He had used up most of his power on the walls hours before, just after dawn. The drums had told him to expect the worst, and the worst had come with the forced opening of the gates-by Reduners already on the inside. Since then, Kaneth had been fighting in the streets. No more ziggers, though, thank the Sunlord. Or maybe thank the Reduner reluctance to risk dying in the frenzy from their own bastard weapons. Still, men died, overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of chalamen and bladesmen. They'd had to flee and regroup.
He'd known they were doomed. Known he was a dead man refusing to give up. It made no difference to his decisions. He had rallied as many guards as he could find, and they'd held off the invaders for a time on Level Ten. He and Elmar had fought side by side, two men sealing a long camaraderie with a deeper bond of two warriors who believed they were about to die. As the day wore on, more and more men dropped. Elmar saved Kaneth several times; Kaneth returned the favour, flashing a smile at the pikeman. For a while, they seemed charmed, a duo that could hold death at bay.
On Level Eight, their small group made another stand and held their position with the aid of an ageing waterpriest rainlord who had not yet used up all his power. In the end, the man died, speared from behind, and the group splintered as they were charged by Reduner warriors. Kaneth led those who stuck with him to the Level Six Cistern Chambers. He knew it was time to abandon the streets to the Reduners.
When he scanned the men remaining with him, Elmar was no longer among them. He spared a moment to grieve. They arrived at the Breccia Hall entrance almost a sandglass run later, and a water reeve opened the door for them. Kaneth continued up to the waterhall on Level One, leaving the guards behind at the hall.
He emerged straight into chaos. The defensive wall that had been erected across the tunnel leading from the mother cistern had been partially torn down. Everywhere he looked there were bodies of the dead or dying. At one end of the hall, half a dozen guards and a reeve were fighting still, close to being overwhelmed by eight or nine Reduners. At first glance, Kaneth couldn't see Ryka, and his heart clenched with the unthinkable fear that she was dead. Then he saw her, lying against the wall, out of the way of the fighting.
Not dead, but wounded. Her thigh was roughly bandaged; blood showed through the cloth. She faced the skirmishing, propping herself up on an elbow. From the intensity of her stare, he guessed she was using her water-powers. He raced across the room, sword drawn, reaching for the dregs of his power as he ran. Halfway across, he sucked water from the nearest Reduner. The man collapsed, shrieking. Entering the fray, Kaneth trod on the man's face. The next man he ran through with his blade. The impact almost wrenched his sword out of his hand.
Kaneth came up behind a warrior advancing on Ryka and tossed him face first into the nearest cistern. He pushed the man's head under the water. A younger warrior leaped at Kaneth with a roar of rage and a swinging scimitar. Kaneth ducked, parried-and blinded his attacker without losing his hold on the drowning man. He released his grip only when the Reduner stilled under his hand.
Panting, Kaneth resorted to water-power again and blinded two more Reduners before they realised their danger. Another turned to flee towards the exit tunnel, only to have Ryka snatch up a sword and swing it into the back of his knees. He collapsed. She finished him off by extracting the water from his throat. He died opening and closing his mouth in silence, like a fish out of water.
Kaneth looked around for someone else to kill, but the remaining Reduners were already dead. He lowered his sword and turned to the Breccian guards. They were all wounded, but still upright. "Good work," he said with a satisfied nod. "Check all the bodies to make sure they are dead. If not, kill them. And get that dead fellow out of our drinking water. Then start to block the entrance to the tunnel again before the next lot come."
The men obeyed wordlessly. One of them plunged his head into the open cistern. When he lifted it out again, dripping, he drank deeply from his cupped hands. To Kaneth, it was an action that said more than anything else; in a single day, something that once would have been a crime had ceased to mean anything at all.
He looked at Ryka. She was on her feet, bloodied, dirty, weary, her sword slipping from her grasp. And he was certain, as never before, what was important-and how stupid he had been not to have seen it years earlier. How ironic, he thought, his heart aching. It took a war.
"How badly are you hurt?" he asked, striding to her side.
"Shallow cut. Bloody, but nothing serious."
"Your father?"
"I heard he died up on the walls."
The pain in her eyes unmanned him. He couldn't speak. It was she who came to him, standing up and reaching out in answer to what she read in his eyes. "I thought you might be dead, too," she whispered. "I thought I'd lost you."
He enfolded her in his embrace, clutched her tight, buried his face in her hair. They stood like that, momentarily shut off from the world, while the men dealt out death around them. When he did speak, he said the first thing that came into his head.
"There haven't been any hussies. Or snuggery jades. Not since the day we married. Not even once." Oh shit, he thought. Did I really have to mention that now?
Her arms tightened around him. "Not even since I left your bed?" she asked.
"Not even then. I didn't want them any more, not after you." He eased his hold so that he could see her face, meet her eyes. When he spoke, there was pain behind every word he uttered, and he neither tried nor wanted to hide it. "Ryka, the truth is you have to come through this alive. Because without you, I won't have a reason to live. It's taken me half a lifetime to see that you are all that matters, all I want, all I need. I'm so sorry you were forced into a marriage you didn't want. So very, very sorry."
She sighed as if he had said something excessively stupid. "You are the only man I ever wanted to marry since I was fourteen years old, you dryhead."
He tried to make sense of that, but it was too difficult. Emotion uncurled inside him, but he couldn't untangle the strands: love, hope and shining joy entwined with dark knots of despair and grief.
"There's no need to say it," she said gently and laid a finger to his lips. "I've already heard the only thing I needed to hear. I love you, Kaneth Carnelian, and I always have. Always." The day passed unbearably slowly down in the hidden room on the thirtieth level. They measured time by the run of a sandglass and the faint light that entered through the ventilator from the outside. The day had, in fact, begun for them before dawn, when they had heard the distant drumbeats that signalled an attack on the walls. The level's reeve had spoken to them then, using the other ventilator shaft, his voice echoing strangely. He had told them he would go out into the streets to find out what was happening and they were not to move until he came back.
He had not returned yet.
Senya slept most of the time; Laisa paced; Jasper tried to read by lantern light. He'd opened the pack he had been given, to find that it contained the tables and maps he had studied with Cloudmaster Granthon. They detailed all the areas throughout the Quartern where rain was supposed to fall, and when, and how to get it there. Some of this Jasper had already learned in a practical sense from Granthon. Granthon and Nealrith had done their best to pour as much knowledge into him in the time they'd had, but it had not been enough. Here, in written form, was all he needed to know, if he ever had the chance to study it. If ever he grew enough in power to apply it. The size of the task was monumental.
Those papers weren't the only things in the pack: there were food supplies, a blanket, a palmubra hat and water skins, as yet empty. All things he would need on a journey.