“WE CAN’T WIN,” Bixa said. She was coming up from the Palace cellars, Garet at her side. It was late, and they had just seen the last of the Masks, twenty-six in all, chained and locked away. Two of the ex-Duelists had died in the fight at the warehouse, and a third was under the watchful eyes of both physicians and guards in a separate room.
Bixa continued her analysis as they climbed. “If we break down the gates of those two Wards, the people will despise us as invaders. But how can we ignore the actions of their Lords? If we do, certain other Wards will see it as an opportunity to defy the King and push for Heaven knows what powers for themselves, even if they come at the expense of the whole city.”
Garet nodded. He was sure Ward Lords like Sacourat were watching to see how much they might gain from this defiance. They turned left at the top of the stairs and came into the Palace proper. Bixa signaled to Shula and Cheza, who waited by the main doors, and the agents followed them into the Shouting Room.
Trax looked up from the map set into the table. Pieces from a surround game were placed here and there on the surface.
“Good, I need you to show me where our guards are, Bixa,” the King said.
The Captain looked over the map. She moved several harrier pieces in front of the Inner Gates of Wards Twelve and Thirteen. The hunters she placed just beyond the Outer Gates.
“The ones in the fields are on horses and have bows, in case someone tries to break out,” she said. “The ones inside are mainly armed with pikes and swords, for we don’t have enough bows to give to both.”
Shula pointed to the Sixteenth Ward and then the Sixth. “These two Wards have archers among their guards. I’ve seen them shoot in contest with the King’s Guard.”
Bixa nodded, and the King said, “Good! Send word to them at once. Braxa and Tortal are loyal. They’ll not refuse me.”
Shula bowed and left the room. Trax looked at the remaining three.
“This looks too much like a stalemate in surround. Gost controls his side of the board, and we control ours. But we can’t leave this at a draw. So tell me, all of you, how will the people of these Wards react if we break through the Gates and take their Lords and that rascal Gost by force?”
There was a silence as the others considered this.
Bixa spoke first. “You know how I feel, Your Majesty. I think it will be our downfall if we attack. The city will be as torn as it was two centuries ago. And what if the beasts return while we fight among ourselves?”
“Indeed,” said Trax. He turned to Cheza, who looked back with his one eye.
“Your Majesty,” the agent said. “I agree with the Captain, but what else can we do? We’ll never win the people over now, for who knows what lies they’re being fed by Gost and Sharock?”
“So tell them the truth,” Garet said. “Give them all the facts, and they might open the Gates themselves.”
Cheza sniffed. “A clever plan, if it would work. How will you get that message through a locked gate?”
Garet looked at the King, but Trax said nothing, so Garet thought of how his idea could be accomplished.
“If we get more bows, the messages could be tied to arrows with their points cut off. We could shoot them over the Wall.”
Bixa shook her head. “We couldn’t cover a whole Ward, let alone two. Their guards would only have to clear a small area to get to the arrows before your message could be read and passed around. We need a way to shoot in or sneak in messages all over the Wards and all at once!”
“Impossible,” Cheza said. He folded his arms and glared at Garet.
Trax smiled, chuckled, and then began to laugh. His mirth grew until he was bent over with it, shaking. After some little while, he sputtered to a stop.
“Forgive me, friends, but I know of two people who specialize in the impossible. It’s only that this is the most inopportune time to ask for their help.”
Bixa looked at him, understanding slowing dawning in her expression. Cheza and Garet, however, were still confused.
“It is a bad time, isn’t it?” the Captain said with a wicked smile. “But I fear we must insist.”
Trax shook his head. “I’ll pay for this offense to love. Heaven will find a way! Captain, could you send Garet on this sensitive mission? A friendly face might take some of the sting from the timing of our request.”
IT WAS AN odd time to be practicing in the Baneahall, and Salick hestitated in the hallway, seeing someone had come before her with the same intent.
“So, yet another Bane fails to find sleep this night,” Tarix called out. She put down the trident she was swinging through wide circles and smiled at the Gold who stood in the training room door.
“I’m sorry, Master,” Salick said. “I’ll use the other room or perhaps the kitchen yard.”
She had come down for some respite from turning and twisting in her bed. She could not sleep for thinking of Garet. With the demons still absent and patrols reduced to a minimum to allow the overstretched Banes to recover, it seemed there was nothing to do but wander the Hall, regretting the words she had said to him—and not said.
“No, stay Salick,” Tarix told her. “I’m sorry if I’ve been cross with you. It’s my worries that make me so stiff-necked! Come, I’d like to see how far you’ve progressed in your training, if you don’t mind?”
She tossed the trident to Salick, who caught it automatically. Tarix picked up two of the clawed batons and readied herself.
After a moment, Salick dropped into a crouch, trident head down and the shaft held above her head. She slid forward, keeping the points of her weapon fixed upon Tarix’s legs.
“An invitation for a high attack,” said Tarix, and struck at her head.
The Gold reversed the height of her hands, the left going high and the right low. She snapped her hips into the move, and the baton went flying from the Red’s hand to bounce off the wall.
“Well done!” Tarix said and launched a flurry of feints and strikes against Salick with her remaining weapon. Salick blocked them all, letting the anger and frustration of the last days fuel her defense. When Tarix slowed, Salick forced her to retreat with jabs at her legs and head, then caught the baton between the trident’s tines and forced it to the floor.
“Hah! Enough, Salick, You have improved this past year. How old are you now?”
“Almost nineteen years,” Salick said, then added, “A year older than Garet.”
Tarix smiled. “So you are. A shame you weren’t older. You could be a Red with your skill level and experience. But it’s always said, ‘never a Red before thirty’ or some such nonsense.”
“How old were you when you became a Master?” Salick asked. She placed the trident in the weapons rack and accepted a ladle of water from Tarix.
“Twenty-eight,” the Red said with a wink, “but I lied about my age.”
“Maybe I should,” Salick said. She sat down, weary to the bone but unwilling to go back upstairs and fail again at sleep.
“Do you want a Red Sash so badly?” Tarix asked. She sat down beside Salick.
“I used to,” Salick admitted, “but now I don’t know. The Hall is my life, Master. I never thought of any other life, but what if the demons are truly gone?”
Tarix shook her head. “They’re not. I know that in my oft-broken bones! But listen, Salick, life is your life, not this Hall, and you can live as well outside of it as in. What about those you care for? I know that you and Garet have fought, but you may yet reconcile. If not, there will be someone else for you . . .”
“I don’t want anyone else!” Salick said. She stood up and clenched her fists. “I want him to come back and everything to be the same.”
Abruptly, she sat again, and Tarix laid a gentle arm around her shoulders.
“You’re shaking, Gold! Ahh, I know that you want him to return, but even if he came back, the Hall’s changing now. Maybe we all thought things were back to normal after last winter, but we were wrong. Come now, stop crying and think.”
Tarix pulled off a strip of bandaging cloth from the roll hanging on a peg. She handed it to Salick to wipe her eyes.
“Change there may be, but much good remains. You are part of that good, and so is Garet. The way I see it, the both of you will always try to do what is right. You just have to find a way to do it together.”
“Like you and Relict?” Salick asked. She wiped her nose and took a deep, shuddering breath.
Tarix laughed and stood up. “Well, we make our mistakes together, and that seems to be enough for us.”
She pulled up the Gold and gave her a brief hug. “Now go and rest. Who knows what else this night will demand of us?”
“NO, WE CANNOT stop in this dark,” Corix said. “There might be more.”
She stood by the corpse of a Racer Demon barely visible in the light of a quarter moon.
Cernot pulled his pickaxe out of the beast’s back. He looked down the trail, straining his eyes to catch any movement. It was no good tracking the fear, for that was everywhere.
Falor looked up from tending their patient. “Surely there can’t be more than four, Master. Two Shriekers, a Catcher, and this one: there can’t be more!”
“The Master’s right, Falor,” the Gold said, wiping the pick’s point on the mossy side of a tree. The trail was so narrow, it had forced the Racer into a straight-line charge. That had made it easier to kill. All Cernot had needed was proper timing, and Corix ran a well-trained Hall.
“I wouldn’t have thought that we’d be attacked by two demons, let alone four,” he told her. “We have to keep going, so chin up, Green. You stuck that second Shrieker like a Gold. It was a good kill.”
Falor smiled, but flinched when a distant howl sounded from the east.
“Well, at least they’re not surrounding us on this side of the river,” Corix said. “This old trail is too overgrown with brush to let them flank us. Falor, you take the litter again, I’ll guard our backs.”
“Do you want my spear, Master?” Falor asked, but Corix shook her head.
“No, in this light, or lack of it, I’ll need to get close,” was all she said. Cernot took the pack off his back and handed it to Corix. She removed two metal gauntlets and slid them onto her hands. Cernot tightened the straps for her, and the Red lifted them into the weak moonlight.
Metal bands protected her arms from wrist to elbow. A steel plate on the back of each hand stuck out beyond her knuckles as a wide and sharpened dirk.
Cernot and Falor picked up the litter and stumbled off in the direction of Shirath. Corix tapped the two blades together before following.
“If you want a feast, demons, we’ll make you sing for it first,” she said to the night.
“COME IN, GARET, come in out of the dark!” Andarack shouted over the singing. “I’m glad you could make it to our wedding feast. Where is my bride? Dasanat, see who is here!”
Garet had come to Lord Andarack’s house in the Eighth Ward not knowing what to expect. Bixa told him that the couple had moved their wedding date up as the Astrologers had declared these demon-free days very lucky indeed. The Captain had no idea if a wedding feast was still planned, but ordered Garet to find Andarack even if he had to pound on the door of the Lord’s bedchamber.
That at least had not been necessary, to Garet’s profound relief. The feast, however, was still in good riot, the musicians making a joyous noise at one end of the Hall and a troupe of theatre actors doing comic pieces at the other. Dasanat was sitting atop the Lord’s dais looking patiently bored.
She stared at Garet for a moment, placed him, and then came down to deliver a gracious greeting, considering.
“You’re here,” she said and waved at the laden tables. “Eat something.”
“Thank you, no,” Garet said. “I must talk with both of you. Is there somewhere more private and less noisy? It is of some importance!” He had to shout the last as everyone in the great hall, Andarack included, sang the last chorus of “My Winter Love.”
Dasanat grabbed her new husband by an arm and took Garet to a hallway behind the dais. It led to a small sitting room. Dasanat closed the door, and the noise dropped to a tolerable level.
“What?” Andarack said, somewhat surprised to find himself away from the feast. “Oh, Garet, of course. Did the King want something? It’s a shame he couldn’t attend. Affairs of the city and all that, I’m sure.”
“Yes, he does want something, I’m afraid. But first, I want to congratulate you both on your wedding. I didn’t know the date had been changed, though I’m afraid the events of the day would still have kept me from attending.”
“Well, at least you could come to the feast,” Andarack said. “What is this about?”
Garet accepted a glass of wine Andarack fetched from a sideboard. “I don’t know if you have heard much of what went on today, but we raided the Trader Chirat’s warehouse in the Twelfth Ward. We found the Masks, well, the people who wore them, but not the silkstone masks. Those we arrested are in the Palace cellars now, but Gost and Sharock have sealed the gates of both Wards against the King.”
Dasanat looked at him, but her thoughts were elsewhere. Andarack put down his own glass and gave his head a shake.
“Now I wish I had drunk less! What of Lord Kirel?” he asked.
Garet shrugged. “It is not known if he is still the Lord or if Gost has taken over. It doesn’t really matter. The King needs a way to speak directly to the people of those Wards. We need to scatter a written message from the King into every corner of Wards Twelve and Thirteen. Can you think of a way to do this?”
Dasanat’s attention snapped back to the conversation.
“Kites, but we could not depend on the wind. Hmmm. Sotor was working with heated air. It can make a paper ball rise in a tube, but the wind is still a problem, and the fire, of course, if the flame must go with it.”
“Of course,” Andarack said, rubbing vigorously at his temples, “we could use arrows.”
“Too limited in their present form. It’s a problem of scale, you see,” Dasanat replied, looking at Garet.
“I don’t, actually,” Garet said, but the two ignored him.
“We could build a giant mechanical archer!” Andarack shouted, grinning at the idea forming in his head.
Dasanat took the wine glass from his hand and looked at him. His grin faded.
“You’re right. Too impractical,” he said, “but a giant bow might work.”
She nodded.
“Slow loading though,” Andarack said. He took Dasanat’s hands in his own.
“Not if you design a loading rack and an automatic release mechanism,” she replied, and leaned her head against his chest.
“I believe I have a drawing somewhere of an automatic wagon-loader for logs. It could serve as a start, but the crank . . . spark powered?” he asked, and embraced her.
“Perhaps,” she said, and kissed him.
After a long pause, Andarack freed his head to turn and look for Garet. The young man was waiting at the window, trying to hold his attention on a quarter moon floating in a scud of cloud.
“Sorry, Garet,” he said, and laughed. Dasanat kept her head on his chest, eyes closed.
“Not at all,” Garet said, in a strained voice. “It is your wedding night. However, the King needs this device in the morning. Can it be done?”
“Of course,” Andarack said. “Do you mind much, Dasanat?”
Her eyes opened, and she stood away from him. “We will need several Mechanicals from the feast, and cold water to sober them up. I’ll arrange that now,” she said and left the room.
“I’m really very sorry, Andarack,” Garet said. “If there is anything I can do to make it up to you?”
Andarack smiled at him, a hint of mischief in his eyes. “I have a severe punishment in mind, young man. It shall be your job to go out into that crowd and tell everyone who is not a mechanical, which means every Lord, Lady, and drunken lout, that they have to stop drinking and go home.”
By the time Garet had pushed out the last reveler and closed the doors, he wished he were back at the Hall dealing with demons. At least they never threw up on you.