Kate Elliott - Shadow Gate

Kesta set a hand over hers on the railing. 'Some old trap from ancient days. It made a terrible noise. Eiya! A lot of people on the steps died when it was sprung.'

'Captain Ressi did that?'

Her usually lively face looked drawn and aged in lamplight. 'Neh. Captain Ressi was at council hall. A sergeant sprang it. Killed himself in the process. Knew he was going to, I think.'

'What do we do now?' asked the fire captain. He was surprisingly young, with a short-clipped beard and an annoying habit of

drumming his fingers on the railing as he started talking. 'The senior militia captains are dead in the council hall, or trapped in the city and surely dead by now.'

'You are a captain,' said Pil.

'Eiya! Through my mother's Green Sun connections, if you want to know the truth. I was so cursed proud of myself, wasn't I? Riding my gelding through the streets, strutting about with my fire hook.' He glanced at Peddo, then away. 'My kinfolk sent me up here three days ago to square the accounts on the various hall storehouses. This much water in the cisterns. That much oil. So many tey of rice. I tell you, I think they knew. I fear they sent me up here to keep me out of harm's way, curse them!' He began sobbing. 'Gods-rotted traitors!'

They stepped away from him, and he looked over indignantly.

'I wasn't in on it! As soon as the trouble erupted, I secured the storehouses and cisterns with what firefighters remain up here, in case any of this crowd decides to grab what they can.'

'Why come over here to the stairs, then?' asked Peddo. 'Since it's the only way up or down from this rock besides flying, or the baskets?'

The young man gestured helplessly, a sweep of his arm that took in the city. Overhead, stars glittered in silence; below, Toskala roared as its thousands ran or fought or hid, or simply wailed and grieved. The wind blustered, but like them it could do nothing but witness.

'What's the point of staying?' asked Kesta. 'We've lost.'

'What's ever the point of staying?' said Nallo, thinking of the day she had walked into a strange village to marry a man she'd never met, to fulfill a contract other hands had sealed in her name. 'To say you can. To show you will.'

'And what the hells does it matter, Nallo, when those demons can fly? The steps are blocked, but the demons can come back any time they want.'

'Maybe so, but if they'd wanted to kill us all, then why didn't they?'

'The winged ones carried no weapons,' added Pil, 'but the ones who died, died in blood. So then who stabbed them? Not the demons.'

'A good point,' said Peddo, smiling wanly at Pil, who blushed and looked away.

'Traitors stabbed them!' said the fire captain hoarsely. 'Any of us might be a traitor!'

'The hells you say!' snapped Nallo. 'I'm no gods-rotted traitor. And I'm not cursed ready to give up, either.'

'We need a captain,' said Pil. 'If we mean to resist. This rock is a good fort. If we can protect ourselves against demons, and ration water and food.'

'And throw the cursed traitors to their death!' screamed the fire captain with a howl of outraged grief.

Distant voices on Justice Square echoed his cries, and the guards at the stairs stirred restlessly, looking scared.

Nallo slapped the fire captain right across the face. That shut him up. Probably with his soft skin and well-kept hands he'd never done a day's worth of real work in his silk-wearing, pampered life.

'Do you think you're the only cursed person who's suffered? We either give up now, or we take stock of our situation and then we cursed well decide what we mean to do! I don't want to give up!'

The image of her husband lying dead in the road with the flies buzzing in and out of his gaping mouth sprang so vividly into her mind that she began to cry. He had stayed behind with the other men to hold off the army while the women and children ran into the forest to hide. Dazed from a day of hiding in the brush, Jerad and little Zi had not truly understood what had happened to their father. Avisha had trembled so close to hysterics that Nallo recognized only now how much strength it had taken the girl to suck it up and keep going for the sake of the little ones. And they'd done it. They'd walked away from the ruins of a life they could never have back, and by sheer stubbornness they had found other shelter. Not a safe place, for maybe there weren't any safe places left. But a decent place, a good place. A place they could find pride in.

'I didn't give up before, and the gods know I'm cursed well not going to give up now. What if we can hold this rock? Won't that give hope to others?'

'Who will be captain?' repeated Pil.

'That's right,' she said fiercely, looking at each in turn: the fire captain still stricken and likely to break out in a whine; Peddo

exhausted but thoughtful; Kesta twisted between despair and hope. Pil as always so calm that you didn't know whether to love him or shake him to see if he would ever yelp. 'We need a commander, someone who knows Toskala and the other halls. Someone who has allies. Someone who might actually know what he's doing, even if he is a vain-hearted and insufferably smug horse's ass. I say, we send word to Argent Hall. To Marshal Joss.'

Joss paced to the edge of darkness beyond which Scar drowsed on a rocky perch, but he heard

and sensed nothing out of the ordinary. Yet he could not shake off a tingle along his skin, like ants crawling up and down his neck. He returned to the fire. Water boiled in a pot set on a tripod over the flames. He placed a bowl on a rock and poured water over leaves, then covered it to steep. Darkness had trapped them in the steep-sided, hidden valley, and he was himself confined to the circle of firelight with a blanket on the ground, if he even dared attempt sleep. Hearing the scuff of footsteps, he rose.

Miyara set down their lamp beside the bowl. She wiped sweat from her forehead with a cloth and sank into a crouch, rubbing her neck.

'How are things?' he asked, not sure how much he was permitted to know but desperate for any scrap.

'I'll take the tea. Thanks for brewing it. Priya and I could use a sharp pinch to keep alert.'

'How are you managing without the lamp, if you don't mind my asking? Or did you find another in the shelter?'

'I did not.' She grinned. 'Us reeves taking a break from training at Naya Hall to spend a night in the cave aren't doing so because we need light, eh?' She laughed.

Joss ran a hand over his head. 'What do you mean?'

'Surely you of all people would-' Then she laughed again. 'As nervous as you are, Marshal, you'd think you were the father, eh?'

'Or responsible for Captain Anji's wife. This is scarcely the time for jokes.'

'Aui! No more jokes, then!' Miyara shook her head, lifted up the bowl's cover, and inhaled. 'Eihi! That's ready, eh? It's out of your hands, Marshal. The gods will favor her, or curse her, but if you ask me, she's a tough one. Never a word of complaint. She's managing as well as any can who must suffer through her first birth. Here, now, let's take this back. I've something I'd like you to see.'

'Is that allowed-? I wouldn't want to-'

'Not all the way into the cave. If you will, Marshal, come and see. It's a puzzle. I thought you might have an answer.'

She carried the lamp and he the bowl, warm against his hands. The path led through a tangle of growth unexpected after the dry tableland of the Barrens: candleflowers, plum, falls of sweet-scented heaven-kiss, moist ripe sunfruit, lush stands of uncultivated jabi. This burgeoning orchard of wild fruit was tended solely by the gods' blessing. He bumped his head on a ripe sunfruit dangling over the path.

Miyara balanced in the lamp in one hand and plucked it with the other. 'This way.'

No insects chattered, nor did night-waking animals rustle within the growth. The lack of animal noises was unnerving, but at least a stream babbled in the distance and wind caught among the surrounding crags. They reached the pool, deep and round, rimmed by the remains of an ancient building. A waterfall thundered into the pool from the height. They walked alongside walls no more than knee height, worn down by time and wind and rain. Who had built here? Lived here in such isolation? How had they found their way in, when truly it must be impossible to reach the valley by climbing?