“That opens the sewer grates unless I’m sorely mistaken.”
Zane took the key and frowned. “You’re suggesting the assailants came from the sewers?”
Caliph nodded.
“Impossible. The castle sewers are independent of the city sewers. The only way into them that doesn’t drain out of the castle is by a main line that’s locked and regularly patrolled. We’ve had no disturbances. It’s impossible that . . .” His mouth stopped working as he began to ponder more creative ways.
There were certain prisoners in West Gate with tattoos identical to those found on the bodies tonight who had been caught trying to steal heavy machinery. The Cro
state Brickyard had filed a report. All of it began to form a fuzzy picture in his mind.
“Impossible?” asked Caliph. “Let me tell you what’s impossible. I have forty-two dead men and women. Forty-two grieving families I have to address tomorrow without any excuse for our incompetence. Now I swear—” His voice began to rise.
“Forgive me, your majesty,” Mr. Vhortghast crooned. “I’ll have a thorough inspection of the sewers completed before dawn.”
“Arrest David Thacker.” Caliph seemed to collapse as he said it. He sat down on the edge of the bed, utterly bereft.
“Right away, your majesty. On what charge?”
Caliph waved faintly at the coffer. “Qaam-dihet for now. Maybe treason later. And find out who Peter Lark is. I want to know what this letter is about.”
“I will conduct the interrogation myself, your majesty.”
Zane Vhortghast left the room.
Sena felt dirty. She had never actually used her skills in this way. Pår
n and får
n were innocuous choices compared to sentencing a man to death. And death, she felt certain, was what David Thacker would get.
The basics of interrogation were simple. The first was to capitalize on the stress of capture or, in this case, arrest.
David Thacker was thrown headlong into a filthy concrete cell. He hurt his shoulder as he tried to break his fall. Zane Vhortghast watched from a dark room behind a pane of glass while three men roughed him up. They shone lights in his eyes. Then they introduced him to the first of many stress positions.
David Thacker kneeled on a cement floor, ankles crossed, hands behind his neck, a sandbag on his head.
Zane Vhortghast entered the room.
“Do you own a key to the grates in the east garden?” asked Zane.
David was already crying.
“No.”
“This isn’t yours?” Zane held up the key from David’s box.
“No. It must have been planted.”
“Planted? How do you know where I found it?”
“I don’t.” David sobbed. His face was awash and gleaming with snot and tears under the lights. “I just assumed you must have gotten it from somewhere.”
Zane ignored the useless statement.
“Do you use qaam-dihet?”
“No. Only sometimes.” Under the lamplight, David’s sleeves had fallen down. His arms were crosshatched with an ugly pastiche of scars.
“Who is Peter Lark?”
David froze with fear. “I don’t know. I swear I don’t know.” The other men in the room took notes while Zane asked the questions.
“Obviously he knows you. There was a letter in your box. Did he tell you to unlock the sewer grates?”
“I told you, it’s not my key.”
“So it’s his key, and you just agreed to unlock the grates for him?”
“No. Peter Lark’s got nothing to do with the sewer grates. That’s something totally different.”
Zane smiled at the sweet sound of truth.
“Really, what does Peter Lark have to do with?”
“Nothing. I don’t know. I never saw him but once and he wore some disguise.”
“Who did you open the sewer grates for?”
“Fuck off!”
But the spymaster knew that David’s knees were already aching and his arms had gone numb. He was patient. “Who did you open the sewer grates for?”
It was to be a long night of games at which David Thacker could not win.
CHAPTER 22
Roric Feldman was a traitor. That was the news Caliph heard on the first morning of the new month.
A hawk had come streaking into the spires of Isca Castle like a stiletto. Its dark streamlined form shot out of a blinding dawn.
General Yrisl was the first to read the note, which he then took directly to the king.
Messieurs,
Our boundaries remain ominously intact. The enemy refuses to cross the White Leech River. It remains a cold glittering line between the loyalists and the dissenters. Unfortunately, the mountains now belong to Saergaeth Brindlestrm.
Regretfully, it is my duty to inform you that Kennan Keep, governed by Lord Roric J. Feldman, has sided with the enemy. There is neither time nor space for me to detail his treachery here. Suffice to say, Forgin’s Keep remains our last position in the Greencap Mountains.
I respectfully request that you muster a legion as our front grows. I will position one army at Coldwell and the other at Borgoth’s Noose with the hope that we maintain our hold on Menin’s Pass.
Else when winter comes we find ourselves cut off from the outside world.
Yours Sincerely,
Mortiman Tentil
Prince of Tentinil
Caliph sank into his chair.
“Can we spare two armies?”
Yrisl shook his head. “Tentinil already has five thousand active duty spread along the front. Even if the prince calls for a muster and adds his to ours we’ll wind up with a thin legion. Two armies of about four and a half thousand men.”
“Remind me what we’re up against.”
The general leaned forward with his elbows resting on his knees, hands hanging limply toward the floor.
“The whole north is with him. That means Mort
rm and Gadramere and a total of about seventeen thousand infantry compared to our fourteen. We have eleven light and seven heavy war engines to spread across six thousand square miles—all the heavies are still in Isca. Meanwhile, they have all their engines at the front. Something like eight heavy and a dozen light minus what we guess they lost at Fallow Down. All of that wouldn’t be half-bad if their zeppelins didn’t outnumber ours by more than three to one. And as you know, that’s Saergaeth’s game.
“He pressed us to the river and dug in. Now he’s using the river as an easily maintainable line while he secures the keeps in the west as bases for the fleet of zeppelins he’s retrofitting day and night back in Miskatoll.”
“What about King Lewis?”
Yrisl snorted. “The intelligence the Pplarians gave us can’t be substantiated but personally I think you’d have better luck convincing a leper to spare change.”
“So he won’t help, but let’s assume he does. Assume we can convince him.”
“At the very best he’d give you four thousand infantry and a hundred knights. You can count Vale Briar’s zeppelins on one hand.”
“So it’s the zeppelins that will kill us.”
Yrisl nodded. “It’s just a matter of time.”
Caliph signed off on the order for a muster. As the fountain pen scratched across the paper, Caliph felt a terrible premonition.
“Do you think I should tour the field?”
Yrisl tilted his head with a pained expression and gestured as though the matter were highly debatable. In the end, his answer was simple. “No. I wouldn’t count on Saergaeth to move before fall when the leaves are gone and there’s less cover in the woods for our troops to hide. He’ll want maximum visibility. Stark contrast for the bomb sites. Men and machines will stand out even better against snow.