M McNally - The Sable City

Dugan was given a room directly across the hall from Tilda. Before she could call him over and demand to know exactly what was going on a series of servants arrived, first bearing wash basins, then thankfully lunch which turned out to be an excellent stew of thinly-sliced potatoes, carrots and some sort of onion, with diced chunks of two kinds of poultry. Chicken and something that was not chicken, but was still good. The empty bowls were taken away shortly thereafter, and after another ten minutes had gone by without more servants appearing, Tilda finally whistled sharply across the hall. Dugan appeared in his doorway, still wearing his hat indoors over his cropped hair, and Tilda motioned him over. He came, but held up a finger before she could speak. He looked around at the walls hung with tapestries, then opened the balcony doors and stepped outside. Tilda joined him and he shut the doors behind her.

“I always assume someone is spying on me whenever I am in a castle,” he said.

“When have you ever been in a castle?” Tilda asked crossly, and Dugan nodded that she had a point.

“What is going on here?” Tilda finally asked after hours of waiting.

Dugan sighed, turned to the south, and pointed beyond the front range of the Girding Mountains. The whole view from the balcony was actually quite lovely, though Tilda was in no mood to enjoy it.

“You see the tall, yellowish peak?” Dugan asked. “With the high faces too sharp for snow to cling on them?”

“What am I, blind?” Tilda asked.

“That is Yagnorak. There used to be a dwarf city inside, but that has been in ruins for centuries. However, it is well known in this part of the country that the Trellane family has been keeping open a secret passage beneath the mountain for generations. A secret passage that leads through to Daul.”

Tilda stared at him. “There is known to be a secret passage?”

Dugan sighed. “That is exactly what your Master said.”

“Captain Block is not my Master,” Tilda said, surprising herself with her own vehemence. It did not help that Dugan smirked at her.

“Right. Anyway, your Captain is now telling the Baron that the House of Deskata has business with the King of Daul, and that he needs to get to the kingdom right away. The fact that he comes knowing about the passage will convince Trellane that he is legit, for who else but the King would have told a Miilarkian about it? Trellane gives us a guide, or whatever, and off we go through the tunnels, arriving in Daul that much closer to our boy, the Centurion.”

Dugan held his hands out from his sides and looked very proud of himself and his scheme. Tilda kept staring at him.

“That is the worst plan I have ever heard. Just awful.”

Dugan lowered his hands. “Block said that, too,” he muttered. Tilda was not finished.

“Seriously. You are starting with at least three premises that would all have to be true for the plan to work, and you don’t know that any of them are. First, there might not even be a secret passage. Second…”

“Matilda, stop. I know it is risky, but the fact is we do not have another option. If there was a better way, don’t you think I would take it? Think about it. Neither Trellane nor any other Codian noble is seriously going to cross a Miilarkian. If something goes wrong here the worst that happens to the two of you is maybe you have to wait a bit longer to kill John Deskata. But I get hung. For desertion and treason and whatever else they want to charge. I’ll thank you not to think I would stick my neck in a noose on a whim. I am not stupid, either.”

Tilda blinked, mostly because of what Dugan had said about she and Block killing John Deskata. It struck her now that of course that was what Dugan would assume, for he had recognized the Miilarkian Guilders for what they were, and Guilders had a certain reputation abroad. In any tavern in any port town on the four continents washed by the Interminable Ocean, whispered stories could be heard about some terrible thing the Guilders had done to someone who had crossed a Miilarkian. Yet somehow, it had always happened in the next town up the coast.

Tilda could have told Dugan that he was wrong, and that these two Guilders were not here to assassinate anyone. She could have told him that their mission was more important than he could fathom, more important than his life, or Captain Block’s, or certainly her own. But there was no reason for Dugan to know any of that, and even if there had been, it was not Tilda’s place to tell him.

She stayed quiet, and Dugan took her silence as acquiescence. He let out a breath, and looked down from the balcony on the surrounding keep and courtyard.

“You saw that knight Procost give me the stink-eye?” he asked. Tilda raised an eyebrow.

“I did, but I did not know it was called the stink-eye.”

Dugan smirked. “Works though, right? That is an Imperial Knight, swearing allegiance to the Code rather than to any one Codian noble. He may be serving here but he is not a servant of the Trellanes, and I doubt he is privy to the family secrets. I hope your Captain is speaking wisely.”

“Captain Block does not speak otherwise,” Tilda said, and Dugan gave her a look.

“Sure he does, Tilda. Everybody gets worried, or angry, and they say things they don’t mean.”

“Not Captain Block.”

Dugan took a last look down on the town, and toward the great yellow mountain looming among the Girdings. He turned to go back to his own room, but said one more thing before opening the balcony doors.

“Well, then he is just wrong.”

Tilda watched Dugan leave, exiting her room for the hall to his own. She stayed out on the balcony for a while.

*

There was still no sign of Captain Block at nightfall, though Tilda and Dugan were brought another meal, this one of pork loins roasted with nuts and then glazed. Tilda agreed with Dugan’s assessment shouted across the hall that while the Dauls had not won a war in centuries, they still knew how to cook a pig.

Tilda occupied the evening hours by oiling blades, and then she cleaned all three of the ackserpi guns Block had brought along from Miilark. There was still no sign of the old dwarf, and the anxious waiting made Tilda tired. She lay down on top of the bed covers in her room, still in trousers and sweater but with her boots off, and despite everything running through her mind she soon drifted off to sleep.

Footsteps on the stairs woke her with the night sky still dark outside, and Tilda was against the wall beside her door with a dagger held behind her back by the time someone knocked. The Captain’s voice growled her name. She opened the door and found Block swaying on his feet, one eye open and one screwed shut, face waxy and a very long day’s worth of dark gray stubble on his cheeks.

“We’re leaving,” Block said, wincing in the low lantern light from the hall. “Get the bags.”

Servants, also looking groggy but at least sober, appeared on the stairs while Block lurched over to pound on Dugan’s door. Tilda dispersed the baggage among them, keeping the long, flat ackserpi case and the Captain’s kitbag for herself. Dugan came over in time to hoist the bedrolls along with his own saddlebags. Everyone followed the Captain down from the tower and back out into the courtyard. Block muttered at the eastern sky, faintly touched now with light over the courtyard wall, and weaved toward a six-horse coach waiting by the open gate. Tilda took a few rapid steps to draw even with him.

“What about our horses?” she asked.

“Sold ’em to the baron,” Block said with a slur. “Would have given them as a gift, but Trell…Trellane wanted to bargain with a Miilarkian.” The Captain chuckled and shook some coins together in a pocket.