“That is at least a half dozen of those things we’ve killed,” said Dolomite as he and the other fighters, Vansen included, bent to the work of finishing the wall while the autarch’s troops were in retreat. “How many more do you think there are?”
“Not more than a hundred,” said Jackdaw with a fierce grin. His own soldiers, despite some of them being badly shaped for digging and building walls, were helping out with a will. It was almost possible for Vansen to forget that some of them looked like frogs and foxes, and others were even stranger than that. They were all becoming brothers, in the manner he had seen before: facing death together was the greatest of levelers. Perhaps, with the help of these Qar, they could actually hold out against the autarch until Midsummer had passed.
“We will kill them one by one, then,” Vansen said. “Until we have the gunflour to blow them all right to the gates of Kernios himself.”
Jackdaw laughed. “You are funny, mortal. Do you not know where you are?”
“What do you mean?”
“We are already at the gates of Kernios, Captain. That is what is under siege here in the earth—what we defend! Our enemies seek to conquer the Palace of Kernios! We are Death’s own honor guard.”
For a moment Vansen wasn’t entirely certain what he meant, but then began to understand. At last he summoned a grim laugh of his own. “As you say, then, friend Jackdaw—that is what we will do. Defend the gates of Death’s city until we ourselves are invited inside.”
It was almost a relief to realize how futile their task was. Vansen shook his head and bent once more to his work.
When he and the boy got back to their room, Flint sat down to think his strange, quiet Flint-thoughts and Chert hurried to turn his notes into marks on his maps before he forgot what they meant. The whole of the Pit had to be traced and much of the labyrinth behind Five Arches would have to be redone as well. As Chert worked, some of the things Flint had said rolled around and around in his mind, troubling him although he could not say exactly why.
He had just finished marking the changes and was moving onto other things when an idea came to him—a strange, magnificent, utterly mad idea.
For long moments he just sat, breathless, not even certain of whether it made any sense. Opal came bustling in from her labors with many things to say about what was happening and what she had been doing, but Chert scarcely heard her. He did his best to smile and say the right things, but his thoughts were completely taken by the new idea.
It was definitely not the kind of thing he could discuss with Opal, much as he valued her counsel. The danger of it was appalling, and she had all but told him that if he again went off and got himself involved in something risky when they had a boy who needed him to be a father, that would be the last night she would ever sleep under his stone. And since Chert didn’t know whether Vansen and the Guild would even listen to such a lunatic idea, let alone approve it, he wasn’t going to waste an argument with his wife on it yet (an argument that he knew he would lose anyway, and lose badly.)
He didn’t want to waste any more time that should be spent on the maps, but neither did he want to wait too long before taking his audacious plan to Vansen, Cinnabar, and the rest. After the evening prayers had been called, Chert waited impatiently until Opal and Flint fell asleep, then got up, lit the lamp, and went back to his table. He made a pile of all the maps he would need for his calculations—there were many—then bent over the table in the guttering light of the lantern and began working out his scheme in the solid, old-fashioned way the Guild had taught him, filling his slates with numbers and symbols that would explain the workings of his strange, unthinkable idea.
14. The Queen of the Fay
“Such was his misery that many times the Orphan would have thrown himself into the green sea even against Heaven’s wishes, but for the kindness of an old blind slave named Aristas…”
Saqri waited as he climbed up out of the waves onto the rocky shore, as poised in her formless white robes as a temple statue. She was also quite, quite dry. Barrick, drenched and drizzling seawater, had barely an instant to marvel at either that or the sea meadow he had not seen in so many years, then Saqri turned and started up from the shore toward the royal lodge, which was just visible through the trees at the top of the stony hillcrest.
“There are some things you learn after a few hundred years,” the Queen of the Fairies called as he trudged after her, streaming water and making squelching noises with every step. “One of them is how not to get wet unless you want to.”
He didn’t have the strength to discuss it. Exhaustion and his sopping clothing were pulling at him like a legion of invisible goblins, making each step a terrible chore. Also, he could see the lodge more clearly now, and although the Fireflower voices seemed uncharacteristically silent, his own memories were not.
“First to touch the door is the lord of the cliff!” his sister shouted, and, without waiting to see if he had even heard her, she was gone, sprinting up the ancient steps. Barrick hesitated for a moment, waiting to see if Kendrick would run, too, but their older brother was waiting patiently for their father. Kendrick was twelve years old and determined to show he was nearly a man—he wasn’t going to be playing any games. Barrick sprang up the steps after his twin.
“Cheat!” he yelled. “You had a head start.”
“That’s not cheating,” she called over her shoulder, laughing so that she almost lost her balance on narrow steps worn to a shiny polish by rain and wind. “That’s strategy!”
“If either of you step into that house without the guards,” their father shouted from the dock, “I will skin you and feed you to the hounds!”
Which only made Briony laugh harder, of course—she loved those dogs so much, she’d probably enjoy being devoured by them, Barrick thought—and then she stepped a little short and almost fell back.
“Briony!” their father shouted. “Have a care, girl!”
She spun her arms around like the vanes of a windmill, trying to keep her balance, which gave Barrick the chance to help her. As he hurried past, he gave her the smallest nudge with his good arm so that she tilted forward and recovered her footing.
“Cheater!” she shouted after him. “You pushed me!”
Now it was Barrick who laughed. She knew it was a lie—she knew he’d looked after her, for once, instead of being the one looked after, and it felt glorious. He reached the pathway at the top and dashed along it toward the lodge, past the cypress trees. He had just caught sight of the broad coachway that lay before the front door—a most useless feature in a place with no roads and no coaches, but he supposed King Aduan and his builders might have had greater ambitions for the place—when he heard his sister’s footsteps behind him.
“I’ve got you now!”
What, did she think that because his arm was crippled he was also lame? He put his head down and flung the last of his strength into a finishing burst, sprinting across the gravel coachway and thumping against the front door of the lodge just before his sister. Gasping too hard to say anything, they both slid down the door to sit side by side on the porch. His lungs finally full of air again, Barrick turned to her and…