"Not for the likes of us," Walegrin decided, judging the weight of the leather armor he and Strat wore. "We go below. It's our only chance."
He led the way, crashing through the rubble and needing Strat's help more than once to shoulder through a crumbling door or wall that threatened to block their way.
"Lost 'em," Strat muttered when they burst through a flimsy gate to find Lizard's Way deserted.
Walegrin cupped his palms around his lips and emitted a passable imitation of a hawk. "Gave it a good try, though," he added between gasps. "Worth a jug between us."
Strat was nodding when a hawk cried and a face appeared in the gutters above them.
"Round the alleys and back. Captain. We caught her."
"Her?" both men said to themselves.
Kama glared at the night from the calf-deep stench of a Maze rooftop rain cistern. Stupidity and bad luck. Another fifteen steps and she would have been so deep in the Maze they would never have found her, but not this time. This time the damn shingle had to give way and take her sliding down a rain trough. That was the bad luck. Stupidity was not knowing the trough ended in a cistern when she had taken this exact route a dozen other nights. She would have ignored the makeshift rope Thrusher dangled above her if survival weren't more important than pride or if her ankle weren't already swollen from the fall and her hands abraded by her efforts to free herself on her own.
She bore the indignity of being hauled up like a sack of dead fish, knowing that the worst was yet to come.
"0 gods, no-" a familiar voice breathed softly. "Not you-"
Kama refused to look in that direction but stared instead at the young-ish officer in charge of the garrison troops who had pursued, then rescued, her.
"Well," she demanded, "are you satisfied or are you going to drag me up to the palace?"
Walegrin felt his throat tighten. Not that he wasn't accustomed to seeing a woman in men's clothing-in a thief's night-dark clothing at that. This was Sanctuary, after all. The garrison soldier guarding their flank was a woman he'd hired himself and as nasty a fighter as was ever bred in the Maze. But the young woman standing in front of him, her wet clothes plastered to her and her long hair snapping like whips when she tossed her head, was the backbone and brains behind the 3rd Commando, and probably the PFLS, for that matter. Worse-she was Tempus Thales's daughter.
"Who sent you?" he stammered, and had the god's good luck to find the one question that would leave her as uncomfortable as he was.
"Did your... did Tempus send you?" Strat asked, stepping into the light of a freshly kindled torch.
Kama tossed her head, barely acknowledging Strat's question, and stood silent until Thrusher stepped forward and grabbed her weapon hand.
"Lady, you want to use this again?"
"Yes-let go of me-"
"Thrush." Walegrin moved to restrain his lieutenant who had already unstoppered his wineskin. "I'm sure the lady has her own... resources."
Thrush turned around, exposing the wound to the torchlight. Everyone in the courtyard who carried a sword felt a twinge. The skin on Kama's palm lay in twisted spikes cross-hatched with black splinters from the cistern walls; not a wound that killed but one that stole reflexes and precision, which was just as bad. Kama shed a fraction of her composure.
"Lady," Thrush stared up into Kama's eyes, "you got a good doctor in there?" He shrugged a shoulder Mazeward and pointed the wineskin at her palm.
"Are you any better?"
Thrusher bared all his teeth.
"He's not bad," Walegrin confirmed, "but the demon's piss he keeps in that sack of his is guaranteed." , "Given to me by my one-eyed grandmother...." Thrusher explained as a stream of colorless liquid spurted toward Kama's hand.
"It'll hurt like hell," a faceless voice warned from beyond the torchlight.
But Kama already knew that. Her face went white and rigid and stayed that way until Thrusher put the cork back in the wineskin. Strat offered a strip of his tunic as a bandage as her own clothing was as filthy as the wound had been. She seemed relieved when Strat put his hand under her arm.
"Why?" Strat asked in a voice Walegrin saw rather than heard.
"Go on back to the barracks," Walegrin ordered quickly but made no move to leave the courtyard himself. "We'll see the lady to her lodgings." He met Strat's glower and outlasted it. "You and I have a jug of wine to split," he explained when his men had vanished.
"Why, Kama?" Strat repeated. "Didn't he think Crit would carry out his orders?"
They began moving slowly toward the warehouse where Strat had left his bay horse.
"I've been following Crit," Kama admitted. "When I saw him with the bow-I don't know if he's got orders or not." She paused to tuck a hank of hair behind her ear. Whatever pain remained in her face had nothing to do with her injuries. "Nobody in the palace understands any more. They haven't set foot in the streets. They don't understand what's happening. ..."
Like everyone else who had spent the winter in Sanctuary- rather than in the palace, or Ranke or some relatively secure war zone-Kama had lived through hell. Walegrin guessed she would have more faith and friendship for anyone who had also endured those long, dead-cold nights on the barricades, regardless of the color on their armband, than she could feel for any outsider-even her father.
"It takes someone who's been out here to understand," he agreed, sliding his arm under Kama's other arm so she didn't need to put any weight on her twisted ankle. "There's one I trust. I'd trust him at my back on the streets and I trust him in the palace...."
Molin Torchholder slouched back against the outstretched wings of a gargoyle. He would have preferred to be somewhere well beyond the city walls but winter was finally yielding to Sanctuary's fifth season: the mud, and he wasn't desperate enough to brave the quagmires masquerading as streets and courtyards. The palace rooftop was deserted except for workmen and laundresses who could still be counted on to leave him alone. He closed his eyes and savored the gentle warmth of the sun.
In a methodical fashion he reviewed the conversations and rumors that had passed his way. The garrison commander, Walegrin, was finally showing promise; acting on his own initiative, he had established friendly relations with Straton and Tempus Thales's daughter, Kama. That was a good sign. Of course, the fact that Straton was on the streets, cut off from both Ischade and the Stepsons and dealing with Jubal, was a bad sign. And confirmation that Kama was the intelligence behind the PFLS was the worst information he'd had in months- even if it wasn't a surprise. Tempus, never an easy man to predict under the best of circumstances, would be chaos incarnate if any of his real or imagined family turned on one another.
The whining hawkmask the garrison had interrogated had told them everything he knew, and a good deal he did not, about Ischade. Like Straton, the priest found it interesting that Ischade had rivals within her own household-rivals who could transform an Ilsig harridan into a Rankan lady. Molin knew the necromancer had been detaching herself from her magic since her raven had appeared on his bedpost with no message and less desire to return to the White Foal. If Ischade found her focus again, the bird would let him know by its departure. If she didn't, welclass="underline" Jihan could protect the children, Randal would protect his globe, and the rest of magic could destroy itself for all he cared.
On the balance, then, the thoughts percolating through his mind were satisfying. The street powers-the Stepsons, Jubal, the 3rd Commando, and the garrison-were reining in their prejudices and rivalries without overt interference from the palace. Sanctuary-flesh-and-blood Sanctuary-would be quiet when the imperial delegation made its appearance. The disorganization of magic and the broodings of Tempus Thales seemed soluble problems by comparison.