by Sam Hawke
Eliska looked torn; I could see the engineer in her rebelling at such a suggestion. “It’s a terrible step to have to take. It took decades to build them.”
“How would we even do it?” Tain stared down at the map. Such small marks to represent such mammoth feats of engineering.
“I do not know,” Marco said. “Where I grew up, our bridges were wood, not stone. We would have to smash the support pillars, I suppose?”
Eliska sighed. “Bell’s, perhaps we could do. Great force applied to the supporting pillars, yes, perhaps. But Trickster’s?”
The main bridge across the lake, and an integral part of the famous and enviable vista of our city, Trickster’s was a massive single arch towering over the north side of the lake between huge supporting buildings. I had no concept of how it had even been built, let alone how that could be undone.
“We’d have to knock down the entire supporting structure,” she continued. “And even if we could … please, understand, we would be safer with no bridges, but we would be condemning ourselves to years of rebuilding, maybe even decades. The bridges are the lifeblood of our city.”
Tain stared at me, beseeching, but I had no counsel to offer. It was a terrible decision to have to make. “You said the tunnel neutralized their numbers, Marco,” he said eventually. “Wouldn’t the same be true of the bridge? Couldn’t we hold them back from the Finger if it came to that?”
“For a while, perhaps. But we would be left with no further retreat, Honored Chancellor.”
They continued discussing options, but I lost track as I stared at the map. On the map, the city was a mere collection of pen markings: geometric shapes and neat lines. But in my head, I saw those markings as they were in reality—a living city, people’s homes and work and studies, a beacon of peaceful and secure trade for people all over the world. The lower city was far bigger than the upper; all those neat diagrams showing Guilds, marketplaces, and residential districts.… I tried to imagine how we could function without access to its facilities. Not to mention that the lower city housed the vast majority of the city’s population. I pictured the bustling lower city burning, the upper filled with desperate crowds, and the thought made me sick and sad.
“How long do you think we have?” I asked Eliska. “How long would the wall hold out if it was struck with catapults in a full attack?”
She sighed again and stretched. I heard cracks and pops as her joints protested. “They’ll focus on the weakened part of the wall. Under sustained force from projectiles and rams, it might only be a matter of days to knock a hole in it or bring that part down.”
“It will be critical to target their siege weapons,” Marco said. “That means we must have catapults of our own that are accurate enough to destroy theirs, and we must be ready to stop a ram.” He looked us all over, his face grim. “As we did when they attacked the gate, we must be ready to pour demons down upon them, so they are too frightened to approach. More oil, more stone and metal … these things we need.”
Tain nodded, rubbing his forehead. “All right. Listen. I don’t want them killed any more than I want city residents killed. Our goal here is still peaceful resolution. I want peace flags hanging from every available space on the walls, and I’m going to talk to our prisoner and make him understand we want to negotiate, not fight. I’ve sent a physic to look after him for now; hopefully after a day of being cared for decently he might be inclined to listen.
“In the meantime, Eliska, can your Guild make a plan for destroying the bridges—just work out if it can be done, and how? Jov, we need people on the spyglasses every hour of the day, watching for signs that the rebels’ weapons are ready. Marco, we need a plan for defending the weak spot—give us as much time as you can, and a strategy for falling back if we need to.”
The two Guilders left us and I shut my eyes, trying to silence the clamor of disjointed thoughts and images in my head. Every part of me hurt, from the inside of my brain to the ends of my toes. I’m drowning, I thought, drowning in my own head.
But self-indulgence wasn’t going to get us through the day, let alone the siege.
Tain stood beside me, fingering the map Marco had left, his eyes unfocused. “We could lose half the city in a few days—more than half. Hundreds of years of buildings, industries, markets, and lives. I can’t believe this is happening.”
“Well, it is,” I said bluntly. “And things are only going to get worse. We need to start thinking about keeping you out of the front line. It was stupid going down into the mines today. Your guards can’t protect you in close quarters fighting and neither can I. You’re not just the Heir of a peaceful city anymore. You can’t act like it.”
“I know you’re worried, but there are more important things—”
“Tain.” I cut him off, dropping my voice so the guard servants couldn’t hear. “Tain, for fuck’s sake. Someone tried to kill you yesterday. There’s no more important thing.”
He clenched his jaw, but I pressed on, having to work to keep my voice level. I couldn’t fail at this. Not this. I was all that was holding up our family’s ancient duty.
“Defending the city is everyone’s duty, but mine is you—just you. And someone watched you at training yesterday, followed you, and poisoned your food. They’re careful, they’re biding their time, and they will try again. The only thing protecting you so far is that whoever the enemy is seems to want your death to look like an accident. If that changes…”
Tain looked down, lips tight. His generosity of spirit, the good-naturedness I had always admired about him, suddenly seemed like dangerous naivety. “Fine,” he said eventually. “Fine. I’ll be more careful, all right? I won’t go rushing in. But Jov, you’ve thought we had a traitor the whole time but you don’t know who it is. I can’t avoid everyone on the Council.”
I thought back to Kalina’s list of names, the people who were in the Manor to have poisoned the leksot in the garden: Javesto, Varina, Marco, Eliska, Bradomir, Budua. Before, I’d thought those least sympathetic to the rebels were the safest. Perhaps Javesto was helping the city Darfri, and perhaps Budua was evasive with Council records, but now that made them seem less likely, not more, to have wanted to harm Caslav. Marco and Eliska, too, it was hard not to trust given I doubted we’d have held off the siege for even a few days without the guidance of those two Guilders. And Marco, at least, had risked his own life to help save mine while I climbed that ladder. Yet still, I couldn’t rule anyone out.
“I just need to know you aren’t going to do something stupid again. Don’t put yourself in a vulnerable position. I have to be able to trust you, at least.”
“You can, I promise,” he said. But I couldn’t be sure, and worry and anger and frustration gnawed at me.
* * *
It took longer than I’d hoped to check over our sector and update Chen with the new instructions. We were leaning too heavily on the Order Guard to manage things, but she was competent and Kalina and I were already being pulled in too many directions with competing priorities. By the time I was able to return to my apartments, it was afternoon. Outside our property I crossed paths with Lord Ectar and two of his silent, expressionless servants. Irritation and worry sprang up inside me. Kalina was in there, resting; she’d pushed herself too hard the last few days. What was Ectar doing, bothering her? “What can I do for you, Lord Ectar?”
Apparently he shared my irritation, because his usual careful manner seemed ruffled. “Nothing, Credo Jovan. I have been turned away from seeing your lady sister.”
“She’s unwell.” Grateful I’d sent a messenger to wait outside our apartments in case Kalina needed me, I made to step past him. He made a kind of huffing sound, so put upon that it rankled me. “My sister’s ill health bothers you, Lord Ectar?”
“What is wrong with her?” he demanded. “She seemed fine when I saw her.”
For most of my life I’d had to hear the same sentiment—sometimes asked in confidence, sometimes with brashness or suspicion
or disbelief. They couldn’t see what was wrong so they assumed it was not real. “She’s been doing too much,” I snapped. “She is always unwell, she’s just very good at hiding it.”
He raised an eyebrow, the expression of polite skepticism recognizable and familiar even on his pale, painted face. I pushed past him without bothering with any more false pleasantries; he could take his nosiness and ignorance elsewhere. I’d never have dared to do it a month before, for fear of someone noticing the rudeness. How foolish our social rules seemed now.
My sister was awake—thanks, no doubt, to the unwelcome visitor—her eyes bruised and sunken, skin dull. I made her tea and a portion of rations; she argued, but feebly, and eventually ate a small amount. I held her hand as we talked over the day. She refused my offer of a numbing agent but didn’t comment on the low-level sedative in her tea, though I suspected she had noticed. Without sleep, things could get worse rapidly, and we lacked our usual luxury of a physic on demand.
While she drank I unfolded the clothes I’d picked up earlier from the Manor, and turned them inside out. I took out the naftate powder, one of the few substances that didn’t need to be hidden away, and began dusting the insides of Tain’s clothes.
“What are you doing?” Kalina asked. She would know naftate powder as the drying agent that absorbed geraslin ink, allowing papers to be reused after the text had been removed—or, as in our old games, brought back to life under heat in a “secret” message. It had another use to a proofer.
“Naftate powder will highlight certain toxins. A Chancellor a hundred years ago nearly died because the servant who dressed him every morning rubbed manita fungus on the insides of his clothes and his skin gradually absorbed it.”
She watched as I worked. “What happens if the fungus is there?”
“It’ll dry up and leave a faint blue residue.” Nothing appeared as we sat there, watching, but I fully intended to do it to every item of clothing he wore from now on. Just in case.
“I want to go to the Builders’ Guildhall,” I told Kalina after she had finished her tea, and her eyelids drooped. “Some of Etan’s work might be useful for the engineers working on the bridge options, but I’d rather the information came through Eliska’s Guild than straight to her from me. Etan knows—knew”—I remembered, breath catching in my chest for a moment—“a few people there who liked to dabble in chemical reactions.”
“What about the rebel prisoner?” she asked. “Has anyone spoken to him?”
“He was pretty hostile,” I said. “They had to take him to the jail because he attacked one of the physics at the hospital when they were trying to treat him. There’s a Guard supervising now. Tain wants to give him some time to be treated fairly so he might be more amenable to talking.”
“I want to try talking to him,” she said, voice slurring.
I squeezed her hand. “You sleep some more, for now, all right? You’ll feel better after a proper rest.” I tried to sound confident rather than hopeful. She only ever had so much energy to spend, and it was all being sucked up by this mess we were in.
I was half-afraid she’d ignore my advice, but by the time I’d gathered up some of Etan’s papers—carefully curated first, of course—and our supply of dung crystals, her breath had deepened into sleep.
* * *
The Builders’ Guildhall was abuzz with activity. Eliska must have had every engineer and master builder in the city at work on the bridge plan. On one wall of the entrance hall a great diagram of Bell’s had been drawn and three engineers were arguing about how much force would be required to pull the support pillars out. “A team of oku,” one began, and one of his colleagues laughed.
“Oku from where? How many oku do you think we have in the city now?”
“Someone find that out,” the third muttered. “We haven’t eaten them all, have we? We’re still using them for milk and pulling carts.”
I wandered through the back laboratories, searching. At last I found the scientist I sought: Baina, clever and ambitious and discreet. She was bent over a bench, her bulk spread over enough space for three people, writing notes with one hand while stirring some unidentified substance in a massive ceramic bowl with the other.
“Good morning, Credo Jovan,” she said.
I smiled. “It’s well into the afternoon now.”
“Oh.” Baina went on stirring. “Well. I’ve been here awhile. I’m trying to work out what will best dissolve mortar. That lot out there”—she waved scornfully in the direction I’d come—“are mad if they think the supports will come down without internal weakening first.”
“That’s why I came, actually. It occurred to me that Etan might have some notes about chemicals that could help—you know how he was always tinkering.”
She paused, eyes narrowed in interest. “He was clever, your uncle.”
“He was.” To mask the shake in my voice, I pressed on. “I remembered him telling us about a few things you might find useful.” I handed her my collection of papers and the box of crystals, along with my most baffled expression. “I don’t understand it myself. But I remember him making something burst in a stone bowl with these crystals he’d gotten hold of and it completely smashed up the bowl and made such a mess in our kitchen I wondered if, on a larger scale…”
“It might damage a stone support?” She shoved aside her own notes and pawed eagerly at Etan’s. “No one has any real ideas about Trickster’s, but if we could find some way of applying a burst of force to particular spots, we might have something.”
“Is there anything you need that you don’t have?” Reading upside down from her discarded scribblings, I recognized a few acids I knew from my own work. “Do you need me to get the Stone-Guilder to assign more people to help you?”
Baina grinned, looking me over. “No, thank you. Some of what I do is not … Guild-endorsed. I’ve already arranged some supplies from people who aren’t exactly on the books.”
“At this point, anything that’s for the defense of the city is on the books,” I said. “You can use my authority for anything you like.”
She suddenly looked off to the side, a sly twist to her lips. “You know, this material is very rough, Credo Jovan. I’ll need to be doing my own experiments, figuring things out.… I don’t know how much use your uncle’s work will really be.…”
I’d read her right, in our brief contact. She’d never mention my name or where the information came from. It would be her innovation, exactly as I’d hoped. “Of course,” I assured her. “The other Credolen thought my uncle was odd for his interest in experimentation anyway. I’d rather not give them anything to gossip about.” Our gazes met; we understood each other.
But of course, we didn’t trust each other, not quite. An abandoned barrel across the street from the Guildhall provided me with sufficient cover to hunker down to wait. I was curious about her contacts; they likely moved in circles beyond Council access.
I didn’t have to wait too long. Baina’s massive form was easy to spot coming out of the Guild with a crowd of others at the end of a shift change, and her pace slow enough to track even in the fading light. North she went through the streets while I followed, keeping my footfalls light. She spoke to no one and kept her head down; as we headed into increasingly poorer neighborhoods, my confidence that she was meeting her contacts and not merely returning home grew. When she ducked into a building I slipped closer, excited, until I saw it was a kori bar. It was still doing good business, despite what must be dwindling supplies and useless currency in return, though if the city survived the siege, half of it would probably belong to these bar owners. Perhaps Baina wasn’t quite as single-minded as I’d counted on.
Then I saw the sign above the door: Branno’s.
Frowning, I moved closer, the coincidence tingling in my head. A dingy area of town, a crowded, dank bar … not such a bad meeting place. Inside, Baina had moved to a table in a corner. Oil rations meant that the place was lit poorly with candles, and she was o
nly recognizable by her size. I wished I’d thought to bring something to wear over my paluma; my tattoos would stand out too easily in a place like this. It might be better to watch from outside. I turned, and froze.
Three treads away stood a Doranite man in nondescript clothing; I had only seen Batbayer briefly at Lazar’s, but his face was seared into my head. He was staring straight at me. His eyes dropped to my arms, then back to my face.
He ran.
It took me by surprise and I lost critical moments in the shock of recognition; by the time I found my senses and sprinted after him, he’d already disappeared down an alley. I followed, pelting into the shadowy passage. Whatever his role, whoever he really was, he knew me and feared me. That was enough.
I quickly lost sight of him between buildings, but the sound of his footfalls guided me in my pursuit. My heart pulsed through my chest as I skidded to a stop at a junction. Half-sized stone walls and iron gates enclosed two small yards on the other side of the pathway. Trusting my ears, I crossed quickly and vaulted over the opposite wall, stifling a curse as my ankle turned on the soft, earthy landing. Teach me to try acrobatics.
Across the yard, over another wall. My ankle rewarded me with a jolt of pain. I listened, but this time I couldn’t hear anything. The ground was too soft. I was in a maze of residential buildings, yards, and narrow passages, and I’d lost him.
I cursed. My one chance to figure out his connection to all of this, and I’d ruined it. What would he do now?
* * *
“Do you think Baina is connected?” Tain paced the room like a hungry graspad, padding back and forth. Earlier I’d been concerned he wasn’t taking the threat seriously enough; now I worried about the opposite. His erratic temper was on the rise, just when we needed care and caution.
“Not really,” I said. “We should talk to her, and I’m sure we’ll confirm he was there to meet her, but I don’t think she’s involved in any kind of conspiracy. She’s just an unconventional scientist. She knew unsavory types, un-Guilded traders and such. We were assuming because he was a Doranite that he was working for his own country, and maybe that’s true, but given Baina was seeing him about acids and other restricted supplies, I’m more concerned that he might have supplied Varina with poison.”
