Pelaya looked at her mother's face, so young and beautiful again now that sleep had for a moment soothed her fearful heart. She could not bear to wake her. She went to her mother's desk instead and wrote a letter in such a careful hand that Sister Lyris would have been proud of the execu¬tion, if not the purpose. She closed it with wax and her mother's seal.
She found Eril with three of the lower servants, trying to make order of the chaotic pantry. The Akuanis family never moved into the Landmarket house this early in the year and the household had not been prepared for their sudden arrival.
"I want you to take this letter up to the stronghold," she told him. "I want you to bring someone back here."
Eril looked at her with the full amount of hauteur he could afford to show to the daughter of his master. "To the stronghold, Kuraion? I don't think so. It is not safe. What do you want so badly? We packed up everything."
"I didn't say something, I said someone. He is a king, an important man, and the lord protector has left him in the stronghold to die."
"That is not a task for such as me-not unless your father himself asks me," he said with the firmness of an aging servant who had been cajoled and tricked over the years in every way young girls could devise.
"But you must!"
"Really? Shall we go and see what Kura Ayona has to say about it, then?"
"She's sleeping and can't be disturbed." Pelaya scowled. "Please, Eril! Babba knows this man and would want him saved."
The servant draped his fingers across his forehead in the manner of one of the onirai ignoring his persecutors while communing with the gods. "You wish me to risk my life for some foreign prisoner? You are very cruel to me, Kuraion. Wait until your father returns and we will see what the mas¬ter's wishes are."
She stared at him for long moments, hating him. She knew that even if she somehow forced Eril to go, there was no promise he would do what he was told, anyway-he was as stubborn as only a venerable family retainer could be. The citadel hill was in chaos and he could easily claim he had been prevented somehow.
Her heart was hammering-each crash of cannonfire might be the one that brought the stronghold roof down on poor Olin Eddon. She would have to go herself, but even in good times it would have been scandalous as well as dangerous to cross the city alone. She needed some kind of armed escort.
"Very well," she said at last, then turned and stalked away. She had a plan, and in fact was rather shocked with herself for even thinking of it, let alone putting it into action, but if she hadn't balked at forging a letter from her mother then she certainly wasn't going to let herself be frustrated by one difficult servant.
At the bottom of the road she stopped at the front gate of their neigh¬bors, a wealthy family named Palakastros. A group of beggars stood outside, as usual. Unlike Pelaya's thrifty mother, the mistress of the Palakastrai was a rich old widow who worried about what would happen to her after she died, and so she made a practice of sending food out from her table nearly every day. This assured that there was almost always a crowd of the aged and infirm outside her gate, much to the annoyance of Ayona Akuanis and other householders on the long, wide street. Because of the siege there were two or three times as many as usual today and they quickly sur¬rounded Pelaya.
Anxious at being hemmed in by so many strangers, especially dirty strangers, she picked one who looked extremely old and frail and thus less likely to try any tricks. She pulled him aside, leaving the others grumbling,
and handed him a small copper coin with a crab on it."Go to that house hold," she pointed back up the road toward the broad eaves of her family's house,"and ask for Eril the steward. Speak to him only. Tell him Pelaya says he is to meet her at the Sivedan Temple on Good Zakkas Road, and that he must bring his sword. If you do this properly, I will bring you two more of these tomorrow, right here. Understand?"
The old beggar gummed the coin reflectively, then nodded. "Temple of Siveda," he said.
"Good. Oh, and tell Eril that if he brings my mother or anyone else I don't want to see, I will hide and they will never find me, and it will all be his fault. Can you remember all that?"
"For three copper crabs? Half a seahorse?" The old man laughed and coughed, or it might have been the other way around-it was hard to tell the difference. "Kura, I'd sing the Trigoniad from stem to stern for three coppers. I've ate nothing but grass for days."
She frowned, wondering if he was making fun of her. How could an old, toothless beggar know the Trigoniad? But it didn't matter. All that mattered was getting King Olin to safety.
In fact, Pelaya thought, if this worked, Olin Eddon would almost cer¬tainly invite her to his own court someday out of gratitude. She could tell her family, "Oh, yes, the king of the Marchlands wishes me to come for a visit. You remember King Olin-he and I are old friends, you know."
She set off for Good Zakkas Road, half a mile away in the Theogonian Forum district. She had thought of bringing a knife herself, but hadn't known how to get one without risking her plan being discovered, so she had decided to do without. That was why she needed Eril and his sword. It had been years since he had fought in her father's troop, but he was big enough and relatively young enough that no one would try to rob her in his com¬pany, at least not in daylight. Still, robbery might be the least of the dangers.
Am I mad? The streets were full of soldiers, but most of the rest of the citizens had returned from their scuttling morning errands and were locked in now, terrified of the cannons, of the foul smoke and fire that fell from the sky. What am I doing?
Doing good, Pelaya told herself, and then remembered the Zorian in¬junction against self-importance. Trying to do good.
Jp
The rag had slipped from his mouth down to his chin and the dust was getting in again. Count Perivos spit out a mouthful of grit and then pulled the cloth back into place, but he had to lay down his shovel to tie it. He cursed through ash and dirt. When you had forty pentecounts of men at your disposal, you didn't expect to be wielding a tool yourself.
"Smoke!" the lookout shouted.
"Down, down!" Perivos Akuanis bellowed as he threw himself to the ground, but there was little need: most of the men were down before him, bellies and faces pressed against the earth. The terrible moment was on them, the long instant of whistling near-silence. Then the massive cannon-ball hit the citadel wall with a bone-rattling crunch that shook the ground and smashed more stone loose from the wall's inner side.
After waiting a few moments to be certain the debris had stopped fly¬ing, Count Perivos opened his eyes. A new cloud of stone dust hung in the air and had coated everything on the ground; as the count and his work¬men began to clamber to their feet he could not help thinking they looked like some sort of ghastly mass rising of the recent dead.
One of his master masons was already on his way back from examining the wall, which had been pounded over these last days by a hundred mighty stone cannonballs or more.
"She'll take a few more, Kurs, but not many," the man reported. "We'll be lucky if it's still standing tomorrow."
"Then we must finish this wall today." The count turned and shouted for the foreman, Irinnis. "What do we have left to do?" he demanded when the man staggered up. "The outwall can only take a few more shots from those monstrous bombards of theirs." Count Perivos had learned to trust Irinnis, a small, sweaty man from Krace with an excellent head for organi¬zation, who had fought-or at least built-for generals on both continents.