David Drake - Master of the Cauldron

Sharina couldn't see who he was shouting at. The Blood Eagles stood in a tight circle around her and Tenoctris, their shields raised to fend line soldiers away from them.

An officer who seemed old for his modest rank stepped close to the circle of guards. "Your highness?" he said, peering between the shoulders of Ascor and Lires. "Your highness, you shouldn't be here! It's far too dangerous!"

"The only danger at present is that we're going to be trampled to death by your men!" Sharina flared. "Get them out before they destroy information we need to save the kingdom!"

Captain Rowning recoiled in shock. "Your highness!" he said.

Sharina felt her gut knot in self-disgust at what she'd just said. Rowning's troops had reacted splendidly in an unexpected situation. She shouldn't have let her fear and anger cause her to lash out that way.

"Captain," she said, "you've done very well, very well indeed. But please bring your men up from the cellars now."

Rowning turned to the signaller at his side, a cornicene whose horn curved around his body instead of the trumpeter normally attached to an infantry unit. "Sessir," he said, "sound recall!"

The signaller blew a long note followed by three quick ones, then repeated the call. His mouthpiece was bone, not brass like the horn itself: he might have to use it in the dead of winter. The horn calls rattled the rooftiles.

Though Sharina didn't see how anybody could tell what the signal was supposed to be through the blurring echoes, troops stopped shoving forward. After a moment they began to back out of the sanctum. Men returned from the cellars, some of them helping along fellows who'd fallen under booted feet.

The sanctum had nearly emptied, and the last of the soldiers were straggling up the stairs. "Ah, your highness?" said Captain Rowning, hesitant because of Sharina's snarl. "What would you like me to, ah, do? Now, I mean."

"Leave a squad here and yourself accompany me into the cellars," Sharina said in quick assessment. "If you'd be so good."

She didn't especially want the captain present, but he'd be pleased at the invitation. She owed him that and more for her outburst.

"I'm honored, your highness!" Rowning said, his expression opening brightly like a lotus flower at dawn.

"Hey troop!" Lires called to the last soldier coming up from the cellars. "What did ye do for light down there? There's lanterns?"

"Huh?" said the soldier. "No, it's windows, like, in the ceiling. There's plenty light, though. No problem there."

Rowning drew his sword and trotted down the steps, apparently worried that Sharina would withdraw her offer. Ascor raised an eyebrow to Sharina for instructions, then muttered, "Let's go," to his men.

"Tenoctris, hold my shoulders," Sharina said, stepping in front of the wizard. The stairs were narrow and the soldiers rushing down them had ripped the railing away. It'd been a sturdy one, judging from how thick the upper bracket with its tag of broken pole was.

Twenty steps led to a floor of poured concrete. Looking down as she descended, Sharina saw six troughs of bright gray zinc along the wall on the street side of the single room. Sealed storage jars, wide-mouthed and each big enough to hold several bushels of grain, stood opposite them, and in the middle was a long limestone table. The tabletop had originally been smooth and probably white, but now stains and blade scratches covered it. It'd been used for surgery-or butchering.

The room was better lit than the sanctum above. Slabs of crystal around the edges of the coffered ceiling flooded down a cold, milky light. The panels on the south, the street side, were brighter than others.

Tenoctris looked at them with interest. "That isn't wizardry," she said, "but it's quite clever. Sunlight's led down through blocks of glass from the roof, I suppose. I saw a device like that on Yole in my own day, in an underground chamber built by one of the Duke's ancestors."

A corpse lay between the table's two slab supports. He'd been one of the lookouts pretending to be painting. His partner was huddled just behind him. They'd been hacked to pieces by soldiers who'd found no better way to slake their bloodlust.

Tenoctris sighed. "Well," she murmured, "it can't be helped."

"Captain Rowning?" Sharina said. "These are ordinary men, are they not? Not People, I mean."

"Right," Rowning said. He'd sheathed his sword and was using his dagger to pry at the tar sealing the ceramic stopper onto a storage jar. "They couldn't put People out where they'd be seen, your highness. Once you get a look at them, it's like Serians-you don't have any trouble telling what they are the next time. And there's a lot of folk here in Valles who saw them after the Battle of the Tides. Or in it, for that matter, with all the militia who fought that day."

Rowning popped the plug off the jar. He looked in, sniffed, and stuck his dagger down inside. The dagger point drew up a slab of flesh as broad and flat as a napkin. It was pink and fresh-looking but it didn't have bloodvessels.

"By the Lady!" Rowning said. "What's this? Is it human? Is it?"

He twitched the dagger, slapping the flesh against the wall. It slipped down with a sucking sound. Rowning's face had a look of horror. That struck Sharina as incongruous in the midst of slaughtered men who'd been human beyond question.

Tenoctris knelt beside the third body, the member of the People whom the javelin had thrown down the stairs. A pair of Blood Eagles bracketed her to keep others from bumping the frail old woman.

She looked over her shoulder at Rowning. "No more than the People themselves are," she said. Smiling wider she added, "But no less, of course. I think this is Hani's workroom. Here in Valles, of course. There'd have to be a much larger installation to create as many People as were in the army that invaded Ornifal before."

Rowning jerked back from the jar, his dagger poised to slash at anything that came out of it to touch him. "BloodyHell!" a Blood Eagle rasped under his breath.

"Create?" Sharina said, staring at the People's leader. She edged back unconsciously, much as Rowning had done. "Then they're not human?"

"Human?" Tenoctris repeated with a grimace. She lifted the corpse's hand and looked at the big ring on its finger. "Dear, I don't know how to answer that. What I'm sure of is that Hani or someone else, some wizard, builds the People from materials like those-"

She nodded to the jars.

"-instead of them being born the way you and I were." Tenoctris smiled with a vagary of thought, and added, "A very long time ago, in my case."

Ascor glared at the dead leader of the People. "I suppose they could sneak into Valles without being noticed," he said grudgingly. "But what were they herefor?"

Tenoctris pulled the ring from the corpse's finger, twisting it one way and then back to loosen it. "I suspect they might have known something about the theft of Stronghand's body," she said, holding the ring to the light. "I'd have questioned them about it if I had a chance."

"Sorry, milady," Captain Rowning muttered. He started to wipe his blade on the skirt of his outer tunic, then thought again. He turned and with a grimace of fury hurled the dagger point-first into the stairs. It drove deep into a tread and hummed for a moment with the violence of the stroke.

Lires prodded the leader's corpse with his boot. "I'm not sorry they're dead," he said conversationally. "I guess you and her highness'll figure things out, milady."

Sharina looked at Tenoctris, then at the soldier. She felt a rush of relief. "Yes, I agree with Trooper Lires," she said. "With both parts of what he said. What do we do now, Tenoctris?"

Tenoctris rose to her feet, helped by one of the Blood Eagles. She smiled also.

"Speaking as a human being," she said, "I don't think creatures like the People should exist, nor that humans should help accomplish purposes which certainly aren't meant to benefit Mankind. A scholar would have a more detached viewpoint, but one can't be a scholar always."