“Are you trying to keep me from the palace? From my palace?” she shouted.
The lieutenant in charge of the formation called back, “Drop your weapons, all of you! I call on you in the name of Ederd the Fourth, Overlord of Ethshar, to surrender!”
Tabaea laughed. “I could just go around the block,” she called, “but I think I’ll teach you all a lesson.” With the Black Dagger ready in her hand, she marched forward. The line of soldiery braced to meet her. When she came within striking distance, the soldier directly in front of her called out, “Stop, or I ’11 kill you!” He raised his sword high.
“Go ahead and try!” Tabaea called back, without stopping. The man stabbed at her; catlike, she dodged the thrust. Her hand flicked out, like a cat’s paw at a mouse, and closed around the sword’s blade.
Startled, the soldier tried to snatch it back, but Tabaea tore the weapon out of his hand and flung it aside.
The soldiers to either side were striking at her, as well, now; she ducked and wove, dodging their blows. She snatched the swords away from two more soldiers. The line formation had broken, now; they were all coming to get at her, forming a tight little knot around her.
She smacked away swords, dodged their thrusts, grabbed one in her fist, and bent it until it broke; behind her she could hear her ragtag army muttering, brushing up against the soldiers, but not really fighting.
It didn’t matter. She didn’t need them.
A sword hit her squarely in the side, and she felt an instant of incredible pain, but then it was gone; she had lost another life.
Angry, she lashed out with the Black Dagger and sliced open a soldier’s throat. As he started to fall back she finished him with a thrust to the heart; she wanted a life to replace the one she had lost.
She picked up another guardsman and threw him against his companions; then another, and another. She used her hands and her warlockry both.
“You can’t stop me!” she shrieked. “No one can stop me!”
The Black Dagger flared blue, and something crackled like dead leaves in a hot fire. Someone was trying to use magic against her. “No one!” she repeated, “not even wizards!”
The dagger flared again, greenish this time. Tabaea jabbed it into a soldier’s belly.
A moment later the guard broke; several men fell back under the lieutenant’s orders, but others ran off down side streets, either Wizard Street or Arena Street, and a few ducked into the Cap and Dagger.
And of course, half a dozen or so lay unmoving on the ground.
“All right, men,” the lieutenant shouted. “She won’t make it easy, we’ll leave this one to the wizards!”
“Run away!” Tabaea called. “Look at them, you people, look at them run! Send your wizards, I don’t care! They can’t stop me!” She waved the dagger in the air, and a cheer went up from her “army.” “Come on!” she called, and again she marched toward the palace.
At the palace, the more ordinary officials and workers listened closely as the magicians reported on the encounter.
“Bad,” Karanissa said, “very bad. Three dead, at least. All on our side.”
“She’s still coming?” Lady Sarai asked.
“Oh, yes; the fight hardly even slowed her down.”
“What if we let her pass, but stopped her army?” The question was directed at the entire room, rather than at Karanissa.
“We could,” Okko agreed, “but what would that accomplish, if we can’t stop heft”
“Well, she couldn’t very well rule the city all by herself, could she?”
“No,” Okko agreed, “but I think she could kill everyone here, one by one, starting with the overlord himself, until the survivors started obeying her.”
“Would she do that?” one of the overlord’s scriveners asked, horrified.
“Yes,” Teneria said flatly. “She would.”
Sarai turned to the wizards. “What spells have you tried against her?”
“Several,” Tobas said. “From simple curses to the White Death. Whatever is protecting her blocks them all instantly.” “Is there any way to stop her?” Lady Sarai asked.
“Probably,” Tbbas replied, “and we’ll keep trying spells. But most of them would take more time than we have to prepare. And some of them would take out large parts of the city with her.”
“And we don’t really know which to use,” Karanissa pointed out. “Since we haven’t yet figured out what keeps her alive, we can’t be sure of how to kill her.”
Lord Torrut stepped into the room at that point and demanded loudly, “What’s happening?” Several people rushed to tell him; he quickly chose one to serve as his spokesman and began quietly absorbing information.
“I wonder where the other conspirators are?” Tbbas asked.
Karanissa shook her head, but before she could say anything, Kelder of Tazmor answered quietly, “I don’t think there is any conspiracy. I think there’s just Tabaea.”
“You never found traces of anyone else, did you?” Lady Sarai asked, startled. “She’s small enough, and strong enough, and seems to have several different magicks available—how can she do that?”
“There’s just Tabaea,” Karanissa agreed. “At least, there’s just Tabaea and the rabble from the Field.”
“It’s all just her...” Lady Sarai’s voice trailed off; then she asked, “What happens if we can’t stop her?”
No one had an answer for that, until Karanissa suggested, “We die, probably.”
“There’s no need for that,” Lord Torrut said, startling the others. “We don’t die; we retreat, we regroup, we reconsider our situation, and when we’re ready, we retaliate.”
“But how...” Sarai began.
“Listen, little Sarai,” Torrut said, cutting her off, “you and your father have made fun of me for years for being a warrior with no wars to fight. Well, now I have a war—and by the gods I swear that I’m going to fight it, and I’m going to win it. It’s not who wins the first battle that matters, it’s who wins the last battle. This Tabaea is going to win the first one, but I intend to make sure it’s not the last.”
The whispered side conversations had died away as Lord Torrut spoke; now everyone was listening to him.
“This Tabaea doesn’t like the overlord—that means we need to get him out of the palace before she gets here, and while we’re at it, I think we had better get his entire family out, with him: Ederd the Heir and Zarrea and Edarth and Kinthera and Annara, all of them. If she’s lived in the Wall Street Field then she probably doesn’t like the guard, and she doesn’t like me, and Sarai, she probably doesn’t like your father, Lord Kalthon—you’d better get him and your brother out of here, too. And magicians-she doesn’t like magicians.”
“But where do we go?” Lady Sarai asked, dismayed.
“She’s coming from Grandgate, is she? Then we go to Seagate. We put the overlord and his family and anyone who’s too old or too sick to fight on a ship, and we sail it out of here, out of her reach.”
“How do you know when it’s out of her reach?” Tobas asked.
That stopped Lord Torrut for a moment; then he smiled, showing well-kept teeth. “I don’t,” he said. “I’m guessing. But if she could stop a ship at sea... well, has she shown any sign of being able to affect what she can’t see?”
“No,” Karanissa said, “not yet.”
“How can we fight back from a ship, though?” Lady Sarai protested. “Until we know how to fight back,” Lord Torrut pointed out, “what does it matter where we are?”