Evand went quiet and shushed Avin twice while he was thinking. His steely soul stabbed out in a thousand new directions and he took hold of Nace by his vest. “Have you spoken to the garrison?”
“The 4th here in Alsonelms?” Nace said and then his soul bloomed too as if struck by the same inspiration.
Evand turned to Phost. “Do the Grano have enough silver to pay a season’s wage to the 4th?”
The man was flummoxed, and after a glance of Avin said nothing.
Ellyon was wiggling his fingers and looked toward the ceiling as he worked with the numbers in his head. “No,” he said and glanced once at the chests Avin had brought, “not unless we steal a bit from here and there.”
“Would the Corneth have enough silver on hand to pay the Hemari in silver instead of gold?”
The weathered old Hemari named Okel laughed out loud. “Not a chance. The Alsonelm treasury is filled with Yud and Urmandish gold, same as all the Kaaryon’s cities.”
Evand said, “If we can convince the Hemari that this new exchange rates will hold they will want to be paid in silver to avoid the reduction at the end of the season. The Corneth will lose control of them.”
“The boys here would rather report to a Yentif, anyway,” Okel said and pointed at Benjam and his troop of scout, “what would you do if told your gold was worthless? Take your chances or accept Evand’s silver?”
“Silver,” most said in quick unison.
Avin stepped forward, “Enough of this. We are not here to hatch some half-baked plot. Chaos in Alsonelm and the Kaaryon is our goal. You have contributed nicely to that end, but are required at the capital. I’ve said as much twice now.”
“Liv, get our coats,” Evand said and moved to the table that had his maps upon it. “Emilia, come here please. Where are the city’s Hemari officers right now?”
The rest of the room was startled to see me moving and none of them knew what to say. Natan and his men collected close around me, and I joined Evand by the table. After a moment’s study I pointed at a spot not far from the archives. It seemed a tavern judging by the concentration of milling Hemari and the fuzziness of their souls.
“Fantastic,” Evand said. “Ellyon, secure the chests.”
“You will do no such thing,” Avin said. “Rahan thought you might try something. Liv and your child are already being moved down to the docks. You should join them.”
Evand glanced at me, and I shut my eyes tight to search for them.
“I always knew you were a mercenary, Avin,” Evand said.
“You took Liv as a hostage?” Nace said and stepped away from him.
“Not a hostage,” Avin said with a dark scowled. “Don’t you dare step away from me. Barok stands with Rahan.”
“As party to the kidnap of his brother wife? Like hell he would, Avin. What happened to you?”
Avin swore at him and everyone started yelling.
“Shut up so I can find my mother,” I shouted and cooked them all to enforce it.
The room came to a sudden stop while and all eyes were on me as I closed mine. I found Liv and the men escorting her toward the docks. They were not Hemari. I also saw the common connections between Phost, those men, and Avin. Uncle Phost had sold her to Rahan. I should have seen it coming. Ellyon’s connection to Phost severed as did Benjam’s and the Hemari’s connection to Avin. None of them had known what Avin and Phost were up to.
“Found her,” I said and took hold of Phost’s hand. “Ellyon and Uncle Phost will come with me to get Liv, Evand. You go talk to those garrison officers.”
Avin looked ready to tell his Hemari to stop us. “You are coming with me, too, Avin. All of you Bessradi boys. We don’t want that galley to go to waste. Leave the chests behind. Come, if we don’t get to the docks in time to stop the galley from kidnapping my mother, I’m going to turn you all to ash.”
“Avin?” Phost said, but the old priest would not even lift his head to look at me. His black soul was all but gone. He had no songs or fight left in him.
“Come along, uncle Phost, and bring your best men,” I said and pointed out the Grano that were loyal to him. “You, you, and you. Come along.”
“Signal when you have her,” Evand said.
“Two small pulses means that we are safe. Three means we need you.”
Then he called to his men, and I hurried my group across the plaza and into the crowded and chaotic streets. The men who had betrayed us trudged along like thralls on their way across Tin Bridge, while the Natan’s men cleared the way for us.
We reached the docks and found the galley as they were getting ready to leave. The small crew of aboard was being ordered about by Avin’s priests. They saw me and were close to panic. Seeing Avin stooped and defeated, they came to a halt and bowed their heads.
“Natan,” I said, “Go get my mother and liberate that crew.”
He was swift, and Liv strode up onto the deck daring any of the priests to meet her gaze. Phost was the only man to speak, his apology started while his chin was still upon his chest. I let go of his hand as Liv marched down the dock toward us. She shifted Aris into her left arm, got hold of one of her daggers by its sheath, and struck Phost a savage blow upon jaw with the pummel. The bone shattered and he fell.
Ellyon offered her his arm, and she stepped in beside me.
“The rest of you get aboard,” I said and the only dissenting sound was Phost’s shrieks. “Not you, Benjam. You and your men are welcome to stand with us.”
He and his men took a knee upon the pier while Phost’s men carried him aboard. Avin was alone when he paced up the gangway behind them.
“Avin, look at me,” I said. When he turned I asked, “What happened in Alsonvale?”
He paused at the rail while his priest hurried the galley off the pier. The gangway fell into the river and several untended ties went taut and snapped.
“We had to try, Emi. Rahan needed his own magic.”
“Oh, Avin. You are lost.”
The gray eyes that looked up at me had no life left in them. He sat down along the galley’s rail as it caught the current and swung away.
If the city had not been waiting and thrashing behind me I would have called my friend back, but I did not have time for one man. Already many things were in motion. Evand had reached the tavern and the Corneth were gathering in numbers in the streets around the archives. A large group of them began moving toward us.
“We can’t get back the way we can. Ellyon, the Grano estate is close, yes?”
“Just there,” he said and pointed north along the river. “We can get there through a sally port where the wall meant the water.”
“Quickly. We need to get out of sight and give Evand time.”
They were all ready to move. Ellyon knew the Grano men who guarded the sally port and we got through the wall and onto a quiet street between stone row houses and the harbor wall.
I flashed heat at the city in two quick pulses. Aris shrieked from the bites of heat and Liv seized my hand.
“I’m fine, mother, sorry. Letting Evand know we are okay.”
“Warn us next time, please,” she said and kissed my forehead.
“This way,” Ellyon said and led us through those narrow streets to old wall and gate. We made our way inside, and caused a small stir amongst the estate staff, but they were the only people present. Phost’s wife and daughter had been moved earlier that morning. I hoped he’d left them somewhere safe.
Natan, Benjam and their men got busy closing curtain and locking the doors and gate. Ellyon gathered up the staff and we withdrew with him to a smaller building at the back of the estate that offered an exit both west and north. A trio of maids that knew Ellyon very well volunteered to keep watch while we hid. Benjam would have preferred to use his men, but the girls would be far less conspicuous moving around the grounds. Two of them gave Ellyon a kiss, and the third wished she’d done the same.
I took out my map of the city and we leaned over it whi
le I described what was happening.
Corneth men had gathered at every intersection in the Merchants’ Quarter and all around the archives. A large group was still searching for us by the visitor’s dock and over a thousand of them had massed outside one of the gates to the grand plaza. Wayland had command of our men there, but they were terribly outnumbered. A second much larger force of Corneth men were gathering at their keep on the far side of the archives. The Hemari 4th was becoming agitated by all the movement and noise but none of them were moving in large groups.
Evand was still at the tavern between the Hemari Quarter and the archives, speaking with the officers of the 4th. Many of their souls tossed about as if on fire while the rest had latched onto Evand and Nace. Then Evand moved into the middle of them and the effect took solid hold.
“They’re moving west,” I said at one point and traced my finger along the map as Evand moved.
“Toward the garrisons,” Ellyon said, and I described the storm of activity there.
Liv badgered me with questions, and made me label a handful of rocks and move them around the map for her the many groups began to move.
“Evand is convincing the officers to join him,” I said, and began to see the difference between men who held silver and those who did not. Word spread fast and a crowd of seventeen thousand gathered in the gardens at the center of the garrison buildings.
The group searching for us was moving closer.
“Evand is speaking to the crowd,” I said and smiled when the souls of his audience began to sway. I must have shouted or clapped when their souls locked onto his because Liv shouted at me to explain.
The boys tried their best to keep us from yelling.
“Oh, Liv, Evand has taken command. The Hemari had attached themselves to him the same way Ellyon and Wayland do. They have started moving—fast.”
I called out details and she helped me match my move bits of rock around on my map of the city.
“They are taking control the city’s walls and intersections,” Ellyon said with terrific excitement, but then calmed. “Are the Corneth getting any closer to us?”
I found them and put my finger down two streets away from the Grano Estate.
“Telling Evand now,” I said and the three quick jerks of heat made them all cringe. Everyone in the city was affected, but none so much as Evand. The Hemari formed solid squares that moved east as the misshapen Corneth came south.
“Has anyone died?” Ellyon asked.
I clapped my eyes shut and tried to look at the entire city at once. “No, not yet. Wait. Yes. A man just died here,” I said and pointed to the spot. “And three more here.”
“The archives,” Liv said and jumped up. “Tell me everything happening there. Is Evand with that group?”
“Yes, with his officers and many thousands of Hemari. The Corneth outnumber them and are spilling across the plaza. More people are dying.”
I had to squint to tell one side from the other in the terrible storm of confused souls. “There is fighting everywhere in the plaza now. Oh, so many on both sides are dying now. Evand is pushing around the Corneth with another group, moving through the carols and studies, I think. They’ve charging out behind the Corneth. Oh, Evand, be careful! He is right in the middle, running into them. Aha! There, he’s killed the senior Corneth man. Oh, that’s broke them. The rest are running.”
“What about the rest of the city?” she asked.
I told her in quick sequence about all the small battles across the city. The city’s towers were in the Hemari control, but not the harbor or the many roads between us and the archives.
One of the maids started yelling, and then all three of them came running with tales of Corneth mobs in the streets.
“Time to move,” Ellyon said. “Did Evand send anyone our way? Are there any Hemari nearby?”
I searched and found several hundred moving toward us. A couple of them died while I watched. “Yes. They are fighting to get here.”
“The Corneth are trying to get ahold of us,” Liv said, folded up my map, and snatched up her daughter. “Lead the way, Emi.”
Benjam and Natan were ready for the move. We eased through the estate’s north wall and out into the streets. The air was thick with smoke and shouting and it was darker than I expected. The battle had taken much longer than it seemed to have, and I wondered how many times I’d left the world behind to watch the dance of souls. The patience of my friends was without limit.
We moved as fast as we could and I pointed us along a route between the marauding Corneth. At the far end of the park we spotted the Hemari, Okel in command. He smiled to see us and moved his men to envelop us.
“This way,” he said and pointed back the way he’d come.
“No, wait. More of the Corneth are spilling south. That way is blocked. We should go this way.”
“East?” Okel asked. “We could get pinned along the river. Are you sure?”
Everyone else was already moving. Benjam handed off his shield and weapon and scooped me up in his arms. “Point the way, little goddess.”
We became a rolling comet then, and it was like flicking in and out of a dream. We soared along east and north through alleys, and then smashed through an estate with a wide orchard of apples that wrapped back around west. A comet once again, we shot along above an angry tumble of ants until the smells of river fish woke me to the harbor warehouses we crept through. Then back south we hurtled between two nests of violent stars toward Evand’s ordered ranks.
The stink of opened bodies assaulted me next and I woke to a view of a thousand wounded men gathered upon the archive steps. Inside the grand foyer I found Evand with his new officers gathered around a map. Their fast words came to a stop as they saw us.
Each of them was wounded as well.
“Father, your arm,” I said. The mangled wreck below his left elbow looked as though it had gotten smashed in a gate or beneath a rolling horse. He had it bound up in a harness, and I would have run to him if not for the steadiness of his face and his soul. Around him, a network of captains and lieutenants had units of men moving a hundred places at once while scouts like Benjam fell back toward Evand like fat drops of warm rain.
“A trifle, right Natan?” Evand said and the pair laughed and tapped the ribbons upon their chests.
Liv and I did not find this funny at all. We spotted one of our volunteer priests and waved him forward.
“Not yet,” Evand said. “We are preparing a counter attack, and I want the Corneth to be stumbling around from the happy glow of healing when we hit them.”
“You mean to use the healing magic as a weapon,” Liv said with a ferocious smile and hurried his table full of maps. Evand’s many scrawled with ink and brush upon one caught Liv up to his fast moving plans.
When an office with a gashed forehead and a broken hand brought word that everyone was in position, I closed my eyes to make sure. The difference in the men in just that short time was a delight to witness. All of Evand’s men had stopped moving, and every one of them had their souls pointed at me.
Evand waved on the ready priest, and I gave the man a small hug before he withdrew a pace and began to sing. He was strong, and the smash of his white song knocked me fell flat on my back. I struggled for a moment through the friendly warmth to see what was happening in the city.
Evand’s soldiers had been ready for it, and when the priest’s verse ended they swarmed the Corneth in a hundred places at once. Every blockade, tower, and estate was overrun so fast that my skin was still tingling with magic when the action was over. I expected to watch as thousands died on both side, but there were only a few capable of deadly violence after such happy and welcome magic.
It was a thing to remember.
Scouts relayed reports of the outcome almost as fast as I could describe it.
“Alsonelm was ours,” I said.
The room cheered. Evand hefted me off the ground and kissed my cheek, as Liv join the grand embrace
.
Still his soul was fixed and ready. He saw that the priest was tended to while the great roaring of joy began to subside around us, and then he calling the room to attention.
“Ellyon,” he said first, “Find a general’s helmet and the insignia Liv made for us. Spend some time with the officers of the 4th. Emilia doesn’t know to look for them yet, but this city is loaded with a different kind of refugee. More of the 5th survived than we though. They are here in Alsonelm as are many Hemari from other divisions that fled Yarik’s command over the seasons. The Corneth, for all their flaws, quietly made the city a sanctuary for our lost brothers. It is upon my promise to see the honor of those men restored that we won the city. They will be the heart and soul of the new Hemari 7th. Be swift, general.”
Evand’s focus set deep into every Hemari there, and Ellyon went without another word. I closed my eyes once to try and find these men I had missed, and it galled me how obvious it was and yet how hard it was to find them without knowledge of the pattern. Their souls were not tied to any one grand captain or general. They were tied only to each other and all but invisible from their sadness.
“Benjam,” Evand said next, “You are now a captain of the Hemari 4th. Fix your sleeves and shoulders and assemble a fresh company of scouts. Make sure they are boys from the hills and fields south of here. We have Emilia’s eyes, but I need maps of every feature of terrain between us, Rahan, and Yarik as soon as possible.”
“I’ll need three companies to see it done properly.”
“You can have two.”
Benjam paused long enough to bow to me before he rushed out.
To Natan, Evand said, “Take command of every man here who survived the Warrens, and move them to the harbor with all speed and secure every ship before someone else thinks to make off with them. Once done, I give you leave to cross the river, and liberate the people of the city Servants’ Quarter.”
Natan’s stained soul bloomed and the joy spread. “May we offer them what Rahan offered us?”
“Yes. His treatment of the Warrens is above reproach. I empower you to do the same. Send across to Ellyon the men who would join the Hemari. You do not have a season, though. We may need to be on the move in a matter of days. Keep it simple. They have been healed. Get them feed and organized.”
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