21
The first step was breaking into the city. Kylar knew there had to be dozens of smugglers’ routes, but that wasn’t the kind of information smugglers handed out at Sa’kagé parties. He did know what he was looking for, though. It would be hidden within a few hundred paces of the walls, and it would emerge somewhere onto rock so as not to take hoofprints and wagon tracks, and it would be somewhere close to one of the main roads.
On the low hills surrounding the city, a month ago buildings had lined every road: taverns, farmhouses, hostelries, and any of the innumerable trade houses that catered to travelers who hadn’t the coin for accommodations or services in the city. Now, there were no buildings.
The Ceurans had taken everything. They had dismantled every building and brought the materials into their camp. Kylar could only imagine the frenzy the Sa’kagé must have been in, trying to decide which tunnels to collapse and which to salvage, hoping to preserve their own way out of the city if all else failed.
He moved through the Ceuran camp slowly, dodging from shadow to shadow. He had eschewed invisibility for a hazy black, hoping it would be harder to see than the odd distortions of sleet hitting something that wasn’t there.
His eyes should have given him a distinct advantage in searching for a smugglers’ entrance. He finally found a large, low rock sitting feet from the main road with trees on either side of it. It was perfect. If the rock swung open, smugglers could pull their wagon onto the main road unseen and leave no tracks. Kylar brushed the sleet away from the rock and saw tell-tale scrapes from the iron-bound wagon wheels grinding against the rock. This was it.
Ten minutes later, he still hadn’t made any progress. Every two minutes, he had to hide as a sentry made his rounds, and every five minutes a different sentry overlapped from the opposite side. Kylar couldn’t blame the interruptions, though. He just couldn’t find the catch that opened the door. Maybe it was the sleet, making his fingers clumsy with the cold. Or maybe he just wasn’t as good as he thought.
Immortal, not invincible. Why’d Durzo have to be right all the time? Come to think of it, where the hell is Durzo?
The thought affected Kylar more profoundly than he expected. He’d lived for months thinking his master was dead. In all those months, Durzo hadn’t bothered to come see Kylar. Kylar had thought himself his master’s best friend. Even when Aristarchos ban Ebron had told him all of the heroes his master had been, Kylar had still thought that his relationship with Durzo was special. In a way, learning all the great men his master had been made Kylar feel better about himself. But time had moved on, and apparently so too had Durzo. Whatever brief importance Kylar had had in that man’s seven-century-long life, it was finished.
Kylar sat down on rock. The sleet soaked through to his underclothes in seconds. It made him feel even worse.
~Don’t tell me you’re going to cry.~
You mind?
~Wake me when the self-pity’s done, would you?~
Damn you, you sound just like Durzo.
~So I stay with the man night and day for seven centuries and he rubs off on me. You only spent ten years with him, and look how much like him you are.~
That caught Kylar off guard. I’m not like him.
~No, you’re just out here trying to save the world by yourself—again—by coincidence.~
He did this kind of thing a lot?
~Ever hear of the Miletian Regression? The Death of Six Kings? The Vendazian Uprising? The Escape of the Grasq Twins?~
Kylar hesitated. Um, actually . . . no.
The ka’kari sighed. Kylar wondered how it did that.
“I’m an idiot,” Kylar said. He stood up. His butt was numb.
~An epiphany! Long overdue, too. But then, I’ve come to expect small things.~
Kylar walked to the wall. The last few hundred paces were empty of Ceuran soldiers—none of them were foolish enough to stray within bowshot. The only place the Ceurans had moved closer was along the shores of the Plith, where they were moving great quantities of rock to fill in part of the river. All along the shore and the approach to it, they’d built a corridor to protect the workers from arrows. The wytches had protected every approach to the city except the river. Kylar supposed that they’d figured a couple of meisters standing on either bank could keep any ships or swimmers from making it through the narrow passage. The Cenarians didn’t have that luxury. This was where Garuwashi would attack. Once one bank was filled in enough, he could start sending skirmishers in.
If the sa’ceurai came and fought one-on-one with Cenarian soldiers, Kylar had no doubt who would have the larger pile of corpses at the end of the day.
Kylar walked to the wall. The great stones had been hardened with spells, and fitted more tightly to their neighbors than weight and mortar could accomplish. Kylar brought the ka’kari to his hands and feet.
~I should make you swim.~
Kylar smirked and felt the stone dimple under his fingers and toes. He began climbing.
Any hopes he had that Terah Graesin wasn’t going to do something stupid died as he reached the top of the wall. With four hours until dawn, men were already preparing to attack the sa’ceurai. Most of the soldiers were still asleep, and the horses still in their stables, but a huge area had been cleared inside the south gate. Flags had been planted so that the regiments could find their positions first thing in the morning, and squires were scurrying around, making sure armor and weapons were in top condition. From the size of the area cleared, Kylar guessed that the queen was preparing an all-out attack at dawn, committing perhaps fifteen thousand men for the attack.
He squinted at the flags, doing the math. He wouldn’t have said she had so many men.
The answer was in the flags nearest the gate. More than one flag bore a rabbit. The queen had conscripted Rabbits—and put totally untrained peasants at the spearhead of the attack on the most highly trained sa’ceurai in the world? Genius. It was one thing to throw your peasants against the other side’s peasants when you had space to try to bring in cavalry from the side or something, but when the Cenarians came pouring out the gate, Garuwashi’s sa’ceurai would meet them immediately. The battle would be confined to one front—the peasants would find themselves all alone, getting slaughtered, unable to move forward because of the sa’ceurai, unable to move back because the rest of the army was trying to get out of the south gate.
It would probably only be minutes before they panicked, and then it was only a matter of how many people would be slaughtered before Luc Graesin called off the attack and tried to shut the gates before the sa’ceurai got into the city.
Kylar dropped into the great yard and stole a leather gambeson from a pile, along with trousers and a tunic. A minute later, he stepped out from behind a smithy as a boy hurried past pushing a cart filled with cheap swords and pole arms.
“So the Rabbits get to lead the attack? Hit ’em at dawn?” Kylar said, waving at the battle flags. “How’d that happen?”
The kid lit up. “We volunteered.”
“I know a man who volunteered to snort guri pepper sauce. It didn’t make it a good idea.”
“What are you saying?” the kid asked, offended.
“Why’s the queen letting them go first?”
“It’s not the queen. It’s her brother Luc. He’s Lord General now.”
“And?”
The kid scowled. “He said the uh, the casualties would be highest among the first ones out. You know, till we took out their archers. The Rabbits ain’t scared of nothing.”
So the new Lord General manages to cull his bravest citizens and ensure a crushing defeat, all at once. Brilliant.
“You mind? I got work to do,” the kid said.
Kylar stole a horse. He didn’t have the time to walk to the castle. As he mounted, a groom came toward him. “Hey, who are you? That horse belongs to—”
Kylar brought the mask of judgment to his face in a rush and whipped his head toward the man, snarling, blue flame leaping up in his eyes and mouth.
The groom leapt backward and tripped into a horse trough with a yell.
Kylar rode as fast as he could. He left the horse and the stolen clothes before he got to East Kingsbridge and went invisible. He ran the rest of the way, leaving guards with their heads swiveling, trying to find where the patter of running feet had come from. Rather than run through the twisting, illogical halls of the castle, he climbed the wall. In minutes, he dropped onto the queen’s balcony, which was still missing part of the railing where Kylar had freed Mags Drake’s corpse. He looked inside.
The queen wasn’t alone.