"Was there an answer somewhere in there?"
"Anything less than six hours to recover would be pointless. We could try to make a break for it an hour or two before dawn."
"I have the fear that's going to wind up feeling like a very, very long time from now. But that sounds like the best we're going to do."
At that very moment, bells rang across the last of the daylight. All of the sound seemed to be coming from the east.
"The bells are not rung for sundown," Gladdic said. "They are to tell us—and the city—that our time is up. Lord Pressings is leaving. We are now alone."
"Against an army." Blays moved to one of the narrow windows. "If you want to survive, let's get to work."
"Work?" Winden said.
"I would love to spend the next eight hours sleeping, but I think that would get me killed and eaten, robbing me of years of potential sleep in the future. Dante, isn't this one of the buildings you stuck a tunnel beneath?"
"And it leads to a different one down the street. Do you want to hide in it?"
"No, because it turns out I'm trying not to die. If the Blighted trap us down there again, we'll have no escape. I'm just trying to figure out what we're working with." Blays wandered from the doors, arms folded as he considered the wide-open ground floor. "It's a stout building, but this floor will be impossible for us to hold. We'll head up to the second floor—make it the third. We'll blockade the stairs behind us. Before that, we'll set up tinklers on any doors or windows wide enough for the enemy to climb through. And we'll try to find some rope."
"Tinklers?"
"A glass bottle or clay cup. Anything that'll make a lot of noise if it's knocked down. The more breakable the better."
"Why rope?"
"Because rope is great. You can never have too much rope."
They moved about the room, securing the shutters and bolting and barring the only other door into the building. Blays padded off to the kitchen, returning with a sack of crockery and bottles. They leaned these carefully against the shutters and doors.
This done, they climbed the stairs, which Dante's thighs weren't happy about. Going room to room, they dragged out tables, chairs, and chests, interlocking them on the steps below the second floor landing. Outside, it began to rain, hissing against the street. They rested briefly, then blocked the next flight of stairs as well.
They ascended to the third floor, but this was all prison cells—emptied during the siege—so Gladdic led them up to the fourth, where a larger set of quarters was more to Blays' liking. It was now fully dark and they felt their way to the window with their toes. Outside, rain beat against the streets. A few Blighted roamed about, completely indifferent to the rain, but they took no particular interest in the Chenney.
The building seemed empty, but they made a quick search to be sure. Finding no rope, they gathered up sheets and curtains and returned to the fourth-floor quarters. They sat on the floor, using knives to cut the fabric into strips, then knotting the strips together.
After a few minutes of silent work, Dante looked up. "Don't tell him this only occurred to me now. But does anyone know what happened to Naran?"
"This morning, he took the Sword upriver," Blays said. "Something about fetching more arrows and things from the towns to the north."
"Glad to hear it. And mad at myself for not having a way to tell him to come pick us up."
"If he sailed his ship down the river into the middle of this mess, I think there would be less heroically rescuing us and more tragically getting blasted to flinders by the White Lich."
"Earlier, you were with Corson," Gladdic said. "Do you know what became of him?"
Dante shook his head. "The last I saw him, he was on his way to shut down the portal. But the lich got back to Gods' Plaza before Corson could finish tearing it down. I don't know what happened to him after that."
"Then it is most likely he is dead."
"Maybe. But I got away. Maybe he did, too."
Gladdic used his one hand to thread two strips of a sheet together, then bit down on one end and pulled the knot tight. "It is a strange thing to sit in this tower in perfect peace knowing that the city that surrounds us is already gone."
"Mallon and Narashtovik have been enemies for ages. I've spent countless hours thinking about what I'd do the next time war broke out between our people, including the exact manner that I'd crush you. But I never once thought about ravaging Bressel like this."
"I wouldn't have had the heart to," Blays said. "No matter how badly they hated us. My dad fought for this land."
Gladdic looked up from his work. "Your father was a soldier?"
"In the king's army, for a bit. Helped annex the southwest coasts. Perbank and Lissel. Places like that."
"I fought in that war as well. In hindsight, it might have been the last just one that Mallon fought."
"Do you suppose you knew him?"
"That is doubtful. I spent little time among the soldiers."
"Probably for the best. He would have thought you were an arrogant son of a bitch." Blays grinned and cut another strip of cloth. "After the war wound down, the king didn't need half as many soldiers. My dad was let go. But fighting was what he knew, so he came here to join the armsman's guild. Hired blade for merchant caravans and the like. I didn't get to see much of him. Always traveling. In a world like this, a man who knows how to use his sword will never want for work.
"He loved coming back here. Not just because it meant he didn't have to dodge any arrows for a while. But because he loved the city. He'd drag me around it until my legs were ready to fall off. If I ever whined about it, he'd give me a slap, but before my cheek had even stopped stinging, he'd show me something that made me ashamed to have complained. Nothing shuts up a miserable child faster than a piece of dough fried in hog fat from Mama Laney's stall.
"He liked showing me the statues in particular. The lords and heroes. I think they made him feel like, even when he was being paid a few silver to put his life on the line protecting a wagon of potatoes, that he was a part of their tradition. They had made Mallon prosperous and great and now he was doing his own little piece to preserve what they'd built.
"He knew all of their stories, too. Even when I was so young I could barely buckle my own shoes, I loved hearing those stories. They made me feel proud. Proud of him. And proud of this place."
Blays set down his knife and sheet and went to the window furthest from the tiny light Gladdic was using to illuminate their work. "We fought the lich when he came for the Tanarians because it was the right thing to do. But him coming for the Mallish feels so much worse. We have to stop him. We have to kill him. Even if it means the death of every last one of us."
"I am ready to do so," Gladdic said. "For this city is my home, just as it was your father's. Much of what I have done in my life I now regret. But to this very day, I do not feel an ounce of regret for why I did what I did: for Bressel. For Mallon. For the people who live here. For all those who came before us, as we saw in the Mists: and for all those who I once thought would come after."
His face crinkled in confusion. "It feels as if it must be a message of some kind that we find ourselves in this building—although it is not one that I can decipher. For it is in this building that the course of my life was set.
"I was not born in Bressel, you know. Rather, I was born in the hamlet of Tesserlen. It lies in a valley past the western hills. Perhaps fifty miles from here. My mother was the daughter of farmers, but my father was a seller of potions, and not very well thought of for it. I was second-eldest, which meant that while my father trained my older brother in the ways of his 'art,' expecting that he would one day take over the business, my father meanwhile expected me to be his—and, one day, my brother's—assistant.
"And I loathed it.
"Our job was to sell concoctions to heal the ill and the troubled, which meant that in truth, our job was to lie to the desperate and the dimwitted. To extract coins from those who accepted
a brightly colored wagon as proof of expertise, or who had exhausted every reasonable means to get better, and would now throw their last hope at the unreasonable instead.
"Old men paid us the money they needed to eat through the winter in vain hopes that my father's foul wares would cure their ailing wives. Elder children would sell their own shoes to buy a tonic to salve their father's fever. A few of the potions did cure the sickness, while others masked or salved the symptoms, and there is something to be said for that. But many did no more than what the buyer wished to see.
"This made me ashamed of my father. For I had discovered in secret that I could touch the nether, which could heal. When I could stand it no more, I stole some of my father's money and ran away, working my way eastward along the road until I came at last to Bressel.
"The city was a vision of beauty. But as I struggled to make my way within it, I soon found it to be the beauty of a sword that is about to be plunged into one's gut. And it left my belly just as empty. Starving and now penniless, I contrived to use a trick of the nether to steal some meat and fruit for myself.
"My trick worked on the merchant—but it was witnessed by a monk who apprehended me and brought me here, to the Chenney, where I was locked inside a cell, with a priest keeping watch on me at all times. I soon learned that I was to be executed for two crimes: the use of unclean sorcery, and the suspicion that I was under the influence of demonic control.
"I related the sad story of my life, but this had no effect on them. Nor did any of my pleading and sobbing. At last I fell silent, and sat motionless for a full day. When I stirred, I asked to be able to read the Ban Naden.
"My request was granted. Seeing me in study of its pages, the same monk who had brought me to be jailed and sentenced asked if he could test me to see whether I had any facility with the ether. As it turned out, I did. Much more so than with the nether. In exchange for a pardon from the church, I pledged my life and labor to the glory of Taim, and swore never to touch the nether again, on pain of the hanging and dismemberment I had originally been sentenced to."
The left corner of Gladdic's mouth twitched. "For many years, though I remained curious about the nether, I kept my vow. Even when I convinced myself at last to void it in pursuit of deeper wisdom and higher goals, I remained grateful and wholly loyal to the city that housed me, the order that guided me, and the nation which nourished both.
"For twice I was damned—first by birth, and second by the law—yet I was saved. And that is the glory of Mallon, and of Taim, who was blessed it."
No one spoke for a minute, hands busied with labor. Winden frowned. "This city, I have only just seen it. But in it I have seen the beauty you talk of. It looks not like the work of people but the work of gods. I am sad to see it ended."
"I've only spent a few months here in total," Dante said. "And most of that time was pretty miserable. My first time here on my own, I spent most of the while getting hunted down by Mallish crypto-Arawnites. They even sent a neeling to strangle me." He looked up. "That's funny. I don't think I've seen a single one of those things since we got here."
Gladdic nodded. "Some years back, they engaged in a rash of thefts, attacks, and murders. If they had kept their crime among themselves, perhaps it could have been ignored, but it spilled across the wider city. After lesser efforts to curb their crimes failed, the king evicted them from the land."
"What, all of them?" Blays said. "Even the ones that didn't do anything?"
"Which proved immensely effective, as the excess assaults ceased at once, and never resumed."
"Where did they go?"
"That was not of particular interest to us."
"Well, I expect it was to them."
Gladdic only shrugged.
"But even when I hated the place," Dante continued, "I could tell it was a great city. It's probably still the greatest that I've ever seen. But I don't think it's lost yet, Winden."
She gave him a look. "Not lost? How? Its soldiers and people, they flee. Soon, we will too. The lich will own it."
"He won't destroy the city. That's not what he does. And for as many people as he's Blighted, many more remain. We will leave here—and then we will find a way to cut him down at last. After that, the people will return here. They'll rebuild. And we might even help them, if they'll take it."
"After today, it is hard to know how they will look at your people," Gladdic said. "But victory soothes many insults and wounds."
"Speaking of. As soon as we're somewhere safe, we need to go straight to the Mists. The lich was able to open these doorways several miles away from himself. It's possible he could cast another doorway much further than that."
"Such as directly into the middle of our retreating troops."
Blays muttered something rude. "We've got the flowers. Suppose we should take a trip into the Mists right now?"
"Way too dangerous," Dante said. "I'm pretty sure the lich will need a day or two to finish consolidating the city and then to recover. That's when we'll take to the Mists."
"So we'll have one to two days minus the time it takes for us to recover and get out of here. According to you, we could have as little as twelve hours."
Winden shook her head. "Twelve hours of time here. In the Mists, that will be much longer."
They soon had several lengths of makeshift rope prepared. No one seemed inclined to sleep, so they searched the other rooms, finding a short fighting blade for Gladdic, a few candles, half of a wheel of cheese, a bottle of wine (which Blays claimed he only wanted for the bottle itself), some twine, and a whole bunch of knives. After a moment of thought, Dante took a short sword for himself, too. Blays came back with a small silver hand mirror.
Dante raised an eyebrow. "What's that for?"
"I don't know yet. But it's the sort of thing that could wind up being surpremely useful." Blays inspected himself, though in the gloom he couldn't have made out much more than a face-shaped blob. "Besides, you can't make a dashing escape without looking dashing."
They returned to the room where they'd knotted their ropes. It had three simple beds and after a while of sitting in the darkness they decided to try to get some sleep. Dante and Winden took the first watch. Blays fell asleep within two minutes.
The rain petered out, then returned with a sudden rush. Dante sat beneath the window with his back to the wall. In truth, they had far more than the portals to worry about. They all knew it, but it had been left unsaid, perhaps because it was too much to take on all at once.
They'd lost more that day than Bressel. It was quite possible that they had also lost the ability to defeat the Eiden Rane through any conventional means. Within a day, maybe two, his army would be twice or more the size it had been when he'd marched on the city—and, assuming there wasn't some limit to what he could absorb, he would have gained personal power in kind. Even if they found a way to shut down the doorways through the Mists, Dante wasn't at all certain they'd have any hope of winning a pitched battle afterward.
They were going to have to come up with something else instead. Running down the prime body would work, although he had no idea how to do that, given that it could be anywhere. Or maybe there was some vulnerability in the lich himself, something they'd overlooked or could discover. The truth was he had no idea. All he knew was that the days of widescale warfare were over, at least as anything more than a distraction or delaying mechanism. As soon as they negated the portals, they had to find a way to assassinate the lich.
The rain softened to a steady patter. Sometimes he heard a scream, suggesting the Blighted were searching the buildings for survivors, but these were distant, and for the most part the city was as quiet as a country field. As dark as one, too. There were no lamps on the street corners or candles in any windows. At that point, anyone who showed a light might as well slit their own throat.
Somewhere below, a glass bottle smashed against the ground.
Blays sat straight up in bed. "They're here."
"You don't kn
ow that," Dante said. "That could have just been someone—"
"They're here, you idiot. Get ready to move, or get ready to die."
Winden stirred Gladdic. Blays moved to the shutters and peeked outside, then swore under his breath. Dante leaned in for a look. Down in the street, rain-slick Blighted moved swiftly toward the building, entering it through the shutters they'd pried open, which had knocked down the bottle on the other side.
"We'll hold the stairs if we can," Blays said. "And if we can't, well, we'll do something stupid."
He took up one of the longer lengths of knotted sheets and tied one end around the leg of a massive, ornate desk. Their main packs were too bulky to fight well with, so they took their smaller ones, which only held one dreamflower box each and a few vitals, and headed for the stairs.
Something thudded down below. Then again. Wood snapped and splintered. A heavy object scraped and bumped over stone.
"Ripping up the blockade." Blays headed down the stairs toward the third floor landing. "They'll be on us in a few minutes. Don't suppose any of you have gotten your strength back yet?"
"Not a drop," Dante said. "I've got some of my trace left, but at this point I think it's more effective to use it to keep my sword going."
"It is very tempting to slap you around right now."
"I exhausted myself fighting for this city!"
"Not because you did something wrong. Because this is one of the only times you can't fight back."
The Blighted stomped and smashed at the furniture clogging the lower floor. Blays waited at the third floor landing, standing just back from the narrow exit from the stairs that they'd half blocked off to let themselves get downstairs while restricting the number of enemies who could climb up them. He cocked his head, then jogged into a nearby room and went to the window, silhouetted by the starlight.
He returned looking pleased. "Change of plans. Get these stairs blocked off. Fast as you can."
They'd already dragged some extra furniture outside the stairwell and it was a simple matter to carry it in and pile it up to blockade the rest of the stairs. Blays soon decided they'd done enough and brought them back to their room on the fourth floor.
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