The Hidden City

‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,’ Aphrael said. ‘We’re inside the enemy city, and the longer we putter around, the more chance there is of being discovered. If it’s in any way possible, we want to free Ehlana and Alean tonight. I’ll send out word and start the others moving. Nobody’s going to get much sleep tonight, but that can’t be helped. All right then, Xanetia, let’s go look for water. The rest of you stay here. We don’t want to have to go looking for you when we come back.’

‘Are you mad, Gardas?’ Bergsten demanded of the massively armored Alcione knight. The Thalesian Patriarch refused to look at the pleasant-faced young man standing beside the knight. ‘I’m not even supposed to admit that he exists, much less sit down and talk with him.’

‘Aphrael said you might be tedious about this, Bergsten,’ the person Sir Gardas had escorted into the Patriarch’s tent noted. ‘Would it help at all if I did something miraculous?’

‘God!’ Bergsten said. ‘Please don’t do that! I’m probably in trouble already!’

‘Dolmant had some problems when I visited him, too,’ Aphrael’s cousin observed. ‘You servants of the Elene God have some strange ideas. He doesn’t get excited about us, so why should you? Anyway, the normal rules are all more or less suspended until this crisis is over. We’ve even enlisted Edaemus and the Atan God – and they haven’t spoken to any of the rest of us for eons. Aphrael wants me to tell you about something having to do with the soldiers Klæl brought with him. Somebody named Khalad has devised a means of destroying them.’

‘Tell Gardas about it,’ Bergsten suggested. ‘He can pass it on to me, and I won’t get into trouble.’

‘I’m sorry, Bergsten, but Aphrael insisted that I say it directly to you. Just pretend that I’m a dream or something.’ Setras’ face grew slightly puzzled, and his large, luminous eyes revealed a frightening lack of comprehension. ‘I don’t entirely understand this,’ he confessed. ‘Aphrael’s much cleverer than I am – but we love each other, so she doesn’t throw my stupidity into my face very often. She’s terribly polite. She’s even nice to your God, and he can be extremely tedious sometimes – where was I?’

‘Ah –’ Sir Gardas said gently, ‘you were going to tell his Grace about Klæl’s soldiers, Divine Setras.’

‘I was?’ The large eyes were blank. ‘Oh, yes. I was, wasn’t I? You mustn’t let me ramble on like that, Gardas. You know how easily I get distracted.’

‘Yes, Divine Setras. That had occurred to me.’

‘Anyway,’ Setras pushed on, ‘this Khalad person – a frightfully clever young man, I gather – realized that there might be some similarity between the awful stuff Klæl’s soldiers breathe and something he calls “firedamp”. Have you any idea at all of what he was talking about, Bergsten?’ Setras hesitated. ‘Am I supposed to call you “your Grace” the way Gardas did? Are you really that graceful? You look awfully large and clumsy to me.’

‘It’s a formal mode of address, Divine One,’ Sir Gardas explained.

‘Oh. We don’t have to be formal with each other, do we Bergsten? We’re almost old friends now, aren’t we?’

The Patriarch of Emsat swallowed very hard. Then he sighed. ‘Yes, Divine Setras,’ he said. I suppose we are. Why don’t you go ahead and tell me about this strategy Sparhawk’s squire has devised?’

‘Of course. Oh, there’s one other thing, too. We have to be at the gates of Cyrga by morning.’

‘Please, Atana Liatris,’ Baroness Melidere said patiently to Sarabian’s Atan wife, ‘we want them to make the attempt.’

‘It is too dangerous,’ Liatris said stubbornly. ‘If I go ahead and kill Chacole and Torellia, the others will run away and that will be the end of it.’

‘Except that we’ll never find out who else is involved,’ Patriarch Emban explained. ‘And we can’t know for certain that they won’t try again.’

Princess Danae sat a little apart from them with Mmrr curled up in her lap. Her vision was strangely doubled with one image superimposed on the other. It seemed that the dark streets of Cyrga lay just behind the others here in the sitting-room.

‘I’m touched by your concern, Liatris,’ Sarabian was saying, ‘but I’m not nearly as helpless as I seem.’ He flourished his rapier.

‘And we will have guards nearby,’ Foreign Minister Oscagne added. ‘Chacole and Torellia almost have to be getting help from somebody inside the government – some leftover from that coup-attempt, most likely.’

‘I will wring his identity from them before I kill them,’ Liatris declared.

Sarabian winced at the word ‘wring’.

‘We are near, Divine Aphrael.’ Xanetia’s voice seemed at once a long way away and very close. ‘Methinks I do smell water.’ The dark, narrow street they followed opened out into some kind of square a hundred feet further on.

‘Let’s catch them all, Liatris,’ Elysoun urged her sister-empress. ‘You might be able to beat one or two names out of Chacole and Torellia, but if we can catch the assassins in the actual attempt, we’ll be able to sweep the palace compound clean. If we don’t, our husband’s going to have to go through the rest of his life with a drawn rapier.’

‘Hark!’ Xanetia whispered in that other city. ‘I do hear the sound of running water.’

Danae concentrated very hard. It was exhausting to keep things separate.

‘I really hate to have to put it this way, Liatris,’ Sarabian said regretfully, ‘but I forbid you to kill either Chacole or Torellia. We’ll deal with them after their assassins try to kill me.’

‘As my husband commands,’ Liatris responded automatically.

‘What I want you to do is to protect Elysoun and Gahennas,’ he continued. ‘Gahennas is probably in the greater danger right now. Elysoun’s still useful to the people involved in this, but Gahennas knows more than they want her to. I’m sure they’ll try to kill her, so let’s get her out of the Women’s Palace tonight.’

‘It is beneath the street, Divine One,’ Xanetia said. ‘Methinks there is some volume of water passing under our feet.’