Cazia turned as the girl stepped away. She’d taken the pouch with the translation stone. The princess deftly opened it and overturned it into her palm.
Never mind that. Cazia cast the spell again, then again. The door would never swing open, not with all that granite behind it, but if the grunts tore it from its hinges, she didn’t want to leave them enough room to climb over.
When she finished, she turned toward the princess. The beasts outside screamed their animal rage and frustration, but Vilavivianna was very still. Her straw-colored hair hung loose around her face, making her seem almost adult. By the emberlight, Cazia could see that her eyes were wide with shock.
Cazia took the blue stone from her and clutched it in her trembling fist. The roars from outside suddenly became words.
Blessing! Bless you! Bless you! Take you! Blessing! Blessing!
That was it. Over and over, they all said the same thing. Great Way, they were talking.
The stupid commander was wrong. The grunts weren’t animals. They were something worse.
Cazia stood there, unmoving, listening to the creatures’ words in utter astonishment. If they spoke words, they could think, and if they could think, what advantage did the girls have against them?
Vilavivianna slammed the nearest shutter closed and threw the bar. The bang of wood on stone shook Cazia back to herself. She slipped the stone back into its pouch and pocket, then began another spell. The grunts battered at the door behind her as though they might push the stack of granite blocks onto her from behind. Her concentration faltered but did not fail. She stacked blocks against the second door until it was completely barricaded.
“At least we will not have to look at them,” Vilavivianna said, having to raise her voice over the noise from outside. “But closed doors will bring all of them here and will drive them into a frenzy.”
“Good.”
“Good?” The girl took a few sticks of wood and laid them on the hot embers of the stove pit, then sprinkled shavings over them. Why not? They weren’t in hiding any more. “Are we establishing Fort Child, then? We build high our walls, ration our salted fruit mush, and wait for rescue?” There was a note of derision in her tone. She frowned at her cut hair and began to braid it again.
Cazia took another breath to steady her nerves. It seemed odd to say, but the firelight made her feel stronger. There was still a great deal of work to do. “We don’t have to wait for rescue. We’re already here. We’re going to gather supplies and get out of this fort.”
The princess thrust her little chin forward and nodded.
The grunts could easily have smashed the shutters but they didn’t. The door was all they cared about. Cazia pulled Vilavivianna into a narrow space between two benches--she had to kick aside a wooden pail full of boiled bones to make room for them both, and for some reason, that brought on another flinch. A bad one.
The little princess laid a gentle hand on her elbow. “Are you well?”
“I’m fine,” Cazia snapped. She was not going to show weakness in front of this Indregai snob. “I just need to catch my breath.” She began another spell. It was difficult to focus past the jumpiness in her stomach--the meal she’d eaten didn’t want to stay down--but she did it.
A block at about waist height crumbled. Cazia crouched down to peer through but there was nothing but darkness beyond. Good. If the wall had stood against the yard, they would have seen starlight. She began shoving the broken rock through the hole, making space to crawl through.
“I can fit,” Vilavivianna said. “But you should break another rock to make room for you.”
“I can fit, too!” Cazia snapped. “Besides, if I broke another, the whole thing might come down on us.”
“Ah,” was all the princess said. She wriggled through the gap like a snake.
Cazia squeezed into the hole just behind her. Her shoulders fit through comfortably, but her breasts scraped uncomfortably against the rough stone. It was embarrassing, even in this pitch dark room with no one nearby but a child who couldn’t even see. A few years ago, this wouldn’t have happened, but she wasn’t Vilavivianna’s age any more. Her hips were a tight fit as well, but she knew she could get through. It would just take a bit of time. “Do you see any windows?” she whispered.
There was no answer at first, which she didn’t like. Could something have happened to the girl in the few moments--
“No,” the princess finally said. Her voice faint. “There is no light at all. The darkness, it is too much. I—”
“Patience,” Cazia said. She finally got her hips through, but was punished for her haste by the sound of tearing cloth. “Fire and Fury,” she said as she stood in the darkness.
She cast a light spell, placing it high on the wall beside her. It was just a little glowing ball, like a self-contained sphere of moonlit fog, but their eyes were so accustomed to the dark that it looked as bright as the rising of the sun.
“We are here!” Vilavivianna said, more loudly than Cazia thought was wise. But she was right. This was the armory. It was directly next to the kitchen, but there had been no easy connection between them until Cazia had created one.
And there were no windows, but the door was standing slightly ajar.
Cazia snatched a travel cloak from a peg in the wall and threw it over the door. The walkway where Zollik had killed the grunt must have been directly above them, which meant the great hall where the creatures held their prisoners was across the yard to the left. The armory door opened inward, with the hinges on the right. If a grunt looked out of the hall doorway, it would not see into the lighted room, but it might see a shaft of light falling into the yard.
“Do you see?” Vilavivianna asked.
At first, Cazia could not. She peeked between the cloak and the door jamb, noting the light from the great hall and the uneven ground of the yard…
There was a dead man lying just outside the door. Even in the terrible light, they could see it was Commander Gerrit. Farther from the door, they could see silhouettes on the ground that could only be more dead bodies.
Monument, sustain me.
The girls arranged the cloak on the corner of the door, rubbing the wool against the rough granite wall so it stuck there. Eventually, they were satisfied. The door would stand open, but no light would shine through.
In the armory, both of them went for the knives first, choosing two iron blades each with good leather-wrapped handles and belt sheaths. Then Cazia crossed to the cloaks, rations, and back packs while Vilavivianna hunted among the bows and quivers for something that suited her. Cazia had no intention of taking any more weapons. Knives and darts were enough for a scholar, and her quiver was full.
She packed meatbread and gathered smallish cloaks, a pair of wooden canteens with bladder linings, and a few other odds and ends they’d need.
The whole thing suddenly seemed ridiculous. Cazia had never trekked through wilderness in her life, but to do it at night with no other company but a girl even younger than she was?
They would be eaten by a bear or a mountain cat. They would be buried in a rockslide, kidnapped by Durdric Holy Sons, or fall from a cliff. They would starve. Cazia had spent her whole life in the palace, with only the occasional trip, under guard, outside Peradain.
Vilavivianna stepped up at her shoulder and examined her pack. “Is there no needle and thread? A copper needle will do as long as we keep the green off of it. Some gut would also be useful; I know imperial troops are used to healing magic, but we will be far from sleepstones and medical scholars.”
Cazia stood and surveyed the room. In the far corner, there were small leather satchels with medical symbols branded into the corner. There were copper needles inside with gut, clean cotton, and tiny glazed jars with wax stoppers. She grabbed two.
Vilavivianna had laid out a second pack and was loading them both. She’d already loaded all the provisions Cazia had set out into one of the packs, and was adding an equal amount to the other. She’d also t
hrown aside the black imperial cloaks Cazia had chosen, replacing them with two unmarked gray ones. Finally, she put a hatchet onto the top of each pack.
“We are young,” the girl said, “and we are not strong enough to carry everything we will need. But this will have to do.”
Cazia felt almost reassured to see the princess take over. “I’ve never done this,” she said, afraid the younger girl would mock her. This one is not highborn or necessary, is she? “I’ve never gone into the wilderness without an armed guard.”
Vilavivianna strapped a long knife to her belt beside her other two. On her, it looked like a short sword. “Good. You have saved my life here in this fort, and you have done everything for us with your magic. When we get beyond the walls, I will have a chance to repay your valor.”
The word valor shocked Cazia. Valor? All she could remember was the uncontrollable anger she felt as she slapped the girl’s face like a bully, her cry of surprise when Vilavivianna spoke up from between the cabinets, and her flinches.
Her expression must have showed her confusion, because the princess said, “Have I offended you again?”
“No. Not at all. Thank you.”
The little girl nodded. “I have not seen armor.”
She was right. What was the point of an armory if there was no armor? They peered around the room. Racks of spears and knives, jars of oil, cloaks, a whole wall of shields... Why was that tapestry there?
The tapestry concealed an unbarred door, and they found armor behind it. Cazia had to cast a second light spell in this smaller room. There were three rows of iron cuirasses along one wall and four racks of iron greaves on the other.
“Tyr of the Sleeping Earth,” Vilavivianna said, her hands opening and closing. “So much iron, just sitting here.”
Cazia almost said, We’re not going to steal from the fort, but that would have been ridiculous. No one had given them permission to take what they already had. “We’re only going to take what we need.”
“Of course,” the girl said without taking offense. “I am a princess of Goldgrass Hill, not a thief. Still, with just two rows of those breastplates, one could buy a whole valley in my land. But they would only weigh us down. We need boiled leather, and it must fit us or we must leave it.”
Cazia did find a boiled leather vest that fit her, even if it did was tight around her chest. Vilavivianna wasn’t as lucky; not even the smallest of the fleet squad armor sat comfortably on her, and she had to make do with a thick quilted jacket. “At least I will be warm,” the girl said. Cazia dug through the pile until she found one her size.
After that, they found a chest full of broad-brimmed cloth hats waxed against the rain, with iron caps sewn inside them. Cazia thought they looked ridiculous, but Vilavivianna carefully wrapped up her hair to make the smallest of them fit. Maybe, if she escaped back to her own people, it would buy her a great big garden plot.
They went back to their packs. Then the princess took a sword belt from the floor beside her. “You must wear this.”
Cazia didn’t know a thing about swords except that you held them by the blunt end. “I don’t need it.” She patted her quiver of darts.
“Those will go into your pack,” Vilavivianna said. “You can not wear them in the Sweeps. Not if you want to live.”
Great Way, the girl was right. Even in the heart of the empire, scholars went everywhere with an armed guard. If the two young girls in the wilderness came upon a mining camp or herding clan, they might receive hospitality. But for a scholar, kidnapping and ransom was the best possible outcome.
“You’re right,” Cazia said. “But not until we’re clear of the grunts. I don’t know how to use a sword, and these darts are my only weapon.”
“That makes sense. Let me finish packing. You must choose a spear for the journey--do not argue. You must.”
The spears were back near the gap she’d created in the wall. The howling of the grunts had not lessened--did the cursed things ever tire?--in fact, it seemed to have doubled. Clearly, they were attacking both doors now.
Cazia should never have left this hole in the wall. She swept the rubble in toward her feet, and with the sound of fists bashing on stone echoing around her, she cast a new block into the wall. It didn’t fit as well as it should have; she was getting better at creating stone blocks, but she had a long way to go before she’d be ready to build a wall.
Worse, the gaps made her nervous. A too-small block would not catch the grunts’ attention, but little gaps with lights flickering through?
“Are we ready to go?” Vilavivianna said. “I assume we will use your stone-breaking spell to escape through the wall.”
“I have something to show you,” Cazia said. She led the princess to the tapestry again. Together, they stood in the doorway and looked eastward down both rooms. “Do you see it?”
“No,” the girl admitted, growing impatient. “Are you taunting me or teaching me a lesson?” Her tone suggested there wasn’t a lot of difference between them.
“It looks to me as though the rooms are different lengths,” Cazia said.
Vilavivianna looked again. “Yes! Such a thing never occurred to me. But what does it mean?”
Cazia examined the eastern wall. She didn’t find anything interesting and extinguished the light as they went back into the main room. In the far southeastern corner, the wall had no racks on it. It took Cazia a few heartbeats to find the latch, and the hidden door creaked as the wall swung inward.
She extinguished the light in the main armory, letting darkness fall over them. Only the faint glow of lightstones shone up at them. Vilavivianna rushed down the stone stairs into the tunnel, and Cazia hurried to keep up.
“This is too long to connect to the great hall, yes?” The princess seemed excited. “It must go to the commander’s tower beyond. Too bad Commander Gerrit couldn’t get to it.”
“Let’s keep our voices low. There might be ventilation pipes.”
This was a safe place, Cazia realized. If they brought their rations down here, they would have light and safety for as long as their supplies held out, or until the empire retook the fort. Surely someone would try that, considering the value of the hostages?
She stopped suddenly. Vilavivianna stopped, too. “What is wrong?”
There was no rescue coming—or rather, if soldiers liberated them from Samsit, it would not be a rescue. Every tyr in the empire was probably hunting for her, and for the little princess, too. The Italgas had treated her gently--even kindly, at times--in part because of Lar and in part out of a sense of honor.
But tyrs took hostages all the time. Sometimes, they demanded ransoms or forced marriages, or just dropped people into pits and forgot to feed them. Someone who wanted leverage over the tyr her father, far away, would find her to be a very useful fulcrum.
And Vilavivianna? She would almost certainly be forced into a marriage she didn’t want, and Fire take the idea of waiting for her to come of age.
Not all tyrs were ruthless Enemies, but most were. No matter how tempting, the girls couldn’t hide down here. They had to get them out of the fort as soon as possible.
“Quickly,” she whispered. They ran to the end of the hall, their boots gently scuffing the stone floor.
There was no stairwell at this end, only a ladder chiseled into the stone. Cazia put her finger to her lips and started to climb. Her pack was a burden, but thankfully, the passage was wide enough for her to pass without scraping loudly against the stone.
From there, they came to a set of curving stairs. The darkness here was absolute once she passed out of sight of the stone ladder, but she had climbed the secret stair in the Scholars’ Tower many times. This was no different. She crouched low, using her hands on the stairs as she went up.
Faint glimmers of light showed her the hidden doors, and she knew which she needed. At the third floor, she paused to listen and, hearing nothing, unlatched the door.
This was the commander’s Far Counsel, where
he kept the mirror. Cazia had never used one herself, but she had been present for the message to the tyr her father, as well as some of the other tyrs--Fire and Fury, was it really just six days ago? The one in the palace was big enough to match the weight of ten men--to make it hard to steal, Lar had said--but this one was only mounted on a thick lead base.
So, she knew what to do. She stood before it, making sure her entire face was visible in the polished silver, and said “Tyr Gerrit.”
She’d worried that it wouldn’t work because Tyr was a title, not a name, but the mirror glowed brightly anyway. After many breaths, a man’s face appeared within it.
She would never have guessed he was related to the commander. He was about fifty, with a receding hairline and a gray beard that he had twisted into a dozen small braids. His eyes were narrow and cruel, and Cazia was heartsick at the idea that this was her best hope for an ally. Tyr Gerrit had fought for the king so many years ago. If he wasn’t a decent man--
“What are you doing, girl? Playing? I’ll have you whipped! I’m a busy—”
His voice echoed in the stone chamber. Cazia shushed him, and while that made his face turn red with anger, something in her expression convinced him to take her seriously. “Fort Samsit has been taken.”
His expression didn’t change. “I’ve heard no reports on this. Who captured it?”
“Grunts. It happened a few hours—”
“Grunts! Animals stormed a fort of the empire and overwhelmed two hundred spears and bows? Where is Ranlin?”
“Commander Gerrit is dead!” Cazia hissed. This was not going at all as she expected, and she wasn’t sure what to say next.
Before anything came to mind, another voice came through the mirror, from a man she couldn’t see, “It’s a prank. No, it’s a ruse to make us keep our spears behind the walls of our holdfasts. May I?”
“This is not a prank!” Cazia’s voice became louder, and the princess laid a hand on her elbow to calm her. I have the flinches, she wanted to shout, but would that convince them the danger was real or would that make them doubt her further? One thing was certain: it would not earn her any sympathy. There was no feeling rarer among the tyrs than sympathy.
The Way Into Chaos: Book One of the Great Way Page 18
