing to liberate the Captured, which was supposed to be our primary mission.
I had convinced everyone that we needed to launch an old-fashioned, Annals-based game of misdirection. Make the enemy think we were up to one thing when actually we wanted to accomplish something else entirely. Get them running hard to head us off in one direction when we were following a completely different course.
With Goblin and One-Eye now so old, our deceits have to be increasingly intellectual. Those two do not have the strength or stamina to create and maintain massive battlefield illusions. And, though willing to share their secrets, they had not been able to arm Sahra for the struggle. Her talent did not extend in that direction.
The first Greys charged out of the darkness, into the ambushes waiting to receive them. For a while it was a vicious slaughter. But, somehow, a few managed to get through to support the Guards barely hanging on at the Palace entrance.
Subredil and I moved into position against the foot of the wall, between the big entrance and the servants’ postern. Subredil hugged her Ghanghesha and whimpered. Sawa clung to Subredil and drooled and made strange little frightened noises.
Though the attackers piled up heaps of Greys, they never quite managed to break through the defense of the entryway. Then help arrived from inside. Willow Swan and a platoon of Royal Guards burst through the gateway. The attackers scattered instantly. So fast, in fact, that Swan screeched, “Hold up! There’s something wrong!”
The night lit up. The air filled with hurtling fireballs. Their like had not been seen since the heavy fighting at the end of the Shadowmaster wars. Lady had created those weapons in vast numbers and a few had been husbanded carefully since then. The men employing them had not been involved in the attack on the entrance. They clung to the fire plan, which counted on everyone being able to pick Swan out from amongst the Guards and Greys.
His life depended on it.
Fire fell to the side of the group away from Subredil and me. Willow was afraid. When fire swiftly shifted to fall on the entry and cut him off, he was supposed to retreat toward the service entrance. Past us.
Good old Swan. He must have read my script. As his men were being torn apart by fireballs just yards away, he skittered along, hand against the wall, staying just steps ahead of destruction. Molten stone and chunks of burning flesh flew over his head and ours and I realized that I had underestimated the fury of my weapons, perhaps fatally. It was definitely a mistake to have committed so many.
Swan stumbled over Minh Subredil’s ankle. Somehow, when he hit the cobblestones, he found himself face-to-face with a drooling idiot. Who had a dagger’s point neatly positioned under his chin. “Don’t even breathe,” she whispered.
Fireballs hitting the Palace wall melted their way right in. The wooden gateway was on fire. There was plenty of light by which our brothers could see us signal that we had gotten our man. Fire became more accurate. The resistance to the Greys coming to help became less porous. A second apparent attack came forward. A couple of those brothers collected Swan. They kicked and cursed us. And took our weapons with them when they went away, part of a general retreat as the attack wave fled from no evident resistance.
As they disappeared into the darkness, the thing that we had feared most occurred.
Soulcatcher came out on the battlements above to see what was happening. Subredil and I knew because all fighting ceased within seconds once somebody spotted her. Then a storm of fireballs flashed her way.
We were lucky. She was sufficiently unprepared that she could do nothing but duck. Our brothers then did what they were supposed to do. They got the heck out of there. They got downhill and lost amongst the population before the Protector could release her bats and crows.
It was my belief that the activity would have all the nearby part of the city in an uproar within minutes. The men were supposed to help that along by launching absurd rumors. If they remained calm enough.
Subredil and Sawa moved two dozen yards closer to the servants’ postern. We had just settled down to drool and be held and whimper while we watched the corpses burn when a frightened voice demanded, “Minh Subredil. What are you doing here?”
Jaul Barundandi. Our boss. I did not look up. And Subredil did not respond until Barundandi stirred her with a toe and asked again, not unkindly. She told him, “We were going to be here early. Sawa needs to work bad.” She looked around. “Where are the others?”
There had been others. Four or five even more eager to be first in line. They had fled. That might mean trouble. No telling what they might have seen before they ran. An early stray fireball was supposed to have panicked and scattered them before Swan got to us but I could not recall that having happened.
Subredil turned more toward Barundandi. I held on to her tighter and whimpered. She patted my shoulder and murmured something indistinct. Barundandi seemed to buy it, particularly when Subredil discovered that one of her Ghanghesha’s trunks had broken off, and she began to cry and search our surroundings.
Several of Barundandi’s associates were out as well, looking around, asking one another what happened. The same thing was going on at the main entrance, where stunned Guards and sleep-fuddled functionaries
asked one another what had happened and what they should do and, holy shit! some of those fires burned all the way through the wall and it was six or eight feet thick! Shadar from as far as a mile away were arriving, gathering dead and wounded Greys and also trying to figure out what had happened.
Jaul Barundandi’s voice gentled further. He beckoned his assistants. “Help these two inside. Be gentle. The high and the mighty may want to talk to them.”
I hoped my start did not give us away. I had counted on getting inside early but it had not occurred to me that anyone might be interested in what two near-untouchables might have seen.
8
I need not have worried. We were interviewed by a seriously distracted Guard sergeant who seemed to be going through the motions mainly as a sop to Jaul Barundandi. The subassistant had evidently suffered an overinspiration of ambition in thinking he could win favor by providing eyewitnesses to the tragedy.
His solicitude began to fade once he had little to gain. A few hours after we were taken inside, while excitement still gripped the Palace and a thousand outrageous rumors circulated, while leading Guardsmen and Greys kept bringing in more and more trusted armed men and sending out more and more spies to watch the regular soldiers in their barracks, just in case they were in on the attack somehow, Minh Subredil and her idiot sister-in-law were already hard at work. Barundandi had them cleaning the chamber where the Privy Council met. A huge mess had been left there. Somebody had lost her temper and had worked out her anger by tearing the place up.
Barundandi told us, “Expect to work very hard today, Minh Subredil. Few workers showed up this morning.” He sounded bitter. He would not garner much kickback because of the raid. It did not occur to him to be thankful he was still alive. “Is she all right?” He meant me. Sawa. I was still doing a credible job of shaking.
“She will manage as long as I stay close. It would not be good to put her anyplace where she cannot see me today.”
Barundandi grunted. “So be it. There’s work enough here. Just don’t get in anybody’s way.”
Minh Subredil bowed slightly. She was good at being unobtrusive. She seated me at a wide table about a dozen feet long, piled up lamps and candlesticks and whatnot that had gotten thrown around. I invoked Sawa’s narrow focus and went to work cleaning them. Subredil began cleaning floors and furniture.
People came and went, many of them important. None of them noticed us except the Inspector-General of the Records, Chandra Gokhale, who kicked Subredil irritably because she was scrubbing the floor where he wanted to walk.
Subredil got back onto her knees, bowing and begging pardon. Gokhale ignored her. She began cleaning up spilled water, showing no emotion whatsoever. Minh Subredil took that sort of thing. But I suspect Ky Sahra had just formed a definite opinion about which of our enemies should follow Willow Swan into captivity.
The Radisha appeared. The Protector was with her. They settled into their places. Jaul Barundandi appeared soon afterward, meaning to get us out of there. Sawa seemed to notice nothing. Her focus on a candlestick was too narrow.
A tall Shadar captain bustled in. He announced, “Your Highness, the preliminary tally shows ninety-eight dead and one hundred twenty-six injured. Some of those will die from their wounds. Minister Swan hasn’t been found but many of the bodies are burned too badly to identify. Many that were hit by fireballs caught fire and burned like greasy torches.” The captain had trouble remaining calm. He was young. Chances were good he had not seen the consequences of battle before.
I kept working hard to shove myself way down deep into character. I had not been this close to Soulcatcher since she held me prisoner outside Kiaulune fifteen years ago. Those were not happy memories. I prayed she did not remember me.
I went all the way down into my safe place. I had not been there since my captivity. The hinges on the door were rusty. But I got inside and got comfortable while remaining Sawa. I had just enough attention left to catch most of what was happening around me.
The Protector suddenly asked, “Who are these women?”
Barundandi fawned. “Pardon, Great Ones. Pardon. My fault. I did not know the chamber was to be used.”
“Answer the question, Housekeeper,” the Radisha ordered.
“Certainly, Great One.” Barundandi kowtowed halfway to the floor. “The woman scrubbing is Minh Subredil, a widow. The other is her idiot sister-in-law, Sawa. They are outside staff employed as part of the Protector’s charity program.”
Soulcatcher said, “I feel I have seen one or both of them before.”
Barundandi bowed deeply again. The attention frightened him. “Minh Subredil has worked here for many years, Protector. Sawa accompanies her when her mind is clear enough for her to accomplish repetitive tasks.”
I felt him trying to decide whether or not to volunteer the news that we had witnessed the morning’s attack from up close. I clung to my safe place so hard that I did not catch what happened during the next few minutes.
Barundandi chose not to volunteer us for questioning. Perhaps he reasoned that too intensive an attention paid to us might expose the fact that he was charging us half our feeble salaries for the right to work our hands into raw, aching crabs.
The Radisha finally told him, “Go away, Housekeeper. Let them work. The fate of the empire will not be decided here today.”
And Soulcatcher waved a gloved hand, shooing Barundandi out, but then halted him to demand, “What is that the woman has on the floor beside her?” Meaning Subredil, of course, since I was seated at the table.
“Uh? Oh. A Ghanghesha, Great One. The woman never goes anywhere without it. It’s an obsession with her. It—”
“Go away now.”
So it was that Sahra, at least, sat in on almost two hours of the innermost powers’ responses to our assault.
After a while I came forward again, enough to follow most of it. Couriers came and went. A picture of generally upright behavior by the army and people took shape. Which was to be expected. Neither had any real reason to rise up right now. Which was nothing but good news to the Radisha.
Positive intelligence just made the Protector more suspicious, though. The old cynic.
“No prisoners taken,” she said. “No corpses left behind. Quite possibly no serious casualties suffered. Nor any great risks endured, if you examine it closely. They fled as soon as there was a chance someone would hit back. What were they up to? What was their real purpose?”
Reasonably, Chandra Gokhale pointed out, “The attack appears to have been sustained with exceptional ferocity till you yourself appeared on the battlements. Only then did they run.”
The Shadar captain volunteered, “Several survivors and witnesses report that the bandits argued amongst themselves about your presence, Protector. It seems they expected you to be away from the Palace. Evidently the attack would not have been undertaken had they known you were here.”
One of my touches of misdirection. I hoped it did some good.
“That makes no sense. Where would they get that idea?” She did not expect an answer and did not wait for one. “Have you identified any of the burned bodies?”
“Only three, Protector. Most are barely recognizable as human.”
The Radisha asked, “Chandra, how bad was the physical damage? Do you have an assessment yet?”
“Yes, Radisha. It was bad. Extremely bad. The wall appears to have suffered some structural damage. The full extent is being determined right now. It’s certain to be a weak point for a while. You might consider putting up a wooden curtain-wall in front of what is going to become a construction area. And think hard about bringing in troops.”
“Troops?” the Protector demanded. “Why troops?” Her voice, long neutral, became suspicious. When you have no friends at all, paranoia is an even more natural outlook than it is for brothers of the Black Company.
“Because the Palace is too big to defend with the people you have here now. Even if you arm the household staff. An enem
y doesn’t need to use any of the regular entrances. He could climb the outside wall where no one is watching and attack from inside.”
The Radisha said, “If he tried that, he’d need maps to get around. I’ve never seen anyone but Smoke, who was our court wizard a long time ago, who could get around this place without one. You have to have an instinct.”
The Inspector-General observed, “If the attack was undertaken by elements descended from the old Black Company—and the employment of fireball weapons would suggest some connection, even though we know that the Company was exterminated by the Protector—then they may have access to hallway maps created when the Liberator and his staff were quartered here.”
The Radisha insisted, “You can’t chart this place. I know. I’ve tried.”
Thank Goblin and One-Eye for that, Princess. Long, long ago the Captain had those two old men scatter confusion spells liberally, everywhere. There were things he had not wanted the Radisha to find. Things that remained hidden still, among them those ancient volumes of the Annals that supposedly explain the Company’s secret beginnings but which have been a complete disappointment so far. Minh Subredil knows how to get to them. Whenever she gets the chance, Minh Subredil tears out a few pages and smuggles them out to me. Then I sneak them into the library and when no one is watching, I translate them a few words at a time, looking for that one phrase that will show us how to open the way for the Captured.
Sawa cleaned brass and silver. Minh Subredil cleaned floor and furniture. The Privy Council and their associates came and went. The level of panic declined as no new attacks developed. Too bad we did not have the numbers to stir them up again every few hours.
Soulcatcher remained uncharacteristically quiet. She had known the Company longer than anyone but the Captain, Goblin and One-Eye, though from the outside. She would accept nothing at face value. Not yet.