Devin grabbed one of the guards. “Find out what’s happening down there.”
The guard disappeared. Javel watched him go, picturing the scene at the gate below; the Gate Guard would be scrambling to bolster the doors, to pull the drawbridge. They knew how to repel invaders; it was part of the standard training for a Gate Guard. But if there were too many people on the bridge, it would not rise, and the gates, while strong iron, would not hold forever against a steel ram. Even the moat was not deep enough to act as an impediment. If Vil was still in charge of the Gate Guard, he would be down there, calm and competent as ever, directing men as they bricked the gate and strained to raise the bridge. But if the attacking force was large enough, every guard on the gate would know that these were holding actions only.
Arliss turned to Devin. “What about the Mace’s back way out? The tunnels?”
“I don’t know them,” Devin replied, looking shamefaced. “He never told me.”
“Andalie?”
She shook her head. Another blow shook the walls around them, and Javel blinked as grit silted down from the ceiling into his eyes.
“Have the Mort invaded again?” Devin demanded. “How could we not know?”
“It’s no invasion,” Andalie replied. “This is the Arvath.”
Javel felt a tug on his trouser leg, and looked down to find a small girl staring up at him. She was tiny, little more than a toddler, but her eyes were strangely adult. Javel tried to ignore her, but she kept on tugging, her small face determined, and finally he bent down and asked, “What is it, child?”
“Gate Guard,” the girl whispered, and her voice did not match her age either; the tone was mocking, somehow familiar.
“Yes?”
“You might still be useful.”
Javel recoiled, but the child had already released his leg. She toddled over to the woman, Andalie, and climbed up into her arms. They stared at each other for a long moment, as though speaking, and a shudder worked its way up Javel’s spine. For the past few days, he had been riding too hard to even think of drink, but in that moment he would have given anything for a shot of whiskey. Perhaps ten.
A rhythmic thrumming echoed beneath their feet, and Arliss shook his head. “The gate won’t hold forever. We have to barricade the wing.”
Andalie nodded. “We need furniture. The heavy pieces.”
Thinking of the heavy armoire in his room, Javel headed back there. But he paused in the doorway, struck by the pitiful pile of belongings at the foot of the bed. He had brought only a few things with him to Mortmesne, preferring to leave their house just as it was, so that when Allie came home, she would see that nothing had changed. The idea made him smile now, but it was a smile full of winter. His old life was gone, wiped away, and the sad, half-full state of his baggage seemed to prove it.
Gate Guard, the girl’s voice, Dyer’s voice, echoed inside his head.
“I was,” Javel replied, almost absently. He had been a Gate Guard for more than ten years, and a decent one. Going to a job every day, a job that needed doing, and performing it competently . . . there had been honor in that. But a man eaten up by his past mistakes could not see it. Javel bent to his baggage, picked up his sword, and stared at it for a long moment, feeling as though he stood on the edge of a precipice.
Useful.
He turned and strode down the hallway, into the great open room that housed the Queen’s empty throne. When he turned the corner, he saw the Guard preparing to barricade the great double doors with heavy furniture, several pieces already grouped on the far wall.
“Hold!” Javel shouted. “Let me pass!”
“You don’t want to go out there,” Devin told him. “There’s a mob, at least two hundred, plus the Mort.”
“I’m a Gate Guard,” Javel replied. “Let me pass.”
“Your funeral.” Devin knocked four times on the door, then raised the bar and opened it wide enough for Javel to slip through.
“We can’t let you back in!” Devin called after him.
“Right,” Javel muttered, increasing his pace. The sound of the ram was much louder out here, a steady thudding that shook the walls. More dust drifted down from the ceiling, a light snowfall in the torchlight. As Javel descended the stairs, the thudding increased until it was strong enough to make his teeth clatter, each blow punctuated by the metallic clang of wood on iron. Part of Javel, the weak part that always retreated into the shadows of the pub, wanted to turn around, to run right back upstairs.
“No,” he whispered, trying to convince himself. “I can still be useful.”
When he reached the first floor, he ran down the main hallway, passing several wide-eyed Keep servants along the way.
“Sir, what’s happening?” an old woman demanded.
“Siege,” he replied. “Make for the upper floors and hide.”