Jame regarded the dog thoughtfully. “When this is over,” she said, “you might want to talk to the Falconer about your pook. Are you all right?”
In truth, Gorbel looked awful. Sweat plastered thin strands of black hair to his bulging forehead and his eyes were feverish.
“Never dance with a cave bear.” His snort of laughter ended in a racking cough.
“Gorbel, you need a healer, or at least a few days of dwar sleep.”
He waved this away and paused to scratch an armpit. “Damn that Gari. When he reclaimed his flea circus, he was supposed to infest the Brandan with it, not us. A healer? Not until this farce of a war is over.”
“Listen, I need your help. Fash is about to skin my cat.”
This roused him. “A fine hunting ounce like that? He wouldn’t dare.”
“He dared to flay Merikit.”
“Huh. You’re right. No respect for skin, that man, nor hide, nor hair, except his own. Took me a long time to learn that.”
He rose, dislodging the pook, letting the flag slump to the floor, and shambled over to the door.
“Huh. Stuck.”
Jame scooped up the flag and stuffed it into her coat. She was starting to bulge like a bolster.
The door was locked.
“H’ist,” said a low, urgent voice through the keyhole from the outside.
“Dure? D’you have your friend in your pocket?”
“Yes. Stand back.”
Something scrabbled at the lock and then began to devour it. Black, articulated feelers probed through the wood, broke off acid-weakened fragments of metal, and shoved them back into the black hole that was the trock’s mouth. The whole mechanism fell out on the floor with the trock still clinging to it. Dure scooped up his pet and dropped it back into his pocket.
They followed Gorbel as the Caineron Lordan lumbered down the stairs, Jame dearly longing to increase his speed with a well-placed kick. Voices rose to meet them from the barracks’ common room.
“No bloody cat bloods me and gets away with it,” Fash was snarling.
“You did try to put his eyes out first.” That was Shade, sounding almost casual and quite bone-chillingly cold. “Even if he is already blind.”
“Get out of the way, you Shanir freak. Reef, tell her to move.”
The Randir master-ten’s voice answered, coolly amused. “Who am I to tell my lord’s daughter, however misbegotten, to do anything? You started this. You finish it.”
“Yes, Fash,” said Gorbel, rounding the stair. “Try.”
Jame could at last see the room below. Jorin crouched hissing in a corner. Shade stood between him and Fash, pointing at the latter with Addy wreathed about her arm, gaping jaws balanced on her fingertips. Arm and serpent seemed to twine together like one bifurcated creature, balance and counterbalance
Fash saw Jame and laughed. “See? I told you that a threat to her kitty-cat would bring her running. Need I remind you that her scarf is worth as much as her missing flag?”
Gorbel ignored this and Reef. “By whose orders was I locked in my room? Where are the others?”
Reef answered blandly. “Someone said they should join the squabble in the square. Supposedly, the order came from you. Who was I to stop them? Really, Lordan, you belong in bed. Why not take the little Knorth with you? Just leave us her scarf, and shut up that yapping hassock.”
Gorbel was shaking, with fever or with fury, Jame couldn’t tell. Whichever, he looked dangerous to himself and to others.
The pook was yipping at Gari, who faintly sizzled in a haze of tiny, leaping forms. The pook sat down abruptly and began frantically to scratch—at head or tail, it was unclear.
Gari’s eyes met hers.
In an instant, Jame saw the situation plainly: a Coman, a Randir, a Caineron, and a Knorth, nominally enemies but all members of the Falconer’s Shanir. She also saw what Gari was about to do.
“Up,” she said to Gorbel and Dure. “Out,” to Shade.
Grabbing Jorin, she joined Shade on the boardwalk and slammed the door behind them, just as Gari let loose his seething horde.
“Ambushes, insects, general mayhem—we seem to be repeating the night of the cull as farce,” said Shade, tucking Addy’s twitching tail inside her shirt to improve the serpent’s grip. Her own trembled slightly. “At least no one has put a hole in the Commandant yet.”
From the way that the Randir rubbed her arm, Jame knew that she had felt the bones shift in it. Such a thing had happened to her before, at least twice in the past season. Jame had witnessed similar phenomena elsewhere, under what she hoped were very different circumstances. On impulse, she touched the Randir’s shoulder.
“Shade. Don’t do anything rash. There’s got to be an explanation.”
The other turned stony eyes on her. “I’m sure there is. The question is, can I live with it? Meanwhile, your five-commander is trying to get your attention.”
On the far side of the square, Brier waved again.
“Excuse me,” Jame said, and began to work her way through the battling masses, dodging a fury of flung mudballs as she went. Farce indeed. Above, she could see the Commandant on the Map Room balcony. That was where the various teams were supposed to deliver their spoils of war.
Brier handed her the Randir flag. “The arrogant bastards hardly bothered to hide it, or to keep an adequate guard.”
Jame stuffed it into her jacket, which was now close to bursting.
“Help me get up there.”
Brier formed a cup with her big hands. Oh lord. All right. She put her foot into the proffered hoist and was flung upward. Balcony and wall whirled past. She was going to miss the opening. Suddenly the Commandant was in her way and she crashed into him. As they picked themselves up inside the room, she saw that she had planted one muddy boot firmly in his stomach and the other in his already battered face.
The monitors had assembled in the Map Room, including Torisen and Harn in the background, the latter looking sick but shakily on the mend.
Jame pulled the four flags out of her coat one by one.
Awl surveyed the Randir banner wryly, then Jame. “Do you have anything else in there?”
“Sadly, no,” said Jame, regarding her flattened chest with regret. “Oh, except for this.” She extracted Timmon’s scarf. “Someone should release him from our kitchen, unless he’s thought to climb up the chimney.”
The Commandant had been adding up points. “I make this two hundred sixty flag points captured, one hundred thirty retained, and one commander’s scarf worth ninety. Four hundred and eighty all together.”
“The Ardeth pretty much swept the Danior,” protested one monitor.
“Altogether, flag, commander, and cadets, the Danior are only worth ninety-one. True, we haven’t added up all the ten-commanders, fives, and common cadets, but do you see anything matching this?”
Some grumbling ensued, but no real protest.
“Very good,” said the Commandant. “The Knorth team wins. Excuse me while I announce it to the cadet body.”
Moments later he returned, wiping mud off his face with his scarf. “They appear to be having too much fun to attend properly. I will inform them later. Meanwhile, will someone please go and release the Ardeth Lordan from duress vile in the Knorth kitchen?”
Epilogue
“ . . . and when we retrieved the Ardeth Lordan from the kitchen,” Torisen was saying, “he was soot black from head to toe. Jame was right: he’d tried to climb out the chimney, but it was too narrow and hot. He looked as if he wanted to throttle her—as when haven’t we all?—but then she presented him with a carrot and he burst out laughing.”
“A carrot?”
It was late on the sixty-third of Winter, nearing dawn on the sixty-fourth. Torisen and Marc were in the Council Chamber while the Kendar waited for the latest sheet of glass to be cool enough to work.