When he came back late at night, he found Linsha on watch and Callista asleep on their blankets. Wearily he stretched out between them as before.
“What did you see?” Linsha asked. She stroked a hand down the soft fur on his side.
Mae is right. The building is heavily guarded, and those black-robed priests are everywhere. But I think with some archers and a good distraction, we can get inside. The problem will be timing. We need enough time to secure the eggs, carry them outside, and get them loaded in the net.
“Hmm. It’s too bad Falaius and Wanderer are too far away. Have the Tarmaks dealt with a good fire lately?”
I don’t know. I shall try to arrange one.
Linsha’s mouth turned up in a small smile and her cheeks flushed a charming pink. “As much I like cats, do you think you could be Lord Bight for just a little while?”
The cat moved away from the two women and was quickly engulfed in the shimmering bright light of his magic. He changed back to the man who had been the Lord Governor of Sanction for almost thirty years and stood before Linsha with his hand held out to her like a supplicant.
Linsha unfolded her long legs and rose to take his hand. They moved away from the sleeping courtesan and sat down together side by side against a far wall. In soft voices they talked long into the night of inconsequential things, of her family and Sanction, of things they remembered from the summer of the plague when Linsha served in the governor’s personal bodyguard.
“If I ever get back to Sanction,” Lord Bight said. “I will need a new Captain of the Guard. Should you decide the Knights of Solamnia are no longer enough for you…”
Linsha was startled by his words. No longer enough? She hadn’t thought of that. In fact she had concentrated so much on escaping Ithin’carthia and reclaiming the eggs that she had not thought about anything that might happen after this war. As far she knew, she would be on the Plains until the Grand Master relieved her or she died, whichever came first. And what about Crucible? Would he really leave her to return to Sanction? And what would she do with the eggs? The questions and the possibilities swarmed over her, until she wanted to scream. Not now! She could not think that far ahead. First they had to rescue the eggs and get them safely away. Then they had to deal with the Tarmaks. Then maybe, if they both survived, they could think about what next.
“Not now,” she murmured. “Not now.”
He opened his mouth, and she silenced him the only way she could think of. She leaned over and kissed him.
Egg Hunt
18
The next day the Legionnaires moved them to another place in a different part of the city to avoid drawing attention to movement around the abandoned house. They were led through backstreets and dark alleys to a door leading down into a deeper cellar where ale barrels stood empty and a few wine casks still sat on their racks. Several cheeses and an old ham hung from the ceiling beams and a bin of dried apples sat close to a wooden stairs that led up to a public house.
“It’s the Orchard House,” Linsha exclaimed. “I remember the proprietors. Delightful people, and the wife made the best apple pies.”
“Why thank ye, Lady Knight. I remember you, too. Always paid your bill.” A gray-haired woman leaned down from the upstairs door and squinted at her secret guests in the dim light of a single lantern. “There’s not much left down there. The Tarmaks killed my man and ate me out of house and cellar. But you’re welcome to anything you find. Just keep it quiet while there’s customers in the bar.”
Linsha and Mae waved their agreement and thanks, and the old woman stepped back and closed the door behind her.
“She said you can stay down here for a few days while we gather the weapons and work out the details,” Mae said. “We have some men in hiding from the Tarmaks we will send to you to help. Do you know what you want to do for a diversion?”
“How are the Tarmaks organized to handle fires?” asked Linsha.
“They have our old fire fighting equipment-the ladders, the buckets, and the one hand pump. But we always counted on Iyesta to help us put out any fires in the city, so there is very little available to them. It’s rained so much lately, I don’t think they’ve given it much thought.”
“Good. Is there a warehouse where they are storing anything worth burning?”
Mae’s eyes twinkled and the laugh lines appeared around her nose and mouth. “They have a lot of their stores in a warehouse near the waterfront, but it’s really too close to the guild building to be a good distraction. There is another one over in Mirage where they have stored much of the wine and spirits they stole from the farmers and merchants.”
Linsha looked at Callista who grinned. Mirage was the name of the newer section of the city where many of the offices, warehouses, and shops connected to the harbor were located. The older guild buildings were mostly in the older city in the Port District.
“Wine and spirits,” the courtesan said. “That should burn well.”
Linsha looked down at the cat in her arms and winked.
Three days later a cloudbank rolled up out of the south and settled over the Missing City in a dank, gray gloom. Darkness came early that night, and the citizens of the city hurried back to their homes and their meager meals, leaving the streets to the Tarmak patrols. By midnight, the streets were almost deserted.
Few people saw the large shape in the sky and no one saw where it came from. It swooped down from the clouds and hovered silently over Mirage for a moment. There was a brilliant streak of light like lightning, a thin clap of thunder, and the shape was gone as suddenly as it appeared. None of the Tarmaks who saw it could identify it because of the clouds and fog, but a few guessed it was a blue dragon from the burst of lightning. Others doubted they had seen it at all. It was probably just an errant storm cloud. What they couldn’t doubt was the sound of warning bells. Smoke was rising from a warehouse in Mirage. Within moments the smoke became billows and the flames licked high through the roof. A massive explosion rocked the building and sent flaming debris flying in all directions. Smaller fires ignited on the roofs of nearby buildings and on a storage shed filled with fodder. Alarms bells rang throughout the city.
The Tarmak dekegul in charge of the city’s forces collected his men and marched out of the old city to the harbor district to fight the fires. He took several dozen slaves with him to help, but he left the slaves in the large pen by the guild houses under guard, deciding they would be more trouble than it would be worth to take them along. They had a bad habit of trying to escape.
The prisoners were sheltered in a series of pens and stables that had once been a livestock market. Seeing the glow on the rooftops, they came out of their stalls to observe what was happening and were startled to see two women brazenly approach the pair of guards at the main gate. Both women were cloaked, and one carried a pie. One of the prisoners, a thin, haggard young man dressed in rags, nearly choked himself on a cry of recognition.
The taller woman said something in Tarmakian that caused the guards to laugh. She walked forward, arguing in a loud voice and gesturing with the pie as if she wanted to give it to someone. Just as the guards reached for the pie, she heaved it into the face of the nearest guard. The two women acted at the same time. The smaller one pulled out a crossbow from under her cloak and shot the second guard while the tall one pulled two throwing knives out of her belt and killed the guard with pie in his face and a third guard that came running.