The vertigo faded, and she looked up at the doorway to her tiny room, one identical to the room given all the hostages, made by the assembly of small, portable screens, furnished barely, with a bed, press, and an overtasteful arrangement of flowers. Lantern-light glimmered faintly through the cracks of her door, and from not far away she heard the tread of one of the sentries.
Her head throbbed with languid, slow-motion pain. There would be no more sleep, she knew. Not in Tastis’ city.
She stood up and thought the color of her privy-coat darker, to near-black. She would wear it every moment she was among Brodaini — that was one of Tyson’s orders, and one she agreed with wholeheartedly. She threw her surcoat over it, donned her belt, then took the pistol from under her pillow and clipped it to the belt. Quietly, so as not to disturb her neighbors, she slipped from her room.
The common room was to the right, and there Fiona nodded tersely to the Brodaini on watch — there were three at all times, one at each giant, heavily-barred door, another on the roof. The room was bare and clean, still well lit even at night; she passed through it quietly and walked up the winding stair to the roof.
A hot fitful wind struck her as she opened the door: the heavy stone had kept the tower’s rooms cool, even here in high summer, and she gasped with the force of the heat. She could feel sweat beginning to prickle her scalp. She returned the sentry’s challenge, then stepped out onto the warm flags, relieved, even if she was hot, to be out of the confining stone of the tower and under the canopy of the sky.
The southern winds had brought high scudding clouds with them, and the bright nonmoving light that was the Igaran starship was obscured. Deprived of the comfort of its sight, Fiona walked quietly to the rampart, seeing the black bulk of the Old Citadel, Tastis’ looming threat to the hostages, as it rose above the tower only a hundred yards away. She pulled herself into a crenelation, drawing up her legs and planting her back firmly against the cool stone. Then she tilted her head back to watch the stars. Unreachably high, the starship was momentarily revealed by the streaming clouds, and Fiona, unreasonably, was comforted. Her face licked by the wind, she closed her eyes.
When she woke it was past dawn. The lookout had been changed, she realized, but she hadn’t heard it. The hot blast from the south still gusted through the battlements, and the entire sky was roofed by high, grey cloud. She stretched her legs out, blood returning to the cramped muscles, and then went down for breakfast.
At midmorning, in what little privacy her quarters provided, she called in a brief report to Tyson, informing him, as she put it, of her continued existence; and told him more would come later, after she’d returned to Calacas. Then, quietly so as not to disturb the sleep of the night guards, she asked to speak to Grendis. The Brodaini chieftain seemed pleased to have something to do: Fiona asked about her life, her ancestors, the way she had lived in Connu Keep before Pranoth had been forced into exile. She found Grendis was a soft-spoken woman, thoughtful and grave; she spoke plainly about the life she had led, the children lost to accident or war, the homes she had been forced to abandon — there was no trace of self-pity in her tone, just a dignified acceptance of her life and its turbulence. Fiona found herself admiring the old woman considerably.
And then it was noon, and time for the hostages to parade themselves on the roof, under the spyglasses of their kin in Calacas. Fiona followed Grendis up the roof, the Brodaini in their armor tramping after, followed by the Classani with their umbrellas to keep between the Brodaini and the sun.
Fiona gasped at the furnace-blast of heat from the flagstones, then stood apart from the others as Grendis was handed her long glass and began viewing the battlements. In an hour or so, when the escort came, Fiona would leave the tower and cross the bridge to Calacas, away from Tastis’ city. The nightmare, for the present at least, would be over, and she would have survived. She would be visiting the hostages regularly from now on, but she would never again have to spend a night in the enemy city.
“Aiau!” Fiona looked sharply up at Grendis’ startled cry, and then watched in alarm as the expression on Grendis’ face turned from surprise to horror. Grendis dropped the glass and turned to her party, visibly mastering her shock in order to speak. Her voice was soft, but its tone was urgent and undeniable.
“Ban-demmini, we must leave the roof,” she said. “Gather our people, and guard the doors. Capiscu, fetch your rope. We must break out of the city, and quickly.”
Fiona stared at her for an instant; and then a sudden blare of trumpets from the Old Citadel spurred her limbs and she leaped for the stairway along with the rest. Tastis, she thought as her pulse began to beat about her ears, he’s given the order to kill us. She pulled her hood up over her head, then slid the facemask down.
“Bro-demmin!” A voice from below, where a guard stood at the base of the stair. “The court is filling with guards!”
Fiona’s heart sank. Tastis’ people were moving too fast. Grendis hesitated only a second. “Make certain your door is barred, then join us,” she called, then ducked into the common room, now filled with Classani strapping on their armor and snatching up their weapons. Grendis swiftly counted heads, found all present, then gave her orders.
“We’ll have to try to move along the battlements toward the Old City gatehouse,” she said. Her voice, amazingly, was still calm, speaking in an ordinary tone of voice but with compelling urgency. “We could be under fire from the Citadel, and we’ll have to move quickly to keep the men in the gatehouse from shutting us out. If we can’t get through the gatehouse we’ll lower ourselves down Capiscu’s rope on the opposite side of the wall, then fight our way to the Long Bridge Gatehouse. Capiscu and Sethaltin have the lead.” She raised her arms swiftly, a brief and hurried blessing. “Go, cousins!” she called, and her people were in sudden motion.
A door from this second storey of the tower led to the old city wall, and from its battlements to the big gatehouse. From there, the hostages could descend to ground level, cross a canal/moat and two blocks of tenements, and then arrive at the Long Bridge Gate.
Capiscu and Sethaltin, two young, heavily armored men with rhomphia, ran down the passage between the screened-in sleeping area, slamming gauntleted hands on the iron bolts in the door, sending them shrieking back into place. The metal-bound bar was flung aside, and then one of the Brodaini burst the door open at a run, moving with surprising speed down the battlement toward the citadel gatehouse. The rest followed: Fiona tried to stay in the middle with Grendis, thinking her coat to a stone-grey color to blend in with the wall.
The door to the second level of the gatehouse slammed in Sethaltin’s face, and his rhomphia bit at the timbers. The courtyard below was filled with milling soldiery, responding to the cry of trumpets; and then from the warriors throats came an ominous, dreadful moan as they saw the hostages above them. Fiona glanced left and right: they were trapped here on the inner wall. Arrows began whistling down from the keep, thudding into the shields the Classani held high to protect their lords. Too late, Fiona thought with flashing anger. Too late. In another few seconds those soldiers would realize the hostages’ intentions and start to pour up into the gatehouse, making it impossible for the hostages to fight their way through even if they battered down the door. Others would smash their way up into the tower, and then the hostages would be cut into fragments beneath an advancing wall of steel. Her nightmare come to terrifying life.
Grendis must have realized the same thing, for she began to give swift orders for Capiscu to ready his rope so they could descend into the clear, on the other side of the wall. A Classanu lurched to the flags, a long arrow slicing into his knee as deep as the cock feather. More arrows began to come down from the gatehouse battlements, a crossfire. Fiona heard a muttered Brodaini curse. Too late, she thought, and came to the inevitable decision.