The nudge on her arm was so soft; she turned, and Tra. Hoppa gave her a look of silence, pressing close. “Climb the statue, hide there between the wings. Go when I distract them. Wait until the small hours, then get away. Get away from Burgdeeth.”
Zephy gasped, started to speak . . .
“Shhh—watch me. Go when the soldiers run.”
Tra. Hoppa moved away from her, slipping between the girls. Then suddenly she broke free of the line and ran, her skirts and tunic flapping. The rear guard came running past, pushing Zephy out of the way. A big girl, taking Tra. Hoppa’s example, broke out in the other direction and others followed. There was shouting, someone screamed. Zephy thought she was frozen to the spot, looked around blindly. Then she ran, terrified.
She reached the statue and pushed between the bronze bodies. Were the two Kubalese still on the other side? She couldn’t see, hadn’t time to look; she clutched for the Luff’Eresi’s raised foreleg and scrambled to pull herself up. Her hands slipped on the smooth bronze; she gripped the edge of the Luff’Eresi’s wing and struggled, pulled, until at last she scrambled up between the god’s rising wings, sick with fear. His back was still warm from the heat of the day; she was hidden as if in a nest of bronze where his wings and human torso rose up. She could not see below her, could see only the wings rising like curved walls on either side of her.
Finally when no one clutched her ankle, when no face appeared, she relaxed and pulled herself forward on her belly until she could peer down between the Luff’Eresi’s wing and his waist.
The two Kubalese soldiers were gone from beside the hedge. There was still angry shouting from several directions; but she was well concealed, and the warmth of the statue felt good. Where the Luff’Eresi’s back changed from horse to man, the muscles were smooth and taut. His wings rose from this joining place, their feathers, as long as her forearm, overlapping in intricate patterns. And the wings themselves soared as if they felt the wind, the windblown clouds above seemed to stand still and the wings to move beneath them. Waytheer shone once between blowing clouds thin as gauze,, then was gone. She wished she had her cloak. She had sat on it in the cell, and left it there sodden with muck from the stone floor.
The soldiers’ voices faded, at last were gone. The line of girls who had not escaped, and Mama, had already reached the Inn. Had Tra. Hoppa been captured? If she was free, would she go to the tunnel? Zephy looked at the Horse of Eresu next to her, his dark shape lifting in the moonlight, then left her perch to climb onto his back, nearer to the tunnel entrance. His horse’s head rose above her, his mane flung out. She could see only one light near the square, in the Deacons’ house across the way. What had happened to the Deacons? And to the Landmaster? The Landmaster’s Set had been plundered. From her prison Zephy had watched as silver and carved furniture and Zandourian rugs had been thrown carelessly onto the cobbles, then loaded in bundles onto the backs of Burgdeeth’s own horses, to be carried to Kubal. Jewels had been tossed from soldier to soldier, glinting in the sun then stuffed into saddlebags. And the serving girls had been used cruelly by the Kubalese. Quiet girls who had spent most of their lives in the Set, living quite apart from Burgdeeth. Once, they had seemed only shadows to Zephy if she thought of them at all. Now she remembered them with pity.
When she had seen Elij grooming the Kubalese horses, she had felt only surprise that he was not locked in a cell or dead. And she had wished him dead instead of Shanner.
There was a dull pulsing of laughter from the Inn, and then shouts. She could slip down the side of the statue now, and go into the tunnel. But she knew she must not. She must wait until all the soldiers slept, then make her way to the Inn. For she could not leave Mama.
FIFTEEN
She slid down the side of the statue in shadow, and stared around her at the unsheltering, moonlit square. There was a long, unprotected distance before she could slip into darkness beside Burgdeeth’s buildings. It would be so easy to slide open the door to the tunnel now and hide herself there. She felt as if eyes watched from everywhere. She pulled off her shoes and raced headlong to the first deep shadows, by the Weaver’s. She crouched by the broken loom, her heart pounding.
She began to move carefully along the wall among the tangled, broken debris from Burgdeeth’s homes. At the edge of the moonlight, a carved doll lay forlorn atop a broken washtub. Food was scattered, good mawzee spilled and honeyrot sticky where casks had been smashed open. In front of the Forgemaster’s, smith’s tools lay covered with blood so she stood, shocked, for a long moment. She felt sick for Shanner, sick with his death, and sick that the tools he had loved were here like this. There was a child’s tunic hung from the corner of a building and some hides had been thrown into the street.
The Kubalese soldiers must have been very drunk, indeed, to destroy so wantonly. Even they would need tools, need food and equipment.
A tangle of brooms and cookpots and broken benches lay across the Inn’s porch, in full moonlight. From the shadows she stood looking, then quailed as she heard movement inside. In one of the upper rooms? A girl laughed, and a door banged. Maybe the girls didn’t all find the Kubalese so distasteful. She started forward then drew back in terror as the door opened noisily and a Kubalese soldier stepped out.
He stood on the porch looking around him. He seemed to look right at her. She thought he must hear her heart pounding; she felt like a trapped animal. He belched and scratched himself, then started down the steps. She shrunk from him, pressing herself into the rubble as he came toward her. But he kept on, lurching past her so close he could have touched her, and went on down the street toward the square. She watched him cross the square, a black figure striking across the pale cobbles toward the Set.
She listened for other noises from inside. When all had been silent for some time, she swallowed dryly, slipped up the stairs, and began to lift the heavy door. She got it open without sound and stood in the dark hallway. Where would Mama be? Not in her own room, surely. But she turned, and began to push open Mama’s door, willing her eyes to see.
The moonlight through the window cast itself across a sleeping form in Mama’s bed. Zephy crept in. The figure was big, and as she stood listening, it groaned. She edged backward, to get out. A whisper stopped her.
“Zephy?” Mama’s hand was on her arm, pulling her away from the bed, from the moonlight. Then Mama’s arms were around her.
*
At last, shaken with crying, they huddled in the far corner of the room away from the sleeping Kearb-Mattus who, wounded, had been brought to the best room in the Inn. It was to tend Kearb-Mattus that Mama had been sent for. He had awakened only once since Mama had arrived, but his bandages were clean now, and his wounds had been doctored with dolba leaf. “There are other wounded in the longroom. I am to nurse them and Kearb-Mattus. Tra. Hoppa cooked their supper.” They had caught Tra. Hoppa, then.
“Where is she?”
“In the loft. Sleeping in the loft.”
“Mama . . .”
“You must go away, Zephy. I don’t know whether what Tra. Hoppa said was true, I don’t want to know. But they will surely kill you, the Kubalese will kill you if they find you. They won’t wait for Kearb-Mattus.”
“We can go now, we—”
“I cannot go with you.”