Chapter 20

The Paladins give Clement Saleen’s dagger. This was not in the plan.

She holds the weapon, and it is cold and heavy. No rust, no rust pits, carefully and properly sharpened, well balanced. “A good blade,” Clement says.

The Watfield Paladins nod, and one says, “A good man.” Their eyes are shining.

“You will remember him in the blade,” Karis murmurs. The G’deon is standing with all the others in the alley. Her face is pale. Her feet are so painful she can hardly walk. But she has come, so she can save Clement again.

“In the blade,” Clement says, “I will remember Saleen.”

The Paladins brush at tears. Two step forward to remove Clement’s belt, attach the sheath, and put the belt back on her. She does know how to do this herself, though. The belt is necessary to keep the blood-stiff, shredded remains of her tunic from flapping open, for she wears no undershirt. She is glad the Paladins put the belt back on her.

Earlier, one of the officers had taken off her own tunic for Clement to wear. Clement was doing the fastenings, then the plan came to her. She had taken the tunic off and given it back. “I’ll wear my ruined tunic. Find Karis for me.”

Karis had come in, and Clement had told her the plan. Clement had acted very calm. But her breathing, that had been wrong. Karis had said, “Shall I do it now?”

Now Clement is clear. She sheaths Saleen’s knife. She steps from the shadowed alley into hazy sunshine.

She wades in mist. Her blood-stiff trousers chafe her crotch. The thick sunlight casts a damp warmth onto exposed skin. Her steps disturb the mist. A haze of light rises up around her.

She has reached the gate. The quarrel that had pierced her is in her hand. “Soldiers of Watfield Garrison!” she cries. “Tell Heras her general has returned her quarrel!”

She flings the bolt up into the light, over the wall, over the barricade.

Up on the rampart she hears exclamations, and the creaks and thuds of hurried movement. Now scuffling, grunting, the whack of a fist. A gun blast. A ball of lead smacks into a building’s stone wall. These soldiers need target practice, Clement thinks.

The plan: Clement pulls back the rags from her unscarred belly. “Shoot me!”

She waits. She observes the spyholes and glimpses movement. The soldiers are peering at her. She reviews again what she had told herself before, before Karis made her so clear. A new captain, for Megert had not been loyal enough. New orders. Heras thought Clement was dead. Heras realizes that Clement has won. She might kill her again, but then Clement will win again.

Heras has always been clear.

Clement waits. A shutter slams down the street. A dog barks. A vendor sings. The sun has risen a little more.

“A long wait is good,” she had told Karis before dawn. “It means someone is fetching Heras, which means the gate captain doesn’t know what to do. And that means Heras is beginning to lose her people.”

From the other side of the gate there comes a clangor. The bars that secure the siege gate are being removed and dropped. The gate begins to vibrate and utter a squawk as a dozen soldiers grab handholds and endeavor to break loose the rust-frozen rollers. An officer shouts a cadence. In short jerks, with many an ear-splitting squeal, the gate opens. A palm’s width, an arm’s length. The breadth of a single soldier. Clement sees, through the bars of the primary gate, the new captain squirting oil into the massive lock. He begins wrestling with the key.

Clement waits.

The lock opens with a squawk. Two soldiers step out to swing the gate upon its shrieking hinges. The narrow opening in the siege gate frames a person on the other side. She is waiting. It is Heras.

“The soldiers will think I’m a ghost,” Clement had told Karis.

The two soldiers stare, wide-eyed. Clement steps forward. She had once thought of Heras as a predator. She had realized she herself was the prey. To be with her had become terrifying. Yet Clement had never ceased to want her.

Speak so the captain can hear. No one else will matter.

“I am your general,” Clement says. “I am taking command of this garrison.” She makes her voice loud. She speaks clearly.

“Welcome, my general,” Heras says.

Clement steps forward. Heras looks at her closely. But Heras is not important. Clement steps into the garrison. The primary gate clangs shut behind her.

“Heras will lock me in,” she had said to Karis, “to prevent me from being dragged to safety again.”

Loudly and clearly, Clement says, “The G’deon is here.”

“Is she?” Heras says. “Will she rescue her puppet general? Will she knock down our walls? I’d like to see that—but this G’deon is an impostor, isn’t she?”

Clement says, “Captain, take Heras into custody for mutiny.”

The captain doesn’t move. Heras draws her saber. Saleen’s dagger is a weight on Clement’s belt. To draw it is not in the plan.

“I will not spill Sainnite blood,” Clement says. She is speaking to the captain. “But if my blood is spilled, this garrison’s walls will fall down.”

Clement drops to one knee. The saber slashes in air where her throat had been.

“Draw!” Heras cries. “Draw, damn you!”

“I would rather die,” Clement says.

Heras lifts her arm. Clement has seen many a dummy decapitated by the blow. “I can’t put your head back on your body,” Karis had said that morning. Clement is looking into Heras’s eyes. Heras does not blink. The saber begins to sing.

There is a dissonant clang of steel on steel. Heras’s saber flings itself upward over her head. She snatches it out of the air. The blade that blocked the blow rings on stones. It will have to be resharpened.

“Guard your general!” someone cries.

Soldiers fling themselves between Clement and Heras. Clement stands up. The gate captain is now beside her. He has no weapon. He shouts up at the rampart. Soldiers grab at each other. Weapons are drawn. The captain shouts. The resisting soldiers are overwhelmed.

The gate captain says, “General, please pardon that I didn’t act sooner, but they had to see that she would kill you with her own hand. Shall I have myself placed under arrest?”

This was not in the plan. Clement does not know the answer to the captain’s question. She ignores it. “Heras and all the lieutenant commanders are to be arrested. Open the gate. Your new commander is waiting outside.”

“Yes, General.” The captain pushes through to Heras and tells her to surrender her weapon.

Heras places her saber point over her heart, and falls. The blade plunges through. The soldiers cry out.

Heras has missed her own heart. She is silent, grappling with the saber. She puts a leg out, but cannot rise. She pulls the saber. She slashes her hands upon its edge.

Clement draws Saleen’s dagger and cuts her old friend’s throat.