The two agents nodded to Shula and left the room, passing by Garet without acknowledgement.
“Those two hold grudges,” Shula said, pausing to help him gather up his papers. “I’d watch my back if I were you. They make bad enemies.”
“What about you?” Garet asked. “Are you a friend or an enemy?”
She handed him the last ledger and laughed. “Both? Neither? I’m just here to do the King’s bidding and keep the human demons from the door. An unlucky word, but all too true for the likes of Gost.”
Garet asked, “Do you think he is really behind this?”
Shula fanned herself again. “I wish they would open the windows. Of course, this being the Shouting Room, they’re all nailed shut! If Gost is in charge, that might explain why that giant Maroster is missing.”
“Do you believe him to be in this tunnel?” Garet asked.
“Or buried under it! If Gost is the one we seek, well, he’s not a forgiving man, and things have gone badly for the Masks of late. They’ve lost their field commander, and now their very reason for existence has disappeared. If it’s Gost! But he is the smartest person on Bixa’s list, and therefore the most likely. However,” she added and winked at Garet, “you’re pretty smart yourself. Maybe it’s you who’s behind the Masks!” And she cackled all the way out into the hallway.
GARET WAS STILL
in the room when a steward came in.
“Two Banes to see you,” she said, managing to sound both annoyed and gratified to be delivering such a message to such a man.
His breath caught, and he rushed to the anteroom where he had once waited with Salick, hoping that she would be there again.
“Oh, it’s you two,” he said when he opened the doors.
“How rude! And I thought distance was supposed to bring true friends closer,” Marick said.
Beside him, Dorict rolled his eyes. “Perhaps he should move back to the Midlands or to the Southern Deserts. He could leave us another note when he goes.”
The Blue’s tone was scathing, and Garet blushed. The meeting he had longed for had been replaced by the one he had dreaded.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I had no choice! Shirin’s exile forced my hand, and you two weren’t around. That was probably for the best, since you would have tried to talk me out of it.”
He backed up and sat down in one of the spindly chairs set against the wall, a chair that was probably not meant to be sat in, since it creaked alarmingly.
Dorict’s shoulders unstiffened a bit, and he shrugged. “What makes you think we would have bothered to try? You can be just as stubborn as Salick when it comes to your principles. Nobility must be such a burden!”
“I wasn’t trying to be—” Garet began, but Marick interrupted.
“You’re right,” he said, punching Dorict in the shoulder. “He’s just like her, at least that’s what we told her the other day.” He went over to a bowl of artful ceramic fruit to see if they were detachable.
“Did she send you?” Garet asked, allowing a little bit of hope to creep into his tone.
Dorict relented and shook his head. He put a hand on Garet’s shoulder, but retracted it quickly when the chair creaked even more.
“No,” Marick said, “I’m afraid she is still angry that you left. Tarix sent us to tell you what we found in the Twelfth Ward, since Branet refuses to. The Masters are ready to spit fire over his handling of this, though none have put themselves forward as a replacement, even though I—”
Dorict stomped a booted foot on the polished tiles. “Quiet, you fool. Tarix told you she’d toss you from the Outer Wall if you tried to make her Hallmaster by your tricks! And put that apple back in the bowl.”
He turned to Garet. “Chirat is the one you want. He’s a trader in the Twelfth. The carter who took the Masks out to that logging station works for him.”
Garet stood up, and the chair groaned, perhaps in relief.
“That falls well within what we already suspected. Please thank Master Tarix for me. I must go and report this.”
He made to leave, but Marick stopped him. “Wait, you fool! How can we go back unless we know what’s going on? Information for information, that’s a fair trade, isn’t it?”
Garet looked over to Dorict. The Blue nodded.
“Tarix will want to know,” he said.
Garet thought for a moment. He looked to the doors of the anteroom, wondering who might be listening just outside.
“Let me talk to Captain Bixa and perhaps the King, if he will see me.”
“And why would he not?” Marick said, juggling three of the bright apples. “Especially when you look so important in those new clothes. What a marvelous coat, and is that a sword I see on your belt?”
Garet blushed again. He knew his new clothes were far more costly than a Bane’s uniform.
“You even have a new sash?” Marick added, pointing at the narrow baldric that ran from Garet’s shoulder to his belt.
“That’s to keep my sword from falling down,” he said.
Marick laughed, almost dropping an apple, saving it from shattering by catching it on the top of his boot like a street juggler in the market.
“Put those back,” Dorict said. He bent over to rescue the threatened apple and carefully put it in the bowl. He came for the other two, but Marick held one out of reach.
“Vinir wants the news later. I’ll save this one for her to see if she tries to bite it!” he said.
Dorict threw up his hands. “Will you send a message to the Hall?” he asked Garet.
“Stay here,” Garet said, and left them arguing about artificial apples and appropriate behaviour in a palace.
When he returned, Marick was planted in a chair, which did not creak under the little Bane’s weight, and Dorict stood in front of him, arms crossed as if daring him to try and get up.
“I talked to the Captain, and she talked to the King. Please tell Master Tarix and Hallmaster Branet that two representatives from the Banehall should present themselves here tomorrow as the sun rises. They can come along when we raid Chirat’s warehouse. Is that a fair trade?”
Dorict nodded, but Marick slipped around his larger friend to answer. “Only if I’m one of the two, since I’m the one who found out—ow! Dorict, let go of my ear!”
“Good luck tomorrow, Garet,” Dorict said, and led his protesting partner out the door.
Garet sighed and made to sit down on Marick’s chair, then thought better of it. He was tired of meetings and contentious plans. Perhaps he would go to the market and buy some of Torfor’s buns and sit a while with the peaceable old man.
He went out the kitchen gate to avoid the cold stares of the door steward and the colder stares of the guards. He might be a mysterious irritation to them, but he was only a brief annoyance to the cooks.
The air had the freshness that comes after spring storms wash all the smoke and stink from the air. Above him, the dome of Heaven shone blue, and marriage bells rang from the temple. People were everywhere today, for the demons had disappeared and peace had come to the city for the first time in six hundred years.
THE WOMAN CAME
crashing out of the brush, face scratched, hands bloody, but she didn’t stop. She tossed aside the useless bow and ran as if her life depended on it. The screeching call of a hunter told her that it did.
She slid down the banks and into the stream. Her only chance was to confuse her scent until she could get to the river. If she could swim across the Ar—and that was a big if, for it ran wild between Shirath and Old Torrick—she might live another day, and so might her city.
She kept moving, splashing as little as possible. The cold water, fresh from the high hills to the north, chilled her legs. After a league of travel, she paused to wash off the blood on her hands and face. Those hands were shaking as she scrubbed at them with the hem of her coat. The fear she had felt behind her all morning was growing, but that wasn’t the only terror in her heart. An image of what she had stumbled upon rose up, and she retched as an empty stomach tried to purge itself again.
There was a hooting noise behind her, and she turned to see a Shrieker Demon sniffing along the bank. This close the fear it cast joined with the cold water to freeze her in place.
The demon raised its beaked head and saw her. Its tongue extended from between its teeth, and it crept down the brushy bank towards her.
The woman threw everything she had into breaking the fear spell the beast laid upon her. Could she but move her legs, she could run. Could she but move her hands, she could take the knife from its sheath and fight. Ever since that night in the Banehall when a demon had killed her lover, Draneck, she had loathed the monsters, hated them enough to create the Masks with Gost’s devious support. Those silkstone faces let her kill demons, and that became the central fact of her life. She lived to kill them. To kill them all if she could. She drove that thought into her body like a red-hot spike.
The beast moved closer, and Shirin flexed her fingers.
“
WHY MUST WE
go through the Sixteenth Ward?” Branet demanded. The Hallmaster was in a fouler mood than normal, which explained why Relict pretended not to hear.
Garet grit his teeth. The Hallmaster had been asking questions of the air instead of to him directly. Branet had barely glanced at him since Captain Bixa ordered Garet to escort them to the rallying point in the fields by the Outer Gates of the Twelfth Ward.
“So as not to draw attention to the number of guards and agents—and Banes—who are gathering to raid the warehouse, Hallmaster,” he said.
Relict caught his eye and gave him a lopsided smile. “A good plan, Garet. No need to alert this Chirat of his approaching arrest! Don’t you think so, Hallmaster?”
Branet grunted and kept walking through the Ward. They came to the great horse barns of the Ward, but had no time to admire the fine stock bred there. Relict tried to make conversation.
“The people of this Ward really know horses,” he said. “Do you ever wonder why some Wards are good at one thing and not another?”
Branet said, “No, I haven’t.”
Relict deflated, and Garet stepped in to rescue the Master. “Barick has records saying where in the river valley the people of each Ward originated. The Sixteenth’s citizens came from the drylands between the southern hills and the desert. They didn’t farm that much, but bred the best horses even then.”
“What of the Ward we are . . . searching, the Twelfth? Where did they start out?”
“In a trader’s cart, no doubt,” Branet said, giving the lie to his apparent disinterest in the conversation.
Garet smiled in spite of himself. He waited until they were past a rowdy band of horse wranglers before he answered. “You are right, Hallmaster. The traders were scattered throughout the valley, answering to family and trade agreements rather than a particular lord. Even so, they were tolerated for their usefulness. Indeed, they became quite powerful, playing each Lord against the others. When the city was built, they demanded their own Ward, and were given it.”
“That is a lot of influence,” Relict said, as they came through the gate and turned left, following the curve of the Outer Wall. “And they still have their fingers in all the trade going from Ward to Ward and from city to city.”
“Running afoul of the Banehall is going to lose them that power,” Branet said. He looked sidelong at Garet. “They will realize that we in the Hall must remain the leaders of this city. Perhaps you will regret choosing a lesser power to serve.”
Relict’s eyes widened, and he stepped forward as if he would strike the larger man, a Bane who had once been his good friend, but Garet restrained him.
“No, Relict, please control yourself. There is a great deal to do today, and we must hurry to join the others.”
He turned to the Hallmaster, whose expression hinted at regret over his words. “Sir,” Garet said, “I do regret leaving the Hall, but I would not change my decision. There are no lesser powers here, no more than there are lesser lives. I serve the city, not its Palace nor its Hall, and I pray you do too.”
With that he turned and continued along the Wall. Relict caught up with him by the time they passed the Twelfth Ward’s Outer Gates.
“Well said, Garet! Don’t worry, we can talk. He follows just beyond the sting of your words. Do you think the King would give you back to us so that I could tie you beside our dear Hallmaster’s ear? You could shout wisdom at him all day!”
Garet smiled at the picture in his mind. “I have a job, Relict, but if this raid goes badly, I might need another,” he told the Red.
Relict shook his head. “I wish you well in it, though we miss you in the Hall. I don’t know if you have been informed of this, but we were kept out of the compound around Lord Kirel’s house last night when we tried to have a look for that tunnel entrance. The guards gave Taron and his team some lie about unsafe walls and turned them away.”