"Oh, it's working all right; better than you could guess." He wiped his eyes and nose on the napkin from their tray and locked his emotions down. "All right, lady -- mage, we need information, not waterfalls."
"First-tell me how you got here so fast."
"We weren't about t' let anybody beat us here," Kyra replied. "Not after that message. Sewen sent me on ahead t' tell ye that Queen Sursha give us leave t' deal with this soon's we get some of her new army units in t' replace us. The rest of the Hawks'll be here in 'bout a month."
"Ikan's out rounding up all the former Hawks we can track down," Justin continued. "We'll be trickling in the same as the Hawks will -- no more than two or three at a time, and disguised. One of the merchant houses is going to let some of us use their colors; Ikan took the liberty of taking your name in vain to old Gnumo. We have the support of Sursha's Bards, and half a dozen holy orders. We'll be everything from wandering entertainers to caravan guards. You've got a plan, I take it?"
"Tarma has; she's worked it out with a couple of highborn we can trust," Kethry told him. "All I really know about is my part of it, but generally we're hoping to accomplish the whole thing with a minimum of bloodshed."
"Specific blood" Kyra replied, with a smoldering anger Justin shared.
"Oh, yes. One of the lot we've already taken out -- Raschar's Adept. But the others -- " Kethry allowed her own anger to show. " -- Tarma's identified every person that had a hand in the deed. And they will answer to us."
Justin nodded, slowly. "What about arms? There's going to be at least half of us without much, given the disguises."
"Being smuggled in to us from an outside source, -- so that Char won't be alerted that something's up by activity in forges and smithies. We're getting everything Tarma could think of; bows, arrows with warpoints, various kinds of throwing knives, grapnels, climbing spikes, pikes, swords -- the last is the hardest, that, and armor, but we're hoping most of you will manage to bring your own. Do either of you have a guess how many there might be that we can count on?"
"Six hundred at an absolute minimum," Justin said with grim satisfaction. "That's four hundred Hawks and the two hundred that either retired to Hawksnest or that Ikan knows for a fact he can get hold of and will want in."
"Gods -- that's better than I'd hoped," Kethry said weakly. "There're four hundred regular troops here. about a hundred and fifty assorted militia, and fifty personal guards belonging to Char. There're some other assorted fighters, but Tarma tells me they won't count for much; there're Char's adherents, and their private guards, but we don't know but that they won't turn their coats or hide if things look chancy. That means we'll be going pretty much one-on-one; all the professionals starting the fight even."
"Even with his mages?" Justin asked dubiously.
Kethry raised her chin, her eyes glinting like emerald ice in the light from the window beside her. "He hasn't a mage that can come close to me in ability, and I have more power at my disposal than any of them could hope for."
"Where are you getting that kind of power?" Justin asked in surprise. "I mean -- you're alone -- "
"You -- and the Hawks. Your anger. I can't begin to tell you how strong a force I've already tapped off just you two; when I start to think about six hundred Hawks, it makes my head reel. It's the kind of power a mage sees perhaps once in a lifetime, and if I weren't an Adept I'd never be able to touch it, much less control it."
"You're Adept class now?" Justin said incredulously. "Great good gods -- no wonder you aren't worried!"
"Not with power like that at my disposal. I can channel all that anger, harvest it, and save it for the hour of striking. We're the attackers, this time. I can set up as many spells as it takes as far in advance as I need to, spells specifically designed to take out each mage; and wait until the moment of attack to trigger them. I'm assuming only half of those will work. The rest will probably be deflected. But the mages will be off-balance, and I can take them out one at a time. I know how mages think -- when they're under magical attack they tend to ignore anything mundane, and they seldom or never work together. White Winds is one of the few schools that teaches working in concert. I think we can plan that they will be concentrating on me and not on anything nonmagical. And that they won't even think to band together against me."
Justin nodded, satisfied. "Sounds like you people have a pretty good notion of what you're about. Now comes the hard part."
"Uh-huh," Kethry nodded. "Waiting."
Singly, or by twos and threes, the Hawks came, just as Justin had told Kethry they would. Each of them arrived in some disguise, some seeming utterly harmless -- a peasant farmer here, a party of minstrels there, a couple of merchant apprentices. Day by day they trickled into Petras, and no one seemed to notice that they never left it again. Each went to one of the dozen inns whose masters had bought into the conspiracy, carrying with them a small bronze coin and a handful of recognition words. Each was met by Kethry, or by one of the other "official greeters" -- Justin, Kyra or Ikan, who had arrived within days of the first two.
From there, things got far more complicated than even most of these professional mercenaries were used to.
Beaker coughed, scratched his head, and turned his weary donkey in to what passed for a stableman at the Wheat Sheaf inn. The stableman here was, like most of the clients, of farm stock; and probably had never even seen a warhorse up close, much less handled one. Beaker's dusty donkey was far more in his line of expertise. The "stable" was a packed-earth enclosure with a watering trough and a pile of hay currently being shared by three other mangy little donkeys and a brace of oxen. Beaker had serious second and third thoughts about this being the contact point for a rebel force, but the instructions had said the Wheat Sheaf and specified the stable-man as the contact.
"Ye wanta watch that one," Beaker drawled, handing the wizened peasant the rough rope of the donkey's halter with one hand, and four coins with the other -- three copper pennies and one bronze Hawk-piece. "She'll take revenge if she even thinks ye're gonna lay hand to 'er."
"Oh, aye, I know th' type," the fellow replied, grinning, and proving that a good half of his teeth had gone with his lost youth. "Ol' girl like this, she hold a grudge till judgment day, eh?" He pocketed all four coins without a comment.
Well, that was the proper sign and counter. Beaker felt some of his misgivings slide away, and ambled on into the dark cave of the rough-brick inn.
Like most of its ilk, it had two floors, each one large room. The upper would have pallets for sleeping; the lower had a huge fireplace at one end where a stout middle-aged woman was tending an enormous pot and a roast of some kind. It was filled with clumsy benches and trestle tables now, but after the inn shut down for the night, those that could not afford a pallet upstairs would be granted leave to sleep on table, bench, or floor beneath for half the price of a pallet. Opposite the fireplace was the "bar"; a stack of beer kegs and a rack of mugs, presided over by the innkeeper.
Beaker debated looking prosperous, when his stomach growled and made the decision for him. He paid the innkeeper for a mug of beer, a bowl of soup and a slice of roast; the man took his money, gave him his drink and a slice of not-too-stale bread. Beaker slid his pack off his back, rummaged his own bowl and spoon out of it, then shrugged it back on before weaving his way through the tables to the monarch of the "kitchen."
Rather to his surprise -- the inn staff of places like this one were rather notorious for being surly -- the woman gave him a broad smile along with a full bowl, and put a reasonably generous slice of meat on his bread. Juggling all three carefully, he took a seat as near to the door as possible, and sat down to eat.
The food was another pleasant surprise; fresh and tasty and stomach-filling. And the inn was cool after the heat and dust of the road. The beer was doing a respectable job of washing the grit out of his throat. Beaker was about halfway through his meal when her heard someone come up behind him.
"How's the food t'day, sojer?"
"When cows fly, prob'ly. Makes me fit in here though." She straddled the bench beside him a mug and bowl of her own in hand. "Eat here ev'ry chance I get. Ma Kemak, she sure can cook. Pa Kemak don' water the beer, neither. Finish that up, boy. We gotta get you off th' street soon's we can." She set him a good example by nearly inhaling her soup.
From the inn Kyra led Beaker on a rambling stroll designed to shake off or bore any pursuit, bringing him at last to the stableyard entrance of a wealthy merchant. A murmured word with the chief stableman got them inside; from there they slipped in the servant's door and climbed a winding staircase to the attic of the house. Normally a room like this was crowded with the accumulated junk of several generations, now it was barren except for a line of pallets. There were only two windows -- both shuttered -- but there was enough light that Beaker could recognize most of those sprawled about the room.
"Beat you, Birdbrain," Garth mocked from a corner; looking around, Beaker could see that a good half of the pallets were occupied -- and that evidently, he was the last of Tarma's scout troop to arrive.
"Well, hell, if they'd given me somethin' besides a half-dead dwarf donkey t' get here on -- "
"No excuse," Jodi admonished. "Tresti and I were Shayana mendicants; we came here on our own two feet."
"Beaker, what have you got in the way of arms?" asked someone off on the opposite side of the room; peering through the attic gloom. Beaker could make out that the speaker was a skirmisher he knew vaguely, a Hawk called Vasely.
"One short knife, and my sword," he replied. "And I've got my brigandine under this shirt."
"Get over here and pick out what you want, then. Take whatever you think you can use, we aren't short of anything but swords and body-armor."
Beaker crossed the attic, picking his way among the pallets, and sorted through the piles of arms. Shortly thereafter he was being caught up on the developments by his fellow scouts.
He learned that they hid their faces by day, slipping out only at night to meet in the ballrooms and stableyards of the great lords who had also joined the conspiracy. There they would hear whatever news there was to hear, and practice their skills.
Each night, as the Hawks gathered to spar, Kethry would siphon off the incredibly dangerous energy of their anger and hate. Dangerous, because the energy generated by negative emotions was hard to control -- and attracted some very undesirable other-planar creatures. But it was a potent force, and one Kethry was not going to let go unused. She channeled what she accumulated each night into the dozen trap-spells she was building, one for each of Char's mages. She was beginning to think that she might well be able to carry this off -- for despite her brave words to Justin, she had no idea if what she planned was going to work, nor how well. She was just too new at being Adept to be certain exactly what her capabilities were.
"I wish you'd tell me what you're going to do," Jadrek said plaintively. He'd been watching her as she traced through the last of the parchment diagrams, laying in the power she had acquired that night. There were times his patience astounded her still....
"I didn't realize you'd want to know," she replied, sealing the new layer of power in place, and looking up at him with surprise as she finished. "Come around here behind me and have a look, then."
He rose, moved to her right shoulder, and bent over the table with his expression sharp with curiosity. "Well, you know I'm not a mage, but I do know some of the mage-books -- and Keth, what you've been doing doesn't even look remotely familiar."
"You know what a trap-spell is. That's this part." She leaned over the parchment and pointed out the six tiny diagrams encircling the last mage's Name, as he looked over her shoulder with acute interest she could feel without even seeing his face.
"That's just the part that's like a trigger on a physical trap, right?"
"Exactly, except that what will activate the trigger won't be something the mage does, but something I do -- a kind of a mental twist to release the rest of it."
He examined the elaborately inscribed sheet with care, leaning on the back of Kethry's chair, and not touching the page. "That looks familiar enough from my reading -- but what's all the rest of this?"
"That's something new, something I put together. There's a mind-magic technique called a 'mirror-egg' that Roald told me about," she said, sitting back. He responded to her movement by beginning to massage her neck as she talked. "It involves surrounding someone with an egg-shaped shield that is absolutely reflective on the inside. It's something you do, he told me, when you've got a projective that refuses to lock his mind-Gift down, or is using it harmfully. Everything he projects after that gets flung straight back into his face -- Roald says it's a pretty effective way of teaching someone when admonishment fails."
"I would think so," Jadrek agreed.
"Ah -- " his gentle hands hit a particularly tense spot, and Kethry fell silent until he'd gotten the muscles looser. "I thought about it, and it occurred to me that there was no reason why the same kind of thing couldn't be applied to magical energy. So I found a spell to make a mirrored shield, and another to shape a shield into an egg shape, and combined them. That's this bit." She traced the twisted patterns with her finger above the diagram. "When Jiles got here, he agreed to let me throw one on him as a test."
"It worked?"
"Better than either of us had guessed. Scared him white. You see, with most other trap-spells if you have the patience to work your way through it, you can find the keypoint and get yourself loose by cutting it. Not this one -- because everything you do reflects back at you. There're only two ways to break this one -- from the outside, or to build up such pressure inside that the spell can't contain it."
Jadrek pondered that in silence for a moment, while Kethry let her head sag and reveled in the relaxation his hands were leaving in their wake.
"What's to keep the mages from building up that kind of pressure?" he asked at last.
"Nothing -- if they can. But if they try -- and they don't figure out that they're going to have to shield themselves within the shield -- they'll fry themselves before they free themselves."
Jadrek spoke slowly, and very quietly. "That -- is not a nice spell...."
"These aren't nice people," Kethry replied, recalling all the soul-searching she'd done before deciding that this was the thing to do. "Frankly, if I could call lightnings down on all of them, I would, and take the guilt on my soul. I agree, it isn't a thing one should use lightly, and just before I trigger the traps, I intend to burn the papers. I won't need them any more at that point, and I'd rather that the knowledge didn't get into too many hands just yet."
"And later? How do you keep someone else from finding out how you did it? What if -- "
"Gods -- Jadrek, love, once a thing's been thought of -- it gets out, no matter what. So once this is all over with, I'm going to arrange for the information to be sent to every mage school I know of, and spread it as far and wide as I can."
"What?" Jadrek asked, so aghast that he stopped massaging.
"You can't stop knowledge; you shouldn't try. If you do, half the time it's the wrong people that get it first. So I'm doing the best thing you can do with something like this -- making sure everybody knows about it. That way, if it's used, it will be recognized. Mages trapped inside one of these eggs will realize what's happened and get outside help before they hurt themselves, ones outside will know the counter."
"Oh," he said. resuming what he'd broken off. There was silence for a while as he plainly pondered what she'd said.
One more thing to love about him. He doesn't always agree with me, but he hears me out, and he thinks about what I've said before making up his own mind.
"Huh," he said, when she'd begun to drowse a little under his gentle ministrations. "I guess you're right; if you can't guarantee that something harmful stays out of the wrong hands -- "
"And I can'
t; there's no way."
"Then see that all the right hands get it."
"And that they get the antidote. I don't know that this is all that moral, Jadrek, I only know that the alternative -- taking the chance that someone hke Zaras figures out what I did .first -- is less moral." She sighed. "I never thought that becoming an Adept would bring all these moral predicaments with it."
He kissed the top of her head. "Keth, power brings with it the need to make moral judgments;
history proves that. You have no choice but to make those decisions."
She sighed again, and reached up to lay one of her hands across his where it rested on her shoulder. "I just hope that I always have someone around to keep reminding me when something I'm thinking about doing 'isn't nice: I may still do it -- but I'd better have good reasons for doing so."
He squeezed her shoulder, gently. "Don't worry. As long as I'm around, you will."
That's what I hoped you'd say, she thought to herself closing her eyes and leaning back. That is exactly what I hoped you'd say.
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