by Barb Hendee
She still thought much of Leesil’s plan bordered on madness, but she hadn’t come up with anything better. If all went well, they might have a chance at rescuing Wynn. If all went as planned. But this entire strategy still felt wrong to her. She should’ve been the one with Leesil, not Brot’an.
She could’ve covered Leesil’s back while he scaled the bailey wall and then hauled her up by a rope. If the worst came, they’d always fought back-to-back to get out of anything . . . almost anything. Instead, she was standing in the dark with two young elves and a grumpy know-it-all masquerading as a dog.
Since when had she become the distraction, the decoy?
“Hear it?” Osha whispered.
Magiere heard nothing and glanced back at him. Osha was dressed in a heavy cloak with its hood pulled forward, shadowing his face. With his longbow strung, he reached over his shoulder and drew an arrow from his quiver. The arrow’s feathers were so black that even Magiere had trouble making them out in the dark.
Leanâlhâm was dressed in a boy’s breeches, a jerkin, and a shabby cloak. Leesil had scavenged up this clothing, and Magiere had refrained from asking him where and how. The girl had been eager enough back at the inn. Now she stood there shivering, gripping her cloak closed about herself from the chill, fright, or both.
“It come,” Osha whispered.
At Chap’s huffed agreement, Magiere finally heard the distant grind and creak of wagon wheels on cobble. She glanced back again at Leanâlhâm and then down at Chap.
“Both of you stay here, even if things go wrong,” she ordered, and then raised her eyes to Osha. “Ready?”
Osha nodded once, and Magiere took off past him down the alley at a run. When she reached the alley’s far end, she headed down the next street. She ran hard to get behind the wagon’s path before Osha would have to step out in front of it.
Magiere halted at the corner where the side street met the mainway. But the sound of hooves came from her right and not left, up the way toward the alley’s mouth. She had beaten the wagon and arrived at the next intersection too quickly. She leaned back against a shop’s corner, head hanging, just listening.
As the wagon passed by, she ducked around the corner, flipped her hood back, and watched it roll up the street. She crept along the shop fronts, as any moment now . . .
A shadowy form rushed out of the next alley’s mouth a dozen yards before the wagon.
Osha rooted himself midstreet and raised his bow, aiming at the driver.
“Stop now,” he ordered.
In a creak of wheels and rattle of tack, the driver jerked the wagon team to a halt. Magiere came in behind it as quietly as she could.
“What’s this about?” the driver shouted.
“I need wagon,” Osha said.
Magiere crept toward the driver’s side of the wagon.
Osha had his aim set on the driver’s head, but even if he had to fire, it would not be lethal. The driver wouldn’t know this, nor likely spot the oddity of the arrow that Osha had notched to his bowstring. When the plan had been settled back at the inn, Leesil had insisted there be no unnecessary bloodshed.
But he’d looked right at Magiere when he’d said it.
It stung her, heated her with anger, but she’d said nothing. He had his reasons, especially for what had happened up in the Wastes . . . what she’d done to save him when they’d fled that icy, white plain.
Brot’an had replaced the head of one of Osha’s arrows with a lump of lead.
“Get out of my way!” the driver growled. “Or I’ll run you down.”
“No, you won’t,” Magiere whispered.
She never saw the driver’s face clearly. The instant his head whipped toward her voice, she braced her foot against a front wheel spoke and lunged upward, slamming her fist into the side of his head.
His head whipped the other way as he toppled, the force sliding his body across the bench. As he tumbled off the wagon’s far side, beyond Magiere’s sight, Osha arrived. He stood over the driver, looking down at the man, as she came around to join him.
Magiere snatched the back of the driver’s heavy canvas coat with one hand. Osha just stared at her. She ignored him and dragged the limp man to the side of the street and dropped him under a shop awning. Osha was still watching her as Leanâlhâm and Chap came out of the alley.
Chap began rumbling at her.
“Get ready,” Magiere told Leanâlhâm. She still didn’t want Leanâlhâm in the middle of all this, but events were now in motion.
Magiere headed to the wagon’s rear and pulled back the tarp covering the load. She expected to find crates of goods, food, perhaps blankets, or even bundles of paper and racks of ink for the sages. She found something else.
The wagon was piled with folds of heavy canvas tarps or tents, coils of rope, lanterns, and a few hand axes. The nearest cask smelled of salt pork or jerky. At that, she jerked a canvas sack open, expecting to find dried peas or beans, or even just potatoes. It was filled with iron spikes, each having a side hook for lashings.
She stared in puzzlement at the piled canvas again, hesitating as Leanâlhâm crept in beside her. Why would the guild go to such trouble to bring this stuff in under the cover of night? Why would they need these things at all? It made no sense.
“Quick,” Leanâlhâm whispered. “We must go.”
Magiere pulled the cask out, tossed it aside, and began shoving other items out of the way to make a space.
“Get in,” she said.
Leanâlhâm climbed into the little hole Magiere made for her. Every instinct in Magiere rushed up, telling her to pull the girl out of there.
“It is all right,” Leanâlhâm said, reading her face.
“You don’t do anything other than what Leesil told you,” Magiere answered harshly. “Once you’re back out, you dive for cover at the first sign of trouble. You let Osha handle anything until Chap and I catch up. Do you hear me?”
“Yes,” Leanâlhâm answered, nodding as she leaned back among the cargo.
Magiere pulled the tarp back into place and then paused as she grabbed its corner lashing. In only a blink, she jerked the cord with all her strength, and it snapped off short on the wagon wall’s edge. Whoever unloaded the wagon would only find it broken. Should Leanâlhâm be forced to hide again on the way out, at least the tarp couldn’t be tied down to hamper her.
Magiere rounded to the front as Osha climbed onto the wagon’s bench and took the reins. He looked down intently at her and then glanced over his shoulder to where Leanâlhâm hid.
“I . . . I protect,” he said.
“You’d better,” Magiere answered, handing up his bow and quiver.
Osha stored his weapon under the bench at his feet, and Magiere stepped back, with Chap at her side.
“We’ll be watching for you,” she said.
Osha nodded, pulling his hood farther forward, and the wagon rolled off, heading for the loop of street around the guild’s castle, still blocks away.
Chap whined once in agitation. Magiere dropped a hand on his head, stroking his ears once.
“That was the easy part,” she said. “We’ll have plenty to do soon.”
Or so she hoped. Magiere tried not to think what might happen to any of them, including Leesil, if all of this didn’t go as he’d planned.
Chane, Shade, and Ore-Locks hid around the corner where Wall Shop Row met Old Procession Road. They were only a block from the guild’s bailey gate. Strangely, Chane was not even nervous.
They had gone over and over their plan. He was confident he would have Wynn out of the guild this very night. With that in mind, he unwrapped a bit of burlap that held something Ore-Locks had purchased for him that day.
Chane took out a small sandglass with a line drawn partway down around its upper half. He shook it briefly, until all the sand fell into the bottom, and then he set it down before Shade.
“As I said,” he told her. “When I turn this over, wait until the sand fills the bottom to the mark.�
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She wrinkled a jowl in annoyance and huffed once.
Perhaps Chane had repeated this too often, and he looked to Ore-Locks. “Ready?”
Ore-Locks nodded, the tail of his bound red hair bobbing once.
Chane flipped the sandglass over. He turned quickly, running south along Wall Shop Row with Ore-Locks behind him. They left Shade alone with the sand already falling.
One block down, Chane swerved into a cutway between the buildings. He had already scouted this path two nights before. It was one of the only cutways where the backside of Wall Shop Row opened through the remaining sections of the “outer” bailey wall of the old guild castle.
There, at the cutway’s back mouth, Chane and Ore-Locks stopped and crouched low. They peered out and across the Old Bailey Road loop at the inner bailey wall, scanning its top in both directions for any signs of city guards walking their circuits.
Chane believed he had timed this correctly, but was not taking any chances.
“Clear,” he finally whispered, and scurried across and along the wall toward the bailey gate. When they reached the indented corner where the wall met the gate’s nearside barbican, they stopped and listened.
Chane heard the guard inside the portcullis shifting on his feet from a long night of standing.
“Remember to look for the glove,” Chane whispered.
“Of course,” Ore-Locks answered, sounding almost as annoyed as Shade.
Once Chane and Ore-Locks were inside the courtyard, there would be no further chance for second checks. The plan then was for Chane to enter the keep’s main building and make certain they had a clear path to the new library building at the back. With Captain Rodian in charge of guild security, there was no telling what safeguards he might have placed inside the main keep. Chane needed to check before Wynn was brought through there.
At the same time, Ore-Locks would go to Wynn’s room and bring her quietly out and through the main keep to meet Chane in the library. After that, escape was a simple matter of going out a third-floor window. Chane would help Wynn scale down the back of the bailey wall.
But they had also planned for failure. If, for any reason, Chane could not get to the library and could not risk crossing the courtyard again, he would simply toss a glove outside the keep’s main doors. If Ore-Locks spotted the glove in bringing out Wynn, he would have to try to take Wynn out by a secondary route.
Chane hoped that would not happen as he looked up the bailey wall and grimaced. Their only method for getting into the keep was another part he did not like.
“I will make it quick,” Ore-Locks whispered. “But getting through the keep’s own thick wall will be even less pleasant.”
Chane nodded, and he took Ore-Locks’s thick hand. There was an advantage to having a stonewalker on his side.
“Close your eyes if you have to,” Ore-Locks said.
Chane wrinkled his nose an instant before Ore-Locks heaved him forward.
Dänvârfij crouched with Én’nish on the rear of a rooftop where Wall Shop Row met Old Procession Road leading up to the bailey gate. She stared down in puzzlement.
“Who are they?” Én’nish whispered.
Dänvârfij shook her head.
They had been standing watch on the front of the small castle when a tall, pale human, a red-haired dwarf, and the black majay-hì had appeared up the mainway and crouched around a corner in hiding. The two men had run south out of sight along the row of shops. It was not long before they reappeared southward, scurried across the street that looped around the guild, and crouched in hiding next to the southern barbican of the bailey gate.
This night, after more debating with Fréthfâre, Dänvârfij had surrounded the guild with her people. Rhysís was covering the northwest, Owain the back, and Eywodan on the southeast. Tavithê had gone to watch the port, in case Én’nish was wrong and their quarry tried to flee the city without the sage.
“What could they be doing?” Én’nish wondered aloud.
Dänvârfij had no idea. The human and dwarf certainly could not scale the wall there without being spotted. If they did, they would simply find themselves trapped in the inner bailey when a guard came along the wall’s top, into view. She had half expected to see Léshil, Magiere, and even Brot’ân’duivé come this night, but not two strangers. How many in this city took covert interest in the guild . . . or the little sage?
Én’nish gasped. “Look!”
Dänvârfij already saw and straightened to her feet as the human below gripped the hand of the dwarf. And the dwarf thrust his other hand through the bailey wall’s stone.
It was hard to be certain of what she saw next. It happened quickly in the wall’s night shadows, out of reach of the great braziers on the gatehouse’s front. But the color of the wall’s stone appeared to flow up the dwarf’s arm and over his body.
He stepped through the wall, pulling the pale human after him. Both disappeared into stone and were gone.
A moment of silence passed before Én’nish asked, “Do we move?”
Dänvârfij hesitated. What they had witnessed was disturbing, impossible. She had heard talk of mages among the humans, but had never imagined anything like this. The nature of the dwarves was still unfamiliar to her, as those people did not exist in her part of the world. But the two men were not their quarry, and they could not risk missing Magiere and Leesil.
“No,” Dänvârfij answered. “We do not know what they are after. Should they be here for the sage or not, we can take them either way when they come out. We hold our positions . . . for now.”
She was less certain than she sounded.
Panic rushed through Chane as Ore-Locks pulled him into the bailey wall. He did not struggle and focused only on gripping Ore-Locks’s hand as darkness and cold enveloped him. The sensation of suffocation—though he did not require air—and the pressure all over him were no easier than the first time . . . when Ore-Locks had dragged him through a cave-in on their way to Bäalâle Seatt.
This time, the discomfort did not last as long. Almost before Chane knew it, he stood within the inner bailey among a narrow band of trees, looking at the keep’s own taller wall. Still disoriented, he stumbled and then righted himself.
Passing through stone was never easy, even for an undead. Ore-Locks was not as skilled as some of his brethren, the keepers of the honored dead in the depths below Dhredze Seatt. He could not take anything living with him through stone, which was a pity, because that would have made getting Wynn out far easier.
“Are you well?” Ore-Locks asked.
“I am fine. Go on.”
He was not fine, but Shade would be on the move soon. The sands in the glass were still falling, and they had to be ready. Ore-Locks took off down the bailey, and Chane followed to where the keep’s wall met the southern corner tower.
“This one is thicker,” Ore-Locks warned again.
“Just go.”
Ore-Locks took hold of Chane’s arm and stepped into the wall.
The world went black and cold again, and Chane choked down rising panic.
Stone pressed in over every part of him, as if to crush him. Time froze in the longest of moments. Then, suddenly, the pressure vanished and air surrounded him again.
Chane heard the soft crackle of braziers somewhere nearby on the gatehouse tower, and the chill night felt almost warm compared to the cold of stone. He opened his eyes and looked up as Ore-Locks let go of his arm.
Below the night sky’s stars, Chane looked over the end of the two-story stone barracks. Wynn’s room was at the top near corner, but there was no window on the end of the building.
He dropped low and scurried to the building’s corner, crouching with Ore-Locks near the old cistern. They were inside the courtyard, hidden in the shadows. Now the waiting continued as Chane peeked around the corner and across the keep’s broad inner courtyard.
No guards were in sight, but that did not mean they were not there. From his present position across to
the courtyard’s northern corner, he could see only half the space. He could see the main keep’s double doors, but not the opening to the gatehouse tunnel or the courtyard’s western corner beyond that.
Chane possessed a decent internal sense of time, but the moments passed too slowly as he imagined sand trickling away before Shade’s eyes.
“Any moment now,” Ore-Locks whispered.
Leesil flattened against the side of a warehouse on Norgate Road near where it met the back of Old Bailey Road, which encircled the guild’s castle. Brot’an leaned out slightly from behind him, and they both gazed on the back of the keep’s bailey wall.
“Any time now,” Leesil whispered.
Their next move had to be timed just right.
A guard in a red tabard finally appeared, walking the bailey wall around the eastern tower. The man kept on along the back wall, heading for the rear central barbican.
Leesil and Brot’an had chosen to approach from the rear because it was the only place where any part of the keep met the bailey wall. A large building had been built inside the bailey for some reason. They had no idea what was inside it, but its upper-floor windows were just within reach of the wall’s top . . . with a short climb. The bailey wall itself, a good twenty feet high, at a guess, was another matter.
Leesil crouched, getting ready to run, and both he and Brot’an waited for the right moment.
Tonight, neither of them wore cloaks, and Leesil had even forgone his hauberk. They both wore long scarves that wrapped up and hid light-colored hair and the lower half of their faces. Only their eyes were left exposed.
Leesil’s winged punching blades were strapped tight on his thighs, but he was uncomfortable with the two new weapons sheathed inside his shirtsleeves—an anmaglâhk’s hook-bladed bone knife and stiletto. Brot’an had offered them to him, and Leesil knew they would be necessary, so he’d taken them. He was uncomfortably aware of only one possible source for the spares Brot’an had been carrying: the body of a dead anmaglâhk.
After all the questionable things Leesil had done in his life, it shouldn’t bother him to use a dead man’s weapons, but it did. He’d once possessed his own anmaglâhk stilettos and bone knife, at the time unaware what they’d meant or where his mother had gotten them. He’d traded one intact stiletto and a broken one to a blacksmith for his first set of winged blades.