“Good.”
“Kuskan,” she called to her messenger. “Pack everything. But do it quietly. I don’t want to cause a panic.” She turned her attention back to her administrators. “We’re going to withdraw under cover of darkness and take the Basin Highway up to the Cypress Road, where we’ll cut across toward Redstone. We’ll regroup there and assess our losses.”
Taniel frowned. It made sense, of course. The government was too important to stand behind such a risky battle. They should run. But once Lindet and her camp pulled out, it left behind a vulnerable city in the path of a Kez brigade. The Kez were not kind to cities that harbored revolutionaries.
“What about the people?” Taniel asked.
“Once we are safely out of Planth, the order will be given to evacuate the city.”
“We have two days until the Kez arrive,” Taniel protested. “That’s not enough time to empty a city of this size, especially if you don’t even tell them until tomorrow.”
Lindet’s gaze fell on Taniel and his throat went instantly dry. He felt more than a little foolish for the fact, wondering what his father, a man who’d told kings to piss off, would say about him cowing before a chancellor not even halfway through her twenties.
“The people,” Lindet said coldly, “will provide a valuable distraction. Once we’ve withdrawn and given the evacuation order, people will panic and flee north along the highway. We’ll leave behind a defense, of course – you and your Ghost Irregulars, some of the soldiers and militia – who will harry the Kez just enough to slow them down. Once the government is safely out of harm, you will withdraw.”
Taniel felt sick to his stomach. Beside him, Ka-poel bristled like an angry cat. “You expect us to withdraw, leaving ten thousand Fatrastan citizens on the highway, weighed down with all their possessions, at the mercy of a Kez brigade?”
“Yes. I expect exactly that. I will not waste such valuable assets defending an unimportant city.”
All around the room, heads nodded thoughtfully as if Lindet spoke the kind of wisdom they expected from their leader. Only Styke seemed at all unsure. “Two-shot is right. They’ll slaughter everyone who tries to run.”
“And anyone who bothers to stay,” Lindet said. “We can’t win. At least this way, we’ll be able to fight another day with little risk to the government or our field assets. If we’d withdrawn earlier we might have avoided this path, but what is done is done.”
Taniel searched Lindet’s face for any sign of regret, or perhaps remorse at the idea of leaving a whole city to die. Her eyes were hard, unyielding. She had made her decision and would not bend.
Pit, he realized. His father would probably like her.
“No word of our conversation leaves this room,” Lindet announced. “There will no doubt be a tragic slaughter once we’ve gone, and our people can turn it to propaganda to help our cause. These lives won’t be wasted. Two-shot, I expect you to prepare your Ghost Irregulars for combat. And you, Styke, keep your Mad Lancers out of trouble until I need you.”
Lindet’s tone made it clear that her words were final. With a knot in his stomach, Taniel found himself ushered out of the church and out into the city square, where the crowd seemed even more unruly than when he’d entered.
All these people, he realized, would be dead by the end of the week.
Taniel stormed through the street, Ka-poel sprinting to keep up, until he saw a boy sitting on the stoop, left leg missing from the knee down, cap out on the ground in front of him. Taniel dug through his kit until he found a few krana coins and tossed them in the cap.
“This city have a newspaper?” he asked.
The boy retrieved his cap excitedly, shaking the coins into his hand and stowing them in a pocket. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Three of them, actually. Thank you, sir.”
“Which one’s the biggest?”
“The Planth Caller, sir.”
“Where can I find them?”
“The corner of Main and Manhouch. Just keep going two more streets and take a left. Big red sign. You can’t miss it.”
“Thanks.”
Taniel paused for a moment, eying the direction the boy had indicated, then glanced over his shoulder for any of those thugs he’d seen outside Lindet’s headquarters. No one stood out from the crowd. It would be an easy thing, informing the newspaper of Lindet’s plans. Word would circulate within a few hours, and people would start leaving immediately. Some of them might even have a chance of outrunning the Kez soldiers.
Ka-poel laid a hand on his shoulder.
“What do you want?” he asked.
Ka-poel scowled at him and shook her head. She pointed at the boy he’d just asked for directions, then cupped a hand over her ear. I heard that.
“So?” he asked.
She rolled her eyes and pulled him toward the nearest alley. Once they’d gotten out of the crowd, she turned on him, gesturing so quickly that he couldn’t follow any of it. Taniel glanced toward the crowd, impatient. He needed to get to the newspaper. The sooner people knew what was happening, the better. “Pole! Slow down. What is it?”
She pointed at him, then mimed a hangman’s noose. You’re going to get yourself killed.
“What do you mean?” he asked, playing dumb. He knew exactly what she meant.
Ka-poel mimicked a crown on her head, then pointed at him and mimed the hangman’s noose again.
“I’m not scared of Lindet.”
She made a book out of her hands.
“Yes, I’ve heard the stories about her. And they’re just that: stories.” Everyone had heard the stories about Lindet; that people had disappeared after insulting her, that she’d had officers quietly executed for disobedience. He’d always passed them off as Kez propaganda. Even now, knowing she would abandon Planth without a second thought, he didn’t believe the more fanciful tales of her wrath.
But they did give him pause. “All right,” he admitted, “There will be reprisal for disobeying her orders. But you don’t know my father’s reputation. What’s she going to do to the son of the Adran field marshal?” The idea of hiding behind his father made his stomach turn, but some things were more important than pride.
Ka-poel didn’t look as if she believed that. She punched him in the shoulder, shaking her head and pointing to herself and then making a circular motion.
“What do you mean, what will happen to you?” Taniel frowned. “If she kills me, you’ll just go back to your tribe. No one will come after you.”
Ka-poel snorted and punched him again.
“Ow! Look, Pole, somebody has to do this and it’s not going to be anyone in her inner circle. She’s going to get all of these people killed.”
She pointed at him, then made a circular gesture and mimed a pistol going off next to her head.
“How am I going to get them killed?”
She threw her hands up, making a panicked face and running back and forth from one wall of the alley to another. She stopped, pointing at him, miming a hangman’s noose. Then the crown again, and a handing-over motion.
It took Taniel a few moments to work out what, exactly, she meant. “You think I’ll cause a panic, get myself court-martialed, and maybe even hand Lindet over to the Kez?”
Yes.
Taniel paced the alley, trying to force himself to calm down. He was furious that Lindet would leave so many people to die to screen her own escape. It was something no good Adran soldier would stomach, and Taniel’s father was known all over the world for his merciless tactics. But Ka-poel had a point. Lindet’s strategy was the only one available to them if they were going to make the most of this mess.