The Aurolani commander clearly had a different view of the situation, and Alexia could not fault his analysis. As dusk fell, the Aurolani dragonels began to speak. They roared defiantly and spat their iron cargo at Nawal. The waiting sorcerers used their magick to deflect shots and divert them, rendering them all but harmless. Efforts to blast the city were futile.
But the Aurolani commander just stepped up the rate of shots, keeping them flying faster and more furiously. Dragonels went off in volleys. And where a single magicker might have been able to handle a single shot, now he had to choose among a flight of them. The more he tried to deal with, the more strength it required. Balls arced by untouched as exhausted sorcerers collapsed.
Moreover, her opponent’s crews heated the missiles in fires until they glowed cherry red. When one of those shots made it into Nawal and crushed its way through the wall of a house or granary, it ignited whatever it touched. From her vantage point, Alyx could see dozens of little fires burning. With a cadre of magickers, they might have been able to keep the fire in check, but too few magicians were being forced to do too much.
And the shot was not the only weapon employed against the city. Just the constant booming of the weapons was enough to fray nerves. Alexia was awake at midnight because she needed to study what her enemy was doing, but others were awake because they could not sleep. For all they knew a thunderclap was the only warning they had before an iron ball bashed their home into burning splinters.
Already people had begun to stream toward the docks.
Alyx frowned. She was confident that the enemy had neither enough firedirt nor shot to sustain the assault for long, yet their profligate expenditure seemed to contradict that. The commander facing her was a fool, a daredevil, or had more supplies and support coming and was not worrying about running out of charges for his dragonels.
Her obvious strategy for dealing with that problem would be to send a force out to raid his position, but she did not have enough troops to hit the Aurolani hard enough. While they could hold the city in bitter fighting, they were incapable of lifting the siege. Moreover, if she were to charge out with a mounted force aimed at taking the dragonels, a volley by draconetteers or, worse, a leveled volley by the dragonels themselves, would be devastating.
She hated having to sit and wait, but she had no choice. As long as the Aurolani had diverted part of their force here and were using up a lot of supplies, those same troops and supplies were denied the forces closing on Caledo. King Bowmar’s messages from the capital were rather sanguine. He labored under no misapprehensions about Alexia’s being able to hold Nawal. He just wanted her to delay the loss for as long as possible.
A knock came at her door, but before she could turn and invite whoever waited there in, the door opened. Three men and one woman, all of middle age and masked, filed in. They had donned fine clothes and clearly had discarded their cloaks elsewhere—all save Duke Thow, in whose palace she was standing.
The woman, whom Alexia was certain she’d seen before but could not recall, stepped from the group of her fellows and extended a hand. “For the love of the gods, Princess Alexia, you must listen to us.”
The duke grabbed the woman’s other arm and restrained her. “Princess, we regret this interruption, and we mean no disrespect, but we must speak with you.” He nodded toward the window. “As you have seen, the precautions we thought would save us are for naught. The city is burning. People are homeless. People are injured; they are dying.“
“Your city is under siege. Casualties cannot be avoided.”
“Granted, Highness, but we must do something.”
Alexia sighed. “I have been considering that very thing. The Aurolani will cease their shooting. They have not enough supplies to keep it up. Our sorcerers will rest and be able to do more.”
The duke shook his head. “They have too much to do. All the fires…”
She snarled. “Magick is not the only way to deal with fire, my lord. I have detailed troops to help organize firefighting efforts. This will leave our mages free for more important duties, like stopping the enemy.”
Alexia continued, not letting the duke get a word in edgewise. “I have considered a raid, but that would leave us worse off than before. It would sap our strength, so that when they came to take the city we could not oppose them. The slaughter would be unspeakable. Is that what you want?”
The woman tore her arm free of the duke’s grasp. “No, we want to avoid that. This is why we have come to you. We want you to negotiate a surrender.”
“What?”
One of the other men opened his hands. “You said yourself that the Aurolani are not shooting at the walls to preserve them against a counterattack. We could negotiate and let them come into the city. We would let them have it in return for the safety of our citizens. Surely they would see the wisdom of that exchange.”
Alexia snapped her mouth shut, then shook her head. “Do you know what you are saying?”
The woman’s head came up. “It will stop the slaughter.”
“You are insane. I know what it is for a city to be overrun by the Aurolani. Svoin was so poisoned that when it was liberated, it had to be burned. This city is home to twenty thousand souls, thirty perhaps? As it is now, so Svoin once was. When General Adrogans liberated it, fewer than five thousand people remained.”
The duke waved that idea off. “That was after twenty-five years.”
Alyx fixed him with a hard stare. “And you assume someone will come save you before another quarter century has passed?”
“No, we expect the Aurolani will abide by any agreement we make with them.”
“And why would they do that? If you surrender this city and if there were troops around who could rescue you, they’d not waste their time. They would just bottle you up in the city with the Aurolani, and when the gibber-ers ran out of rations, then you’d see just how long your agreement would last.”
The fourth man, a white-haired magistrate, let menace slip into his voice. “We have other things we can turn over to them. Valuable things.”
“Such as?” Alexia’s violet eyes narrowed angrily. “Me? The killer of a sullanciri? What are you saying, Magistrate?”
“You know very well what I am saying.”
“I don’t, Magistrate. Perhaps you’d better tell me!” Sayce stood in the doorway. Pure fury burned through her words. “Are you suggesting you would trade to the enemy two people who have come here of their own accord to save you?”
The magistrate looked down his long nose at her. “Princess, you would be safe.”
“Not with you, I wouldn’t.” Sayce strode through their midst, placing herself between them and Alexia. “You would sell me once the others had not been enough, and then others would sell you.”
The woman pleaded. “The alternative is death.”
“Yes, it is!” The Murosan Princess’ hands rent the air. “What are you not understanding? The Aurolani have come here to destroy us. They swept through Sebcia like a summer storm, and why? What did the Sebcians ever do to Chytrine? Nothing. It is the same with us. We have done nothing to invite this invasion save to have a good nation with stouthearted people who work hard to make the best life they can for themselves and their families.
“Look at yourselves. You wear masks, but do you think you are truly worthy of them? Your ancestors would strip them from your faces, then peel back the flesh beneath them. You have become the very complacent sort of people we overthrew when our ancestors took the mask.”
The duke’s spine stiffened with indignation. “You mistake us.”
“No I do not, not at all, Duke Thow. I see you for what you are. Just as you are willing to sell Princess Alexia or Kerrigan to the Aurolani, claiming it is for the sake of the people, you would sell the people for your own sake. You would count that a suitable price to pay, and would praise those making the sacrifice, but would deem yourselves too important to the nation and the city ever to offer yourselves to the enemy.”