“That’s very interesting,” he told Clement, who was following up his riposte by bounding forward, inside the point of Cazio’s weapon, dropping his tip again and raising his hand to keep Cazio’s sword parried to the outside. With that odd twist of the wrist, he cut at the right side of Cazio’s neck. Cazio lengthened his retreat and parried swiftly, bringing his hilt nearly to his right shoulder, then quickly threw himself to his left, dropping his point toward the knights face.
Clement ducked and made a stronger, arm-driven slash at Cazio’s flank as he closed. Cazio felt the wind of it, and then he was past his opponent, turning in hopes of a thrust to the back.
But he found Clement already facing him, on guard.
“Zo pertumo tertio, com postro pero praisef” he said.
“Whatever that means,” Clement replied. “I’m certain I’m fortunate your tongue isn’t a dagger.”
“You misunderstand,” Cazio said. “If I were to comment on your person and call you, for instance, a mannerless pig with no notion of honor, I would do it in your own tongue.”
“And if I were to call you a ridiculous fop, I would do that in my own language for fear that speaking yours would unman me.”
Someone nearby shrieked, and with chagrin Cazio suddenly realized he wasn’t in a duel but a battle. Anne had gotten away from him, and he couldn’t look for her without risking being hamstrung.
“My apologies,” he said. Clement looked briefly confused, but then Cazio was attacking him again.
He started the same as before, lunging for the top of the hand, and drew the same result. The cut came, just as before, but Cazio avoided the parry with a deft turn of his wrist. To his credit, Sir Clement saw what was coming and took a rapid step back, dropping the point of his blade again to stop the thrust now aimed at the underside of his hand. He let his blade recede a bit and then cut violently up Cazio’s blade toward his extended knee.
Cazio let the blow come out, withdrawing his knee quickly, bringing his front foot all the way back to meet his rear foot so that he was standing straight, leaning forward a bit. He took his blade out of the line of the cut at the same time and pointed it at Clement’s face. The cutting weapon, a handsbreath shorter than Cazio’s rapier, sliced air, but Clement’s forward motion took him onto the tip of Cazio’s extended blade, which slid neatly into his left eye.
Cazio opened his mouth to explain the action, but Clement was dying with a look of horror on his face, and Cazio suddenly had no desire to taunt him, whatever he had done.
“Well fought,” he said instead as the knight collapsed.
Then he turned to see what else was happening.
He got it in sketches. Austra was still where she ought to be: away from the fighting, watched over by one of the Craftsmen. Anne was standing, looking down at the patir, who was holding one hand to his chest. His face was red and his lips were blue, but there was no evidence of blood. His guards were mostly dead, although a few still were engaged in a losing battle with the Craftsmen guarding Anne.
Their forces seemed to be winning across the square, as well.
Anne glanced up at him.
“Free the players,” she said crisply. “Then mount back up. We’ll be riding in a few moments.”
Cazio nodded, both elated and disconcerted by the strength of her command. This wasn’t the Anne he remembered from when he’d first met her—a girl, a person, someone he liked—and for the first time he feared that she was gone, replaced by someone else entirely.
He cut the actors free, smiling at their thanks, then got back up on his horse as Anne had commanded. The battle in the square was all but over, and her warriors were rallying back to her. By his quick count of the fallen, they’d lost only two men—quite a good bargain.
Anne sat tall.
“As you can all see, we were betrayed. My uncle intended our murder or capture from the moment we entered the gate. I’ve no idea how he intends to escape his own punishment, but I’ve no doubt he does. We are fortunate we discovered this before setting foot in the castle, for we could never have fought our way out of there.”
Sir Leafton, the head of her detail of Craftsmen, cleared his throat.
“What if that isn’t what happened here, Majesty? What if those troops attacked us by mistake?”
“Mistake? You heard Sir Clement; he gave the order. He knew they were there.”
“Yes, but that’s my point,” Leafton said, pushing his long black hair from his sweaty brow. “Perhaps Sir Clement was, ah, incensed by your conversation with the patir and gave an order Prince Robert would not have wished him to give.”
Anne shrugged. “You are too polite to say it, Sir Leafton, but you suggest that my poor judgment may be to blame. That is not the case, but it hardly matters now. We cannot continue to the castle, and I strongly suspect we could not fight our way back out of the gate. Even if we could, the fleet stands between us and our army.
“We certainly cannot remain here any longer.”
“We might take the east tower of the Fastness,” Sir Leafton offered. “Perhaps hold it long enough for the duke to come to our aid.”
Anne nodded thoughtfully. “That’s rather along the lines of what I was thinking, but I was considering the Gobelin Court,” she said. “Could we hold that?”
Sir Leafton blinked, opened his mouth, then fingered his ear, a puzzled expression on his seamed face.
“The gate is sturdy, and the streets within are all narrow enough to throw up workable redoubts. But with this many men, I don’t know how long we could keep it. It would depend on how determined they were to stop us.”
“A few days, at least?”
“Perhaps,” he replied cautiously.
“Well, it will have to do. We’ll go there now, and quickly,” she said. “But I need four of you to volunteer for something a bit more dangerous.”
As they made their way down the crooked street, Anne had to resist the temptation to take her mount to a run, to leave Mimhus Square and its surroundings as quickly as possible.
The patir had known what was happening to him. She hadn’t meant to kill him, only to put the fear of her in him. But the more she squeezed his fat, corrupt heart and the more he begged and pleaded for her to spare him, the angrier she got.
Still, she thought she’d released him in time. His heart must already have been weak.
“He probably would have died soon, anyway.”
“What?” Austra asked.
Anne realized then that she must have spoken aloud.
“Nothing,” she replied.
Thankfully, Austra didn’t push the matter, and they continued their downhill clatter, passing through the south Embrature gate into the lower city.
“Why so many walls?” Cazio asked.
“Ah, I’m not sure,” Anne replied, a bit embarrassed but happy to have a harmless topic before them. “I never paid proper attention to my tutors.”
“They—” Austra began, but then she stopped.
Anne saw that her friend’s face was white. “Are you well?”
“I’m fine,” Austra replied unconvincingly.
“Austra.”
“I’m just scared,” Austra said. “I’m always scared. This never stops.”
“I know what I’m doing,” Anne said.
“That worries me more than anything,” Austra said.
“Tell Cazio about the walls,” Anne requested. “I know you remember. You always paid attention.”
Austra nodded, closed her eyes, and swallowed. When her lids lifted again, they were damp.
“They… the walls were built at different times. Eslen started out as just a castle, a tower, really. Over the centuries they built it bigger, but most of it was constructed all at once by Emperor Findegelnos the First. His son built the first city wall, called the Embrature wall; that’s the one we just rode through. The city kept growing outside the wall, though, so a few hundred years later, during the de Loy regency, Erteumé the Third built Nod’s wall.