At noon, the reivers were called by groups into the castle for their meal. The captives were given nothing. And after that began the complex business of moving the captives and the loot out of the city.
The women and children went first, kicked to their feet and marched to the square’s central fountain, where they were allowed to drink. Each was then given a bag of loot, a bolt of costly fabric, or a basket of food, and marched away in the direction of the River Gate.
I sat up, wringing my torn hands in anxiety as I peered through the ivy in hopes of viewing my mother or sisters. I failed to see them, but I felt a cold spear enter my heart as I saw Annabel Greyson bent weeping over a bolt of cloth as she shuffled along in a nightgown and bare feet. With her I saw other young women I had last seen gaily clad as Mermaids, along with their mothers and sisters. I saw girls I’d flirted with at market stalls, young boys I’d seen running in the streets, dignified grandmothers I’d met at the temple or the Fane. And I saw Tavinda, the Aekoi woman who’d always bargained with my father for a better price, leaning on the arm of her concubine daughter, both dressed in soiled finery, their captivity a demonstration that the Aekoi had no objection to enslaving their own race.
By the time the last of the women had passed, my heart had been wrung dry of sorrow. I was as bereft of feeling as the stone and cold brick that shaped my hiding place. I could only watch, observe, and keep a mute tally of the tragedies below.
After the women and children had been marched away, the men were given the same treatment, save that their burdens were heavier. They shuffled along, chains ringing, backs bent. I saw aldermen, the Mayor, and the Lord Warden Scrope, who with his band of royal troops had so signally failed in his duty to defend the city. Lawyer Dacket shuffled along with his two sons. I recognized many of this year’s Warriors of the Sea, and though I didn’t see Kevin, I saw Kevin’s father, the Mercer Spellman. I saw monks in their robes, their sacred character having proved no boundary to enslavement. I saw Anthony Greyson, the wrathful father who had pursued me the previous night. Greyson was badly battered, having resisted captivity, and I found no joy in this enemy brought low.
The long, anguished procession took hours. By late afternoon, the square was empty save for the corsairs, who carried away whatever loot remained. Last of all, the reivers carried away the god Pastas, his azure skin and green hair shining in the sun as his statue was carried from the Fane to join the Thousand Gods of the Aekoi.
As the eastern sky began to darken, trumpets blew from the New Castle—a recheat, I thought—to signal any reivers remaining in the city to depart. In armor that glittered of captive gold, the commander marched away, shadowed by half a dozen black flags, and was followed by a few scurrying stragglers.
After which I was left to emerge from my cave into the new, ravaged city, a new world that smelled of cinders, of death, and of blackest misery.
CHAPTER FOUR
My little sword stuck through my belt, I climbed down from my hiding place just after sunset. Red stained the southwestern sky, but the square was in deep shadow, as if to hide the horrors that had taken place there.
My muscles had stiffened, and my arms felt as if they’d been drawn from their sockets. It had been three days since I’d slept. Hunched with pain and faint with thirst, I walked to the fountain, caught the edge of the basin with my hands, and drove my face into the water as if I were diving into a lake. I took two swallows so prodigious that they pained my throat, then came up gasping for air, throwing back my head and my hair. I dunked my head again, swallowed again, and kept swallowing until the taste of ash was gone from my throat. I hadn’t had anything to drink since the cider on my return journey from Mutton Island.
When I’d had enough water, I found my apprentice cap floating on the surface of the fountain. I washed the blood from my hands and the soot from my hair, then put the cap back on my head. Water coursed down my face.
I was not alone on the square: a few ghostly forms drifted through the big open space, some coming for water, others hoping—or fearing—to find their friends or relatives among the bodies the corsairs had left strewn on the brick pavement. I wiped my face, and tried with dulled mind to decide what to do.
Not all the fallen were dead. I heard voices calling out for help, saw a hand wave in the air. I walked to the fallen man and crouched by him, and saw that he’d been stabbed, his shirtfront red with blood.
“Water,” the man said. I didn’t know him. He was elderly, with a lined face and white hair and thin sticklike arms. The corsairs had probably thought he was too old for slave work, and not worth enough money to bother with ransom.
I rose to my feet and wondered where I could find a vessel for water before I remembered my cap. Most of the water drained through the fabric before I could return to the wounded man, but I managed to dribble a small stream onto the man’s parched tongue.
“Thank you. Thank you. More water, please.”
“It will not help,” I wanted to say. “You’re dying.” But I didn’t say it; instead, I went back for another capful of water.
I wanted to go to my home on Princess Street and find out what had happened to my family. But the old man was not alone in wanting water, and others were calling out, and people who were not wounded were wandering out from their hiding places. No one seemed to know what to do, so I decided to pretend that I was in charge. I led a group to a tavern, not to drink but to find cups for water. Those made of valuable metal had been stolen, and those made of glass smashed for the sheer sake of destruction; but the old pewter drinking vessels were still there, and these were carried out to succor the injured.
After this, it occurred to me that the wounded shouldn’t be allowed to lie in the square all night, and I sent people into the Grand Monastery for blankets and the simple beds on which the monks slept, and the injured were carried in blankets to the guild halls and laid on the beds. There was no doctor or surgeon to care for them, but I saw that their wounds were bandaged.
At midnight, an armed group of young men arrived, carrying pikes and led by one of the Warriors of the Sea in his antique bronze armor. I sent them to the Harbor Gate to keep watch on the enemy. Their leader soon came running back.
“The corsairs haven’t left. They’re still on the docks and in the harbor, trying to carry away all the ships.”
I could only shrug. “Let us know if they come back to town, will you?”
The Warrior peered past the visor of his ancient helmet. “Do you want us to fight them?”
“I don’t think that would be advisable.”
Toward dawn, another armed party arrived under the command of Sir Towsley Cobb, whose park and country house lay a few leagues north of the city. He was a small, bustling man in armor, with a little smear of a mustache and a youthful countenance. He and his sons rode chargers, and with them marched the men of his household, armed with clubs and spears.
“Who is in charge?” he called.
I was with a group by the fountain, trying to organize a party to round up food supplies, and I walked to the baronet and his party. Sir Towsley looked me up and down and seemed unimpressed.
“What exactly has happened in the city?” Getting straight to the point.