Forging the Sword (The Farsala Trilogy)

by Bell, Hilari

  “It’s a builders drawing,” said Jiaan, pressing down another corner. “How did you come by this, Mistress Nadi?”

  “My husband’s family were masons,” said Nadi. “His grandfather helped build one of the wings of the palace—the new wing, they’re still calling it, though it’s more than a hundred years old now. I’m not exactly certain how he came by it, but he kept it for its craft, and his pride in having built part of the gahn’s own palace. What he’d think of the use we’re putting it to …”

  The peddler laughed. “If he was anything like his great-grandchildren, he’d be cheering us on. What’s your plan, lass?”

  “Obstacles first,” said Nadi firmly, and Hama grinned.

  “Yes, mother,” she said meekly. “The only real obstacle is the guards, but there are a lot of them, even if Garren has been forced to spread them thin. The grounds are so big, he can’t cordon them off the way the Hrum do their camps. And why should he care if someone gets into the gardens? Which the town boys are doing all the time, on dares. That’s the first bit of good news. If the Hrum who patrol the grounds see someone going out over the wall, or coming in for that matter, they’re not going to fill them full of arrows and ask questions later. Hrum or no, they’ve no desire to shoot down foolish children.”

  “Good for the town boys,” said Kavi.

  “Yes, but it doesn’t gain us much,” Hama went on. “It’s around the outside of the palace that the real security begins. You can think of it as a series of rings, though they’re not round. The first ring is the guards on the gate and the grounds patrols. The gate guards “will ask your business, and if you’ve on the list of people they expect to see, they’ll pass you in and give you an escort to lead you through the rest of the security. If you’re not expected, they send a man to whoever you’re wanting to see, and you wait till the message comes back before they admit you.”

  “What about servants?” asked Soraya, who had been one not so long ago. “And the people who bring in wood and eggs and so on?”

  Nadi gave her a look of startled approval, but Hama shook her head.

  “Folk like that are allowed in,” said Hama, “but only as far as the kitchen, and the kitchen is outside of the palace proper—outside the second ring of security. The building isn’t connected to the palace, so the Hrum only keep the servants under casual watch. The Hrum officers who come and go from inside the palace are given new passwords every morning, for they change them every day.”

  “So that’s why the food at the palace feasts was never hot when it reached the table,” Soraya muttered.

  The peddler’s grin surprised her. “The terrible price of power. But it sounds like we could get through this first ring without much trouble.”

  “That’s true,” said Hama. “But the next ring is a real cordon of guards around the buildings of the palace.”

  Kavi’s brows rose. “A solid line of soldiers? That’s a lot of men for Garren to be keeping on guard duty.”

  “It’s not solid,” Hama admitted. “But they’re posted so they can see each other, and they carry whistles so they can call in the roving patrols to help them. They’re not supposed to be leaving their posts to help each other,” she added. “So if you’re thinking about causing a diversion in one part of the line so that someone can slip through in another, you can forget it.”

  The peddler’s expression of chagrin was almost comical.

  “I thought of it too,” said Hama consolingly.

  “This isn’t a contest!” Nadi snapped. “It isn’t a prank! This is deathly, deathly serious, and if I could keep you from it, lad, be sure I would.”

  Soraya knew that the first condition Nadi had placed on her agreement to help them was that Hama would not, under any circumstances, assist them with anything but the planning.

  “You needn’t fear for me,” the peddler assured her, with a warmth in his voice Soraya had never heard before. “Enough Hrum know my face that I can’t be going among them either.”

  “Well, someone has to go in,” said Hama. “Because the second ring of guards, and all those stationed past them, ask everyone for the password that applies to that security level on that very day. If you don’t have the right passwords, you’re caught—and outside of the gardens you’re likely dead, as well. The inner guards will shoot you full of arrows and be asking questions later,” she finished somberly. “According to our sources, you have to have three passwords to get as far as the wine cellar. It’s likely more than that to reach the vault, and the cells where the prisoners are kept, but no one we could reach has ever been that far in.”

  There was a moment of daunted silence.

  “So the first thing we need is a day’s worth of passwords,” said Kavi. “As many as we can get. Could your people bring them out to you?”

  “No,” said Nadi. “The steward keeps the passwords. He only gives them out if he has to send someone into the palace on an errand, and mostly he goes himself. Our folk have only gotten them occasionally. And if some Hrum guard starts asking questions …”

  “So one of us will have to go in,” said Jiaan. “Someone who is, for instance, marked as a Hrum spy so he can reach a high-up official. An official in the center of the palace, so he’ll hear all the passwords on his way in. I’m just wondering if you set it up that way deliberately.”

  “Then you can stop wondering,” said the peddler sharply. “It can’t be me. Didn’t you hear me telling Nadi that too many of the Hrum would recognize me?”

  Looking at their stiff faces, Soraya wondered if they would be able to work together long enough to bring this off.

  “But those Hrum are still at Mazad,” she said, before Jiaan could say something worse. “Aren’t they? The ones who got to know you before you escaped from Barmael’s camp?”

  “Yes, but that still leaves the ones who saw me when I was selling Arus’ camp bad beer,” said the peddler. “And there were a fair few of them.”

  “But they were all sent to hunt Shir’s bandits,” said Soraya. “So they won’t be here either.”

  Jiaan’s corner of the parchment rolled back toward the center, and Soraya glanced at him. She couldn’t interpret the expression on his face.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing.” Jiaan smoothed the parchment back into place. “You told me that all you did was leave Barmael’s camp without permission. By the time Garren left, his attack on Mazad had been defeated. Do you think he’d remember to tell his people here to watch out for you?”

  “Likely not,” said the peddler slowly. “He might not have been told that I escaped, though I’d not care to bet my life on that. But even if he was told, the defeat at Mazad would probably put it out of his head. So all I’d need to worry about are those who met me when I was dealing with Patrius—and odds are they still think I’m a loyal spy.”

  “What about Garren?” Nadi demanded. “He may not—may not—have remembered to warn his people about you, but if he sees you himself …”

  “Yes,” said the peddler thoughtfully. “I’d have to pick a time when our Garren’s so busy that no one would even think of taking me to him. And a report that’s urgent enough to be getting me in deep, but not so urgent they’d interrupt the governor’s business.”

  “You could tell them you heard folk in the city planning a riot to show the committee that Setesafon’s not really conquered,” said Hama. “Not killing anyone—that might bring you to Garren’s notice—but shouting insults and throwing filth.”

  “Or you could tell them you heard a rumor that I’m in the city,” said Soraya. “Or better yet that you’ve seen me, somewhere in the countryside. There’s still a reward for my capture, isn’t there?”

  Jiaan said nothing.

  “Yes, and I wouldn’t mind claiming it either,” said the peddler. He didn’t look at Nadi’s tense face, but he laid his scarred hand over hers where it held the parchment. “All right, I’m the best one to go in for the passwords. I’ll get through all the lay
ers I can, but I doubt I’ll learn enough to get you into the vault. So how do we reach the gold? Not to mention carry it off without getting ourselves caught.”

  “That’s where my idea comes in,” said Hama. She let go of her end of the palace drawing, allowing it to roll toward Jiaan and Soraya, and after a moment’s hesitation her mother did the same.

  “This is a drawing of the cellars.” Hama unrolled the next parchment. “It doesn’t show where the guards will be posted, or how many there are, but it does show the wine cellar, which is connected to the vault and cells through this short corridor, here.”

  “What’s this?” Jiaan asked, pointing to what looked like a corridor, though it ran onto the map at an angle and ran off the page on the other side.

  “That,” said Hama proudly, “is the basis of my plan for getting the gold out. Those are aqueduct tunnels, bringing clean water in under the palace and taking sewage to the river.”

  “Can’t we go in through the aqueducts?” Jiaan asked, his expression brightening. “We could bypass the guards entirely!”

  “Unfortunately,” said Nadi dryly, “the Hrum thought of that too. The aqueduct and sewer tunnels are also guarded—the soldiers complain about that duty, especially the ones who have to take the sewer side. They don’t put a lot of men down there, but they all have whistles. If they sound so much as one chirp, you’ll have patrols parked at each end of the tunnel in minutes, and they can send in men to hunt you down at their leisure. Once you’ve in those tunnels, there’s no other way out.”

  “But,” said Hama, “if you put the gold in wine barrels, just enough in each cask to make it float a bit under the surface, you could be sending the gold down the sewer tunnel without having to carry any of it out yourselves! We could have fishing boats run out their nets near the sewer tunnel mouth to pick up the barrels as well. They’ll likely miss a few, but the barrels would just come ashore somewhere downstream. And even if all the gold goes to the bottom of the river, at least the Hrum won’t have it.”

  Soraya frowned, trying to picture this. “Can you weight a barrel so it will float under the surface?”

  “Yes,” said the peddler. “It’ll take some fiddling with the weight to get the first one right, but after that the rest should go pretty fast. And if the guards in the sewer hear something scraping along the bottom, well, they won’t be blowing their whistles for that. Nor wading in to investigate, either—not on the sewer side. Hama, that’s brilliant!”

  “It still leaves the problem of getting into the vault,” said Hama, though her eyes were bright.

  “I think I could manage that,” said Jiaan. “I’m the one who’ll bring you in, Lady Soraya. With a band of my men, disguised as a deci of Hrum soldiers. If we had the passwords, who would even think to question a patrol taking a prisoner, someone known to be wanted, to the cells? We could go straight to the cells and then the vault if we had the passwords.”

  “And what happens when a guard demands a password you don’t have?” Nadi demanded.

  Jiaan shrugged. “We’ll think of something.”

  Or not. Soraya shivered. She hadn’t really minded being a servant in the Hrum camp, once she became accustomed to the work, but she’d detested being their prisoner.

  “Where will you get eleven Hrum uniforms?” she asked, hoping he wouldn’t have an answer.

  Jiaan reached behind him and pulled forward one of the tunics that hung on the line. “This is part of one, isn’t it, Mistress Nadi?”

  “It is,” said the laundress reluctantly. “I’m taking quite a bit of laundry from the army—I could probably clothe half a centri on any given day. But Hrum swords and armor are harder come by. Not to mention boots.”

  “We’ve got enough between us to outfit eleven,” Hama broke in eagerly. “You know we do.”

  There was a moment of silence, while Soraya tried not to think about how the resistance had come by eleven sets of Hrum armor and boots. At least she wouldn’t be wearing them. And perhaps she was wrong—she hadn’t thought the resistance had killed many men.

  “That serves for disguises,” said the peddler. “Do you have eleven men who can speak good Hrum?”

  “I speak Hrum best,” said Jiaan, in Hrum.

  Soraya winced. It wasn’t his accent—many Hrum spoke that language with an accent—it was the stiffness, the lack of fluency, that gave him away.

  “That won’t do,” said Kavi. “You sound like a Farsalan trying to pass himself off as a Hrum soldier. You’ve got to get someone else.”

  “I speak Hrum better than any of the Farsalan troops,” said Jiaan, in Faran now. “We had a trader with us for a while—he was fluent. He was the one who taught us, but he was killed when the Hrum raided our camp. Besides, all I’ll have to say is, We’re taking this prisoner to the cells.’ I can practice that till it sounds right.”

  “But what happens if they give you directions?” Nadi demanded. “Or ask a question, and you can’t even understand what they’re saying?”

  Soraya sympathized with the woman’s desire to rein in the whole mad scheme, but …

  “I can translate for him. I speak Hrum very well,” she added in that language. She continued, still in Hrum. “It might be a challenge to rephrase what he needs to know, but I could probably manage. And if it’s something he doesn’t need to know immediately, I can tell him what was said later.”

  The peddler nodded, but Soraya’s heart sank at the puzzled look on Jiaan’s face.

  Nadi saw it too. “This is ridiculous. You didn’t even understand what she said! You’ll make it to the cells, all right—the lot of you! I can’t be party to this!”

  “There are seven thousand Kadeshi,” said Jiaan coldly, “waiting at the border for that gold. If Siatt gets it, they’ll march to Mazad in less than a week.”

  “Closer to two,” said the peddler. “These men likely aren’t accustomed to marching.”

  “Two weeks then,” said Jiaan. “Another week to get them organized, and then they will take the city. If Mazad falls, what will happen to the resistance in the rest of Farsala?”

  Nadi shook her head, refusing to accept it, but Hama put it into words. “Most will be quitting, and you know it. It’s because Mazad’s held out so long that they’ve found the heart to fight. And the ones that don’t quit …”

  “Once Mazad has fallen, once Garren is established as governor, he’ll be able to summon enough Hrum troops to put down any resistance,” Jiaan finished. “We have to keep the gold from reaching Siatt. If this fails, I’ll bring my army and attack it en route. But with the guard the Hrum will put on it, I’ll probably lose so many that Garren will be able to take Mazad anyway. We have to stop it here—we have to!”

  The anguish in his voice made him suddenly sound his age. He was fighting to save his army, Soraya realized, as much as Farsala. Just as she was fighting for Merdas. And the peddler … She’d never known what was driving him—her shilshadu sensing only gave her emotions, not thoughts—but she knew it was strong.

  “You’re young,” Nadi whispered. “Young and so stupid with it. You think you’ve all invulnerable, that nothing can be happening to you.”

  But that wasn’t true, Soraya thought. Losing her father had taught her that she wasn’t invulnerable to loss, though it was hard to think that she might die. Jiaan had to have been close enough to death in the last year to know that it could come for him, and as for Kavi …

  The peddler laid his maimed hand on the woman’s shoulder. “You’re not trading my safety for Sim’s,” he said softly. “It’s not your choice at all. We’re going to be trying this, with your help or without it, but your help will give us a better chance.”

  Nadi’s crumpling face hardened. “Then I’d best be seeing to your uniforms, hadn’t I?” She turned and walked away through the tangled maze of damp fabric. Kavi started after her, but Soraya stopped him with a touch on his arm. “I’ll go. I need …” She shrugged and walked after the laundress, as Jiaan distracted Hama
with a question about how the aqueducts branched.

  Nadi was standing in front of a line of scarlet Hrum cloaks. Her hands were tangled in the cloth, but she wasn ’t moving. Soraya came up beside her and was startled to find that her face, though taut with misery, was dry.

  “I’m sorry,” said Soraya. “But I wonder if you can help me with something. The last time the Hrum captured me, I wore a servant’s skirt—very ragged. It made it hard to stand up to them. This time, I’d like to be better dressed.”

  It was the only excuse she could think of—the only thing that would present the woman with a task she could do.

  Nadi took a deep breath and turned to face Soraya. “He couldn’t have done more for me, for my family, if he had been my son.” Her voice was as stark as her expression.

  “Then help him,” said Soraya. “Because this is something he has to do. I don’t understand why, but—”

  “I do,” Nadi interrupted. “And you’re right. I can’t be stopping him, so I’d best give all the aid I can. Better dressed, is it?”

  SHE TOLD SORAYA that the robes had been brought in for laundering just before the Hrum invaded the city, and they had never been claimed. Soraya wondered if she had known the deghass who’d owned them, and hoped the woman was a living slave somewhere and not dead in the fighting for the city. Her odds of having survived were better than those of the Hrum who’d owned the armor Jiaan and his soldiers would wear.

  The robes were a bit big on her, but most women’s clothes were. The underrobe was a soft cream, the overrobe a rich brown embroidered with amber and gold. Autumn colors, strange in a robe that had been worn in the spring—perhaps it had been chosen because the colors were flattering rather than for the season. It would have suited her cousin Pari. Soraya thought of Pari, also a slave, she hoped—for if not, then her cousin was almost certainly dead. She felt a surge of renewed anger at the Hrum, and at Kavi, too! How many lives had they destroyed?

  And yet … She remembered his scarred hand on Nadi’s shoulder. The deghans had destroyed lives as well, and had never struggled to make it right again, as Kavi did. Strange as it seemed, she knew she could rely on the peddler to do his part. It was Jiaan, with his hatred and his inexplicable reactions, who worried her now. And it was Jiaan she was trusting with her life.