by C. Litka
02
We slowly made our way through the crowd that filled the Imperial Plaza. Ahead, the palace-fortress stood against the pale blue-green sky. It had split into several sections when it crashed to earth in Windvera, so it was rather short and lumpish as the fallen rocks go. Still, it was probably 200 meters tall, and was circled by an ascending series of terraces set like a giant staircase that wrapped itself almost twice around the rock, giving it something like a hanging garden effect. The residents of the palace lived in shutter-protected caves that opened on these terraces. The shutters had been open since the last attacker had left, discouraged, some 100,000 or more rounds ago. The terraces were divided by thick walls or turrets projecting from the rock. Ten meters wide or so, they were pierced by rows of thin slots to allow the cross-bowmen inside of them to fire into the courtyards on either side to discourage any invaders from attempting to breach the caves and gain entry into the palace. The business of the palace was conducted inside the shattered rock.
MossRose, Naylea and Trin were in the lead, dressed in the long, dark maroon-colored pinafore and close fitting cap of Sisters of the Sick. Naylea and I wore broad-feathered wigs. Py and I, with maroon vests of the hospital menial help followed meekly behind them. We were bound for the Imperial Hospital that abutted the lowest walls of the palace. From there, MossRose assured us, we could enter the palace unobserved.
Without the thief's best friend - night - gaining entrance to the palace was our biggest hurdle. The public was not allowed inside, and its staff had to produce tokens to enter or leave - which the spy network of the Kandivarians could not provide in the numbers needed. Only the Imperial Hospital, of all the buildings lining the plaza, had an unguarded doorway to the palace-fortress so that the hospital staff could also serve the Palace Guard's infirmary. MossRose used it regularly to go in and out as she pleased, without being officially noticed. The five of us, however, needed to be more discrete, hence our borrowed uniforms.
The wide, Imperial Plaza linked the palace to the city proper. It was lined with the blank-faced stone buildings of Windvera and housed not only the Imperial Hospital, but the courts and public bureaucracies of the province. The plaza was crowded and noisy with street venders, entertainers, and the press of people with business here. Even with the approaching dinner hour, the crowd was still thick enough to make our progress slow. The hospital admissions hall was even more crowded, which we had counted on to avoid unwanted attention. MossRose boldly led us through the crush of people before the admitting desks and into the first of the long, narrow wards, lined with the raised pallets of the sick and injured, surrounded by family and attending Sisters of the Sick. We weren't questioned until we reached the third of these wards.
'Stop, sisters. You don't belong in this ward,' snapped, a sharp, authoritative voice from behind us.
Py and I stopped and, looking back, saw a tall Sister of the Sick - in a dark red pinafore of finer materials and trimmed in white lace - hurrying towards us.
She was clearly trouble. Naylea gave me look that said "This is your fault."
MossRose was not flustered. 'It is only me, Sister MiLeese.'
Sister MiLeese's eyes widened but as she opened her mouth, MossRose reached out and touched her lips lightly with a finger.
'Not a word, my dear Sister. I have returned and intend to have a private word with Father. It is of no concern of yours. You will speak of this to no one. You have not seen us,' she said, with a smile and that glint of steel in her eyes.
Sister MiLeese, who was not without a glint of steel in her eyes as well, gave her a long look. 'The truth?' she asked, despite MossRose's finger across her lips, giving us a hard, measuring look.
'Enough of it,' replied MossRose. 'I will explain later.'
'I shall expect it,' said MiLeese, not intimidated. But she gave a small curtsy and turned to go about her business.
'Are we in trouble?' I asked, quietly as we started off again.
'I think not. I am the patron and friend of the Imperial Hospital. I believe Sister MiLeese knows what sort of funds she could expect if it was left to my dear father. You see, I know enough about Father's accounting system to extract from him the proper support for not only the Imperial Hospital, but several other such institutions as well. I am valued for that. Still, it shouldn't matter much, either way. We shall be in our hiding place in a few minutes.'
We continued through the ward to a lantern-lit back hallway carved through the fallen rock to the Palace Guard's barracks.
'We will soon be entering the Palace Guard's infirmary and barracks. Our presence is common enough and should raise no questions, though soldiers will be soldiers.'
Which was to say that they cheerfully expressed their appreciation of the girls frankly, and freely as we made our way past the pallets of the sick soldiers. The girls ignored them, as proper Sisters of the Sick should. Once outside the ward, MossRose stopped in front of a door in the stone wall and, looking about to see that no one was in the passage, opened it and said, 'Take a stretcher. We can take Father out on a stretcher without looking suspicious.'
Py selected one of the rolled up stretchers from the closet and after he put it over his shoulder, we continued on our way along the oil lamp lit passageway that carried us past crowded barracks, noisy mess halls and locked store rooms of the Palace Guard and then up several steep ramps, leaving the barracks behind.
'This way,' said MossRose, dodging into a narrow, dark passage. 'Here's where we'll abandon our hospital garb,' she said quietly, indicating a deep black crack in the rock wall. 'No point calling attention to ourselves going forward. We'll collect them when we come back.'
Py shoved the stretcher into the crack along with the pinafores and our vests as the echoes of gongs reached us.
'That marks the end of the work watch. The passageways will be crowded with the staff hurrying home to their quarters, so we'll not look out of place. Just follow me and remember, you're not tourists - look like you belong,' she said, as we set out for the interior.
Light and air circulation are the chief problems of these fallen rock fortresses. To live in caves along the rock's exteriors solves both of those problems, but rather defeats the defensive purpose of these fortresses. The usual solution is to hollow out a great redoubt in the interior to retire to in the event of attack. Since the fallen island of the Palace of Zandivar had split into three sections on impact, they had a large central fissure that they made into a large interior atrium, open at the top. The various palace offices were set around and open to this central atrium - allowing them to catch the light that filtered down through the grated opening overhead. These offices were reached by a passageway on their inner side, which had to be lit by oil lamps set in iron fixtures. These passageways looked like some throwback moon colony's faux-ancient streets at night. Rooms that did not need a great deal of light, like storerooms, were carved into the stone wall opposite the atrium-lit offices. The palace's clerks and servants were now hurrying home through this lantern lit passage. We slipped into this flow of pedestrians and followed the passageways around and up the steep ramps that linked the levels as we came to them, one after another, for five levels, before our plans came undone.
