Cerris gawked, awed, at the venerable butler as the horse galloped on, and damn if he couldn't have sworn that, for the first and last time, Rannert smiled at him. Then he was past, slipping clean through the corridor Rannert's wild assault had opened in the Cephiran ranks. Cerris tossed Sunder to his left hand, reaching to catch Irrial's arm with his right. With a grunt of sudden pain-Cerris never was certain which of them it had come from-she was off the ground, swinging awkwardly up and around behind him.
In an instant they were gone, leaving the Cephirans far behind, though Cerris knew better than to slow down lest a swift-thinking soldier free another of the horses and pursue. He felt her hands clasp tight about his chest, her face pressed against his neck, the wet touch of tears trickling down his skin.
But with his own fingers wrapped tight about Sunder's haft and the horse's reins, his voice trampled beneath the pounding thud of the hooves, Cerris couldn't even try to comfort her. "THERE'S ALMOST NO ONE LEFT," she told him softly as evening neared, the first words she'd spoken since the disastrous battle. "A few ran, but I don't know if they got away."
Cerris had driven the poor horse mercilessly, running it ragged across uneven grasses far from the highway. Finally the panting, lathered beast had snapped its leg in some animal's burrow. Irrial, eyes encircled in red, had looked away as Cerris and Sunder ended its pain.
But the horse had done them proud before the end, carrying them in a wide circle behind the Cephiran wagons, almost back to Rahariem, before it fell. The fugitives had once more blended with the scurrying workforce of citizens and soldiers, still hauling rubble after all these hours, then vanished into the city. They huddled now in the cooper's workshop where the stillborn resistance had been conceived.
Cerris, limbs aching, his entire body limp with exhaustion, forced himself to sit upright, to place what he hoped was a comforting hand on Irrial's arm.
"They knew we were coming, Cerris," she said. "There were so many soldiers waiting in those wagons, they must have been expecting trouble."
"It was a trap," he agreed. "I just wish I knew who…" His shoulders bunched in a sad shrug.
"Someone in the resistance?" Irrial asked. "Is it safe for us to be here?"
"I think it should be." Cerris rose and began slowly to pace, the mindless repetition helping his fatigue-swaddled mind to think even as it sent new complaints through sore calves. "If someone in the group had betrayed us, the Cephirans wouldn't have needed to set a trap. They could have hit us during any one of our meetings." He jerked to a halt as a thought struck him across the face like a gauntlet. "Is Andevar…?"
Irrial shook her head sadly. "He led the ambush, Cerris, and he tried to hold them off so we could run when he realized what was happening. He was one of the first to fall."
"Damn. Damn. I liked him."
"Me, too."
Silence, save for Cerris's pacing steps. And again he halted abruptly, brought up short this time by Irrial's sudden intensity.
"Yarrick," she spat. "It had to be!"
"I don't know, Irrial. I told you before, he has no real reason to love Cephira. They-"
"They could have paid him off! Or made him gods-know-what promises. But who else could it be? Nobody outside the resistance knew we were going to hit that caravan!"
"Yarrick didn't know we were going to-"
"But he knew you were asking about it. If they knew an underground was forming, and that you hadn't fled town after your escape… Well, it wouldn't be hard to figure out the real reason you were asking, would it?"
"It doesn't sound right," he protested, but it sounded weak even to his own ears.
No, that wasn't true at all. He just didn't want it to sound right. Because if Yarrick was a collaborator, that meant Cerris himself tipped them off. It was his fault those men and women, Rannert and Andevar, were dead.
'It was your fault the moment you agreed to support this stupid insurgency. You're only feeling guilty about it because they failed. But then, you've always looked smashing in that particular shade of hypocrisy.'
"That's not true!" he hissed, ashamed that he was once more arguing with himself, grateful that Irrial hadn't heard him-and terrified that, just maybe, that mocking tone spoke truth.
Irrial stared at the floor, Cerris at the far wall. Neither provided them with any answers. TOO MANY OF THE CEPHIRANS had seen them this time, Cerris reluctantly decided as Rahariem bedded down beneath its blanket of night. Even if the names Baroness Irrial and Cerris the Merchant weren't known through the ranks of the soldiers, the descriptions of those who had escaped their trap would surely be making the rounds. Someone might even have sketched them. They couldn't be seen out and about any longer, but neither could they indefinitely sit in the back of Rond and Elson's shop. For one thing, they had to know if anyone else had escaped, if there remained any ashes of the resistance from which a phoenix might arise.
And so, with no other options available, Cerris admitted to Irrial just how he'd escaped from his work gang and his Cephiran overseers. On any other day, Irrial might have reacted to the revelation that he was a wizard on top of everything else-even one of only middling talent-with no small degree of amazement. Tonight she said only, "I wish it had been more help."
Cerris began to wonder if something more than the loss of their companions, devastating as that might be, was eating away at her.
She brightened a little, though, when he explained that those same magics might enable them to hunt for other survivors. "Though I'm not saying it'll be easy," he warned her. "I'm tired as a succubus with a quota, my spells aren't very potent at the best of times, and I've never tried maintaining one of these phantasms on someone else at any great distance. We can't afford to rely on them for more than a few hours, and you need to avoid speaking with anyone who knows you well. There's a good chance they'll see through it."
"I understand. Do it."
Moments later, a man and a woman who only somewhat resembled Cerris and Irrial departed the cooper's workshop.
The better to avoid running into anyone whose familiarity might prove troublesome, Irrial headed toward the late-night taverns she'd never frequented in her prior life as an aristocrat, while Cerris donned the Cephiran tabard that was starting to feel as familiar-and as much in need of a warm bath-as his own skin, and took to the streets.
As the moon flounced through the sky, leaving a wake of brokenhearted stars, Cerris meandered from block to block, chatting with guards standing post, off-duty squads working on a friendly drunk, even an officer for whom he offered to carry a crate of charts and records (aggravating his back in the process). Most had heard only third- or fourth-hand accounts of the engagement, in which the size of the attacking force and the valor of the Cephiran warriors were both obscenely exaggerated. All accounts agreed, however, that only a very few insurgents had survived, and most of those were held under heavy guard, awaiting brutal interrogation. Cerris felt as though his heart had sunk so low he was in danger of digesting it, and he held precious little hope that anyone but Irrial and he remained.
By the time he returned to the cooper's, it was all he could do to drag his feet across the cobblestone streets, and his neck ached abysmally from the strain of supporting a head stuffed with sand. It had been a very long day, filled with exertions physical, emotional, and mystical, and Cerris was frankly surprised that he hadn't simply collapsed like a sack of grain-very, very tired grain-hours ago.