The line ferry landing is at the foot of the old park. Gry took the leash off and Shetar leapt up into the darkness of the woods and vanished. We followed her, finding our way through the trees, up to the paths where Gry and Shetar and I had walked, and so down again to Galvamand, coming at it from the northeast. The lion ran before us like a shadow in the shadows. The house stood huge, dark, and silent as a hill.
I thought in panic, It’s dead, they’re dead.
I ran ahead of the others across the court, into the house, calling out. There was no answer. I ran through the Waylord’s apartments, all in darkness, and on back to the secret room. My hand shook so that I could barely write the words to open the door. There was no light in the room but the faint glimmer of the skylights. No one was there. No one but the books that spoke, the presence in the cave.
I closed the door and raced back through the dark corridors and galleries to the part of the house where people lived. There was a gleam of warm light across the great court. They were all gathered in the pantry where we ate—the Waylord, Gudit, Ista, Sosta, and Bomi, and Gry and Orrec had joined them there. I stopped short in the doorway. The Waylord came to me and took me for a moment in his arms. “Child, child,” he said. And I clung to him with all my strength.
We sat round the table; Ista insisted that we eat the bread and meat she had set out, and in fact I was ravenous. We told one another what we knew.
Gudit had been over at a beer house near the Central Canal where he and his old friends, all stablemen, hostlers, grooms, used to meet and sit and talk slowly about horses. “All of a sudden,” he said, “we heard a lot of noise, up on the Council Hill. Then there was smoke rising, a great black fume of smoke.” Trumpets were blown, and Ald soldiers, mounted and afoot, came rushing past, all heading up along Council Way. Gudit and his friends made their way as far as Galva Street, but a big crowd was already there at the entrance to the Council House square, both Alds and citizens, “yelling and carrying on, and the Alds had their swords out,” he said. “I don’t like crowds. I decided to go home. It stood to reason.”
He tried to go along Galva Street, but the way was blocked by mobs of citizens, and there seemed to be fighting ahead. He had to go round by Gelb Street to West Street. Over on our side of town things seemed quieter, but he saw people heading towards the Council House; and as he came up to Galvamand a troop of mounted Alds went by at the gallop, swinging their swords in the air and shouting, “Out of the streets! Into your houses! Clear the streets!”
We confirmed that there had indeed been fighting on Galva Street, at Goldsmiths’ Bridge, and a man thrown to his death from the bridge.
A friend of Bomi’s had come running in soon after Gudit came home, reporting that “everybody said” the Council House was on fire. But a neighbor running home said it was the Alds’ big tent in the Council courtyard that had been set afire, and the Alds’ king had burned up inside it with a lot of the red priests.
Beyond this there was no news, for nobody dared go out in the street, in the dark, with Ald soldiers all over the place.
Ista was very frightened. I think the terrors of the fall of the city seventeen years ago came back to her that night and overwhelmed her. She set out food for us and ordered us to eat, but she didn’t eat a bite herself and her hands trembled so that she hid them on her lap.
The Waylord ordered her and the girls to bed, telling them that Orrec and Gry would be guarding the front of the house. “With the lion,” he said. “You needn’t worry. Nobody is going to get past the lion.”
Ista nodded meekly.
“And Gudit is with the horses, as always. And Memer and I will keep watch in the old rooms. It may be a friend will come by in the night and bring us news. I hope so.” He spoke so mildly and cheerfully that Ista and the girls took heart, or at least pretended to. When we’d cleaned up the kitchen they went off together with brave good-nights. They had seen Gry posted at the top of the front steps, just inside the great door, where she and Shetar could see anything and anybody that came along the street or entered the front court. Orrec made himself the link among the rest of us, checking in with Gudit now and then, and with the Waylord, and patrolling the deserted south side of the house.
For we all dreaded the same thing, more or less obscurely: that Galvamand would again be the target of the Alds’ fear or revenge.
The hours of the night passed quietly. I went up several times to the Master’s rooms, where I could look out over the city. There was no sign of anything unusual. The slope of the hill hides the Council House from us; I peered that way to see smoke rising or the glow of fire, but there was nothing. I came down again to rejoin the Waylord in the long gallery. We talked a little, then we sat in silence. The night was warm, a soft night of early summer. I intended to go back up to the upstairs windows, but I was sound asleep in my chair when voices roused me.
I jumped up in terror. There was a man at the far end of the room, standing in the courtyard doorway. “Can I stay, can you hide me?”
“Yes, yes,” the Waylord said. “Come in. Is there anyone with you? Come in. You’ll be safe here. Did anyone follow you?” He spoke in a mild, peaceable tone, with no urgency to his questions. He drew the man into the room. I ran past them to see if anyone else was there. I saw someone standing out in the courtyard, a dark form in starlight, and almost cried out in warning―but it was Orrec.
“Fugitive,” he whispered. “Did anybody follow him?”
“Not that I can see. I’ll go back round. Keep watch here, Memer.”
He went quickly back through the arcade. I stood in the doorway, watching out, and listening to the Waylord and the fugitive.
“Dead,” the man was saying, in a hoarse whisper. He kept coughing as he spoke. “They’re all dead.”
“Desac?”
“Dead. All of them.”
“Did they attack the Council House?”
“The tent,” the man said, shaking his head. “The fire―” He broke into violent coughing. The Waylord brought him water from the carafe on the table and made him sit down to drink it. He sat near the lamp, and I could see him. I didn’t know him, he wasn’t one of the people who came to the house. He was a man of thirty or so, his hair wild, his clothes and face smeared with dirt or ash or blood. They were, I realised, the striped clothes worn by slaves serving at the Palace. He sat crouched in the chair, struggling to get his breath.
“They set fire to the tent,” the Waylord said.
The man nodded.
“The Gand was in it? Ioratth?”
Again he nodded. “Dead, they’re all dead. It burned like straw, it was like a bonfire, it burned…”
“But Desac wasn’t in the tent, was he?― No, drink some more water, tell me later. How should I call you?”
“Cader Antro,” the man said.
“Of Gelbmand,” the Waylord said. “I knew your father, Antro the blacksmith. The Gelbs used to lend me horses when I was Waylord. Your father was very particular about their shoes. Is he still alive, Cader?”
“He died last year,” the man said. He drank off the water and sat exhausted and dazed, staring in front of him.
“We set the fire and got out,” he said, “but they were there, they came round us, they pushed us back, back into the fire. Everybody screaming and pushing. I got out. I crawled out.” He looked down at himself with bewilderment.