by Sam Hawke
When the frantic bell announced at last that the wall had given out and the rebels were at the breach, we had done our best to prepare.
A force of our mismatched troops gathered around the damaged wall, meeting the army at the breach, and scattered around the retreat route more people were poised, waiting; in windows, clinging to the tops of archways, even roofs, and lining the streets. The breach itself was a great, V-shaped tear in the pale stone, bleeding rubble and mortar dust. Chunks of rock spread across the ground like a rough bridge from the hole down to the ground.
Fear, anticipation, and bravado buzzed in the air. Some made coarse jokes, some swore, some cried, but all stood their ground. Even with the roar and pounding of the army at our door, even with the frantic pump of my heart and the icy river of fear-sweat down my spine, I felt a sense of connection with those around me. For the first time, I understood a little of what Tain admired so about the Warrior-Guilder, and the pleasure he had found training in her Guild. There was a camaraderie here that was almost exhilarating; an intoxicating feeling of strength and togetherness in the face of danger, tinged with a lonely reminder of how different I was from the strong and brave.
My brother seized my elbow. “Move, Lini,” he said. “You shouldn’t even be here.” For once, he was right. I was more scared than I could ever remember being.
We had the advantage of position; the breach was still only the width of a few men, and from the wall above shrapnel, sewage, and hot sand and liquids fell in a deadly waterfall. But the sheer force of their numbers was already apparent as Jov and I followed the retreat path. We wouldn’t hold it for long.
Attempts at an orderly retreat had been fruitless. Those not locked in behind comrades broke ranks and fled, then we were all jostled as people panicked and tried to run. I glimpsed over my shoulder the last efforts of our defenders on the walls, trying to buy us time to escape, hurling everything they had left over the edges. Swept along with the retreating forces, I hoped desperately that the rebels would follow us through the city and be caught up in the traps we had laid, or at least that triumph would distract them and temporarily destroy their discipline. If they instead followed the line of the walls and blocked off the stairs on the west side of the lake, our people on the battlements would be stranded without a way down to safety.
The traps were crude and simple. Along the main thoroughfare between the breach and the bridge, our people lay in wait in houses and shops by the roadside, ready to spring. Part of my night had been spent in the temporary new Craft Guildhall sewing sharp things—metal, broken glass and crockery—into fishing nets, which could be thrown out quickly over the road to slow down our pursuers. Over alternative routes to the bridge we had spread oil on the roads and strung wires between buildings and plants, all to delay them and give us more time to get everyone over the bridge safely.
Trickster’s was in sight when all of a sudden I couldn’t get a breath. My slowing pace saw me bumped to the outside of the current, losing my brother in the process. Stumbling against an old archway with great chips of crumbling rock, I leaned on it to stop my head spinning. One side was broken enough to form a kind of stair, and my shaking limbs hauled me up a few steps until I was able to relax my chest and expel the stale air. I craned in both directions, looking for Jovan.
My position gave me a good view of the pursuit down the slope toward the lake. The chasing rebel horde was not the immense force I had imagined; at least some of their soldiers must have been caught in our traps or split in different directions upon entering the city. Two women sprang out from houses on either side of the road and hurled some of my nets across the path. The approaching rebels saw the trap too late and their intimidating roars turned quickly to howls of pain. Glancing back the other way, heart thumping between my chest and the cool stone, I saw Jov at last, just as he saw me. He diverted out of the crowd and I fell against his broad shoulders, grateful and shaking. He helped me stumble-run the last distance, flooding with everyone else over Trickster’s Bridge. Perhaps for the last time.
“Jov! Lini!” Tain saw us from inside the Finger and was already halfway down the stairs to help us by the time we reached its base. “Honor-down, what were you doing there so long? I was tearing my hair out.” His hug was ferocious. We pressed together in the middle level of the Finger, where we could see through the slit windows the nearer side of the great arch.
Although everyone had been instructed to gather in the biggest square in the old city, to regroup, most people had lingered instead on the shores of the lake to see what would happen. A hush lay over the crowd, as if the fear, excitement, and desperation of the morning’s events had snuffed our voices. Beside me, watching the stream of people continuing over the bridge, Jov breathed raggedly, and I felt his muscles contracting frantically: making fists, clenching his jaw, shifting his weight back and forth, over and over. He registered the reactions of those around us: raised eyebrows and a careful lack of eye contact, a gradual backing away. My heart ached for him as his complexion darkened with humiliation. I put a hand on each shoulder, careful to use equal pressure.
In time his muscles stopped their rhythmic spasm and his relieved breath signaled his return to calm. The bulk of us had made it to safety now, but stragglers continued to appear in view, frantic as they pounded the last treads to the safety of the Finger. Probably those who had been involved in laying our delays and traps.
“Now!” Marco’s voice boomed down from the roof of the tower above, and the men and women waiting for that command swung down with torches to light Baina’s series of devices.
“But there’re still people coming,” I said to Tain, and he shot me an agonized look.
“Marco has command,” he said. “It needs to blow before the rebels reach the tower.”
But he gripped my hand as we saw three more of our people emerge over the high peak in the middle of the bridge. Then their pursuers plummeted into sight, too, thick and fast toward us.
I couldn’t even breathe, hoping the collective will of those of us watching could somehow spur the last of our people across to safety.
But the last few runners were finally outpaced by their pursuers. I felt the strikes at their backs as if I’d been struck myself. A woman beside me screamed, and the smell and sound of vomit assaulted us as the sight proved too much for a man a few paces over. Even after all we had seen over the past few weeks, this was somehow worse.
And still, the bridge stood. “Is it going to blow?” I asked my brother in a whisper.
The gate clanged shut behind the engineers as they scrambled inside. “I don’t—” he started, but broke off as a massive crack split the air, then two, three, five in succession, a hollow boom. Black smoke and rubble blasted through our vision, and in the background howls rose like a siren. Tain’s grip on my fingers turned to a vise.
“Did they—are they—?”
It took forever for the smoke to clear, and all the while the ringing in my ears lingered as we peered desperately through the mess.
“It didn’t work,” Jov said in horror. “Tain, it didn’t work.”
The bridge path remained; whatever the devices had done, it had not been enough. The rebels realized it, too, and charged again, but Marco was prepared. “Full might!” he shouted, and the archers on the roof and behind the wing walls responded with gusto: a forest of arrows flew at the bridge. The rebels were unprepared; this annex of their army had perhaps become caught up in the pursuit and had not contemplated the fortifications of the Finger.
They pulled back out of range in a hurry, fleeing in a disorganized rabble back across Trickster’s. “They’re in full retreat!” Marco called out, and people around us let out a halfhearted cheer. One or two people simply sobbed.
Ultimately, though, it was the rebels who had the victory. Their force, growing by the moment as more of their army emerged from the city, spread out across the opposite bank, a crude mirror of ourselves. Cheers and jeers echoed across the water.
/> I turned away, bitterness rising in my throat. They were right to cheer. Whatever happened from here, they had taken half our city, and we were penned in, missing most of the facilities we needed to properly defend ourselves. If we didn’t find some way to negotiate with them, the city was lost and us with it.
Lockwort
DESCRIPTION: Attractive climbing plant with small red leaves and dark, indigo flowers, growing primarily in extremely moist conditions. Flowers are toxic if consumed over time.
SYMPTOMS: Over time, mood alteration and depression, tiredness, weight loss, and muscle wasting, visible broken capillaries on the skin above waist level, liver damage.
PROOFING CUES: Fresh flowers smell sweet but are very bitter to taste. Lose taste when dried but retain pleasant aroma.
17
Jovan
The hospital was my first stop after it became clear that the rebels would wait to regroup and strategize. It teemed with people: confused, grieving, terrified, displaced. Only the physics in their blue sashes were easily identifiable, darting from pallet to pallet and in and out of the surgery rooms.
Our injured numbered easily in the hundreds, and that was only those who had been lucky enough to make the evacuation. The fortunes only knew what had happened to those left injured at the breach or on the wall—would the rebels care for them, or leave them there to suffer and die? Or worse, mutilate and desecrate their bodies as they had done with our messengers? As I moved through the hall, assisting where able, searching for familiar faces, a thickset man with tear-reddened eyes jostled past, muttering under his breath. Something about “bloody traitors.” I followed his trajectory and moved to block his path.
“Here, take this to the cleaning station, please,” I barked in my best physic tone, and shoved a bucket of blood-soaked rags into his fists. While he was distracted I made haste to the physic tending a bleeding woman whose simple armor over country-style pants and shirt easily identified her as a rebel. “This is going to get ugly,” I told the physic. “We need to get the rebel wounded into a different part of the hospital. There are grieving people in here spoiling for a fight.”
She gave me a cool look. “And compromise their care and our efficiency? It is part of the honorable code of physics that we treat all persons who need it. Should that not be a matter of everyone’s honor, not just the physics’?”
“I agree,” I said. “But you can’t watch everyone in this room and care for your patients, and someone is going to get hurt if we don’t do something.” I followed her pointed glance down at the stomach wound she was compressing. “More hurt.”
Her mouth twisted, but she nodded. “I’ll arrange it.”
I found Pedrag eventually—he still hadn’t regained consciousness, and a young relative of his told me tearfully that the physics weren’t hopeful. I hadn’t known the old man well but had grown to like him these past few weeks, for what that was worth. “May the fortunes be with him,” I said, and meant it. “He was brave. And surprising. He’d a good sense of humor.” Not to mention, he was the only Councilor injured, and the only one who had fought with our men and women on the front line. But the dead and injured weren’t confined to the lower born. I imagined that none of the Families had come through this unscathed.
* * *
Several days passed in a rush of reorganization as we set new priorities. Battle lines were redrawn since the rebels had only one narrow approach path now, and both sides were hastily reworking their respective attack and defense plans. We focused on increasing the fortifications on the Finger and developing ways to make the long descent from the peak of the bridge deadlier for the rebels to attempt. The fortunes only knew what was being cooked up across the lake. Most of their force had moved into Silasta to occupy the lower city, though a contingent remained outside the external perimeter to the north and south, still guarding against any attempts to send messengers out from the upper city.
We had earned a short reprieve, but things were worse than ever, with too many people crammed in too little space, and internal tensions rising. It seemed certain something would break.
Evening on the second day after the lower city fell, I found myself dawdling on my way to the Manor to join Tain and Marco for a pre-Council strategy meeting. I had a new portion of safe food for Tain, but the truth was they didn’t need me to plan logistics of our defense. It wasn’t my strength. And what is your strength, then? My mocking inner voice asked me. You can’t even get the proofing right. You’re a failure at the only thing you need to be good at. I shook my head, trying to clear the thoughts before the loop of obsessive self-judgment and speculation could start again.
“Why do you do this thing?” a now-familiar voice said, and I only jumped a little as An-Hadrea dropped from the stone wall beside me. I was getting better at reacting when she did this to me, this time trying to turn the shock into a shrug, though her smile suggested she wasn’t fooled.
“Do what, An-Hadrea?” I asked, keeping my tone courteous.
“This thing. Where you eat the Chancellor’s food, and check it for poison.” She met my surprised gaze, guileless, as I blinked, searching for words.
“I … what do you … I don’t know what you mean.”
She blew out her lips in scorn. “Do you think I am stupid? You think I have no eyes?”
“Oh, I know you have eyes,” I murmured. They seemed capable of spying on me at will.
“Well, then. Why do you do this thing?” She fell in beside me, patient, confident of receiving an answer.
“It’s something my family’s always done,” I said at last. “We protect the Chancellor.”
“By eating poison.”
“By proofing,” I corrected, prickling. “Testing for poison. I know the flavors, the smells, the textures, to make sure it’s safe.”
“You protect him by dying in his place? But why would someone highborn do this? Is it not a job for an animal or a servant?”
“No,” I said, annoyed. “You don’t understand. We don’t just die, like some replaceable animal. It takes a lifetime of training. We know poisons—all the poisons.” I forgot that was wrong until it came out. Not all the poisons, obviously. “We have immunities and antidotes. We know how to protect ourselves, and protect them. And this is everything to us. It’s our family’s honor.”
“Honor,” An-Hadrea said. “How is it you are all so obsessed with one half of our creed and you apply it so strangely? You have twisted it into yet another system of rank, a way of measuring who is more valuable than whom. Honor is not a score in a game, Jovan. Honor is about your connection to other people. It is how you show yourself to other people and the regard in which you hold them, which in turn feeds the regard in which they hold you. And honor is only one half of the whole. You have forgotten tah. You understand nothing of the fresken of the land, and you know nothing of the secondworld. But you cannot stop talking about honor. What is honor if you are dead? Or your friends or family are dead?”
It was difficult to explain the notion. “Honor lives on after you die. It’s the mark we carve on the world. It’s living fairly and respectfully. If you don’t live with honor, what’s the point?”
“Fairly? Respectfully? Perhaps I understand these words differently. Where is the honor in how my people are treated?”
I sighed. “You’re right, it is dishonorable. I don’t deny that. But I didn’t know.” It sounded weak because it was, but she had me flustered.
“But you did not spare thought for the people who feed you, here in your shining white city.”
No words came to my defense. I never had thought about the people in the country much. They were just … there, like the landscape—an important part of the infrastructure, but not something to which I’d ever turned my attention. That thought shamed me now. “I didn’t. Honor-down, I wish I had.” I caught her arm, compelled to make her understand. “You always saw this city as greedy and indulgent, so nothing’s changed for you. But I grew up here, An-Hadrea,
I grew up here thinking we were the most civilized city in the world, that we were better than all our barbarous neighbors. And then I found out we’re not better, we’re worse, because our foundations are rotten. Don’t you see? My whole city … my whole world, it’s all been built on lies.”
She stared at me, calm as the eye of a storm. “You are right. You poor thing, having to learn what monsters live inside you. You are as much a victim as the people who have been treated no better than valued livestock.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“No, no,” she continued, savage. “Let me comfort you, for it is you who are suffering. Confronting your role in destroying our way of life is truly just as painful as having that life destroyed is for us. Your feelings must be so hurt. Let us focus on those feelings. They are the most important thing, just like everything in the cities is more important than in the estates. Forget that you are murdering the spirits of the land, that you have taken everything from us.”
I dropped her arm, angry and defensive. “Let’s not pretend one side is all to blame here. Is everyone in this city to blame for what their government’s done? Are innocent children supposed to die a violent death for the crime of being born here? Did a peace negotiator sent out to talk in good faith deserve to be murdered for trying to talk and listen? Tearing the very heads off the bodies of our messengers—not even soldiers, just people who could run fast, and dumping them at our gates like refuse? One side doesn’t have the monopoly on honor.”
She looked discomforted but not stunned; clearly the rumors had already reached her about the messengers’ fates. But her tone, if anything, increased in ferocity. “Did I ever say such brutal acts were honorable? No Darfri would do such a thing to their most despised enemy. But there are lesser people within the rebellion, people who would use us for their own ends. Do you not remember my family came here at great risk and cost to help you, because my mother believes that such violence is unjustified no matter what you have done to us? I suppose you have forgotten that?”
