IT WAS DUSK when the gates of the Thirteenth Ward opened. A cart came out with two figures on the bench seat, one a squat woman in armor holding the reins, the other a heavily pregnant woman in fine dress and waving a silk fan.
The gate stayed open behind them.
Bixa looked at the King, ready to have her guards run forward to secure the gate, but Trax shook his head. He left the pavilion to meet the wagon halfway. Garet, Bixa, and Relict, who had stayed when Branet returned to the Hall, went with him.
“Kaela!” Trax said, putting a hand on the horses’ harness and smiling up at the young woman.
Cruster reined in the animals and set the brake. She bore no weapon other than her expression, which could have struck birds from the sky.
“Greetings, Your Majesty. I am so happy to see you,” Kaela said. “Oh Cruster, don’t frown so! The King means us no harm. He is a gentleman and will treat us kindly, or so his letter said. Besides, when he sees the gift we bring, I’m sure he’ll know where our Ward’s loyalties lie.”
“A gift?” Trax said. “Really, Kaella, you are full of surprises. Here, let me help you down. Captain, will you look after her escort?”
Bixa waited until Cruster stepped down then signaled two guards to flank the woman, swords drawn.
Kaela said nothing. She looked at Garet and Relict and smiled again.
Garet put a hand to his sword.
“Peace, Bane, or ex-Bane, I should say,” Kaela told him. “Come and help me unwrap my present, and you will have no more doubts.”
He stepped forward and looked into the bed of the wagon. A form wriggled under a tarp. Garet pulled back the covering with one hand and held his drawn sword with the other, for his doubts had not yet been belayed.
What he saw, however, made him sheathe the blade again and look searchingly at Kaela.
“Well, well,” Trax said, peering over his shoulder. “It’s what I always wanted, a Gost of my very own! And I know just where to put him.”
He signaled Bixa. The bound and gagged man was lifted thrashing from the cart and carried off between a squad of guards towards the Bridge Gates, Bixa in the lead.
“Kaela,” Trax began, leading the woman towards his pavilion, “this might be an indelicate question, but does your husband know what you’ve done?”
Kaela’s laughter was a silver trill. “Of course he does, Your Majesty. My uncle’s plots and plans only recently became clear to us, to him, I mean. Since he is a loyal Lord, he arrested Gost and sends him to you. If he were not hard at work calming the citizens of his Ward, I have no doubt he would have brought the man out himself.”
“Kaela, you are a wonder!” Trax said. “No diplomat could match your tongue, and no soldier your tactics. I thank you for this gift, and, if you will stay here a moment, I’ll have my own carriage take you back to your oh-so-fortunate husband.”
“Thank you, my Gracious King,” she said. She sat on a padded chair and began to pick among the delicacies set beside her by a steward. “Please give my regards to Lysere. Tell her I how much I admire your handling of this . . . unpleasantness. She is a very lucky woman! Perhaps I should have pursued you more vigorously when I had the chance all those years ago.”
Trax bowed and signaled Garet to follow him out from under the canvas. When they were some distance away, he shuddered.
“Claws, that woman terrifies me! I’m glad she didn’t chase me back then, or I would have had to give up the throne and move to Solantor. Garet, when Bixa returns tell her not to enter the Thirteenth Ward in force. She can go in with Shula, Cheza, and a few others to see what’s happening. Tell her to keep that gate open and find out about Kirel. If he is ready to surrender, have him turn over any of Gost’s friends. I hope the other conspirators are still alive, but with Kaela, well, you never know. I’m back to the Palace. Join me there after you’ve talked to the Captain.”
He left Garet to wait for Kaela’s carriage. The King’s Agent stood awkwardly across from her while she ate bits of pastry.
“It might be of interest to you, Bane . . . ah, sorry again, ex-Bane, that your old Hallmaster, Adrix, has been part of this Mask business. It seems he bears a grudge against you for laming him,” she said, bestowing a sweet smile upon Garet. “I’m sure when you see him brought out in chains it will chase that scowl off your face.”
Garet wondered if it would indeed make him happy to see it. Once it might have, for Adrix had humiliated him when he first came to the Banehall and almost destroyed the Banes with his scheming. Now those memories had faded, scarred over by the terrors of the present day.
He was composing an answer that would be both polite and dismissive when Bixa came riding back, clattering at full speed over the paving stones of the plaza.
“Garet! The King needs you at the Bridge Gates. There’s a commotion. Something about a group of Banes from Old Torrick, beasts chasing them, and . . . they’ve brought Shirin back.”
“What?” Garet said.
Kaela stopped her fanning to listen. Garet ignored her.
“Shirin, she’s back, but badly wounded,” the Captain said. She dismounted from her laboring horse.
Garet looked to the pavilion. Kaela was deep in conversation with Cruster.
“Captain, the King says you are to secure the gates and take a small party to look inside the Ward,” he said, and began to run towards the Bridge Gates.
“What am I looking for?” Bixa shouted after him.
Garet stopped and turned, unwilling to spend even a heartbeat on anything but what was happening at the Bridge Gates.
“Anyone who seems to be in charge. Kirel and any conspirators! Oh, and silkstone! Yes, take any silkstone Masks to the Hall and any other stone to . . . Andarack, I suppose!”
He legged it then, leaping over the small hedges of the gardens, scattering foraging birds and wandering citizens.
There was a crowd at the eastern-most Gate, and Garet ran directly there. Pushing through the onlookers, he found the King and a small group of Banes kneeling around a litter placed on the ground. Trax saw him and waved him closer. Garet took a deep breath and approached.
Shirin lay on the litter. Her arm was splinted, and her clothes were soaked in blood. Rough bandages covered what must have been many wounds. Her eyes opened, blinked, and focused on Garet. She tried to speak.
He knelt by her side and took one of her cold hands in his.
“Shirin, hang on! We’ll get you to Banerict in the Hall. He’s the best physician in the city.”
The wounded woman shook her head. She tried again to speak and managed a whisper. “Warning,” she said.
Garet leaned closer. He felt her uncertain breath on the side of his face as she spoke again.
“Warning, Garet. From the north, demons, fifty or more. Attack,” she managed to whisper, and then her eyes closed again.
A strong hand pulled him back, and he looked into the face of Corix, the Hallmaster of Old Torrick. He had met her only briefly last year, but no one could forget a woman of such uncompromising will.
“She needs the physician,” Corix said, and volunteers from the crowd picked up the litter and took it as gently and swiftly as possible to the Hall.
Trax wiped blood from his fingers. His hands were shaking. “If she said to you what she said to me, Garet, then Gost can wait for a less frightening time. Come. We are both going to the Hall.”
Garet paused before following the King. He had seen many Banes come running from the Banehall, including two familiar Blues who had crept up close enough behind him to hear Shirin’s words.
He caught Marick and Dorict’s attention, and then glanced to the North. The two nodded and ran off over the bridge.
Garet bit his lip. He was putting them in mortal danger, but keeping them in the city wouldn’t lessen that peril, not if Shirin was telling the truth. He took a deep breath and ran to catch up with the King.
“I CAN DO nothing but ease her pain,” Banerict said. He had re-bandaged her wounds, and Garet had been sickened to see the clawing she had suffered.
He turned to where Corix was deep in conversation with Branet, Tarix, and Relict.
“You tell me these stone masks allow anyone to kill a demon?” the Old Torrick Bane said. “Yet we found no such mask near her. She was half in a stream, wounded as you see. There was a dead Shrieker under her with her knife in its throat.”
“And no mask? What can that mean?” Tarix said. Both she and Relict moved aside so that Garet could join them.
“It means she was a Bane, at the very end,” Garet said. He did not look at Branet as he said this, for he feared he might strike the Hallmaster to let out a measure of the grief and anger that threatened to burn him up from the inside.
“Agreed,” Corix said, ignoring the Hallmaster’s discomfiture. “Do you have these masks now?”
“We will,” Garet said. “The Captain of the King’s Guard is searching for them as we speak. I told her to bring them here.”
“Thank you,” Branet mumbled. He was saved from further embarrassment by the physician, who signaled them to approach the bed.
“The end is coming fast, I fear. If you would have words with her, now is the time,” he said.
Trax pulled a chair up to her bed. “Shirin, I am truly sorry that you were sent into the wilds. For my city, I apologize to you with all my heart.”
“Luck,” the woman whispered. “My luck . . .”
Garet came up upon the other side of the bed and took her hand again. “Bad luck for me too, for I would have had us friends, Shirin,” he said.
“Fool,” she whispered. “I’d have killed you . . . someday.”
“Perhaps, but I still wish to part friends. Please tell us what happened.”
She struggled to breathe for a moment. Garet put an arm around her shoulders and lifted her slightly so that she could breathe again. After coughing up fresh blood onto the old stains, she spoke.
“Went towards Old Torrick . . . new life . . . like you said. Saw them . . . demons driven from the north. Fifty or more . . . then they found . . . my scent. Fled. Shrieker caught me.”
She fell back again. Her eyes started to close, and her breath came in hoarse gulps.
Garet felt tears wetting his cheeks. He put a hand on her forehead and said, “Well killed, Bane.”
After one last, shuddering breath, she lay still.
As Garet stood and turned away, Branet took his place and knelt beside the bed. He repeated Garet’s words.
“Well killed, Bane.”
Others took up the praise, and Garet looked to the door to see Salick mouthing the words as she stood behind Bandat. He wiped his eyes and looked again, but she was gone.
“She told me the same tale about the demons, and she said she had been exiled,” Corix said. “For fighting demons. I could scarce believe her.”
“It is true. I forced her exile on the King,” Branet said. He looked down at his big hands resting on his knees. “It was ill done, but I feared losing our place in the city to the Masks.”
There was no reply from any of those present, though Relict put a hand on the Hallmaster’s shoulder.
Branet stood. “Perhaps we should pick a new Hallmaster for Shirath Banehall. I . . . I have made many mistakes.”
Trax rose, glaring at the Hallmaster over the body on the bed. “And what good would that do? It won’t help her,” he said, pointing down to Shirin’s still form. “It won’t help the city, and by Heaven, it won’t help me!”
Branet bristled a bit but subsided. “Trax, don’t you see, I’ve done a terrible thing.”
“As I did last winter, when I sided with the Duelists,” Trax said. “Until Garet and Salick snuck into the Palace to talk sense to me. I’ve had to live with that, Branet. I’ve had to live with lives lost just as you will, my friend. Don’t you think I wanted to crawl away and hide my shame? Well, I did. But I can’t, not if I want to save my city. You can be a better Hallmaster, Branet, if you understand that the Hall, the Palace, and even the stones of this city must protect those who live within it.”
At that, his shoulders dropped, and the King smiled. “Well, there’s a speech! But I mean every word of it. What do you say?”
Branet looked to where Tarix and Relict stood by the foot of the bed.
“Don’t look at me,” Relict said. “I never wanted to replace you, just to talk as we did in the old days.”
Tarix smiled. “You are our Hallmaster, Branet. Like the King says, you will get better. It’s like being a Bane; you have to learn while you’re doing it.”
“Harsh lessons,” said Corix, and she cocked an eyebrow at her fellow Hallmaster.
“Very well,” Branet said. He took a deep breath. “Bring all to the Dining Hall,” he said to the Reds crowding the Infirmary Room’s door. He looked down at the still form of Shirin.
“From Red down to Black Sash, everyone needs to hear this news.”
When they left, Banerict called his assistants to prepare the body for its last journey to the Temple and the burning grounds beyond the Wall.
THE TABLES WERE filled with every Bane not on patrol and some who should have been, but weren’t. They strained to hear what the Old Torrick Hallmaster had to say, shushing each other if someone dared to gasp.
“The last was a Catcher,” Corix said. “I’d bloodied it, and the beast had knocked us about, but it stopped suddenly and turned away from us. A bad choice, since Cernot jumped on its back and drove his pick into its skull.”
Ratal looked at the Torrick Gold and spoke in a tone bordering on awe. “I want to try that,” he said.
“No,” Cernot replied, with some feeling, “you do not.”
Tarix shook her head. “Five demons in all, one after the other! But you were not attacked once you reached the wood lots?”
Corix nodded. She ran a hand through her grey hair. In Old Torrick, Garet had never seen the iron-willed woman look so . . . tired.
“When the Catcher turned, did you feel anything strange?” Relict asked.
Falor answered. She stood beside Ratal, one hand pressed to her side. “The fear shifted in some way, for a moment, but that was all.”
Branet nodded. “We felt, and experienced much the same several days ago. Garet here thinks the demons are someone else’s weapon, one that can be unleashed and then recalled.”
Corix looked at Garet a long time before speaking. “I remember you. You were a Black Sash. Why are you not in a Bane’s uniform?”
“He protects the city in a different way,” the King said. “We thank you, Hallmaster Corix, for you may have saved us all by bringing Shirin’s message. Well, Hallmaster Branet, why would so many of these beasts gather near the city but not attack?”
Branet shook his head. The other Reds did the same, for this was beyond belief.
Garet stepped forward. “I have an idea,” he said.
Trax smiled. “I’m shocked! What do you think is going on?”
Garet reddened a bit. The voices in the Hall stilled as every ear strained to hear him.
“I think they are gathering for a mass attack, fifty, maybe more demons, attacking all at once and overwhelming our Banes so that they can destroy the city.”
He stopped, for there was no chance of being heard. Protests erupted all around him, continuing until Branet’s bull voice shouted for quiet. “Enough! Let him speak.”
Garet looked at Corix. “Hallmaster Corix, you felt a mass of fear from several directions at once? What did you make of it?”
Corix nodded. “I thought much as you do, that there was a gathering of demons coming together towards Shirath. I didn’t believe we would survive to reach the city Walls.”
“Master!” squeaked Falor.
Ratal put a protective arm around her shoulders.
Tarix looked at Garet and said, “Why now? You argued that the single attacks of demons were enough to achieve their goal—locking us up within these city Walls.”
Garet held up a hand, and the crowd stilled. This was the moment when they would laugh at him or believe him. Part of him wanted the laughter, for silence would mean he was right.
“We are no longer locked up. Your Majesty, I must reveal your plans for the expansion to make my argument.”
Trax waved a languid hand at him, which Garet took as approval.
“Shirath is crowded. We all know that, but there are plans to expand the city or build a . . . companion city nearby. By doing this, we are proving to our enemy that we no longer just survive. We prosper and grow! That is why the Caller Demon was sent to us last year. That is why the attacks increased so recently. It was supposed to knock us back down, but whoever planned this did not expect the Masks to appear and help us kill them! That made our enemy change plans again. This is just their newest tactic, a mass assault.”
“Could it be done?” Kesla asked. She looked fitter than before, though Garet’s words had shaken her and left her pale.
“I believe it was done at least once before,” Garet said.
Into the ensuing silence, a new voice spoke. “On the road to Shirath, you asked about this.”
Garet turned to see Salick step out from behind Vinir. He held his breath, not wishing to interrupt and end the moment.
Salick glanced at Branet and then back to Garet before she continued. “You asked Master Mandarack about Terrich, a big town or perhaps a city that once lay between Shirath and Old Torrick.”
Branet nodded. “It was wiped out by demons many centuries ago, for they fought with the other cities, and their Banes abandoned them.”
Tarix and many other Reds nodded at this.
Salick stepped forward, a very small step. “Garet asked the Master how many demons it would take to destroy a city, and why they didn’t move on to the other cities when they were done. At the time, we didn’t know that the beasts might hunt together, so I . . . did not listen to him,” she said, and looked at the floor. When she looked up, it was possible the corners of her lips twitched a bit.
Vinir grabbed her in a one-armed hug.
While the Reds discussed this bit of history, the cooks brought food and drink in for a very late second dinner or a very early first breakfast. Those who had bothered to learn anything about Terrich became the objects of attention at their table.
There was a commotion at the door, and Marick and Dorict came running into the Dining Hall. They skidded to a stop in front of Garet.
“Claws, it’s true!” Marick said. He gasped for breath, and Dorict took up their tale.
“We went north on borrowed horses, though we had to leave them in the orchards. They wouldn’t go any farther, and I don’t blame them.”
Marick recovered enough to interrupt. “There’s a mountain of fear out there, beyond the wood fields.”
“Lots,” Dorict said. “Wood lots.”
Marick grimaced. “You might as well call them fear lots now, for the feel of them. We saw no demons, but there must be a great party of them out in the wilds! It’s as if Birat’s necklace hung from every tree!”
Trax grimaced. The centuries-old tale of a necklace made of demon jewels was known by all in the city, and he himself had felt the hideous terror created by a box full of such jewels last year. It had sent him and his guards running back to the Palace when they had tried to enter the Banehall by force.
“What can we do?” someone in the Hall shouted, and the question carried to a hundred voices and then more.
“We fight!” Branet shouted, and the Banes shouted back, the noise echoing and growing until the dust shook off the rafters.
When the noise had died again, Branet called to the Reds. “We need field patrols to alert us if they begin their attack. Those who have not rested, go and try to find some sleep now. We must devise a strategy, for fifty demons climbing over Heaven knows how many spots on the Walls will be impossible to stop.”
“Meet them in the fields,” Tarix said.
Chovan nodded. “We’ll save more people that way, though we may lose many more Banes.”
The King shook his head. “You are the demon experts, but how do you intend to convince them to come to a certain place to meet your courage?”
Marick tugged the King’s brocaded sleeve. His Majesty looked down into the grinning face of the Blue Sash.
“Leave that to us. Demons forget everything else when a meal is running in front of them,” he said.
Trax frowned. “But it’s no good if the meal gets caught and eaten up before it reaches the other Banes.”
Marick bowed. “But Your Majesty, I never get caught.”
Trax shook his head and turned away. Marick felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to find Corix looking down at him, her expression as unyielding as he remembered from his days at Old Torrick Banehall.
“I caught you once,” she said. “What makes you think those demons won’t?”
Marick looked up into those steely eyes and grinned even wider. “Demons don’t cheat, Corix. You didn’t play fair that night. You gave me a choice.”
It was the first time Marick had ever seen the Red smile. He shuddered. After that, the idea of playing catch-me with a bunch of monsters didn’t seem so bad.