It all happened very fast and rather quietly, so that the Nasi-Keth's horse seemed more puzzled than alarmed. Rhillian stroked his nose, then mounted swiftly and set off in pursuit of where she thought the wagons were heading.
SIXTEEN
Sasha and Bergen arrived back at Father Belgride's temple via the rear planking and found Yasmyn waiting impatiently by the pier.
“What's going on?” she demanded. “Where have you been and how bad is it?”
“What do you think's going on?” Sasha muttered, walking past her to the rear doors. “They're rounding up all the serrin. They have Aisha for certain, I don't know about Rhillian.”
She emerged into the rear-quarters dining hall and found it filled with serrin. These were no talmaad warriors, they were regular Ilduuri, some having ancestry in these lands for two hundred years. They sat on blankets against walls, or on tables in the absence of enough chairs, or stood in huddled groups and talked, their voices hushed as though frightened that men beyond the walls would hear them. They were of all ages, including many children. Some appeared barely more than quarter-serrin, and a few entirely human…mixed families, Sasha thought, and doubted the Stamentaast would have more mercy on the humans who wedded serrin than the serrin themselves. If she were to wed Errollyn, this would be her. And their children.
“Father Belgride has been taking them in,” Yasmyn explained. “They all come here, and some priests have been taking a cart around. Stamentaast will not search the cart if the priest gives his word there is nothing to find. Priests are carrying wagonloads of serrin here, and lying to Stamentaast. Another priest takes a boat along the lakeshore.”
“And these aren't the only wretched wanderers the priests are taking in,” came a new voice. Sasha looked and found Daish, upright and walking toward them. She stared in astonishment, then embraced him with relief, remembering at the last to be careful of his ribs.
“You got better!” she observed, as Bergen repeated the embrace.
“The Steel border guards took good care of me, and those medicines were amazing,” said Daish. He looked remarkably healthy, Sasha thought, with the colour back in his cheeks. “A few of them were coming this way and offered to hide me amongst them, clothed like them. And Bergen, come, look who else has returned.”
He led them from the dining hall, down narrow stone passages past the kitchen and washrooms, to the stables. Before one of the stalls he stopped, and gestured. There stood a big cavalry horse, munching on fodder.
“Tanner!” the big Enoran exclaimed, and ran to his mount. “How in the worlds…?”
“Two days after you left,” said Daish, “I awoke in my chamber in the Steel guardhouse, and I was feeling much better. No sooner had I thought it than a soldier knocked on the door and said that I should come down to the stables. Tanner was there-they'd found him outside the walls on the other side of the canyon. He must have recovered after he collapsed, gone back to the river as Sasha said he would, then followed when he was stronger. The retreating Kazeri would have gone straight past him.”
“Always a chance,” said Sasha, with renewed determination. “Never count a fighter out.” She turned to Bergen. “We have to go after Aisha and those other serrin. That's Family Rontii, the Remischtuul's just concluded they're to be removed, and I doubt they'll just cart them to Saalshen.”
“I'll go,” said Daish and Yasmyn simultaneously. Daish had been told about Aisha, Sasha saw. He looked determined.
“Someone should stay and defend the temple,” said Bergen.
As though to echo his point, Sasha heard a hammering from beyond the stable doors. She strode that way, down the passage that adjoined the stables to the temple. Father Belgride leaned upon his main doors, lit by wall lamps, shouting through the grille at a man outside. With a final yell, he slammed the steel plate over the grille, and noticed Sasha.
“Stamentaast,” he said grimly. “They say I have serrin inside. They threaten to storm the temple.”
“Would they?” Sasha asked disbelievingly.
“I don't know,” said Belgride, rubbing his beard. “I say the gods will curse them if they come in here with swords. But I don't know. Maybe.”
“That's it,” Sasha muttered, striding for her chambers. “I'm tired of my enemies and this dress making common cause against me. I'm getting changed.”
“I will have no fighting in my temple!” Belgride called after her, warningly.
“Tell that to them!” Sasha retorted over her shoulder.
She was fighting the uncooperative dress over her head when Yasmyn hammered on her door. “Sasha, there's a man at the rear wants to talk to you!”
Sasha pulled on jacket, bandoleer, and sword, and strode through the stone halls, now filled with many bewildered and frightened serrin families. A man of mixed-race appearance stopped her.
“This is your fault!” he accused her in Saalsi. “The Stamentaast spoke of traitors, spies, and infiltrators-they were looking for you! You and your friends, someone tipped them off to your presence and…”
“Someone like you, probably,” Sasha said coldly. “Someone who will not fight. Someone who weasels up to tyrants in hope of gratitude.”
“Don't you pretend that you're doing this for us!” the man snarled. “You have no love for Ilduur or Ilduuri, you bring fire and death down on our heads for the sake of your precious foreign war and foreign friends!”
“You sound just like the Remischtuul,” Sasha said incredulously. “Why don't you go and join them, if you have such a meeting of the minds? I'm sure you'll enjoy their company far more than mine and my foreign friends, if you don't mind them killing your children and raping your women.”
The man grabbed her in fury. Sasha punched him in the face, and he fell. About her, the crowd recoiled in fear and shock. Sasha glared at them, readjusting her jacket where the man had grabbed her, and stepped over him on her way to the rear warehouse.
“Who's the tyrant now!” someone shouted after her.
“If you don't like it,” Sasha yelled over her shoulder, “go outside and play with the Stamentaast!”
At the rear warehouse, she met Yasmyn on the point of entering to check on the commotion. “Trouble?” she asked.
“No,” said Sasha. “Sheep are never trouble, that's why they're sheep.”
In the dim light of a lantern, by the rear entrance from the lakeside pier, stood Arken Haast. He wore dark clothes, and an Ilduuri Steel-sized sword through his belt. He talked animatedly with Bergen, leaning against sacks of grain. Sasha thought he must have rowed here, across the lake.
“My father would not tell me,” he said to Sasha. “Until the Stamentaast attacked, that is. The Stamentaast sent messengers to the Shuen Vaal quarter to tell us to remain in our houses, and that anyone found sheltering serrin would be punished. They say all serrin are collaborators with foreign forces. My father was furious-I think he went and threatened some of his Remischtuul colleagues to tell him where the Meraini are. Now he says they're in the Altene. It's a big old feudal castle atop Dirdaan Mountain, it used to belong to Family Altene before Maldereld came, back in feudal times. Now it's a residence for Remischtuul masters.”
“Defences?” Sasha asked.
Arken's eyes narrowed at her. “You mean to attack it?”
“Depends on what you tell me its defences are. The Stamentaast are all tied up here. The Steel are confined to barracks, or on home leave like you. Who else is there?”
“The guilds are powerful. The Remischtuul is made up of guildmasters, with many allies in the various guilds. They make a lot of work at the residences, servants, guards, grounds and kitchen staff, that sort of thing.”
“And even more now with Meraini talons paying for it,” Bergen observed.