“Oh, you know,” she replied breezily. “Death. Dying. A great offering to the god. And what a spot for it! Just a couple dozen miles from Rassambur, and we had no idea this place was even here. Very atmospheric.”
As though to underscore the point, the air beyond the broken wall burst into another sheet of flame, illuminating for half a heartbeat both Triste and the Skullsworn assassin, who continued to hold the knife against her neck. Fear and confusion played over Triste’s face, but Pyrre looked cheerful, despite blood dripping down from a gash at her hairline. It was almost a loving pose, that arm wrapped around the girl’s chest, the two heads close to touching. Minus the knife, it was the sort of thing you might find between a mother and daughter, although the two looked nothing alike. Pyrre was obviously older, her face lined by long years in the sun, her hair as much gray as black. Older, and harder, leaner beneath her leathers. She wore the blood smearing her face as though it were makeup.
“We have to go,” Kaden said, glancing toward the broken wall once more. Boots clattered somewhere in the streets beyond, steel continued to scream against steel, but there were no soldiers just outside, at least not for the moment. Pyrre had said nothing about a rescue, but she was a priestess of death. If she had come to kill them, she would have killed them already.
“Indeed,” the assassin replied, cocking her head to the side. “The tide has shifted. My brothers and sisters came to make an offering to Ananshael, but it sounds as though they have become the sacrifice.” She didn’t sound bothered by the development.
He listened to the fighting. “How do you know?”
“Less screaming,” she said. “Ananshael’s adherents die quietly.” She shrugged. “They have a leach-a strong one. We didn’t figure on that.”
Triste twisted in the woman’s grip. Pyrre let her go.
“Where is the other one?” the assassin asked, glancing around the stone chamber. There was a new note in her voice this time, an eagerness, a hunger. “Long Fist. I’ve waited a long time to see him again.”
Kaden shook his head. “Escaped.”
Pyrre’s eyes narrowed. “We tracked you here.…”
“He leapt into the river just a quarter mile north.”
The Skullsworn clucked her tongue in irritation. “A shame. I was looking forward to opening his throat.”
Inside Kaden’s mind, Meshkent coiled and uncoiled, his voice a silent, wordless growl.
“We have to go,” Kaden said again, as much to blot out the god as to drive them into motion.
Pyrre pursed her lips, looked from Kaden to Triste, then back again. “I suppose we do.”
“How?” Triste demanded, staring out the gap in the wall. The fire had died down, but the shouts and screams seemed to be coming from everywhere.
“I suppose it would be too much to hope,” Pyrre said, “that one or both of you might have spent the past year studying something other than pottery or fellatio?” The assassin raised an eyebrow. “No?” She let out a long sigh. “I guess we’ll stick with the same plan as last time, then.”
“What plan?” Triste demanded.
“You run as fast as you can,” Pyrre replied brightly, “while I kill people.”
47
From the top of the watchtower halfway along Annur’s old northern wall, Adare stared west. It was easier than looking north. There was nothing to the north now but burned-out wreckage, charred timbers crumbling under their own weight, backyard gardens buried beneath ash, the streets impassable, blocked by the crumbling hulks of shattered stores and stables, temples and taverns. The distinctions didn’t matter now. Whoever had lived, loved, and prayed in those spaces just days earlier was gone. Safely evacuated, hopefully. Maybe just dead, hung in one of the dozens of squares, or crushed beneath the weight of the burned-down buildings and their own stupid stubbornness.
Atop the wall, at least, the situation was different. Terial’s old fortification was a hive of activity: soldiers stacking crates of arrows and extra spears, masons laboring to repair cracks and rents, men dangling on ropes before and behind the wall, or standing on hastily erected scaffolding, or bent double in the middle of the walkway itself, slathering old stones with new mortar. Adare glanced up at the sky. According to the master mason in charge of the project, all the effort would come to nothing if the rain arrived before the mortar set, but there was nothing to be done. The Urghul wouldn’t wait for the rain.
As Adare studied the ongoing work for her makeshift command post atop the tallest of the towers, Nira came puffing up the stairs, followed by Kegellen and Lehav.
“Near as any of those assholes with the numbers can figure, there’s enough grain in the warehouses to last the city two weeks.”
Adare looked up at the clouds, considered the figure.
“’Course, we’ll have resupply,” the old woman went on. “More rice than wheat, but food’s food to a grumbling belly.”
“Sixty percent of that food came from north of the Neck,” Adare replied finally, “at least for Annur. Given what’s in the warehouses and the trickle that’ll keep coming up from the south, we can last three weeks.”
“Longer,” Lehav said. “A lot longer. Start the rations now.”
Adare turned to him. “I just burned down the homes and neighborhoods of a hundred thousand Annurian citizens. I’ve told them to live in warehouses and whorehouses and any other kind of fucking houses with enough space on the floor for a curled-up body. It’s astounding the city isn’t rioting already.”
“The Queen of the Streets has her thugs out,” Nira said. “They’re-”
“Encouraging calm,” Kegellen interjected. Unlike nearly everyone else on the wall, Adare included, she didn’t seem to be panting or sweating. The sky-blue silk of her robe fluttered lightly in the hot breeze. She patted her hair with a free hand, as though to check it had not fallen free of the elaborate pins and clips holding it up.
“And by encouraging calm, you mean killing people,” Adare said, pressing a hand to her forehead.
Kegellen winced elaborately, as though the words themselves pained her.
Nira just shrugged. “Sometimes ya gotta kill people to save ’em.”
“The grain…,” Lehav began again.
“The grain is fine,” Adare said, shaking her head. “If we all survive long enough to starve, I’ll count it a victory. The miserable fact is that this city is on the brink of extinction. We’re one eloquent, heartbroken mother away. One firebrand of a soldier who saw his family home torn down with his aged father inside. If one of those bastards starts making speeches in the streets, good speeches, we’ll have full-blown madness south of the wall, and even Kegellen can’t keep putting knives in them all.” She blew out a long breath. “We won’t need Balendin and the Urghul to kill us. By the time they show up, there’ll be nothing left of Annur but mud and blood.”
For once Nira had no response. She was staring down at the burned-out houses, but Adare had a sense that instead of the recent violence, she was seeing the wreckage of her own wars, battles a thousand years dead and more.
“The people need hope,” Lehav said finally.
Adare met his eyes. “So start handing it out with the grain,” she growled. “Greatest city in the world must have a few warehouses just packed to the rafters with hope.”
“A flip response,” the soldier said. “One that ill becomes the prophet of Intarra.”
“Intarra,” Adare said, the word so bitter on her tongue it might have been a curse rather than a prayer. “Where’s the goddess when you need her?”
Lehav’s jaw tightened. “That you would ask such a question is the reason the people are losing hope.”
“They’re losing hope,” Adare spat, “because I’m burning down their fucking homes and the Urghul are coming to finish the job.”
To Adare’s surprise, it was Nira rather than Lehav who replied. “He’s right,” she said. “Men don’t need a goddess when the table’s piled high and the bed is warm. They need her when the well runs dry. When the fire’s all but burned out.”