“Aye, Commander.”
We came out into the inner bailey courtyard. There were several fires burning and people everywhere, some of them ferrying wounded to the small inner bailey hospital, others either trying to put out the fires or clean up rubble. The inner courtyard might not have fallen, but it had certainly been hit—and by something more than just trebuchets. The missiles the Adlin had used during their last attack on this place certainly hadn’t been capable of the damage done here. It almost looked like the stone had spontaneously blown apart—and the only people capable of causing that sort of havoc were earth witches of extreme power. Trey trusted those under his command, so did that mean someone else had slipped in here? For the most part, the outposts—other than West Range—weren’t used as vacation spots, but it wasn’t unknown for the kin of those serving at them to visit from time to time. Could one such visit have led to this destruction?
If the wind knew the answers to any of my questions, she certainly wasn’t saying. In fact, she was being remarkably mute. But maybe she was still grieving for Hedra’s soul.
No, the wind said. She is a betrayer, and unworthy of our collective grief. But we cannot fully answer your questions. She forbade us.
She? Hedra, you mean?
Yes.
If you deem her a betrayer, why do you still follow her wishes?
Because the order carries the weight of three, and while one lives, the order holds.
Meaning Saska, I gathered, given she was the only one left of the three women who’d been wearing the bracelets. Can she countermand the order alone?
No. Only death will break the binding.
And I certainly wasn’t going to kill her. Saska might be a part of whatever the hell was going on, but she was also our only real hope of finding answers. And maybe now that Hedra was dead, she’d be more willing to talk.
Two soldiers saluted the commander as we neared inner gatehouse tower and then opened the heavy metal door. Trey bounded up the stairs; I followed, not sure what else to do. But that uncertainty had no sooner crossed my mind when he glanced back at me and gave me a nod. It was almost as if he’d heard the thought, which was decidedly odd considering he wasn’t even wearing an earwig. And while I could talk to the wind, he couldn’t, so it was unlikely she’d passed on the inner question.
Another two soldiers stood watch at the top of the stairwell. Trey pressed his hand against a scanner to the right of the heavy metal doors and, once they’d opened, strode inside. This room was basically a smaller-scale version of the one in the outer bailey. My gaze immediately went to the wide windows that lined the front of the room. The damage was even more extensive than it had looked from a distance. It wasn’t only the left half the main gatehouse that had fallen, but a good twenty or more feet of the wall on that side. It would have taken one hell of a powerful explosion to cause that sort of damage, which surely meant that while the Adlin might have been involved in the attack—and they certainly had been given the number of bodies below in the courtyard—they weren’t the brains behind this whole event.
We desperately needed to find out who actually was.
Ruma turned around as he entered. “Glad to have you back, Commander.”
He nodded. “Any idea how the breach happened yet?”
“Unfortunately yes. We think we caught the perpetrators on video before comms went down.” Her gaze flickered to mine and, just for a moment, I thought I saw a flicker of hostility. “Grant, on the main screen if you please.”
“You saw them, and didn’t stop them?” Trey said.
Ruma nodded. “You’ll understand the lack of urgency when you see the playback, Commander.”
He crossed his arms and waited. The big screen sitting above the main viewing platform flickered then came to life; what appeared was a nighttime view of the outer courtyard, with the main gatehouse front and center. Music and laughter could be heard—no doubt the equinox celebrations in full swing—but on the screen all was quiet. Aside from the watch officers making regular patrols, the courtyard was all but abandoned.
“Skip to the important part, Grant,” Ruma said.
The playback rolled forward at speed. At nine fifteen and thirty-four seconds, two figures appeared. They were dressed in black and were rather small in stature, appearing as little more than shadows in the night-held courtyard. Silver glinted on the wrists of both of them and my stomach began to churn.
They paused for several seconds, looking around carefully; one of them glanced briefly toward the camera, her face pale and thin. Shock coursed through me.
Not just because her entire face and every bit of visible skin was lavender-gray, but also because she couldn’t have been any older than ten or eleven.
“No,” I said in disbelief. “Two children can’t be responsible for all this destruction.”
“These two aren’t ordinary children.” This time there was no denying the hostility in Ruma’s gaze. “They’re stained, for a start—”
“Ruma,” Trey said, with just a hint of reprimand. “Enough.”
She glanced back at the screen, but anger still vibrated through every part of her body. Why was it when the unstained did something bad, no one thought to tar the entire community with the same brush, and yet the opposite was true when it came to us? Life wasn’t fair, I was well aware of that, but it was nevertheless frustrating.
I returned my gaze to the screen and watched the two children run across the yard and disappear inside the gatehouse. For a second there was no further movement, and no sound other than the ongoing celebrations. Then a rumble began, softly at first but gradually getting louder, until it seemed as if the earth itself was screaming. And perhaps it was, because a few seconds later, it heaved upwards with such force that one part of the gate sheered away from the other, and the section of wall connected to it was blasted away. Dust, earth, and metal exploded through the air and, for several more minutes, there was nothing else to be seen. When the debris settled and the dust began to clear, the gatehouse was down, the alarms were sounding, and the Adlin were pouring through the broken section of the wall.
“And the children?” Trey’s voice held little in the way of emotion.
“We presume they died in the explosion. We lost the cameras when the Adlin tore down the comms towers, but there was no sight of them before that point.”
“Did any of the Adlin get inside the inner bailey?” I asked.
“No.” Ruma didn’t even glance at me. “The Adlin don’t appear to have possessed whatever device the kids used, and the flooded moat stopped them getting too close to the inner wall. They retreated rather quickly.”
The Adlin never retreated quickly; if they’d done so here, then there’d been a purpose behind it.
It was also rather obvious that kids hadn’t been carrying anything. Not in their hands, and not on their tiny bodies. Whatever they’d used must have come from within—from the power of the earth or the air. I opened my mouth to say as much, but closed it again at Trey’s sharp look. Once again, he seemed to know what I’d been thinking.
“How did those kids get in here?” he asked. “They’re not from Blacklake.”
“No.” Ruma hesitated. “We found them unconscious in the wasteland a day and a half ago and brought them in. Both were severely malnourished and dehydrated, but otherwise unharmed. We had them in the infirmary but not under guard.”
“Whereabouts in Tenterra did you find them?” I asked.
She gave me the coordinates and I glanced at Trey. “That’s close to where I initially found Saska, Commander.”
“I doubt that’s a coincidence.”
“No.” I hesitated. “Perhaps I should go interview Treace? She might be able to tell us a bit more about the two children.”