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Shield of Stars

Page 16

by Hilari Bell


  The Falcon pulled up a chair and seated herself. “You might as well sit down; this may take a while. I’ll tell you up front that there is nothing in the world I’d like more than to blow Regent Pettibone’s head right off that scrawny neck of his,” she said bluntly. “But I won’t lead my men into danger unless I see a decent chance of success. Suicide is for those who have no other choice; even then it’s usually a bad decision, and I’m nowhere near that point. So you may as well spill this idea of yours.”

  At least she was willing to listen. Weasel took a breath. “There’s a secret passage leading into the old wing of the palace. We found it when …”

  He told the story of their escape from the cells in detail, with Arisa adding things he’d forgotten—or sometimes correcting him when she thought he was telling it wrong. The Falcon asked several questions, but mostly she allowed him to babble on, more and more desperately. Weasel found no clue, in her calm face, as to what she was thinking.

  “So anyway,” he finished, “I thought your men could go back in through the passage and take the palace guard by surprise. Then with Pettibone in your hands”—or dead—“you could free Justice Holis and his friends. And then take over the government. Or whatever.”

  He wanted to continue, to describe some detailed strategy and convince her that she could succeed, but that was all the plan he had. He wiped sweaty palms on his britches.

  Arisa’s bright gaze was fixed on her mother’s face.

  The Falcon sighed. “The passage sounds like it might—might—be useful. But there are several things missing in this plan of yours.”

  Weasel’s heart sank. “Like what?” She had to do this. She was Justice Holis’ only hope.

  “First,” said the Falcon, “unless they fell for your rope-out-the-window trick, the guards who were assigned to discover how you escaped will find the passage themselves. In which case it’s either well sealed, or guarded, or both. So there goes your plan.”

  “But they might have believed we went out the window,” Weasel protested. “If they did, they wouldn’t look any farther, and the passage is still open.”

  “All right,” the Falcon conceded. “Say there’s a fifty-fifty chance we can get in. Say we do get in. At that point, I’ve got less than two hundred men—for that’s all I can muster by tomorrow—fighting the five hundred guardsmen Pettibone stations at the palace. And while the army may not like the regent, the palace guards are his to the last man. Granted, roughly a hundred and fifty will be sleeping at any given time. If you could somehow reach their barracks before the alarm is raised, and either lock them in or take them out, we’d be outmatched by only a little over three to two. Fighting on territory that the guards are familiar with, and we aren’t. And that’s assuming that the servants don’t set up ambushes for us, and that there aren’t a couple of dozen shareholders in the building who’d be loyal to Pettibone and willing to fight. Those odds are bad enough to start with, but when the alarm is sounded—and you’ll note I’m saying when, not if—the army will get there in less than an hour. Maybe half that. And if they arrive before we have both Pettibone and the prince in our hands, we’re all dead.”

  “I thought you said the army didn’t like the regent,” said Weasel. “Is it … Are they loyal to the prince?”

  “That’s not a question with a simple answer,” the Falcon told him. “The lord commander of the army is Pettibone’s man, lock, stock, and bribery. But according to … my sources, the general who’s in charge of the troops is the one who has their loyalty, and that of most of his officers. And no one’s been able to learn where his loyalty lies. I don’t think he’s loyal to the prince. He knows the prince. My guess is that he’s loyal to Deorthas, but I don’t know what that means to him. The one thing I do know is that he’s not loyal to me. So if the army arrives, especially before we have hostages, we’re dead.”

  “Um,” said Weasel. The allegiance of the army was something Justice Holis had never discussed with his clerk. And at the time, Weasel hadn’t cared. “Ah …”

  That odd, cool compassion was back in the Falcon’s expression. “And since the problems I’ve already mentioned are enough to stop me, I don’t mind telling you that the final problem with your plan is that Pettibone isn’t an amateur when it comes to keeping prisoners. You two can thank whatever god you fancy that he didn’t really care about holding you, or you wouldn’t be here. For prisoners as important as Holis and his friends, he’ll post guards around their cells, with orders to kill all of them at the first sign of any escape. So even if we could fight our way through the guards, your friends would be dead long before we could seize hostages and reach the cells.”

  “Oh,” said Weasel, chilled. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “I did,” said Arisa. “And I think there might be a way around it. To save Weasel’s friend, we have to get him out of the cells and into Pettibone’s presence before an alarm sounds, right? So we can seize all of them at the same time.”

  The Falcon frowned. “If you could get him there, there’s a chance we could keep him alive. But I can’t guarantee it.”

  “Well, I was thinking,” said Arisa. “You know how Renn’s always telling those legends about the gods, and the old earth magic and such?”

  “I know that you waste too much time listening to him,” said the Falcon, sounding almost like a real mother.

  “Yes, but he told me about the sword and shield the old kings used to carry. He said that the shield stood for justice; that if someone stood before the king and laid his hands on the shield, he could have the king hear his case instead of the court. King’s Justice, Renn called it. He said the right to demand King’s Justice was still the law, after all these years.”

  Weasel snorted. “Even if that’s true, Pettibone would probably be the prince’s legal representative. And even if he wasn’t, you wouldn’t get much justice out of Prince Edoran.”

  “I know that,” said Arisa patiently. “But if you demanded King’s Justice for Justice Holis, they’d have to go get him, wouldn’t they?”

  “There’s a problem with all of this,” said the Falcon. “Even if the law is still on the books, and you can convince anyone to obey it, you don’t have the shield. No one does.”

  “True,” said Arisa. “But if we bring them that old shield Weasel found in the storage room … It looked really old. Not at all like a theater prop. If we brought that in and said it was the shield, they’d have to examine it, wouldn’t they? To prove it wasn’t? If they couldn’t prove it wasn’t, they’d have to obey the law.”

  “They’d ask where you got it,” the Falcon told her. “And when you couldn’t give them a good answer, they’d throw the shield on the rubbish heap and arrest you.”

  “But what if we don’t tell them we found it in a pile of theater props,” said Weasel slowly. “We can say we found it in a secret passage, under the oldest part of the palace. And we can show them the passage to prove it …”

  “He’ll send guardsmen straight down that passage to look for the sword, and we lose our way in—and out!” But the Falcon’s voice was thoughtful. “The sword and shield were only symbols, but they meant a lot to the country people. They still do. Anyone who wants power in Deorthas would want the sword and shield in his hands.”

  “If you were already inside, you wouldn’t need it,” said Weasel. “And once the troops are in the tunnel, however many he sends, you could close off both ends and trap them there. And if you could get their uniforms …”

  Slowly, the plan took shape.

  Weasel thought he’d be too worried to sleep, but he’d been up all the last night and quite a bit of this one. When one of the Falcon’s men led him to a small tent with a cot in it, Weasel lay down, preparing to run over the plan in his head … and fell asleep before he’d even gotten them into the tunnel.

  He woke at dawn. After he washed up, and a woman tending a pot by one of the fires gave him a bowl of barley porridge, he asked her for directions t
o Ansa’s tent.

  Arisa evidently needed less sleep than he did—besides riding and fighting better—for an empty porridge bowl lay just outside the canvas door.

  Her tent was smaller than the Falcon’s. Four chests lay on the floor, open to show clothing, blankets, and an incongruous tangle of silk flowers. But there were still cushions on one comfortable-looking chair, and three of the tent’s inner walls were covered with long swaths of cloth, dyed in bright patterns. They were so thin that those on the east glowed with the sunlight that leaked through the canvas, filling the tent with color.

  The cloths that covered the west wall were already half down, and the narrow cot was stripped of its blankets, so she’d clearly been packing, but now Arisa sat at a small table, in one of the two straight chairs, and shuffled her arcana cards.

  Only yesterday, the thought that she was wasting time with her cursed cards would have infuriated Weasel, but having a plan in place calmed him. In twenty-four hours they’d either be successful or dead, and either way, the die had been cast. He swallowed a mouthful of the porridge, which had been sweetened with honey. Simple fare, but not bad. “You grew up here, didn’t you?”

  “In this camp, yes,” said Arisa. “Though not always in this place. We lived on the coast for a while, when I was younger. They were only waiting for me before moving on again, but if our plan works out … The rebellion, everything we’ve been struggling to achieve, all my life … It could become reality tonight.”

  She sounded a little ambivalent about that. Of course, this night could also end with all of them in cells awaiting hanging, which was probably why she’d turned to the cards.

  Weasel finished his porridge and set the bowl aside. “Can I help you pack? You shouldn’t let those cards worry you. I mean, they can be interpreted all kinds of ways, can’t they?”

  Arisa looked at him soberly. “You don’t believe in them at all, do you?”

  Weasel shrugged. “Your mother thinks this plan has a good chance, or she wouldn’t try it. And she’s …” Terrifying. “… she’s very pragmatic.”

  “She’s had to be,” said Arisa. “But she never allows hatred to rule her. To affect her judgment.”

  Weasel thought that someone who would become an outlaw and raise a rebellion had to be half-mad with hatred—or at least with something. But if she was crazy, the Falcon hid it well.

  “Why does she hate Pettibone so much?”

  “Reasons,” said Arisa shortly. “But he really is a bad ruler. He favors the city over the country, draining the farms—”

  “I’ve heard all this,” Weasel told her. “Several times. I still don’t care.”

  Arisa sighed. “Sit down. I want to lay out your cards.”

  Weasel frowned. “I don’t believe in them. You know it.”

  “If you don’t believe, why not humor me?” Arisa asked. “Because I do believe, and your actions are going to be pivotal tonight. I need to know how you’re going to influence … Never mind.”

  She looked so miserable that Weasel sank reluctantly into the other chair. “Haven’t you told your own fortune for tonight? And your mother’s? You said it didn’t matter if someone believed, as long as the person laying out the cards had some of that withe stuff.”

  Arisa’s mouth tightened. “You’re pivotal,” she repeated. “Cut the deck.”

  Telling himself that this was nothing but the heretical superstition Father Adan called it, Weasel did as she asked.

  Arisa all but snatched the cards from his hands. She drew the first, the one she’d told him represented him, and laid it down.

  The hanged man, upside down as always, with blood streaming from the scarlet gash in his throat. A chill raced over Weasel’s skin.

  “That’s the same card you drew for me before.”

  He had cut the deck himself. What were the odds that there was a cardsharp among her mother’s men? Hmm. Not that low, actually. Raised in a bandit camp, Arisa might know even more criminal crafts than Weasel did. His nerves settled a bit.

  “You look awfully pleased at the thought of me hanging,” he added.

  “I told you that the hanged man is voluntary sacrifice, not hanging. But the fact that I’ve drawn it twice means it’s a powerful influence in your life. A true significator. It also means my withe is working. It doesn’t always, you know.”

  That thought seemed to cheer her. Weasel wondered what she’d seen in the previous layouts, but she was drawing another card.

  “This supports you,” she said, placing it below the hanged man. “Rely on this.”

  The fool’s tattered clothing and bright grin met Weasel’s curious gaze. “Oh, great.”

  “Don’t be silly. All the cards have deeper meanings, especially the major arcana. The fool is a wise fool—he represents the wisdom of the heart, of your instincts, rather than your intellect. So you can trust your heart tonight. It will tell you true.”

  Weasel’s heart was telling him to run, as fast and far as he could. “Humph.”

  “This inspires you. How odd.”

  The four of stars showed a carpenter in his shop, a saw in hand, and other tools scattered about.

  “Why so odd? There’s a stone card below and a star card above. That ought to make perfect sense.”

  “It does, in a way,” Arisa admitted. “But the craftsman represents the work of man’s hands. Usually it indicates a physical, man-made object. Not something that would inspire you.”

  Which probably meant that this withe of hers wasn’t as good as she thought it was. Weasel had heard similar comments from con artists playing the fortune scam, when they couldn’t come up with a good line quickly. “Go on.”

  Arisa gave the craftsman a last, dubious look, and laid a card to the hanged man’s far right. “This threatens you.”

  The last time Arisa told his fortune, the card in that position was the moonless night, representing Pettibone. For all his skepticism, some part of Weasel was braced to see the same card again, but the wooden hoop and spokes of fortune’s wheel appeared instead.

  Ansa’s face brightened. “Acts of random chance, for good or ill,” she pronounced. “That’s not so bad. Chance plays a part in any complex plan; you just have to deal with it. And this will protect you.”

  She laid a card between the hanged man and the wheel—the one of waters. The fish, half in (or possibly half out of) the net, had a knowing look in his eye. Weasel had always thought he was going to make a clean getaway.

  “Opportunity,” said Arisa. “Though not always recognized and taken. I think this is good. I think it means that some of the random chances can be put to use, if you’re quick enough to seize the opportunity.”

  “That assumes I’m smart enough to see the opportunity in the first place. I’m relying on a fool, remember?”

  Arisa snorted, but she looked happier than she had when he came in. “This will mislead you.” She laid a card to the hanged man’s far left.

  The skeleton-thin beggar who portrayed want appeared. Weasel shrugged. “I’ve been poor and hungry before. I don’t think I’ll be misled.”

  Arisa was frowning again. “There are a lot of major arcana cards here. That means powerful forces are at work. Want isn’t just hunger,” she went on. “Or poverty. Want is the ultimate want. In a larger context it signifies drought or famine. In a personal sense, it implies … well, being denied what’s most important to you. A terrible need, or loss, or grief. Despair.”

  “We’re going to get Justice Holis out alive,” Weasel told her fiercely. “No matter what your stupid cards say.”

  “This doesn’t predict the future,” said Arisa. “Not exactly. It shows the influences that are acting in your life. You can use those forces to shape your future.”

  “You sound like every two-droplet con artist I’ve ever heard,” Weasel snapped. The words “terrible” and “grief” were still echoing in his memory.

  Arisa, scowling at the cards, paid no attention to his insult—which alarmed
him more than if she’d argued. “But want, in whatever aspect, is there to mislead you. So you should resist it, and not let grief, or despair, or need, blind you to the opportunity. And this,” she laid a final card between the beggar and the hanged man, “will guide you true.”

  “The book?” Weasel asked incredulously. “A book is going to save me from … whatever?”

  “How very odd,” said Arisa softly.

  “I bet you’re going to tell me that the book’s not a book, it’s the spirit of my great-granny’s little toe. Her left little toe, that—”

  “The book is knowledge, scholarship, all the good works of man’s intellect,” Arisa interrupted. “But that’s not … Do you remember when I told you that most of the major arcana cards, and some of the minor ones, were really the old gods?”

  “Yes,” said Weasel. “So what?”

  “Well, this god, the god of the book, was one of the lesser gods—the narrow god, the old ones called him, because his only interest was the affairs of men. But men cared about that, so they worshipped him. More than his power justified, perhaps. He was also the god of the city. That’s why there are buildings outside the window beyond the bookstand.”

  The only thought Weasel had given to the book card was whether to save or discard it. But now that he looked, she was right; there were buildings in the window.

  “So what?” he asked again.

  “How dense are you?” Arisa demanded. “The god of the affairs of men. The god of the city. This doesn’t sound familiar? As his worship became more popular, as more people came to him, the narrow god’s priests changed his name. This is the card of the One God.”

  CHAPTER 11

  The Hanged Man: voluntary sacrifice, for the greater good.

  The early dusk of autumn was falling as the coach that carried Weasel, Arisa, and the Falcon pulled into the city. Weasel had no idea where the Falcon’s men might be, but the Falcon didn’t seem concerned, so Weasel tried not to worry. He might as well have tried to grow wings and fly.

 

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