Glen Cook - Surrender to the will of the night

“You look tired, girl.”

“I’m working hard. Great Grandpa Delari always has more work for me than I can possibly get done.”

“Don’t let him take advantage. Say no. You are being careful?”

“Very, very careful. This city is a deadly place right now.”

“As long as you understand. Don’t take chances. We’re coming in tonight.”

“And they’re expecting you. They already have the gates reinforced.” She produced a map, described the welcomes being prepared.

“Dear girl, it’s almost like you were sitting in on their meetings.”

“Isn’t it?”

“They know about the Arniena plan, don’t they?”

“There’s a Benedocto agent close to Mr. Sayag. The Benedocto have agents inside all of the Five Families.”

No surprise, that. Everybody did it. Some of those spies worked for two or three families at once. “Do we know any names?”

Lila produced a scrap of paper. “There are more. These are just names I overheard.”

Hecht examined the list, saw nothing familiar. He admired Lila’s precise hand. Clearly, she had worked hard to develop it. “I’m loving this, Lila. You’re better at this than Heris or the really old man.”

“No. I’m not. I’m just doing things the way you want them done. They only do things the way they want to.”

“I’ll give you that.” He studied the map some more. “This isn’t good. These sites are all traps.”

“I told you that. They’ll have crossbowmen on the roofs. And you can’t surprise them. They’ll be watching with every little brownie and boogie in this end of the world. The Patriarch pulled them in from a hundred miles around.”

Hecht stared at the map. And stared. And found no inspiration. “How is Pella?”

“Turning stupid again. He whines constantly. The old old man should’ve left him where he was. Should’ve let him ripen. He could’ve gone back if somebody else didn’t find him.”

“Rough. And Vali? And Anna?”

“Vali is working hard to make herself good enough to help me. Anna cries a lot.”

“What? Why?”

“It’s her time of life, I think. It doesn’t matter if she’s sad or happy or angry. Everything makes her cry. Except when she gets all righteous and wants to go over to Krois and slap Serenity till he starts seeing sense.”

“Good for her. I guess. So. Honored daughter. Any ideas about what we should do tonight?”

Lila grinned a huge one. “You attack them where they aren’t. I’ll smash them where they are.”

Commencing sometime after midnight, for slightly more than two hours, about every four minutes, there were explosions in the Mother City. They were scattered and happened according to no discernible pattern-though every one damaged Serenity’s friends or the city’s defenders.

There were occasional gaps in the timing. Whenever that happened somebody dropped ropes from sections of wall not being closely guarded.

The Righteous failed to achieve complete surprise anywhere. Despite all the confusion some people did keep their minds on their jobs.

Those chosen to climb the ropes took rope ladders up. They were men experienced at dealing with small Instrumentalities and, one and all, were suspected of being in possession of handheld firepowder weapons. They established their footholds, helped more men come up, helped assemble cranes when the parts for those arrived, then helped hoist light falcons and munitions. They expanded their footholds and fended off swarms of minor Instrumentalities.

The falcons crushed counterattacks. Those ceased. The Shades had imprinted an abiding dread of falcons on Serenity’s friends.

Pots of explosive tossed into gatehouses encouraged men there to surrender or flee. Two gates changed hands despite the prepared traps, which broke up under falcon fires.

Deeming them likely to be useless except as a cause of further confusion, Hecht let the southerners go howling into the city after he opened the gates.

Hagan Brokke rumbled, “So much for it being impossible to attack the Mother City.”

Rivademar Vircondelet observed, “It’s not the attack, it’s the accomplishing anything once we do. Now they know where we’re coming in. They can pull everybody together to deal with us.”

Falcons barked not far away, from above, blasting rooftops. Stones rattled off roofing tiles, broke roofing tiles that clattered to the ground, and found spies or ambushers because there were cries of pain.

Meantime, the southerners finished flooding in. Hecht watched them out of sight. “I wonder how many will survive.”

“They stick together and do what you told them to do, maybe most of them.” Brokke coughed. His lungs were sensitive to firepowder smoke. “But my money is on discipline failing. They’ll spread out to start looting and get themselves picked off a few at a time.”

They were supposed to roar through the streets cutting down anyone they ran into. Spread enough fear and the streets would clear. The invaders could move north, toward Krois, where an enraged but supposedly more rational than usual Serenity would be straining to get the most out of having his enemies attack as he had hoped.

Vircondelet asked, “We got any real shot at pulling this off, boss?”

“We do. Now that we’re inside. Falcons will be handy in the kind of fighting coming up.”

“Easy to sweep the streets,” Brokke said. “But Serenity is holed up inside Krois. He can just squat there till Ghort comes to save his ass.”

“But he won’t be safe in there,” Vircondelet said. “On account of, the boss knows how to get in going under the river.”

“I do,” Hecht admitted. “But Serenity knows I know. He’s the one who showed me how. He’ll have a special welcome waiting down there.”

The explosions stopped. Hecht supposed that meant Lila could no longer steal firepowder from Prosek. Or that she had gotten tired enough to quit.

For a while, once the two gates had been taken, it looked like Brothe might be a paper tiger. There was little resistance to start.

That changed when the sun came up.

Did the locals fear the dark more than the invaders? Hecht’s amulet had distracted him plenty but nothing big had been on the move.

He did feel something new once the darkness fled, taking the boogies with it. This something had been masked by the rustle of all the smaller entities.

It was down in the catacombs. It was huge. And it was between the Righteous and the river Teragi. It felt like the same old murderous thing that kept returning, however often it was hunted down. This incarnation was stronger than any before.

It would make trouble once darkness returned, guaranteed. It was Bronte Doneto’s dark child.

Piper Hecht thought he knew what Bronte Doneto had been up to back when Muniero Delari stumbled into him in the catacombs.

The Righteous made slow headway against stubborn resistance, doing a lot of damage with the falcons. It was not always clear who needed beating down. Serenity’s enemies refused to be cautious in getting out to mix it up with the Patriarch’s friends.

Southerners began to turn up. As Hecht had anticipated, their gleeful charge into the city’s warrens had become a debacle. They had been chastened. Survivors were trying to link up with one another or the Righteous.

Hecht hoped the lesson would not be lost on the men who actually did the face-to-face, bad-breath-to-bad-breath, toe-to-toe fighting.

By midafternoon he was considering falling back to the gates, to wait on the Grand Duke and Admiral. His earlier assessment of his chances appeared to be proving out. He was doing an awesome amount of damage but did not have the manpower to exploit it, even with help from prodigal southerners and local volunteers.