Andarack scratched his cheek. “So this Caller Demon was no king? Someone else was. But why? That demons are a Heaven-sent curse is easy to understand, but as a weapon in a war? Wars have a reason, though they may be idiotic ones. How can we be in a six-hundred years war and not know it?”
“And are we winning?” Tarix asked.
Garet shrugged. “I think the reasons for it are lost in the past for now. Many records were destroyed when the demons came. We may never know why, but I fear we are not winning. In fact, I think we have been losing all this time, if only because our adversaries have what they want, our imprisonment.”
Tarix looked at him in surprise. “How are we imprisoned? We have no jailers, no bars across our windows.”
Garet waved an arm at the city beyond Andarack’s hall.
“We’ve built our own cells, though we call them Wards, and we dare go only a few leagues beyond them, and even then not without a Bane guarding us. Fear is better than bars. As for jailers, that’s what the demons are, attacking us just enough to keep us cowering in our cells. Because these attacks have continued for so long, they must be achieving their intent, and our confinement is the only thing that they have managed.”
Salick stood suddenly, tipping the wine glass over on the table.
“So why have the attacks changed now? First the Midlands, then the Caller, now the increase, how do you explain that?” Salick demanded. She was flushed, and her hands were tightened into fists. Tarix put a warning hand on her arm.
“Let him speak, Salick. I know it rankles to think ourselves pawns and prisoners in someone else’s game, but there is at least some sense in what he says.”
“Sense?” said Salick. “Heaven has decreed this curse for Shirath. Who are we to question it? Questions do nothing but ruin things. Our Hall is under attack from both demons and the Masks while we sit here and debate a question that can’t be answered!”
Garet stood up and deliberately placed his half-full wine glass on the table beside him.
“Salick, I know things are bad right now, but give it some time and things will get better. We just have to think this through.”
Perhaps he was talking about demons, perhaps he was talking about something else.
“But it does matter that the attacks changed. It might mean that they have tired of this war and want to finish it, but I think they now act out of fear.”
Tarix finished her wine, and Andarack poured another glass for her.
“Fear of what?” the Red asked.
“Us,” Garet said. “They fear our increasing ability to fight back. Deaths from demon attacks have been falling for centuries for both Banes and citizens, or so Records Master Arict tells me. The city’s population has also been growing, especially since the plague of two hundred years ago. And one more thing, after the King and Lord Andarack left, Barick talked me half to death while we sorted those scrolls. He’s a terrible gossip, but maybe that makes him a good Historian. He told me that the Ward Lords and King are already planning to extend the city or even build a new town to the northeast. We’re bursting out of the walls of our prison, and we are getting very good at killing our jailers. Maybe that’s why this war is changing: first with the Caller and now with increased attacks.”
“Enough!” Tarix said. “You’ll make my head burst if you keep stuffing it like this. Let me think on this first and then you can fill it up again. What made you invent this grand conspiracy?”
Garet looked down at his Master. Her face was troubled, but as long as he told her the truth, he knew that she would listen.
“I’ve wondered about this for a long time, but it was seeing Lord Andarack and the King play surround. I dreamed of the game later, and realized that we in Shirath were both Hunters and Prey. We hunt the demons, and they hunt us, just like on the board. Why are the Midlands menaced now instead of six-hundred years ago, and why the new demon forms and increased attacks? It might be our planned expansion, but I’m not really sure. What I am sure of is that there has to be a mind behind this change in tactics, and we know the demons have little in the way of thought.”
Tarix nodded and said, “There is a logic in what you say, but I’ll tell you this: your demon-wielding jailers have allies on the inside of this cell, for if Masks and Banes fight, then the city will fall while we are distracted. That is why the Hallmaster has demanded the King catch and imprison all these ‘amateurs’, and he will not back down.”
“Nor should he!” Salick said. She turned to Garet. “Don’t you agree?”
“It is not my place to say,” Garet said. He had no wish to make her even angrier.
They took their leave of Andarack and rejoined Ratal and the others.
“We didn’t see you, so we finished the rest of the Ward and came back here,” he told Tarix.
“You’re beginning to improve, Ratal,” his master told him. “Kesla’s absence is bringing out the best in you, though I’ll let you tell her that particular piece of news.”
Ratal grinned and swung the flail up onto his shoulder, causing the two Greens to duck.
“Right then, to the Hall!”
Salick did not walk beside Garet, but took the lead as if she wished to arrive at the Banehall first and make sure it was still standing. Tarix dropped back beside him and put a comforting hand on his shoulder.
“Give her time, Garet. She worries about the Hall more than most, maybe more than anyone except Branet. And like most of us, she cannot understand how to look beyond the Hall, take it out of the centre of things and put something else there. This war you speak of does that, and it frightens her. Claws, it frightens me! I’d think it all moonshine and mist except for the Caller’s attack last year. That shook me to my bones, and nothing since has seemed sure again.”
Garet was surprised she would speak so openly, and gave only a nod as a response.
The Red smiled at his reserve and continued. “Mandarack once told me that Heaven sent you to us because we needed your eyes, needed to see what you saw before we all walked blindly off a cliff. We listened to you then, and I’ll listen now, though your words trouble me even more than before.”
“You think I’m right?” Garet asked.
Tarix slapped him on the back. “I think you are right, but the Hallmaster, the King, and the Masks all think they are right. You, however, have an eye for what serves the city, not what serves yourself. That, my young Green, can be a weapon as powerful as a demon.”
The Hall was still standing when they returned, but there was a beehive’s swarm of Banes in the courtyard and before the main doors. Pairs ran off towards the bridges and the Hall-side Wards as others came running back.
Tarix waved down one such pair, a Gold and a Blue, as they passed.
“Hey there! Kitoroth, what in Heaven’s name is going on?”
Kitoroth slowed but waved his companion on.
“I’ll catch up. You go ahead and warn the Palace side patrols! Sorry, Master, we’ve not much time. A Bane was attacked by the Masks. They chased him through the fields and city, they say. He’s hiding at an astrologer’s house. She sent word and the Hallmaster’s going there himself with twenty others to bring the lad back.”
At that, he sped off again, and looked like he would catch the Blue before the other made it to the bridge gates.
Salick and Garet looked at each other.
“Could it be . . .” Salick began. She started after the running Banes but Tarix held her back.
“What do you two know of this?” she demanded.
Garet replied for them both. “It might be Marick. He’s been away from the Hall for these two days.”
“And he is the most likely of Banes to find trouble!” Tarix said and raised her eyes to the sky. “I love that boy like he was my own, but I swear that I will kill him myself if he’s hurt.”
She pointed to the Hall, and the others turned to see a column of Banes jogging towards them. Red sashes graced their uniforms, and their weapons, from Relict’s axe to Forlinect’s spear, were all held ready.
Branet was in the lead and signaled them all to stop as they approached Tarix.
“Tarix, I’m glad you’re back. Have you heard of this outrage?”
“I have. Where are we going?”
Branet stared and shook his head. “I need you to guard the Hall. We must travel fast and maybe fight our way through to the Fifth Ward!”
Tarix glared and turned to Ratal. “Take these others back and get all the Golds to guard each entrance to the Hall. Lock it tight until we return.”
She shouldered her trident and said, “Set the pace, Hallmaster, we have a Bane to rescue.”
The Reds set off. Garet was glad to see Tarix keeping up with the rest of them, running beside her husband, Relict. At that speed, he guessed she might pay a price for it tomorrow, but he doubted she would fall behind. Ratal called them to follow and they returned to the Hall. Dorict was sitting on the steps. He jumped up when he saw them approach.
“I knew it would be Marick. Who else would have a pack of Masks chasing him? Oh, what trouble has that fool gotten himself into now?”
The poor boy was fairly bouncing in his worry and irritation. Garet put an arm around his shoulders and turned his head to see the last of the Reds going through the central bridge gate.
What trouble indeed?
ON THE FIRST
day of his investigation, Marick was in no trouble at all. He had walked out into the Wards, going from one to another looking for friendly ears in which to whisper his questions. Who are the Masks? Where can I find them? Do you know of any Duelists still free?
Despite his charms, which he knew to be many, and his guile, those questions went unanswered, and those he thought to be friends and admirers turned cold and bid him be off.
One, an old woman of foul temper and fouler language, threw a cabbage at him.
“Go on, you clawed beast! Heaven smite you! Stop bothering a poor, defenseless woman and go away. Try the Twelfth, if you want your throat cut, and good luck to them.”
Marick made an elaborate bow and ran off. Old Reebat might be unpleasant, but there wasn’t a rumor in the city that didn’t find its way into her hairy ears. He had no idea why she suggested the Twelfth Ward—it was the Trader’s Ward, one set aside to hold the many, cross-related families of the great trading houses that existed long before Shirath was built. They had a hand, or at least a few fingers, in every trade that went on within the Walls or with the other cities of the South. Marick knew little about them, for they had always seemed too dull to attract his attention.
It was late now to repeat his questions in the Twelfth. Yawning, he went back out into the city to find a place to sleep—anywhere but the Banehall. He had several nooks and corners set in his memory, each one convenient to some kind of scam or plot, and sneaking away to one gave Marick a feeling of freedom that was as precious to him as air.
Lately, he had begun to question his life as a Bane. They made little use of his talents, the Hallmaster thought him a pest, and even Garet and Salick were beginning to sound like the others in their criticisms.
He smiled. Let them snore, pressed down by tradition and stupidity!
The sun in his eyes woke him. He rolled off the bench set in the corner of a courtyard in the First Ward. A small girl with a large bucket of water stood nearby, staring at him. He smiled and waved, and she ran away, water sloshing out onto the stones. A neck-cracking stretch, a yawn and a scratch, then he was on his way. He hoped the day would be a busy one.
First, he snuck into the Banehall and left a note for the still-sleeping Dorict. He looked down at the Blue as he slept and wondered at their friendship. They had nothing in common except their shared experiences. Dorict hated adventures. He scolded Marick whenever he tried to have some fun, and worse, he loved reading and studying.
Marick shivered. Their friendship must be Heaven’s Fate, for there could be no other reason. Sneaking out of the building again, he dropped into a stall in the Palace Plaza market and traded the cabbage he had kept from yesterday’s investigations for the loan of a set of patched clothing: trousers, tunic, and a faded green cloak that were never likely to sell. The merchant, a one-eyed occasional thief from the Fifth Ward, accepted the trade wordlessly. He and Marick had done business before. The Bane’s shield and uniform were stuffed under the shop’s counter and covered with a basket.
So disguised, Marick went back across the bridge, avoiding the patrols of his Hallmates and skirting the Banehall by following the inner wall. At the Twelfth Ward gate, he slipped in between ox carts piled high with bolts of cloth.
He loped along, past Lord Sharock’s house and up the main avenue dividing the houses of the rich from the tenements of the poor. Marick had never liked this Ward. It was too ordered, each building placed as carefully as a piece on a game board. On his left were the square towers of the Trading Families, with warehouses on the first floor and luxurious rooms above. Each was a uniform size and four stories tall, and each had an elaborate clan crest carved over the door. Unlike buildings in the rest of the city, there were no windows on the first floor, only massive, iron-studded doors, as if each family suspected their neighbours of plotting theft and murder.