“He’s brave, your fool,” Tamora remarked, “but he’s even more of a fool than I thought possible.”
“Let us wait and see,” Yama said, although he did not really believe that the pot boy could do anything against the armored giant. He was as astonished as Tamora when, a few minutes later, the dogs began to bark again, the gate clanged open, and Pandaras appeared in the gap and beckoned to them.
The giant guard sprawled on his belly in the roadway a little way beyond the gate. His helmet was turned to one side, and one of his arms was twisted behind him, as if he was trying to reach something on his back. Yama knew that the guard was dead, but he could feel a glimmer of machine intelligence in the man’s skull, as if something still lived there, gazing with furious impotence through its host’s dead eyes.
Pandaras returned Yama’s satchel with a flourish, and Yama stuffed his belongings into it. Tamora kicked the guard’s scarlet cuirass, then turned on Pandaras.
“Tell me how you did it later,” she said. “Now we must silence the dogs. You’re lucky they weren’t set on you.”
Pandaras calmly stared up at her. “A harmless messenger like me?”
“Don’t be so fucking cute.”
“Let me deal with the dogs,” Yama said.
“Be quick,” Pandaras said. “Before I killed him, the guard sent for someone to escort me to the house.”
The dogs were baying loudly, and other dogs answered them from distant parts of the grounds. Yama found the kennel to the left of the gate, cut into the base of the wall.
Several dogs thrust their snouts through the kennel’s barred door with such ferocity that their skull caps and the machines embedded in their shoulders struck sparks from the iron bars.
They howled and whined and snapped in a ferocious tumult, and it took Yama several minutes to calm them down to a point where he could ask them to speak with their fellows and assure them that nothing was wrong.
“Go to sleep,” he told the dogs, once they had passed on the message, and then he ran back to the road.
Tamora and Pandaras had rolled the guard under the partial cover of a stand of moonflower bushes beside the road. Tamora had stripped the guard’s heavy pistols from their shoulder mountings. She handed one to Yama and showed him how to press two contact plates together to make it fire.
“I should have one of those,” Pandaras said. “Right of arms, and all that.”
Tamora showed her teeth. “You killed a man in full powered armor twice your height and armed with both of these pistols. I’d say you are dangerous enough with that kidney puncher I chose for you. Follow me, if you can!”
She threw herself into the bushes, and Yama and Pandaras ran after her, thrashing through drooping branches laden with white, waxy blossoms. Tamora and Pandaras quickly outpaced Yama, but Pandaras could not sustain his initial burst of speed and Yama soon caught up with him. The boy was leaning against the trunk of a cork oak, watching the dark stretch of grass beyond while he tried to get his breath back.
“She has the blood rage,” Pandaras said, when he could speak again. “No sense in chasing after her.”
Yama saw a string of lights burning far off through a screen of trees on the far side of the wide lawn. He began to walk in that direction, with Pandaras trotting at his side.
Yama said, “Will you tell me how you killed the guard? I might need the trick myself.”
“How did you calm the watchdogs?”
“Do you always answer a question with a question?”
“We say that what you know makes you what you are. So you should never be free with what you know, or strangers will take pieces of you until nothing is left.”
“Nothing is free in this city, it seems.”
“Only the Preservers know everything, master. Everyone else must pay or trade for information. How did you calm the dogs?”
“We have similar dogs at home. I know how to talk to them.”
“Perhaps you’ll teach me that trick when we have time.”
“I am not sure if that is possible, Pandaras, but I suppose that I can try. How did you get through the gate and kill the guard?”
“I showed him your book. I saw you reading in it when we rested in the ruins. It’s very old, and therefore very valuable. My former master—” Pandaras spat on the clipped grass “—and that stupid cateran you killed would have taken the gold rials and left the book, but my mother’s family deals in books, and I know a little about them. Enough to know that it is worth more than the money. I talked with someone through the guard, and they let me in. The rich often collect books. There is power in them.”
“Because of the knowledge they contain.”
“You’re catching on. As for killing the guard, it was no trick. I’ll tell you how I did it now, master, and you must tell me something later. The guard seemed a giant, but he was an ordinary man inside that armor. Without power, he could not move a step; with it, he could sling a horse over his shoulders and still run as fast as a deer. I jumped onto his back, where he couldn’t reach me, and pulled the cable that connected the power supply to the muscles in his armor. Then I stuck my knife in the gap where the cable went in, and pierced his spinal cord. A trick one of my stepbrothers taught me. The family of my mother’s third husband work in a foundry that refurbishes armor. I helped out there when I was a kid. You get to know the weak points that way—they’re where mending is most needed. Do we have to go so fast?”
“Where is the house, Pandaras?”
“This man is rich, but he is not one of the old trading families, who have estates upriver of the city. So he has a compound by the docks where he does his business, and this estate in the hills on the edge of the city. That is why the wall is so high and strong, and why there are many guards. They all fear bands of robbers out here, and arm their men as if to fight off a cohort.”
Yama nodded. “The country beyond is very wild. It used to be part of the city, I think.”
“No one lives there. No one important, anyhow. The robbers come from the city.”
“The law is weaker here, then?”
“Stronger, master, if you fall foul of it. The rich make their own laws. For ordinary people, it’s the magistrates who decide right and wrong. Isn’t that how it was where you come from?”
Yama thought of the Aedile, and of the militia. He said, “More or less. Then the house will be fortified. Sheer force of arms might not be the best way to try and enter it.”
“Fortified and hidden. That’s the fashion these days. We could wander around for a day and not find it. Those lights are probably where the servants live, or a compound for other guards.” Pandaras stopped to untangle the unraveling edge of his sleeve from the thorny canes of a bush. “If you ask me, this crutty greenery is all part of the defenses.”
Yama said, “There is a path through there. Perhaps that will lead to the house.”
“If it was that simple, we’d all be rich, and have big houses of our own, neh? It probably leads to a pit full of caymans or snakes.”
“Well, someone is coming along it, anyway. Here.” Yama gave the pistol to Pandaras.
It was so heavy that the boy needed both hands to hold it. “Wait,” he said, “you can’t—”
But Yama ran toward the lights and the sound of hooves, carried by a rush of exhilaration. It was better to act than to hide, he thought, and in that moment understood why Tamora had charged off so recklessly. As he ran, he took the book from his satchel; when lights swooped toward him through the dark air, he stopped and held it up. A triplet of machines spun to a halt above his head and bathed him in a flood of white light. Yama squinted through their radiance at the three riders who had pulled up at the edge of the road.
Two guards in plastic armor reined in their prancing mounts and leveled light lances at him. The third was a mild old man on a gray palfrey. He wore a plain black tunic and his long white hair was brushed back from the narrow blade of his face. His skin was yellow and very smooth, stretched tautly over high cheekbones and a tall, ridged brow.