“He annoyed the Empress. But I think she was more annoyed at Sefa, who should have kept him from doing it. Sperrin, as delightfully naive as he is about some things, performed a number of irreplaceable services on the battlefield for Ananya, and there was every chance he would be needed for the same thing again—witness our present predicament. So he was punished in a way that kept him fully available for use. Sefa was a good channeler, but when a channeler is chosen for a marriage like that, it is with the expectation that she will manage any potential problems long before they reach the Empress’s attention.”
“So the Empress blamed Sefa?”
“If a dog begs at the table, do you blame the dog or the trainer who failed to break him of the habit?”
“Sperrin wasn’t a dog.”
“Ultimately, daughter, we are all the Empress’s dogs. An important lesson that we disregard at our peril. When the present...situation shakes out, we will all be somebody else’s dogs. That’s how it has worked in Ananya since the end of the Holy War. Senne’s power flows through the Empress, so she—and agents of her choosing—decide who marries, who eats, who lives, and who dies.”
“That’s a pretty grim way of putting it.”
“You are not in school anymore. There’s no reason to lie to you. The system is what it is. Our family has benefited greatly by it. So did Sperrin and his family, until they annoyed the Empress.”
My father seemed to be enjoying this. It was the most he’d spoken to me in years. I needed to choose my words carefully, though; the flow could shut off just as quickly as it had started.
“I think Sefa may have lied to Sperrin during our visit,” I said, a little hesitantly. “She said some things about their daughter’s location that I’m not sure I believe.”
My father laughed. “And you think you have a better notion of where his daughter is right now than either Sperrin or his wife, correct?”
I flushed, but answered. “Yes. I think I might.”
“In answer to your suspicions: Yes, Guthre is actually Sperrin’s daughter. And no, her mother hasn’t the least notion of where she is. If she told Sperrin otherwise, she lied to him. Sefa finally had enough of the man she let distract her from her marriage to Sperrin—a fairly awful man after his affair with an ex-favorite of the Empress ruined both their prospects—and she abandoned Guthre in order to leave him. The girl left the day after her mother did. I was rather hoping one of them would kill the vile man, but I gather neither one of them had it in her. Maybe the last few weeks of fighting have done it for them.”
“You knew Sperrin was Guthre’s father the whole time we were traveling with them?”
“Of course I did. It was my business to know. Why do you think I encouraged you to befriend her? That sort of friendship can only benefit you politically.”
“But if you knew...why did you let Sperrin send her on a suicide mission?”
My father laughed again. Leaning forward, he picked up his drink and took the last sip of the rust-colored liqueur. He paused to savor the tamindraught before responding. “My dear daughter, Overcaptain Sperrin does not take military advice from me. Besides, it would have been deliciously tragic if she had died, at his hands as it were.”
His response left me a bit disgusted. In spite of my best intentions, I couldn’t bring myself to respond, and the conversation lapsed.
Sperrin
From the gatehouse overlook I could see what remained of the causeway. One giant lay half-buried in the rubble created when the defenders had collapsed parts of the road. More important, a giant-sized ram intended to shatter the front gate had been lost as well. Three giants remained on the stub of the road outside the front gate, pounding at it with hammers to little effect. Nothing the defenders dropped on them seemed to affect the giants much, but they wouldn’t be able to damage the massive gate without help—or at least a lot more leverage than the precipice that remained of the road gave them. The dead giant actually surprised me: After the previous trap, I had expected the fey attackers to be more cautious.
I could see parts of the town burning, but that had been expected as well. Hopefully none of the field workers had been caught outside the fortress. I found himself glad of the night attack: It might have been planned to maximize terror and confusion, but it also meant that very few defenders would be caught in the open.
The signal fires still burned in one of the correct patterns from the redoubt at the top of the stairs. Most likely the fey had gone around the strongpoint, focusing on taking the main fortress first with the intention of mopping up remaining resistance afterward.
The fey might be magical creatures and friends to the gods, but they had no siege train, and no patience for long assaults. To win, they would have to carry Whitmount by storm, and the fortress would not give way easily.
Aside from flying creatures, I expected the biggest problem would be infiltrators. The biggest and strongest fey could be held at bay, but many smaller ones could change shapes, or crawl up sheer walls, or fit into very small spaces. They would look for weaknesses and lightly armed targets, and reacting to those infiltrations would draw off defenders needed elsewhere.
I saw signs of fighting in the outer galleries: splashed blood against the rough stone of the wide passageway, a torn door in the entranceway to one of the turrets, sawdust scattered on the floor to mop up slipperiness and spilled blood. Pairs of sentries stood watch at the entrance to each of the great stone turrets, guarding the engineers and laborers inside who struggled to work the heavy war machines in each emplacement. Brute force was a poor substitute for magic, but the machines had been designed with the thought that channelers might run short over a long siege: Through one open door, I could see a cluster of laborers struggling to adjust the elevation of a massive thrower in response to an engineer’s hoarse shouts. Others manhandled barrels of harrowflame with hand-rigged fuses onto improvised wooden rollers that had replaced the magic-powered slideway to the war machine’s throwing arms. Almost a hundred soldiers and laborers—grabbed from farm fields or anywhere they weren’t needed during the attack—worked a war machine usually served by a crew of six, or four in a pinch.
From behind the next door, I heard a different shout. At my signal the sentries opened the door and entered the turret, blades in hand. I ran forward through the entranceway behind them.
The dark frame of the lightning bear in the turret stood idle on its swivel mount, useless without a channeler to crew it. Inside, three scouts with light weapons fought a ram-headed creature wielding a glittering stillsword. A fourth scout lay in a pool of blood at the fey’s feet. A second of the ram-headed creatures was pulling itself through the wide slot in the stone, high up on the mountainside, that the lightning bear normally projected through. The creature had one arm and a leg through the slot; I could see the stillsword slung on its back as it started to pull itself over the edge. My blade struck sparks on the rock as I severed the creature’s hand. No point in going for the head. It’s too well armored. I struck twice to the creature’s thigh to loosen its hold on the wall, then smashed its face with the flat of my blade, sending the thing backward off the mountainside.
The scouts had fallen back from the second ram-headed creature, but not before it had scored a deep cut to the arm of one of them. The two sentries, troopers from the Mountain Cougars, circled it warily, feinting and looking for position. I sighed.
“Drive, drive,” I called out. “Don’t hesitate! It’s faster than you are!”
I wanted to let them make the kill for themselves, but I didn’t want to lose two more soldiers.
They hesitated. The creature’s stillsword flashed, shattering one of the troopers’ weapons. He screamed as his wrist broke from the force of the blow. The second soldier tried to drive in, but too slowly. Effortlessly, the creature stepped aside and deflected his blow. Glittering armor covered the creature’s midsection and shoulders. As it pivoted to kill the soldier, my thrown knife sank into its buttock, throwing the crea
ture’s step off. In two quick strides I closed the gap between us. The creature bent its knees to block a high blow and counter. Instead I sidestepped and swung low. Blood spurted as I severed the tendon at the back of the creature’s knee. Its leg buckled. Quickly, the soldier stepped in to finish the creature.
As it hit the floor a squad of reinforcements from the Mountain Cougars poured through the door.
“Clear the wounded,” I said, after making sure both creatures were dead. I motioned the two unwounded scouts back to their posts. “You were spotting for the other turrets, right? Get back to it. They need accurate spotters.”
Turning to the trooper I patted him on the shoulder. “Nice kill,” I said. “Don’t hesitate next time.”
“Thank you ’captain,” said the trooper. “It was your kill. I just finished it.”
“The next one will be all yours,” I anwered. “If you give them any time they’ll go right for your weaknesses. They move faster than you do. So you need to think faster than they can.”
“I understand, ’captain.”
The soldiers seemed heartened by my appearance on the scene, but I hoped they took the lesson to heart. When the next encroachment came, I wouldn’t be there to do the sentries’ job for them. They might not have spent much time training to fight fey, but that’s who the enemy was. They needed to be prepared to act, not wait for a creature to bring the fight to them.
I detailed a trooper from the roving patrol to replace the injured sentry, and listened to their undersergeant’s report while I accompanied the rest of the patrol through the gallery. We were stretched thin in places, he said, but holding.
Hopefully most of the sentries fought better than the two I’d encountered. The Cougars captain whose company guarded this part of the defenses would have formed his best fighters into roving patrols to back them up, but the sentries needed to stay alive long enough for that to help.
* * * *
Nemias’s headquarters, in an upper observation gallery, boiled with activity. Messengers rushed in and out amid the hubbub of staff officers shouting instructions and moving markers on the giant diagrams of the fortress and valley that covered four tables in the center of the round gallery.
The front wall of the chamber formed a giant window into the night, though from the outside it would look indistinguishable from the rest of Whitmount’s glittering white facade. Through the transparent rock I could see flickers of large creatures swooping in the night sky, backlit by moonlight. Something—war machine, giant, or other creature—was throwing burning debris from the village. The flaming ruins shattered spectacularly against the walls, showering sparks downward onto the wrecked causeway.
“The walls are holding,” Nemias told me, “but they may not be so white anymore when this is all over. We have creatures infiltrating everywhere. The big ones mostly can’t get in, but too many of the small ones can.”
“I saw that.” My encounter with the fey had been duly marked on the chart by a staff officer as soon as I had reported in, along with the Ananyan casualties.
“We’re holding well enough against the giants and the others, but the flying creatures are doing some damage. I need you to take care of them, Sperrin.”
“How are the machines I set doing?”
“They need a bit of encouragement, I think.”
“I am on my way.”
“Appreciated,” Nemias said. “Once you’ve got them working, step in anywhere you see a problem. The fey will try to hit where they’re not expected, and no one is better at expecting them than you. I’ll send a messenger if I need you someplace specific.”
I turned to go, before Nemias’s touch stopped me. “One more thing.”
“Of course.”
“Take one of the Mountain Cougars roving patrol squads from the guardroom outside. I don’t want you caught out alone with no support, and I want you to have soldiers with you to patch any holes you see. They’re not you, but there are some good troopers there. Send a messenger if you need more and I’ll find you some.”
We clasped shoulders and I strode out. A few words to the subcaptain coordinating the roving squads in the guardroom, and a dozen soldiers soon followed me up the long stairways toward the upper battlements and my improvised air defenses.
The long, sinuous frame of a flying lizard blocked the moon momentarily.
Soon you will die, godling. Blood burned in my veins. I am coming to kill all of you.
Ketya
Whitmount: Six weeks after the Loss
Three days had passed in the cell with my father. Whenever he retired to his bedroom I would pore over the Talisman of Truce while he slept. Somewhere, I knew, the words of the treaty could unlock what had gone wrong, and how to fix it. Whether or not my father was involved in the disaster at the Drowned City, the Talisman held the key to the problem. Eventually I returned the Talisman to its hiding place and slept myself.
When I awoke each morning—if I hadn’t lost all track of time—new dishes of food would be laid out on the side table. Cold meats and yesterday’s bread: Presumably the kitchen staff had more important concerns than hot meals for prisoners and their daughters.
The guard outside changed periodically as well. This morning, through the barred window of the cell door I saw Talye’s familiar face.
“I’m glad to see you,” I said to Talye as she walked over to the door. “Even if I’m sorry for the circumstances.”
“No one blames you for what your father has done,” Talye said. Her eyes belied the words, though.
“I don’t even know what he’s done.”
Talye’s gaze moved past my shoulder, and I knew my father had emerged from his bedroom.
“I’m not saying he didn’t do anything,” I said, quietly so my father couldn’t hear. “I just don’t know. I thought if I came here, I could find out.”
“I suppose it saves someone the trouble of protecting you,” Talye said. Her eyes looked cold, but most of that look seemed aimed at my father. “You would have been more helpful in the hospital, though.”
“I know. I didn’t know the battle was about to happen. I hate that I left Guthre there while I’m safe here.”
Something in Talye’s eyes grew warmer. “Please be careful with Guthre,” she said.
This time I had to ask. “That’s the second time you’ve said that to me. And I really don’t know what you mean. What is it I need to be careful of?”
“She’s a good kid,” Talye started. “And a good soldier. I don’t mean to give you the wrong impression. It’s just that—”
A footstep creaked. Neither of us had heard the approach. Usually boots clattered loudly in the stairs.
“Oh, hello, Kern,” Talye said, looking at the red-haired soldier. His eyes looked oddly luminous. “I’m surprised you’re awake. What’s happened to your eyes, they—”
Talye grunted and spit blood. She pitched forward against him as his knife sunk deep into her bowels, then sliced upward.
The creature that wore Kern’s shape stepped aside and let her fall. None of Talye’s blood had stuck to him.
“I don’t think she’s going to answer any more of your questions,” said the golden-eyed creature.
“You....I saw you before. You were a wolf then.”
“And you let me get away. Pity it cost your friend her life. I hope you didn’t like her too much.”
“And before that you were a merrow.” I said the words in a monotone, talking more to myself than the creature.
“I don’t like to stay the same for long,” it said. “Yesterday’s skin goes out of fashion so quickly.”
“What are you?” I said.
“You would have to ask your father that. I’m afraid he has neglected your education a bit.”
I realized my father now stood beside me, looking out the narrow, barred window in the cell door at the creature in the hall. Something squished when I moved my foot. Glancing down, I saw that my father and I stood in a pool of Talye’s
blood, which had welled under the door.
“I am hoping he is the one who is going to let us out of here,” said my father. “He won’t hurt you, don’t worry.”
“Let you out of here...” the creature said. “Wait, let me see where that’s part of your agreement....” He paused in mock thought. “Hmm.” He pantomimed flipping through the cards of a treaty. “No, no, looks like it isn’t in this agreement. So I’m afraid you will have to find someone else to let you out of that cell.”
“Agreement?” I whispered. I felt the blood drain from my face.
“Oh, that’s so adorable,” said the creature. “Your daughter didn’t know.”
Chapter 23
Sperrin
The problem with the flying lizards tormenting the upper battlements was they were smart. You could fool one into a trap and kill it, but the next one wouldn’t fall for the same trap. I wondered if I would run out of traps before the fey ran out of lizards.
I had started relatively simple the night before. I had the engineers remove the needles from the giant sewing machines—too big to be worked except by magic—that sealed the wagon-sized canvas bags of grain emerging from the grist mills in the valley on their way to the granary. A few hours of work fitted the needles with barbs and adjusted a spear-throwing mechanism so that it could launch a spear—or in this case an improvised harpoon—nearly straight upward. A well-aimed shot speared a griffin under the shoulder, and a crew of fifty rapidly winched it downward. Once they had the creature on the platform, soldiers finished it off with axes and spears, though it still badly hurt several troopers.
We had caught two others over the course of the following day with other stratagems. The great flying lizards no longer swooped in so daringly to scoop up a soldier or tear the roof off a building. And perhaps I should have been satisfied with that, since it fulfilled Nemias’s instructions to me.
But I wanted to kill more of them. I just needed to tempt them with better bait.
It took until the second night of the battle before I could dangle that bait in front of the lizards. Another griffin had been injured by a harpoon but had escaped when a dragonet came to its assistance, badly mauling two of the winch crew before they could reach their shelter. The dragonet had made several more harassing passes during the afternoon and evening, always at unpredictable intervals. That unpredictability had made the creature my particular target.
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