"Young lady," Merrit Moon said, with evident disappointment, "I am very, very surprised. It is most unlike you to capitulate so readily."
Kali smiled. "Oh, I'm not capitulating, old man. You know I never do. I'm just looking after our interests. Ours and everyone else's."
"And how is that exactly?" The old man stared ahead at the snaking line of people, hundreds of them, six abreast, being marched across the plains, then back at an equal number in similar formation behind them. He snarled at the soldiers who marched alongside, effectively herding the people of Gargas like cattle, as they had been doing for hours. "As I believe I pointed out, this is madness."
"Old man, I think they're genuinely trying to help," Kali said placatingly. "If only to guarantee the land barons next year's taxes. It's just that they've never experienced a situation like this before."
"As you say. But what the hells are we doing with them?"
"For one thing, there's no way we could have reached the Drakengrats directly — you saw the k'nid swarm yourself. For another, it does take us closer to the mountains, albeit with a slight detour to the south west. But lastly," she added with a prod, "it's your best chance to get across the plains with your scowl intact."
Moon harumphed and stared into the distance. For the moment the horizon was clear but, having seen the speed of the k'nid with his own eyes, he knew that situation could change at any second.
"Horse could have had us to the mountains in three jumps," he said.
"Maybe, if Horse were up to par," Kali patted her mount as he plodded alongside, still weak but recovering from his injuries. Green eyes rolled. "Besides, whether Andon has the best defences in the region or not, I'm a little dubious about the logic of corralling all these people in one place. I want to make sure they're all right."
Merrit Moon sighed and shook his head, but Kali could tell she'd been forgiven. "You want to make sure they're all right. An admirable sentiment, but I don't really see what you can do to help and, I repeat, this is madness. Do you honestly think we can avoid the k'nid for the three or four days it will take us to reach Andon?"
"I don't think it's going to take three or four days. Look ahead."
Maybe a tenth of a league further on, a dust storm was beginning to brew on the plain, vast spirals of flotsam thickening moment by moment. "Oh, wonderful. We'll be blinded too."
"I don't mean the storm. I mean what's causing it. The people at the front. Look."
It was then that Moon noticed the gestures being made by a group of six individuals leading the march. Garbed in thick, plain cloaks but with hints of far more colourful robes beneath, they appeared hardly to move under their covering — except for a subtle but complex flexing of their hands.
"Are they what I think they are?"
"Yep. League of Prestidigitation and Prestige. Saw them with the soldiers at the gate. And they're weaving. In fact, they're brewing up the storm."
"But why on Twilight would they do that?"
"Perhaps to disguise what's inside it." She nodded forward, into the storm itself. There was a distinct glow visible inside, a swirl of energy that Moon recognised instantly.
"My Gods, they're creating a warp portal. They're going to teleport these people to Andon."
"Without them even realising it," Kali said with a twinkle in her eye. "It wouldn't do to let the general public know just how much magic was around them, now, would it?"
"These people aren't stupid, they'll realise."
"They're scared, tired, hungry and facing the unknown. When they arrive in Andon, they won't even care enough to ask."
"You knew what you were doing all along, didn't you?"
"Oh, aye."
Kali, Moon and Horse continued forward and soon entered the storm. Cloaks or hands raised against their faces to protect themselves from the swirling dust, no one other than Kali and her companions realised what was happening. Even when the teleportation magic took hold of their bodies, causing a slight tingle of the flesh, a barely noticeable buzzing in the bones, as they suddenly left one place to arrive in another. Or at least they thought no one else had noticed. Because as the marching refugees emerged from the other side of the dust storm, finding themselves amidst the skeletons and ruined machines of war that littered the outskirts of Andon it was, ironically, Harmon Ding who noticed something amiss.
Towards the front of the line, the small twitchy man sniffed the air and bobbed his head from side to side, his brow furrowing in confusion and consternation and his fingers rising as if to question the soldiers and the mages at the forefront of the march. Thankfully, they ignored him for the most part, but then Ding's continuing and questioning gaze looked back down the line, spotted Kali, Moon and Horse in its ranks, and his face whitened. He grabbed one of the soldiers and pointed in their direction.
"This we can do without," Kali sighed. "Excuse me."
She began to work her way down the line, and the closer she came to Harmon Ding the clearer his entreaties to the soldier became.
"Don't let them into your city! They're not normal. This crazy woman has, well, a thing, and her friend, the old man, he isn't an old man at all, he's some kind of monster. A big, green monster. They're in league with those other things, I tell you. Armoured horses and big green monsters and crazy women and… and gloves that fire circles in the air."
"Excuse me officer," Kali said in an approximation of a backwoods accent. She could tell from his expression that the soldier had already decided he was dealing with someone less than a full tenth, so that made her task a lot easier. "Is cousin Ding botherin' you?"
"He seems to think your grandfather is a big, green monster, ma'am."
Grandfather, Kali thought with a smile. Oh, the old man was going to love that.
"Pssshh," she said, dismissively. Kali extracted a bottle of thwack she had palmed from the Greenwoods on her way down the line and shook it at the soldier, feigning clumsiness as the cap she had deliberately loosened came off and the noxious brew splashed all over Harmon Ding. "Sorry, cousin," she said. "But at least you can't stink of it any more than you already do."
"But — but I haven't touched a drop!" Ding protested. "Not a dro — "
Kali looked at the soldier and shook her head sadly. "Denial," she said, and rammed the neck into Ding's mouth, whacking him subtly in the stomach as she did so he couldn't help but gulp the thwack down. "There, there. You know it makes you feel better."
The bottle extracted, Ding sucked in a gulping breath. "Armoured horsh," he said, dribbling thwack while his eyes rolled. "Big, green monshter, gloves that — that…"
"I'm sure you have enough to deal with, so I'll take him off your hands," Kali said to the soldier. "I'll look after him, now."
"Thank you, ma'am."
"No problem."
Kali took Ding by the arm and force-marched his protesting form back towards Moon. As they neared Horse she took a quick look around to make sure no one was watching and then suddenly elbowed Ding in the face, knocking him cold. She slung the body over Horse and then fell back into step with Merrit Moon.
"Nice work," the old man commented.
"Shucks, it were nothin'… grandpa."
The old man turned to protest, but then thought better of it as the exodus neared the walls of Andon itself.
They were formidable — and it was immediately clear why the barons had chosen to evacuate the populace here — because in addition to the normal ranks of catapults, trebuchets and giant crossbows that lined their tops, additional defensive weapons had been added to their number. Some, by the look of them, magical in their design. If — make that when — they came, the k'nid would certainly have a battle on their hands.
The soldiers at the front of the line called out and, with a massive rumble, the gates began to open. Gradually, the line filed beneath the stone arch, until it was the turn for Kali, Horse and the old man to enter.
It was then that the first of the problems Kali had envisaged hit them. Inside the city walls, refugees not only from the northern towns but, by their local dress, Fayence to the south-east, milled about in an ever thickening crowd, threatening to block the main thoroughfare. Nor did they just mill. Many were crying in fear of what they had been told might come; others beseeched the soldiers for help they could not give; still others protested volubly about the situation they had been forced into. It was, in short, chaos, and the soldiers looked as confused as they did.
Kali approached one of the city guards, asked what was to happen next.
"To be honest, Miss, it's kind of every man for himself. All accommodation is already taken, and the situation isn't helped by the fact that many have already barricaded themselves in their homes, threatening to put a quarrel through the heart of anybody who approaches. Frankly, the barons have made something of a mess of all this. All I can offer you is stabling for your, er, horse. We're stabling all the beasts in the bunkers in the city walls, should be safe enough there."
"Can't these people use those bunkers?"
"They could Miss, but try persuading them. If you knew things straight from the hells were heading for the city, would you hide in the first place that might be breached?"
The soldier had a point. For that very reason, she wasn't happy leaving Horse there either. But there was no other choice and he would, when it came down to it, be safer there than out in the open. Kali slipped Harmon Ding's unconscious form from her mount and patted Horse on the neck, before handing the soldier his reins.
"Could you see to him for me? I need to find some shelter for our peop — "
Kali's words were drowned out by a sudden series of urgent cries from the city walls and a flurry of activity above as soldiers took up positions. There were mages amongst them too, standing tensed and slightly hunched, their faces dour, fists balling and beginning to flare or crackle with energy waiting to be unleashed. Within seconds there was barely an inch of space left on the walls as Andon's defenders readied themselves.
"They're coming! Seal the gates!"
My Gods, so soon?
Kali raced up the steps to the walls, needing to know what the city was facing. Pushing her way between soldiers she stared out over the Killing Ground — or at least, what she could see of it.
The advancing swarm of k'nid completely obscured the abandoned battlefield as they tumbled, rolled and scuttled rapidly towards Andon's walls. As the k'nid came, Andon's defenders responded with devastating force, unleashing a rain of missiles and magical bolts that should have created an impassable wall of death but which, after the initial volleys ended, appeared to be having very little effect on the k'nid at all. It seemed, in fact, that for every k'nid that was pounded by the defensive assault, another two appeared. As prepared as it was, Andon looked as though it was about to be overwhelmed. Sure enough, only seconds later, the first wave of k'nid reached the walls, scaled them and rushed straight into the ranks of the now panicking mages and soldiers.
As men and women fell flailing and screaming, their cries muting as they were enveloped, spasming, within the k'nid, Kali knew that Andon's walls were already lost and the city itself would soon follow.
There was nothing she could to help these people now but she had to help her own — and quickly.
Kali raced back down the steps and quickly enlisted Moon and the Greenwoods to help marshal the people through the tortuous maze of twisting and jinking streets that led to the Andon Heart. For though the city guard had informed her that all accommodation was taken, she knew of one particular hotel that did not normally open for business that might be able to provide them with sanctuary. If they could get there in time. Because, with most of its residents barricaded behind their doors, the city was strangely quiet, making the sound of the continuing k'nid assault ever louder.
Screams were actually coming from the side streets around them now and, among them, they could hear officers barking desperate orders to their men and the crackle of magical discharges as mages made one last, desperate stand. The k'nid assault was, it seemed, relentless. As the walls around them turned rainbow-coloured with flashes of weapon fire and energy bolts, all Kali could say to her charges was: "Run!"
This they did without hesitation, and Kali led them to the Andon Heart, and there towards the alleyway that led behind two deserted market stalls to the entrance to the Underlook.
As Kali neared the mouth of the alley, a crossbow quarrel thudded into the wood right beside her, stopping her in her tracks. She stared at it, and then up at the window from which it had been fired, and then at the other windows which lined the alley. Like the first, they were occupied by the figures of a man or woman aiming a weapon in their direction.
What the hells? she thought. This was hardly time for Pim and his guild to be playing their secret headquarters games.
"These people need shelter!" she shouted. "Tell Jengo Pim they're with Kali Hooper!"
The only answer was another crossbow quarrel embedding itself firmly in a wall next to her head.
Dammit.
"Kali Hooper!" she shouted again, but her voice was lost in the clamour that was taking over the city.
"Forget it," Merrit Moon observed. "The place is a veritable fortress."
"Yeah?" Kali said. She studied the alley anew, weighing it up. The last time she had been here — immediately after the 'death' of the old man and before her trip to Martak — she had been escorted along its deadly length, but at that time she had still been learning of her new abilities and what had seemed impossible then now seemed less impossible.
"Stay here, old man," she said, and before Merrit Moon could respond, she was gone.
The first of the window sentries didn't even see her coming, Kali already having worked out her trajectory so that she could leap off some piles of rubbish to the alley's side and springboard herself off the wall above to its opposite number. There, her momentum allowing her for a second to actually run along the vertical surface, she flung herself forward, grabbed a drainpipe and slung herself around for a leap back across the alley. Somersaulting in mid air, she hit the first wall again with her feet, kicked off and propelled herself backwards towards the window that now lay opposite, jack-knifing herself as she went so that her legs wrapped themselves around the neck of the sentry positioned there in a scissor grip. Thus anchored, Kali allowed herself to flop loosely, hanging upside down from the window with her back to the wall. As she did, she jerked her legs so that the sentry was flipped forward and out. She opened her legs and he screamed as he plummeted to the ground, hitting with a dull thud.
Five or six crossbow quarrels slammed into the wall where Kali hung, but she was already gone, dropping down to the ground and pinwheeling on her hands across the alley's width.
Back on her feet once more she leapt straight upwards, directly beneath the second window, grabbed and twisted the front of the crossbow that was wielded there, then quickly pulled the trigger so that its quarrel impaled itself in the shoulder of its bearer.
Only seconds had passed since she had begun to run the gauntlet, but it was long enough for those sentries who remained to realise that she would now be coming for them. Shouts and cries of alarm bounced back and forth across the alleyway.
Kali went inside now, pulling herself through the window she had just vacated, knocking the groaning sentry cold then running through the room beyond, along the corridor, and into the adjacent room. She didn't slow her pace, however, indeed she accelerated, then launched herself straight through the room's window. Straight as an arrow, she flew across the width of the alley, waving a casual 'hi' to the stunned occupant of the window opposite, before slamming into him and winding him so severely that he sat down with an oomf.
The oomf became a groan as Kali wasted no time knocking him cold.
Here she changed her tactics, grabbed the sentry's crossbow and threw herself to the side of the window she had just entered. Then, with two perfectly calculated shots a second apart, fired a quarrel through the forearms of the next two sentries she could see from her position. Both cried out in agony and their weapons fell from their hands to clatter and break on the alley floor. Now, only one sentry remained, but she would be the most difficult to take out, and Kali quickly studied her surroundings, looking for a way to finish the job.
Old building, she thought. Unused, neglected, probably riddled with woodworm and dry rot. Fine, that was the way to go.
Without hesitation, she leapt upwards, straight into and through the ceiling of the room, spitting dust and splinters as she broke through plaster and slats. Heaving herself up into the roof space she ran a palm over the underside of the roof itself, found a weak spot and then punched through the tiles. Half a second later she was on the roof, racing along its sloping surface towards the end of the alley and the last sentry post in her way. Calculating when the window would be beneath her, she lay down on the roof surface and let herself slide down it headfirst, dropping off the edge of the roof and plummeting straight down. There was a gasp of surprise as she hit and grabbed the outstretched arms and crossbow of the last sentry, and then a cry of alarm as she realised Kali wasn't intending to let go. Weighed down by her mass, the woman was pulled from the window in to Kali's embrace. The two tumbled towards the ground, Kali wrapping herself around the Grey Brigade member to protect her, and then they hit the ground in a cloud of dust, the woman exhaling loudly as much from shock as the impact. Kali pulled her up. The two of them were standing directly in front of the main entrance to the Underlook.
The woman stared at Kali, gasping in disbelief.
"The door," Kali said. "Get it open. Now."
"It will do you no good."
"I got this far, didn't I?"
The woman shrugged and rapped on the door, a code that had changed from the one Kali remembered. As it opened, two men appeared on the threshold and Kali despatched them swiftly with punches to the nose. Moving inside, she worked her through the corridors of the old hotel until she came to its ballroom — the centre of operations and throne room of Jengo Pim.
As expected, Pim sat on his makeshift throne, and regarded her coldly as she entered.
"Pim, what is this?" Kali said.
"Kali Hooper," the thieves guild leader replied slowly. "So, which of my people dies horribly this time?"
Kali was somewhat thrown by the tone of her reception. Pim had understood the death of his man during her incursion into the Three Towers had been unavoidable and no fault of her own.
"I don't understand."
"Tom Daly!" Pim snapped. "You do remember how you got him turned to stone?"
Oh yes, Kali thought, I remember. But I also remember that his name was Kris Jayhinch — and that was not something Pim himself was likely to forget.
Something was wrong here. And now that she knew that, she was suddenly aware of the tension in the room — the beads of sweat on Jengo Pim's face and, more importantly, those on the faces of the men who surrounded him. She studied the man right behind Pim — a man she did not know — and saw how his arm was tensed, as if holding something to Pim's back. A knife, it had to be. It wasn't Pim who had closed his doors to the refugees, it was these others. Pim had become the victim of a cowards' coup and, by the looks of things, quite recently
"As you can see," Pim explained, "you are not welcome here. Leave now or… my men will fire."
Kali could see that well enough and, for a moment, she said nothing, biting her lip as she tried to work out a way out of this. The number of crossbows that were trained on them made it impossible to pull off any sudden manoeuvres. Deprived of that possibility she could only try to talk her way out. But that, in itself, seemed a likely unsuccessful path.
"Perhaps," a voice said, "I might be of some assistance?"
Kali turned and saw that Merrit Moon and the others had worked their way into the Underlook. But it was not Moon who had spoken. A figure pushed his way through the clamouring crowd and threw back his hood, and Kali found herself staring at a silver haired, bearded figure whose presence made him seem to loom tall over the others.
"You," she said.
The man inclined his head slightly. "Poul Sonpear at your service."
"Who's he?" Merrit Moon whispered in Kali's ear.
"Archivist for the League of Prestidigitation and Prestige, particularly the forbidden bit. Oh, and part time Final Faith spy." She glanced at Jengo Pim and then back to Sonpear. "Well, this is turning into quite the reunion."
"Odd, isn't it, how certain pivotal figures always seem to turn up in the right place at the right time." Sonpear smiled, but it was a smile that seemed aimed only at Kali. "One might almost say it was preordained."
Kali eyes narrowed. Was Sonpear alluding to something? Something, perhaps, to do with her own origins and place in the scheme of things, much as a certain fish thing had alluded in Martak some time back? If he was — in the presence of all these people — if he knew something, now was not the time to talk about it.
"What are you doing here, Sonpear? Shouldn't you be closeted with your buddies in the Three Towers?"
"I should, but clearly I am not." He shrugged. "A small distraction. A liaison in the Skeleton Quays, where I found myself detained. By the time I returned to the towers, they had already been sealed."
Kali smiled. Detained in the quays, eh? She knew just the place and wondered how business was down the Bound to Please. So, despite the fact Sonpear had already proven he was literally capable of wiping the wall with her, he was quite human after all. And now he was stuck here as much as they were. Or, then again, perhaps she was jumping to conclusions.
"I have made myself known to you because I believe I can help with our mutual predicament." Sonpear said.
"How's that, then?"
Sonpear said nothing and simply moved his right hand in a motion like he was turning some invisible dial, and the man with his knife in Pim's back — as well as two others within stabbing distance — rose from the floor of the ballroom making choking sounds and clutching their necks, their feet kicking beneath them for a purchase they could not find. Kali had seen such magical 'persuasion' techniques before but not to the extent Sonpear seemed to be taking them. She swallowed as the eyes of the infiltrators began to bulge, then turned away as Sonpear suddenly flicked his wrist and their heads snapped around a hundred and eighty degrees. Three dead weights fell to the floor with a thud.
"You didn't have to do that."
"Didn't I?"
"He's right, Miss Hooper," Jengo Pim interjected, gesturing for the bodies to be removed. "We are nothing without our code. These men needed to be taught that there should be honour among our kind."
"I think it's a little late for them to learn anything."
"I wasn't referring to the dead," Pim responded. He nodded to the others in the room and, as Kali looked, saw the change of attitude in them. The sense of insecurity that had pervaded the Underlook since she'd first arrived was gone now, replaced by a renewed and total allegiance to the true and proper leader of the Grey Brigade.
"I would suggest," Sonpear said to the other crossbow wielders around the room, "that you put those down. Now is a time to work together, not against one another."
Pim's men capitulated, and Pim himself rose from his throne with a relieved sigh.
"Right," he said. "Miss Hooper, get your people inside. Ferret, see to their wounded. Rathbone, once everyone's safely gathered in seal those bloody doors. I believe we have ourselves a siege situation."
The men went about their duties and it was only seconds later that the outside walls of the hotel reverberated with a series of impacts from outside, sifting dust from cracks in the ceiling of the ballroom. Many of the people from Gargas looked around in fear and hugged each other.
"They wasted no time," Kali said coolly. "Pim, are you sure this place is fully sealed?"
"Tight as an ogur's underpants," Pim said, glancing at Moon when his comment elicited a strange growl. "The question is, how long will the walls themselves hold."
Kali nodded. "The place is old but it's better than nothing. Still, we can't stay here for ever." She turned to Merrit Moon. "Old man, have you got any i — "
A sudden boom from outside, much louder than before, shook the hotel to its foundations, and Kali stopped speaking. Another such boom caused her to look around in alarm.
"What the hells?" she said.
"I believe that my people may be attempting to provide a solution," Poul Sonpear said.
"What the fark are they doing — bombing us?"
"In a manner of speaking."
Kali span to face Jengo Pim. "Is there any way to see?"
Pim nodded. "Upstairs, on the top floor, in the old turret room. Follow me."
Kali and Sonpear raced after Pim up flight after flight until they came to a small, circular chamber which Kali noticed, with some amusement, Pim appeared to have turned into a shrine to the Hells' Bellies, the walls plastered with handbills and memorabilia. What was evidently his sanctum sanctorum was otherwise featureless apart from a panoramic circle of shuttered windows. Pim moved to open one but Sonpear redirected him to another. "No, there. The view will be… better."
Puzzled, Pim did as he was told and flung the shutters wide, then stepped back as the full scale of what was occurring struck him. Kali pushed in beside him.
"My Gods!"
The eastern quarter of Andon spread out beneath her and there wasn't a street or an alleyway, a square or a cul-de-sac of it that wasn't overrun by the k'nid. Smoke, screams and chaos were the order of the day, and it seemed there was no escape from it anywhere. As Kali looked down in horror she saw at least ten people who had not managed to make cover stalked and taken by the k'nid, their skeletons left discarded on the scarred streets. It was not, however, the events that were occurring below her that made Kali gasp, but rather above. Because it seemed that,in reaction to the invasion of their city, the Three Towers were going on the offensive.
Kali had been inside that complex and had heard it thrum with its strange power, had known it to be magical, but it was not until this moment that she realised just how magical it actually was. The three towers, that were the headquarters of the League of Prestidigitation and Prestige, were moving, each of them twining like immense snakes, the bridges that connected them having seemingly retracted — or perhaps simply disappeared — to enable this new and unexpected freedom. But it wasn't just the fact that they were moving that stunned Kali, it was what they were doing as they moved — and what they were doing were blitzing Andon. From the top of each of the looming, swaying structures, huge, orange balls of energy were being fired down into the streets, each so powerful that, as it departed its tower with a thwoom, Kali felt the floorboards of the hotel beneath her vibrate. The vibration was nothing, though, compared to the shaking that followed as the spheres impacted, not only at ground level but occasionally on rooftops as they targeted the k'nid wherever they were. Explosion after explosion lit the battle torn streets. Not only k'nid but buildings and people were blasted apart, flailing and spinning through the air.
"What the hells are they doing?" Kali demanded of Sonpear.
"It's the League's self protection protocol. The towers are defending themselves as best they can."
"You arrogant — this isn't the way, you bastard! Your people are destroying their own to protect themselves. You have to stop this!"
"There is nothing I can do. The Towers are sealed."
"Well, think of something, dammit! They're tearing Andon apart!"
Sonpear hesitated, clearly torn between his League responsibility and the damage that it was causing. For a second he just listened to the sound of the fireballs and to the battering the exterior of the hotel was taking from the k'nid.
"There might be weapons," he said finally, "that may prove more effective in an offensive than those you currently possess. There will, however, be some hazards involved in obtaining them."
"Pal, they can't be any more hazardous than opening that front door or waiting here while it gets blown off," Jengo Pim interjected. "What do you have in mind?"
Sonpear sighed, as if what he were about to announce he should not even be considering. He was about to speak when there was a sudden warning cry from Kali and he stared toward the Three Towers. Or rather, at the space between themselves and the Three Towers. Because one of the towers had turned towards them and, thrumming deeply as it came, growing larger every second, one of the fireballs was on direct collision course with the Underlook.
There was no time to run, nowhere to hide and absolutely nothing they could do. Heart pounding, the last thing Kali saw was Sonpear rushing at her, pushing Pim into the fireball's path. And then the fireball struck and the top of the Underlook was gone in a blazing inferno, just like that.