Beneath the Burning Eye
Even the gods weep when they speak of the Theomachy, the war
between the clan of the three heavenly brothers and the dark clan of
Zmeos the Horned One. Many of the brightest fell, and their like
will never be seen again, but their deeds live on, that men may
understand honor and proper love of the gods.
— from The Beginnings of Things The Book of the Trigon
PELAYA HAD NEVER SEEN anything like it. Even in her worst childhood nightmares, chased by some hungry monster like Brabi-nayos Boots-of-Stone out of her nurse's stories, she had not felt a terror and hopelessness like this.
The sky above Hierosol was black as if with a terrible storm, but it was smoke, not clouds, that had hidden the sun for three days now. On either side of the citadel much of the Crab Bay and Fountain districts were in flame. Pelaya could see the flames in particularly bright relief from the win¬dow of the family house near Landsman's Market, a horrible and fascinat¬ing sight, as if beautiful, glowing flowers were sprouting all across the city. In the districts along the seawalls the sickly smoke of the sulfur rafts had crept over the houses in a poisonous yellow fog. She had heard her father telling one of the servants that the autarch's burning sulfur had emptied most of the Nektarian Harbor district, that even the seaport end of the Lantern Broad was as silent as a tomb but for hurrying files of soldiers moving from one endangered part of the wall to another. Surely this must be the end of the world-the sort of thing the ragged would-be prophets in the smaller church squares were always shrieking about. Who could have guessed that those dirty, smelly men would be right after all?
"Come away from there, Pelaya!" her sister Teloni cried. "You will let in the poison smoke and kill us all!"
Startled, she let the window shutter go, almost losing her fingers as it crashed down. She turned in fury but the angry reply never came out of her mouth. Teloni looked helpless and terrified, her face was as white as one of the family's ancestor masks.
"The smoke is far away, down by the sea walls," Pelaya told her, "and the wind is pushing the other direction. We are in no danger from the poison."
"Then why are you looking? Why do you want to see… that?" Her sis¬ter pointed at the shutter as though what lay beyond were nothing but some unfortunate person-a deformed tramp, perhaps, or some other grotesque who could be ignored until he gave up and went away again.
"Because we are at war!" Pelaya could not understand her sister or her mother. They both skulked about the house as though this astonishing, dreadful thing was not happening. At least little Kiril was waving his wooden sword, pretending to slaughter Xixian soldiers. "Do you not care?"
"Of course we care." Teloni's eyes tilled with tears. "But there is nothing we can do about it. What good does it do to… to stare at it?"
Pelaya got her shoulder against the shutter and lifted it again, pushing so hard that she almost fell out as it began to open. Teloni gasped and Pelaya felt her own heart speed-the cobbled courtyard was three floors below, quite far enough to break her bones.
Her sister grabbed Pelaya's arm. "Be careful!"
"I'm fine, Teli. Look, come here, I'll show you what Babba's doing."
"You don't know. You're just a girl-you're younger than me!"
"Yes, but I pay attention when he talks." She got the shutter all the way open and propped it with the thick wooden rod so she'd have her hand free to point. "There, by the Gate of the Fountain, do you see? That's the place where the autarch's cannons are trying to knock down the wall, but Babba is too clever. As soon as he realized what they were doing, he sent men to build a new wall behind it."
"A new wall? But they'll just knock that down too, won't they?"
"Perhaps. But by the time they do, he'll have built another… and an¬other… and so on. He will not let them break through."
"Truly?" Teloni looked a little relieved. "But won't they dig under the wall? I heard Kiril say the autarch's men would dig tunnels under the walls here by Memnos or Salamander where there's no ocean-that they could come up in our garden if they wanted to!"
Pelaya rolled her eyes. "You don't listen to me, but you listen to Kiril? By all the gods, Teli, he's only seven years old."
"But isn't what he says true?"
"Do you see those?" She pointed to the strange shape by the nearest sec¬tion of the citadel wall. "That's a sling engine-a kind of stone-throwing machine. It throws stones almost as heavy as the ones that come out of the autarch's big cannon. Whenever Babba and his men see someone digging a tunnel, they throw big stones at them and crush it."
"With the autarch's soldiers still inside?"
Pelaya snorted. Was she going to weep about the enemy who was trying to kill them? "Of course."
"Good. I'm glad." Teloni stared, eyes wide. "How do you know these things, Pelaya?"
"I told you-I listen. And speaking of listening, that's how they find the tunnels if they ever come close to the walls. Or they use the peas."
"What are you talking about?"
"Dried peas. Papa and his men dig special drums into the ground all along the walls and put dried peas on the drum heads. That way, if any¬one is digging deep down in the ground under them, the peas jump and rattle and we know. Then we can drop stones and burning oil down on them."
"But they have so many soldiers!"
"It does not matter. We have our walls. Hierosol has never been con¬quered by force-that's what Babba says. Even Ludis Drakava could never have taken the citadel if the old emperor had an heir. Everyone knows that. The Council of Twenty-Seven was afraid of the autarch, so they opened the gates to Drakava instead."
"What if they do that for the autarch now? What if he offers them some bargain to let him in?"
Pelaya shook her head. "The council may be cruel old men, but they aren't fools. The autarch never keeps promises. He would execute them all and chew on their bones." Her childhood dreams abruptly came back to her again-the giant Boots-of-Stone with blood spattered in his beard, his jaws grinding and grinding. It didn't matter what she told her sister, the
world was still going to end. She freed the wooden rod and let the window shutter down. "Let's go help Mama. I don't want to look anymore."
"No! Don't close it yet! I want to see some of the Xixians crushed or burned!" Teloni's eyes were bright.
It was only when she was saying her midday prayers that Pelaya suddenly realized that although the plumes of foul smoke, missiles of burning pitch, and the incessant fall of hot cannonballs from the autarch's ships might have driven the Lord Protector Ludis and his advisers out of the palace and into the safer lodgings of the great Treasury Hall in Magnate's Square, nobody had said anything about evacuating the rest of the palace's inhabitants. Which meant that King Olin of Southmarch might still be there, trapped in his cell.
None of the servants knew where her father had gone, and her mother was so worried about the count's safety she practically burst into tears when Pelaya asked her, but she didn't know either. Pelaya paced back and forth in the entry hall, trying to think of something, growing more certain by the moment that nobody else had even remembered Olin Eddon. She returned to her mother, but Ayona Akuanis had gone to comfort the baby, who had been fretful- all night, and together they had fallen into exhausted sleep.
Pelaya looked at her mother's face, so young and beautiful again now that sleep had for a moment soothed her fearful heart. She could not bear to wake her. She went to her mother's desk instead and wrote a letter in such a careful hand that Sister Lyris would have been proud of the execu¬tion, if not the purpose. She closed it with wax and her mother's seal.
She found Eril with three of the lower servants, trying to make order of the chaotic pantry. The Akuanis family never moved into the Landmarket house this early in the year and the household had not been prepared for their sudden arrival.
"I want you to take this letter up to the stronghold," she told him. "I want you to bring someone back here."
Eril looked at her with the full amount of hauteur he could afford to show to the daughter of his master. "To the stronghold, Kuraion? I don't think so. It is not safe. What do you want so badly? We packed up everything."
"I didn't say something, I said someone. He is a king, an important man, and the lord protector has left him in the stronghold to die."
"That is not a task for such as me-not unless your father himself asks me," he said with the firmness of an aging servant who had been cajoled and tricked over the years in every way young girls could devise.
"But you must!"
"Really? Shall we go and see what Kura Ayona has to say about it, then?"
"She's sleeping and can't be disturbed." Pelaya scowled. "Please, Eril! Babba knows this man and would want him saved."
The servant draped his fingers across his forehead in the manner of one of the onirai ignoring his persecutors while communing with the gods. "You wish me to risk my life for some foreign prisoner? You are very cruel to me, Kuraion. Wait until your father returns and we will see what the mas¬ter's wishes are."
She stared at him for long moments, hating him. She knew that even if she somehow forced Eril to go, there was no promise he would do what he was told, anyway-he was as stubborn as only a venerable family retainer could be. The citadel hill was in chaos and he could easily claim he had been prevented somehow.
Her heart was hammering-each crash of cannonfire might be the one that brought the stronghold roof down on poor Olin Eddon. She would have to go herself, but even in good times it would have been scandalous as well as dangerous to cross the city alone. She needed some kind of armed escort.
"Very well," she said at last, then turned and stalked away. She had a plan, and in fact was rather shocked with herself for even thinking of it, let alone putting it into action, but if she hadn't balked at forging a letter from her mother then she certainly wasn't going to let herself be frustrated by one difficult servant.
At the bottom of the road she stopped at the front gate of their neigh¬bors, a wealthy family named Palakastros. A group of beggars stood outside, as usual. Unlike Pelaya's thrifty mother, the mistress of the Palakastrai was a rich old widow who worried about what would happen to her after she died, and so she made a practice of sending food out from her table nearly every day. This assured that there was almost always a crowd of the aged and infirm outside her gate, much to the annoyance of Ayona Akuanis and other householders on the long, wide street. Because of the siege there were two or three times as many as usual today and they quickly sur¬rounded Pelaya.
Anxious at being hemmed in by so many strangers, especially dirty strangers, she picked one who looked extremely old and frail and thus less likely to try any tricks. She pulled him aside, leaving the others grumbling,
and handed him a small copper coin with a crab on it."Go to that house hold," she pointed back up the road toward the broad eaves of her family's house,"and ask for Eril the steward. Speak to him only. Tell him Pelaya says he is to meet her at the Sivedan Temple on Good Zakkas Road, and that he must bring his sword. If you do this properly, I will bring you two more of these tomorrow, right here. Understand?"
The old beggar gummed the coin reflectively, then nodded. "Temple of Siveda," he said.
"Good. Oh, and tell Eril that if he brings my mother or anyone else I don't want to see, I will hide and they will never find me, and it will all be his fault. Can you remember all that?"
"For three copper crabs? Half a seahorse?" The old man laughed and coughed, or it might have been the other way around-it was hard to tell the difference. "Kura, I'd sing the Trigoniad from stem to stern for three coppers. I've ate nothing but grass for days."
She frowned, wondering if he was making fun of her. How could an old, toothless beggar know the Trigoniad? But it didn't matter. All that mattered was getting King Olin to safety.
In fact, Pelaya thought, if this worked, Olin Eddon would almost cer¬tainly invite her to his own court someday out of gratitude. She could tell her family, "Oh, yes, the king of the Marchlands wishes me to come for a visit. You remember King Olin-he and I are old friends, you know."
She set off for Good Zakkas Road, half a mile away in the Theogonian Forum district. She had thought of bringing a knife herself, but hadn't known how to get one without risking her plan being discovered, so she had decided to do without. That was why she needed Eril and his sword. It had been years since he had fought in her father's troop, but he was big enough and relatively young enough that no one would try to rob her in his com¬pany, at least not in daylight. Still, robbery might be the least of the dangers.
Am I mad? The streets were full of soldiers, but most of the rest of the citizens had returned from their scuttling morning errands and were locked in now, terrified of the cannons, of the foul smoke and fire that fell from the sky. What am I doing?
Doing good, Pelaya told herself, and then remembered the Zorian in¬junction against self-importance. Trying to do good.
Jp
The rag had slipped from his mouth down to his chin and the dust was getting in again. Count Perivos spit out a mouthful of grit and then pulled the cloth back into place, but he had to lay down his shovel to tie it. He cursed through ash and dirt. When you had forty pentecounts of men at your disposal, you didn't expect to be wielding a tool yourself.
"Smoke!" the lookout shouted.
"Down, down!" Perivos Akuanis bellowed as he threw himself to the ground, but there was little need: most of the men were down before him, bellies and faces pressed against the earth. The terrible moment was on them, the long instant of whistling near-silence. Then the massive cannon-ball hit the citadel wall with a bone-rattling crunch that shook the ground and smashed more stone loose from the wall's inner side.
After waiting a few moments to be certain the debris had stopped fly¬ing, Count Perivos opened his eyes. A new cloud of stone dust hung in the air and had coated everything on the ground; as the count and his work¬men began to clamber to their feet he could not help thinking they looked like some sort of ghastly mass rising of the recent dead.
One of his master masons was already on his way back from examining the wall, which had been pounded over these last days by a hundred mighty stone cannonballs or more.
"She'll take a few more, Kurs, but not many," the man reported. "We'll be lucky if it's still standing tomorrow."
"Then we must finish this wall today." The count turned and shouted for the foreman, Irinnis. "What do we have left to do?" he demanded when the man staggered up. "The outwall can only take a few more shots from those monstrous bombards of theirs." Count Perivos had learned to trust Irinnis, a small, sweaty man from Krace with an excellent head for organi¬zation, who had fought-or at least built-for generals on both continents.
Scratching his sagging chin, Irinnis looked around the courtyard-one of the citadel's finest parks only a tennight ago, now a wreckage of gouged soil and broken stone. The replacement wall being built in a bowl-shaped curve behind the battered outwall was all but finished. "I'd like the time to paint it, Kurs," he said, squinting.
"Paint it?" Akuanis leaned toward him, uncertain he had heard correctly: his ears were still ringing from the impact of the last thousandweight of stone cannonball. "You didn't say 'paint it, did you? While the whole citadel is coming down around our ears?"
Irinnis frowned-not the frown of someone taking offense, but more the
face of an engineer astonished to discover that civilians, even those filled and experienced in warfare like Count Perivos, could not understand plain Hierosoline speech. "Of course, Lord, paint it with ashes or black mud. So the Xixies will not see it."
"So that…" Perivos Akuanis shook his head. All across the park the men who had not been injured in the last blast, and even those whose in juries were only minor, were scrambling back to work."I confess, you have lost me."
"What good are our arrow slits, Kurs," said Irinnis, pointing to the shooting positions built into the curving sides of the new wall, "if the autarch's landing force does not try to come through the breach their can¬non has made? And if they see the new wall too quickly, they will not come through the breach and die like proper Xixian dogs."
"Ah. So we paint…"
"Just splash on a little mud if that's all we can find-something dark. Throw a little dirt onto it at the bottom. Then they will not see the trap until we've feathered half of the dog-eating bastards…"
The foreman's cheerful recitation was interrupted by the sudden ap¬pearance of Count Perivos' factor, who had been overseeing the evacuation of the palace, but now came running across the yard as if pursued by saw¬tooth cats. "Kurs!" he shouted. "The lord protector has given the foreign king to the Xixians!"
It took Perivos Akuanis a moment to make sense of that. "King Olin, do you mean? Are you saying that Ludis has given Olin of Southmarch to the autarch? How can that be?"
His factor had to pause for a moment, hands on knees, to catch his breath. "As to how, my lord, I couldn't say, but Drakava's Rams came for him before I could finish moving him and the other prisoners, Kurs. I'm sorry. I've failed you."
"No, the fault is not yours." Akuanis shook his head. "But why are you sure they meant to take Olin to the autarch and not just to Ludis?"
"Because the chief of the Rams had a warrant, with the lord protector's seal on it. It said precisely what they were to do with him-take him from his cell and take him to the Nektarian harbor Seagate where he would be given to the Xixians in return for 'such considerations as have been agreed upon, or something like."
Count Perivos smelled something distinctly unsavory. Why would Ludis trade such a valuable pawn as Olin, unless it were to end the siege? But
Sulepis would surely never give up the siege for the single lowly prize of a foreign king, especially the master of a small kingdom like Olin's, which hadn't even managed to ransom him from Ludis after nearly a year. None of it made sense.
Still, there was no good to be gained wasting time trying to understand it. Count Perivos handed his sheaf of plans to the factor, then turned to the foreman. "Irinnis, keep the men working hard-that outwall won't last the night. And don't forget that the wall near the Fountain Gate needs shoring up, too-half of it came down."
The count hurried away across the wreckage of what had once been Empress Thallo's Garden, a haven for quiet thought and sweet birdsong for hundreds of years. Now with every other step he had to dodge around out¬crops of shattered stone knocked loose from the gate or smoking gorges clawed into the earth by cannonballs: the place looked like something that the death-god Kernios had ground beneath his heel.
With twenty full pentecounts of the city's fiercest fighters surrounding his temporary headquarters in the pillared marble Treasury Hall, it would have been reasonable to suspect that Ludis Drakava, Lord Protector of Hi-erosol, feared an uprising from his own people more than he feared the massive army of the autarch outside his city walls.
Perivos Akuanis looked bitterly at the huge encampment as he walked swiftly between the rows of soldiers. We have nearly had two breakthroughs along the northern wall since the last sunrise. Neither of them would have happened if these men hadn't been held back-a thousand out of the seven or eight thou¬sand trained soldiers in the entire city, all they had to counter the autarch's quarter of a million. The Council of the Twenty-Seven Families had sur¬rendered the throne to Ludis so that a strong man would stand against the Autarch of Xis, whatever the loss of their own power, but it was beginning to look as though they would have neither.
If the outside looked like a fortress, the inside of the treasury looked more like the great temple of the Three Brothers: half a dozen black-robed, long-bearded Trigonate priests surrounded the transplanted Jade Chair like roosting crows, and like crows they seemed more interested in hopping and squawking than doing anything useful. Count Perivos, who had never liked or trusted Ludis, had lately come to loathe Hierosol's lord protector with a fierce, hot anger unlike any he had ever felt. He hated Ludis even more than he hated the Autarch of Xis, because Sulepis was only a name, but he had
to st;ire into Ludis Drakava's square, heavy-browed face every single day and swallow bile.
The lord protector stood, flapping his arms at the priests as though (hey truly were crows."Get out, you screeching old women! And tell your hier-arch that if he wants to talk to me he can come himself, but 1 will use the temples as I see fit. We are at war!"
The Trigonate minions seemed unwilling to depart even after so clear an order, but none of them was above the rank of deacon. Grumbling and pulling at their whiskers, they migrated toward the door. Scowling, Ludis dropped back onto the throne. He caught sight of Count Perivos. "I sup¬pose I should count my blessings the Trigonarch was kidnapped by the Syannese all those years ago," Ludis growled, "or I'd have him whining at me, too." He narrowed his eyes. "And what kind of stinking news do you bring, Akuanis?"
"I think you know about what brings me, although it was fresh to me only a half-hour gone. What is this I hear about Olin Eddon?"
Ludis put on the innocent look of a child-particularly bizarre on a brawny, bearded man covered with scars. "What do you hear?"
"Please, Lord Protector, do not treat me as a fool. Are you telling me that nothing unusual has happened to King Olin? That he has not been hustled out of his cell? I am told he is being traded to the autarch for… some¬thing. I do not know what."
"No, you don't know. And I won't tell you." The lord protector crossed his heavy arms on his chest and glowered.
There was something wrong with the way Ludis was behaving. Drakava was a surprisingly complex man, but Akuanis had never seen him show the least remorse for anything he'd done, let alone act like this-childishly petulant, as though expecting to be scolded and punished. This from the man who had declared an innocent priest (who also happened to have the only legitimate claim to the Hierosoline throne) a warlock and had him dragged from his temple and pulled apart by horses? Why should Ludis Drakava have become squeamish now?
"So it's true, then. Is there time to stop it? Where is King Olin now?"
Ludis looked up, actually surprised. "By Hiliometes' beard, why should we stop it? What can a milk-skinned northerner like that mean to you?"
"He is a king! Not to mention that he is an honorable man. Pity I can¬not say the same of Hierosol's ruler."
Ludis stared at him malevolently. Count Perivos was suddenly aware of
the fact that he was surrounded by troops who owed him no personal loy alty, but who received their pay in the lord protector's name each month. "You climb far out on a thin branch," Ludis said at last.
"But what do you gain by this? Why give an innocent man over to the cruelties of that… that monster, Sulepis?"
Ludis laughed harshly but turned away, as though still not entirely com¬fortable meeting the count's eyes. "Who wears the crown here, Akuanis? Your reputation as a siege engineer gives you no right to question me. I protect what I must protect…"
He broke off at the sound of shouting. A soldier wearing the crest of the Esterian Home Guard shoved his way through Drakava's Golden Enomote and threw himself down on the mosaic in front of the throne. "Lord Pro¬tector," he cried, "the Xixies have come over the wall below Fountain Gate! We're holding them in the temple yard at the foot of Citadel Hill, but we have only a small troop and won't be able to hold them long. Lord Kelofas begs you to send help."
Akuanis strode forward, all thoughts of Olin Eddon blasted from his mind. The temple yard was only a couple of miles from the townhouse where his wife and children waited in what they thought was safety-they and thousands more innocents would be overrun in a matter of hours if the Fountain Gate defenses collapsed. "Give me some of these men," he de¬manded. "Let me go and hit Sulepis in the teeth now-this moment! You have a thousand around this building, but they will be like straws in a gale if we don't keep the autarch out."
For a moment Drakava hesitated, but then an odd look stole across his face. "Yes, take them," he said. "Leave me two pentecounts to defend the treasury and the throne."
After all the harsh words, Count Perivos was astonished that the lord protector would give up his troops so easily, but he had no time to won¬der. He dropped to his knee and touched his head to the floor-bowing not to Ludis, he told himself, but to all the Hierosoline kings and queens, emperors and empresses, who had sat on the great green throne before him-then rose and hurried off to the taksiarch of the men encamped around the treasury. He could only pray that the engineers and workers he had left behind in the Empress Gardens had almost finished the wall, or holding the wall at Fountain Gate would mean nothing.
"Make us proud, Count Perivos," shouted Ludis as Akuanis and the tak¬siarch got the men into fast-march formation. The lord protector almost
sounded as though he were enjoying some theatrical spectacle. "All of Hierosol will be watching you!"
Eril was so furious with his young mistress that at first he wouldn't even speak to her, but only followed with his sword nearly dragging in the dust as they set out from the Sivedan temple toward the Citadel Hill. As they climbed upward on the spiraling road, breasting a great tide of folk hurry¬ing the opposite way, he finally found his tongue.
"You have no right to do this, Kuraion! We will be killed. Just because I am a servant doesn't mean I should die for nothing."
She was surprised by his vehemence and his selfishness. "I couldn't do it unless someone came with me." That seemed obvious to her and it should have to him as well, now that he'd been given time to digest it. What did he want, an apology? "The poor king needs our help-he's a king, Eril."
The servant gave her a look that in different circumstances she would have reported to her mother. Pelaya was shocked-old Eril, silly old Eril, acting as though he hated her!
"Anyway," she said, a little flustered. "It won't take long. We'll be back before supper. And you'll be able to tell the gods you did a good deed when you say your prayers tonight."
Judging by the noise he made in reply, Eril did not seem to find much consolation in the thought.
Although there were still many people on the grounds of the palace and in the stronghold, mostly servants and soldiers, it quickly became clear to Pelaya that Olin Eddon wasn't one of them. His cell was empty, the door standing open.
"But where is he?" she asked. She had come so far and taken so many risks for nothing!
"Gone, Mistress," said one of the soldiers who had gathered to watch this unusual performance. "The lord protector had him moved somewhere."
"Where? Tell me, please!" She brandished her forged letter. "My father is Count Perivos!"
"We know, Mistress," said the soldier. "But we still can't tell you because we don't know. The lord protector's Rams took him somewhere. You'll have to find out from him."
"You talk too much," another soldier told him. "She shouldn't be here- it's dangerous. Can you imagine anything happens? It'll be our heads on the block, won't it?"
She led Eril out of the stronghold and across Echoing Mall toward Kos-sope House, ignoring his complaints. If the servants were still in their dor¬mitories, especially the dark-haired laundry girl, perhaps they'd know where Olin was. Servants, Pelaya had discovered, usually knew everything important that happened in a great house.
As the echoes of distant cannon echoed along the colonnade, Pelaya saw that whether the laundry women were here or not, many other servants had remained, although they did not look very happy. In fact, many of them seemed to glare at her as though it were somehow her fault they'd been left behind. She was glad Eril had his sword. Pelaya could almost imagine these abandoned servants, if left here long enough, turning entirely wild, like the dogs that roamed the city midden heaps and cemeteries after dark.
"The one I want to talk to is in here," Pelaya said, pointing toward the large building on the far side of the palace complex. "Poor thing, she has such a long way to walk each day."
Eril muttered something but Pelaya could not make it out.
When they reached the dormitory they found that the residents were guarding it themselves: three strong-looking young women with laundry-poles stood before the door, and they gave Eril a very stern look before let¬ting him accompany Pelaya inside.
To her delight and relief they found the laundry girl almost immediately, sitting morosely on her bed as though waiting for a cannonball to crash through the roof and kill her. To Pelaya's shock, the dark-haired girl not only wasn't pleased to have a highborn visitor, she seemed frightened of Eril.
"Follows me!" she said, pointing. "He follows!"
Eril scowled. "She never saw me, Kuraion. I'm sure she didn't. Someone told her."
"He followed you because I needed to know where you lived," Pelaya said gently. "He's my servant. I had to find you quietly, when King Olin wanted to speak to you. Now, where is Olin? Do you know? He's' been taken out of the stronghold."
The girl looked at her in blank misery, as if Olin's whereabouts were of no particular interest compared to her own problems, whatever those might be. Pelaya scowled. How could she converse usefully with a laundry maid
who could barely speak her language? "I need to find him. find him. I'm looking for him."
The girl's face changed-something like hope flowered. "Help find?"
"Yes!" Finally, sense had been made. "Yes, help find."
The girl jumped up and took Pelaya's hand, shocking the count's daughter more than a little, but before she could protest she was being dragged across the dormitory. It was not Olin that the brown-haired girl led Pelaya to, but another laundrywoman, a friendly, round-featured girl named Yazi who seemed meant to translate. The new girl's command of Hierosoline was not much better, but after many stops and starts it finally became clear that the brown-haired girl hadn't agreed to help find Olin, she herself wanted help finding her mute brother, who had been missing since the middle of the night.
"He not go," she said over and over, but clearly he had.
"No, we have to find Olin, King Olin," Pelaya told her. "I'll ask my fa¬ther to send someone to help you find your brother."
The Xandian girl looked shocked, as though she could not have imag¬ined anyone would say no to her request.
"Haven't we had enough of this, Kuraion?" said Eril. "You have dragged me across the city for nothing, risking both our lives. Are we now going to have to search for a runaway child as well?"
"No, of course not, but…" Before Pelaya could finish, someone else joined the small crowd of women that had gathered around the brown-haired girl and her round friend. This new arrival was considerably older than the others, her face disfigured by what looked like a bad burn.
"Oh, thank the Great Mother!" this old woman said when she saw them all, then leaned against the wall, gasping hoarsely for breath. "I… I… was frightened I wouldn't… find you." She looked at Pelaya, surprised. "Your Ladyship. Forgive me."
Pelaya just barely nodded a greeting, irritated by yet another interrup¬tion. Eril was right-they needed to get back to Landsman's Market.
"What is it, Losa?" asked the round-faced girl, Yazi.
"The boy who can't talk, the little brother! He is up in the counting house tower and very…" She waved her hands, trying to find the words. "Angry, sad, I don't know. He won't come down."
"Pigeon?" Qinnitan sat forward. "He not… hurt?"
"I don't think hurt, no," said Losa. "He is just hiding in that tower, the old broken one near the seawall. I think the… cannons? I think the can¬nons scare him. He wants his sister."
"We'll come, too," said Yazi. "He likes me."
"No!" said Losa. "He is very scared, the boy. He almost falls when I come. Up very high. If he sees people he doesn't know so well…" She shook her head, unable or unwilling to come up with the words for such a dire prospect. "Just his sister."
The dark-haired laundry girl did not appear to grasp everything said, but she smiled-it did little to hide the anxiousness in her face-and said something in her own tongue to the girl Yazi. For a moment Pelaya won¬dered if she should go with them to help-Olin had taken an interest in this girl, after all-but she could think of too many reasons why she should not let herself get further involved.
After the old, scarred woman had led the brown-haired girl out, Pelaya began to move toward the front of Kossope House. "It's good she's found her brother," she said, smiling at the other laundry women. "Family is so important. Now I must go back to mine. May the gods protect you all."
The faces of the servants turned toward her as she reached the door. They watched her, silent as cats.
"I'm sure everything will be well," Pelaya called to them, then had to hurry to catch up with Eril, who was already striding off in a determined way in the general direction of Landsman's Market.
Old Losa led Qinnitan across the courtyard into a section of the palace deserted days earlier by the clerks who had worked there. It was strange to move freely through rooms she had only tiptoed through before, terrified she might break someone's concentration and earn a whipping.
"Why would he run away like this?" Qinnitan asked, falling back into Xixian now that the young noblewoman and her servant had been left be¬hind. "And how did you happen to find him?"
The old woman spread her palms. "I think the cannons frightened him, poor little lad. I heard him calling and found him where he was hiding, but he wouldn't come with me."
"Calling?" Qinnitan said, suddenly fearful again. "But he can't speak. Are you sure it was him? My Pigeon?"
Losa shook her head in disgust. "There you go. I don't know whether I'm coming or going, all this has me in such a muddle. I heard him cry¬ing-moaning, that's the word I meant. Here, go down this passage."
"But you said he was in the old countinghouse lower isn't it that way?"
"You see? I can't think straight at all." Losa pointed a dirty finger at the low bulk of the almshouse where it hugged the inside of the seawall, [In¬arched doorway of its single squat tower showing dark among the vines like a missing tooth in a bearded mouth."Not the countinghouse tower but the almshouse tower, the old almshouse. There. He's there, I promise you."
Losa guided her into the shadowed antechamber of the building, which had been abandoned and all its poor relocated a few years before the siege. The mosaics on the floor were chipped and scratched so that other than the hammer-shaped object in one's hands, it was impossible to tell which of the Trigon brothers was which. Qinnitan suddenly had the awful feel¬ing that the old woman had tricked her for some reason, but then she saw Pigeon staring back at her from the shadows of the stairwell with his eyes wide. Her heart seemed to swell and grow light again. She rushed toward him but he did not move, although she saw his jaw pumping as though he would have much to say if given his tongue back.
"Pigeon?" Something was wrong, or at least odd: she couldn't see his arms. As she moved closer she saw that they were behind him, as though he had something hidden for her there. A few more steps and she could see that they were tied at the wrists, and the cord looped through the latch of the heavy stairwell door. She reached him, felt him trembling with terror beneath her hands, and turned toward Losa. "What…?"
The old woman was pulling off her face.
As Qinnitan stared in terror, Losa scraped the skin off her cheeks, peel¬ing it away in long, knubbled strips. She had straightened up, and now seemed a head taller and a great deal more solid. She wasn't old. She wasn't even a woman.
Qinnitan was so shocked that she lost control of her bladder; a trickle of urine ran down her legs. "Who… what…?"
"Who doesn't matter," the man said in perfect Xixian. Underneath the waxy remnants of false flesh his skin was nearly as pale as King Olin's had been, but unlike Olin, this man had not a flicker of kindness in his eyes, nor a flicker of anything else: for all the expression he wore, his face might have been carved on a statue. "The autarch sent me." He straightened up, shred¬ding the shapeless dress he had worn to reveal man's clothing beneath. "Don't scream or I'll slit the child's throat. By the way, if you decide to sac¬rifice the boy and make a run for it, you should know that I can hit a rab¬bit with this," — he lifted his hand and a long, sharp dagger appeared in it
like a conjurors trick-"from a hundred paces away. I can put it in the hack of your knee and you'll never walk without a crutch, or I can put it be¬tween two of your chines and you'll never walk again at all. But I would prefer not to carry you all the way to the Golden One, so if you do as 1 ask, you'll keep your health." He kicked away the remnants of the dress, then used the knife blade to cut away a sack he had tied to his waist with rags to give him an old woman's sagging belly.
Qinnitan wrapped her arms around Pigeon, tried to stop him shivering. "But…" Faced with this empty, emotionless man, she could think of noth¬ing to say. Somehow she had known this day would come-she had only hoped it would take longer than this brief couple of months. "You won't hurt the boy?"
"I won't hurt him if he does nothing stupid. But he is the autarch's prop¬erty, so he goes back, too.".
"He's not property, he's a child! He did nothing wrong."
The merest hint of a smile stole across the stranger's cold face, as if he had finally heard something worth his getting out of bed that morning. "Sit down and put your legs out."
She started to argue, but he had closed the distance between them in an astonishingly swift step or two, and now stood over her, the knife only inches from her eye. She sat back on the stairs and extended her feet. He put the end of the knife gently against her throat and held it there with his thumb on the other side of her windpipe, then looped a piece of cord around one ankle. When he had tied the other end, a length of the cord about the distance from her wrist to elbow stretched between her two legs, leaving her neatly hobbled. He took a long dress out of the sack-it was something she had seen some of the chambermaids wearing-and dropped it over her head, then yanked her to her feet. When she stood, the hem of the dress almost touched the dusty tiles, hiding the cord completely.
"Does the boy understand speech?"
Qinnitan nodded, dully, hopelessly. Even if the others went looking for her, she had just realized, it would be to the countinghouse tower on the other side of the palace grounds.
The pale man turned to the boy. "If you try to run away, I will cut off her nose, do you understand? The autarch won't care."
Pigeon looked at the man with narrowed eyes. If he was a dog, he would have growled, or more likely, simply bit without making a noise. At last he nodded.
"Well, come along then." The man landed a single kick that made tin boy whimper wordlessly and scramble awkwardly onto his feel so his bonds could be cut. Pigeon rubbed his wrists, unable to look at Qinnitan for the shame of having been part of her capture. "No tricks," the man said. "It would waste time if I have to kill or cripple either of you, but it wouldn't change anything important. Move along now." He pointed to the doorway. "We don't want to keep your master waiting. He's much less patient than I am, and much less kind."
Qinnitan stepped out into the light of the deserted courtyard, the cord chafing her ankles at each constrained step. She was too shocked and empty even to cry. The space of a few heartbeats had changed everything. Only a few dozen yards away in Kossope House she had friends, a life, all the things she had wanted so badly, but they were all lost now. Instead, she belonged to that madman again-the terrifying, utterly heartless Living God on Earth.