“Not that I can see. I’ll go back round. Keep watch here, Memer.”
He went quickly back through the arcade. I stood in the doorway, watching out, and listening to the Waylord and the fugitive.
“Dead,” the man was saying, in a hoarse whisper. He kept coughing as he spoke. “They’re all dead.”
“Desac?”
“Dead. All of them.”
“Did they attack the Council House?”
“The tent,” the man said, shaking his head. “The fire?” He broke into violent coughing. The Waylord brought him water from the carafe on the table and made him sit down to drink it. He sat near the lamp, and I could see him. I didn’t know him, he wasn’t one of the people who came to the house. He was a man of thirty or so, his hair wild, his clothes and face smeared with dirt or ash or blood. They were, I realised, the striped clothes worn by slaves serving at the Palace. He sat crouched in the chair, struggling to get his breath.
“They set fire to the tent,” the Waylord said.
The man nodded.
“The Gand was in it? Ioratth?”
Again he nodded. “Dead, they’re all dead. It burned like straw, it was like a bonfire, it burned…”
“But Desac wasn’t in the tent, was he?? No, drink some more water, tell me later. How should I call you?”
“Cader Antro,” the man said.
“Of Gelbmand,” the Waylord said. “I knew your father, Antro the blacksmith. The Gelbs used to lend me horses when I was Waylord. Your father was very particular about their shoes. Is he still alive, Cader?”
“He died last year,” the man said. He drank off the water and sat exhausted and dazed, staring in front of him.
“We set the fire and got out,” he said, “but they were there, they came round us, they pushed us back, back into the fire. Everybody screaming and pushing. I got out. I crawled out.” He looked down at himself with bewilderment.
“Were you burned? Hurtt The Waylord went closer to look him over, and touched his forearm. “You’re burned there, or cut. Let’s have a look at it. But first, tell me how you got here, to Galvamand? Were you alone?”
“I crawled out,” Cader repeated. He was not in the quiet room with us, he was in the fire. “I crawled… I got over above the East Canal, I jumped down. They were fighting back there, all over the square, killing people. I went… down… Clear to the seafront. There were guards riding down all the streets. I hid behind the houses. I didn’t know where to go. I thought they might come here. To the Oracle House. I didn’t know where to go.”
“You did quite right,” the Waylord said in the same soothing and matter-of-tact tone. “Let me get a better light here and have a look at that arm. Memer? Would you bring me more water, and a cloth?”
I didn’t want to leave my guard post, but it did seem that the man had come alone and unpursued. I fetched a basin and water, cloths and the herbal salve we kept for kitchen burns and cuts; and I cleaned and dressed the burn on Cader’s arm, my hands being defter at such work than the Waylord’s. After being looked after, and drinking a little cup of the old brandy the Waylord kept for the Feast of Ennu and for emergencies, Cader seemed less dazed. He thanked us and haltingly asked blessing on the house.
The Waylord asked him a few more questions, but he was unable to tell us much more. A small group of Desacs people?some of them slaves of the Alds and some like Cader posing as slaves?had infiltrated the great tent and set fire to it at several places while the ceremony was going on. But the plan went wrong. “They didn’t come,” Cader kept saying. Some of the conspirators, like Cader and Desac, were caught leaving the burning tent; others, who were to be waiting in the square to strike down the Alds as they fled from the fire, had themselves been struck down, or had not been able to get anywhere near the tent?Cader did not know which. He began to weep as he tried to talk about it, and to cough again. “Come, come on, enough,” the Waylord told him, “you need to sleep.” And he took him off to his own room and left him there.
When he came back I asked him, “Do you think they’re all dead? Desac, the Gand? What about the Gand’s son? He was there, in the tent.”
The Waylord shook his head. “We don’t know.”
“If Ioratth is dead and Iddor is alive, he’ll take over, he’ll rule,” I said.
“Yes.”
“He’ll come here.”
“Why here?”
“For the same reason Cader came here. Because this is the heart of everything in Ansul.”
The Waylord, standing in the doorway looking out at the starlit court, said nothing.
“You should go to the room,” I said. “You should be there.”
“To the oracle?”
“To be safe.”
“Oh,” he said, with a little laugh, “safe… Maybe I will yet. But let’s wait out the darkness and see what daylight brings.”
It was still not daylight, though, when looking from the upper windows I saw a fire, southwest of us, down somewhere near the ruined university buildings. It glowed, died down, blazed up again. There were sounds of unrest, horses clattering down distant streets, a trumpet call, faint troubling sounds of voices, many voices. Whatever the disaster in Council Square had been, the city was not cowed or pacified.
Just as the darkness began to grey and the sky to lighten above the hills behind the city, Orrec came in. With him was Sulsem Cam of Cammand, a lifelong friend of the Waylord, a fellow scholar, who had brought many rescued books to Galvamand. Now he brought news.
“Hearsay is all we have, Sulter,” he said. He was a man of sixty or so, courteous, cautious, very mindful of his own and others’ dignity?“a Cam through and through,” the Waylord called him. Even now he spoke quite precisely. “But we have it from more than one source. The Gand Ioratth is dead. His son Iddor rules. A great many of our people are dead. Desac the southerner and my kinsman Armo died in the fire in the great tent. The Alds still have the city in their grip. Riots and fires and street fighting have broken out all night here and there. People are stoning the soldiers from roofs and windows as they pass. But the attacks on the Alds have no leader that we know of. They’re random, scattered. The Alds have an army, we have not.”
I remembered someone saying that, days ago it seemed, months ago; who had said it?
“Let Iddor be certain of his army, then,” the Waylord said. “We have a city, they do not.”
“Bravely said. But Sulter, I am afraid for you. For your household.”
“I know it, my friend. I know that’s why you came here, at risk to yourself. I am grateful. May all the gods and spirits of my house and yours go with you: and go home now; before it’s daylight!”
They clasped each other’s hands, and Sulsem Cam went back as he had come.
The Waylord went to check on the fugitive, who was fast asleep, then out to the little basin fountain in the back atrium to wash, as he did every morning, and then he began the rounds of the daily worship, as he did every morning. At first I thought I couldn’t possibly do the worship, but it seemed to draw me. I went out and picked Iene’s leaves and put them at her altar, and started round to all the god-niches to dust them and say the blessings.
Ista was up and bustling in the kitchen. She said the girls were still asleep, having been awake half the night. Going towards the front of the house I heard voices in the great inner courtyard.
Gry stood on the far side, talking with a woman. The first sunlight was just striking the roofs above the open courtyard, and the air was sweet and summer-cool; the two women stood by the wall in shadow, one in white, one in grey, under a flowering vine, like figures in a painting. Everything was charged, intense, vivid.
I crossed over to them. “This is Ialba Acramo,” Gry said to me, and to the woman, “This is Memer Galva.”
Ialba was small, slight, a delicate woman in her thirties, with keen eyes. She wore the pale striped dress of the Palace slaves. We greeted each other cautiously.
“Ialba brings us news from the Palace,” Gry said. “Tirio Actamo sends me,” the woman said. “I bring word of the Gand Iorarrh,”
“He’s dead?”
She shook her head. “He is not. He was hurt in the attack and the fire. His son had him carried into the
