Lanther’s eyebrow rose to herald the quirky expression that often passed for a smile. He snapped his fingers. From around the open gateway of the wall came two men carrying a covered sedan chair with gauze curtains. Lanther pulled open a curtain and beckoned her inside.
The Wait is Over
15
Trying to look demure, Linsha stepped inside and sat down on the cushioned seat. The chair swayed and rose as the men lifted it and set off at a humpy trot. Linsha gripped the armrests of the chair in alarm. The conveyance jerked and swung like an obstinate colt. After a while, seeing the chair remained upright, she relaxed a little and tried to enjoy the novelty. She flicked open the curtain just enough to see the city streets.
“Comfortable?” Lanther’s voice called from the outside.
“I’d rather walk,” she admitted.
“Not yet, my lady.” His voice suddenly took on a quiet note of caution. “A patrol of Knights is approaching as I speak.”
She pulled the curtains closed and leaned back in her chair, trying to look relaxed. The curtains were thin enough to reveal the outline of a person within and opaque enough to hide the details. With luck, the Knights would see only a woman inside and not bother to examine the chair’s occupant more closely.
Especially since she had none of the jewelry, perfume, nail decorations, or face paints the real courtesans preferred. Only smudges of dirt and a pervading smell of rot and decay.
“Halt!” ordered a male voice.
Linsha felt her heart beat faster. It was Sir Hugh, and the man was nothing less than thorough. Would he recognize Lanther’s face or her profile through the gauzy fabric?
“Yes, my lord,” whined a second voice. Linsha started. Did that nasally, obsequious voice belong to the Legionnaire?
“Where are you going with that chair?”
“My master sent me to escort this lady to a place unknown to his wife.” He made an obscene gesture even Linsha could see through the curtains. “If you get my meaning, Sir Knight.”
Linsha held her breath. She could make out Sir Hugh’s outline through the curtain, and she could see he was staring intently at her. She leaned forward and blew a kiss at him.
“Let’s get moving,” Sir Hugh snapped. Without a backward glance, he reined his horse away and led his patrol up the street toward the North Quarter.
Linsha let her breath out in a sigh. For just a moment she thought he had recognized her… but, no; surely he would have spoken. She opened her mouth to say something to Lanther when a long horn blast came singing on the wind and stopped her words in her throat. The sound was picked up by another horn and another until the city rang with the clarion warning. In every street people stopped in their tracks and stared fearfully toward the sea.
“The signal is given,” Lanther said. “The ships have been sighted.”
Muttering an oath, Linsha thrust aside the curtain and swung her legs around to hop out.
Lanther’s hand clamped around her ankle. “Where do you think you are going?”
Linsha froze. In those seven simple words she heard a steely edge of command that would not tolerate even the thought of disobedience. She had never heard that tone coming from him before, and it startled her enough to make her pause.
He made use of her hesitation to push her feet hack in the chair and pull the curtains closed. “Stay in the chair. There are Solamnics just up the road. These men will take you to our safe house.”
“I want to know-”
He cut her off. “I know you do. I will find out what I can.”
The horns had finally stopped blowing, and an eerie silence held its breath in the city. The morning sun beamed clear and hot over Mirage, but everyone felt the chillness of the shadow of fear. There were no more dragons to protect the people, no more ghostly images to fill the streets and act as a mirror to hide behind. The dragonlord they had counted on for so many years was dead, and the city council was in a panic. A fearful storm had left buildings damaged, people dead, and the militia scattered. Now a strange fleet of ships drew near, and no one knew what to do about it. Iyesta would have flown over the ships and driven them off if they so much as showed a weapon, but by some hideous stroke Iyesta had become a withered, beetled-chewed hulk, and there was no one left to take command of her realm.
Linsha heard hoofbeats galloping toward them, and she looked back the way she and Lanther had come to see a patrol of centaurs cantering fast toward the center of the city. Their faces looked grim, and their hides were dark with sweat. They raced past without a glance, intent on their mission. Linsha guessed what that meant. The militia, scattered and distracted though it was, was making an attempt to regroup and plan their defense. She knew the Legion would be doing the same. Only Sir Remmik knew what the Solamnics would do.
With everything in mind, Linsha damped down her arguments, bolstered her patience, and nodded to Lanther. She would do as he ordered because it was the wisest thing to do. As a wanted criminal, there was little she could do to help at this moment. If the people on the approaching ships proved to be enemies and a fight ensued, she would come out and do what she could defend this city. Meanwhile, she would bide her time and look for an opportunity to return to the labyrinth and reassure herself that Iyesta’s precious hoard of eggs was safe.
Lanther spoke to the two men carrying the sedan chair then hurried away. The chair began to move again, slowly wending its way through increasing numbers of people in the streets. The population of Mirage, on the treacherous edge of shock and panic, was moving again. Some people grabbed whatever weapons they could find and hurried down to the waterfront to join the defenses that were being hurriedly thrown together. Others hastily packed a few belongings and made their way west or north to get out of the city. Visitors and traveling merchants also gathered their goods and hurried to leave a city that might be plunged in the midst of war at any moment. Older people, poorer people, and those with nowhere to go simply did what they could to prepare for what might come and retreated into the shelter of their homes.
Linsha watched the activity in the streets through the slit in the curtain and felt her heart go out to the people of the Missing City. She had lived in a city under constant siege and had seen firsthand what panic could do. But where Sanction had a powerful lord governor, city walls, a moat of lava, a ring of volcanoes, and high mountains to help defend it, the Missing City had nothing. Parts of the city wall were still in ruins, the dragonlord was dead, and the lands beyond the city were mostly treeless, rolling, and easy to move across. There were no barriers to attack any longer. There was only the militia, the Legion, and the Solamnic Knights.
The Legion safe house proved to be a small house on the southwestern side of the city just outside the Garden Gate, a newly repaired city gate in a large section of replaced wall. The house sat in an unobtrusive little neighborhood on a low hill overlooking the city, not far from the sea and only a short walk from several farms where olives, grapes, and wheat were grown and sheep grazed on the scattered meadows. Linsha did not like its isolation or its distance from the center of the city and the waterfront, but it had the advantage of being at the opposite end of the city from the Solamnic Citadel.
She found the two-storied house already occupied by a staff of three older Legionnaires whose duty it was to care for any person the Legion decided should be kept safely out of sight for a while. In an Order where many of the members were deserters from either the Solamnic or Nerakan forces or had performed some task that angered a powerful enemy, the safe house was often in use.