‘Excuse me,’ he said to the various people gathered round the table with him, ‘I’ll join you in a moment. Please carry on. You know what to do.’
Then he moved quickly to intercept the approaching Commander and, taking his elbow, deflected him into a side room.
‘What in thunder’s name are you doing, Dilrap?’ Urssain shouted as the door closed.
‘Doing?’ said Dilrap, wilfully innocent.
‘Commandeering my men,’ Urssain banged his chest in emphasis. ‘And dressing them up to look like High Guards.’
Dilrap was surprised at the belligerence of his own response. ‘I’ll tell you what I’m doing, Commander,’ he said in a vicious whisper. ‘I’m saving our necks, while you’re playing Mathidrin politics. And don’t shout. In case you didn’t notice, that’s the City Rede out there. And the Guild Master. And a cohort of their senior officials. The last thing they need to see now is us arguing and playing palace intrigue.’
Urssain clenched and unclenched his fist, but before he could speak, Dilrap continued, his voice still low as if for fear of eavesdroppers. ‘I know I need you more than you need me, Commander,’ he said. ‘I’m not stupid, and you’ve made it quite clear. But he… ’ The word was mouthed rather than spoken, and accompanied by a nervous look over his shoulder, ‘needs neither of us.’
Urssain opened his mouth to speak, but again Dil-rap forestalled him, his voice now urgent. ‘I know I wasn’t with him when all this happened, but I’ve looked into his eyes, Urssain. I don’t know who or what he is, but I know he could obliterate us with a mere thought if the whim took him. And this City in disarray could provoke just such a whim. He has power enough to control it without our help.’
Most of Urssain’s anger seemed to drain from him suddenly, though a growling residue remained.
‘You should’ve found me and asked,’ he said, almost sulkily. Dilrap straightened up, his face open and apologetic. ‘Commander, there wasn’t time,’ he said. ‘The situation was deteriorating by the minute. I had to act. I’m sorry I had to put your men in High Guard livery, but I had to get messages across the City and you know as well as I do they’d never have got through the streets otherwise.’
He stepped forward and took the Commander’s elbow again, confidentially. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘People won’t remember clearly out of all this confusion. And if they do, so what?’
Urssain’s lip curled as he weighed Dilrap’s com-ments. The man was right. There would be no future for him, perhaps of any kind, if he had to go running to Dan-Tor for help in quietening the City, and neither he nor the Mathidrin were remotely suited to dealing with this kind of emergency. True, Dilrap’s abrupt assump-tion of authority would cause some morale problems, but that he was capable of dealing with. Besides, the men had better be taught to treat the man with a little more respect if he was to do his job in future.
He nodded to himself. No harm was going to come of all this after all. Dilrap was proving to be more valuable than he had thought, but he mustn’t let him know it. He’d proved to be deceptively capable today; he could be dangerous if he developed any ambition other than that of staying alive.
Towards the end of the day, the wind fell and the sky cleared, allowing the setting sun to flood red through the streets. Long hazy shadows increased the alien strangeness of the City’s new appearance. Dilrap came out of the Lords’ ante-room and walked across to the main entrance. Dust grated under his feet. Standing at the top of the steps, he looked out again at the destruc-tion Oklar had wrought. His two new avenues were still bustling with desperate activity, but at least the panic and tumult had ceased and there was some aura of organization about the scene, albeit rough and ready.
Lines of torches had been rigged along both sides of each swathe, wandering indiscriminately through the sharp straight shadows cast by the setting sun. Where digging was continuing around individual buildings, the torches came together in tangled watchful clusters and together with the bobbing firefly lights of the torches carried by individuals, they gave the intense red twilight almost an air of Festival.
Looking up a little, Dilrap could see a clear evening sky as through a fine brown gauze. He wiped his mouth; he had been tasting dust all day. Just looking around the Palace told him it would be a long time before it was all removed, but seeing it hovering in the air made him think it might begrime the City forever.
He moved to one side to allow two of the Rede’s men to carry in a casualty. Would they never end? All these people crushed and maimed by falling masonry and panicking crowds. Halls throughout the city were full of the injured and the homeless. Alaynor had organized that magnificently, though Dilrap admitted guiltily to a twinge of regret that she had allocated one of the Kings’ Halls to the dying and the most severely injured.
It was a correct decision, the hall being more spa-cious than the City’s main sick house nearby, but… the noises…
With an effort he dismissed the memory. He was no healer. He could do nothing other than what he had. He’d used his skills to ensure that hurt and healers were brought together as quickly as possible along with such medicines and other comforts as could be had, but still…
He leaned against the door jamb. No buts, he thought. What price would not any of those poor souls now pay just for the simple privilege of standing unaided and pain free, feeling cold stone against their faces? Just being here he had all that life could offer him, for all the terrors and trauma of the day, and the hazards of the future.
He looked again at the torchlit work dwindling into the distance, and then at the busy but reasonably ordered activity going on around him.
What flexible creatures we are, he thought. As indi-viduals we break and buckle, but as a whole we simply sway, move with the wind, and then swing back to accept whatever new circumstances have arisen.
And what a wind had blown today! It had blown away the valued heritage of generations and ushered in an age the nature of which could only be described as unbelievable.
How could it have happened so quickly? The King, risen whole again only to be cruelly cut down. The Queen and Eldric fled, Dan-Tor suddenly revealed by the hand of a mysterious Orthlundyn as a creature of legend, and laying waste great stretches of the City in his pain and rage.
And the result? Ordinary people picking up the remains. Seizing and holding tightly their own fears for the sake of others. Rushing to familiar places to pick up familiar tools, then soiling precious clothes, heaving and sweating, burying old animosities and rivalries as they dug out friends and strangers alike.
And me? Dilrap’s thoughts turned to himself. He had defied his King and then witnessed his murder, faced the gaze of Oklar and survived his spleen, taken control of Mathidrin officers and troopers and organ-ized them. And now?
Now, he was tired. Tired and glad of it, because his work was not yet finished. It would probably be some hours before he could rest for more than just a few brief minutes and by then he would be exhausted. Now he could remain immersed totally in the needs of the present. The very horrors of the day had given him the opportunity to put time between them and his full realization of them. A strange irony. Had the City not been torn apart, he would have retreated to his cham-bers to tremble and shake himself into who knew what state of terrors, thereby demonstrating his worthless-ness and virtually ensuring his extermination. Now, he was something different. He had made some kind of a decision without realizing it.
He looked down and watched his foot idly making patterns in the dust. His fatigue was protecting him still, he knew, numbing him against the reality that was to come. He may yet prove inadequate for the role he had apparently chosen, but he saw no other choice. He would learn. Had he not silently aided the Queen for months? The memory came almost as a surprise to him.