“You two wait here with the Duchess,” the Sarge said to Ty and Phin. “There’s a fresh-painted shield sign above that door across the way. If it’s Shanatarians in there they’ll be running a hospital and giving free healing.”
The Sarge braced up Rickard, whose eyes were now fluttering, and started away. Rickard’s feet dragged as he could scarcely raise them.
“We should heal her as well,” Phin called after them, for the Duchess had now been unconscious for several hours and her color seemed bad as Phin looked at her slack face. Though given the quality of light filtering down to the streets, everyone in Vod’Adia had an unhealthy pallor.
Ty had another suggestion what they should do with the woman, and Phin met his eyes with a hard glare.
“There will not be any of that,” Phin said in a whisper, surprising himself as despite his state of mind his voice took on all the menace and contempt befitting a Circle Wizard. Ty blinked, drew back from Phin, and it was a moment before the legionnaire remembered to look fierce.
“Phoarty,” the Sarge said from where he had stopped to look back. The sergeant did not need to put on a fierce face as his carried that look at all times. When he smiled he only looked more dangerous. He was keeping Rickard on his feet by the belt with his one good hand.
“We won’t touch the woman, if it means that much to you. But make no mistake. She is going to the Priests of Ayon. Do not get attached.”
“Why take her there?” Phin decided to ask.
“Because that is how we salvage a payday out of this damned mess. Beyond that, I could give a rat’s ass.”
The Sarge turned and dragged Rickard across the plaza. Phin looked after them with a slight frown, for even with the strange light in this place the Sarge’s eyes had looked gray rather than bright green.
*
The Shanatarians across the plaza proved to be a band of Ostrananyans rather than from a Codian church. They healed the Sarge and Rickard without asking any questions as to why the pair were armored as Codian soldiers. The pair rejoined Phin, Ty, and the Duchess after the Sarge gave up all the coins the legionnaires had left to the nearby merchants for a few days of food and water.
Phin had used the time to dampen a handkerchief with a little of the water he already had in a skin. He wiped off the blood caked under the Duchess’s nose, which like her left cheek was badly bruised but not actually broken. She had a large swollen goose egg on the back of her head in her thick hair, but it had not bled.
“Hard-headed little Duchess,” Phin murmured. Ty glared at him.
The Sarge and Rickard returned healthy but with the Sarge’s left hand still short by two fingers. What had formerly been his middle finger now had a deep scar at its base that looked old, though it was fresh. A fraction of an inch more and the Sarge would have lost it as well to the Centurion’s blade.
Phin suspected that the fact the legionnaires had been driven away from the burning inn while Centurion Deskata was still alive was the reason they left the area of Vod’Adia’s entrance with all possible dispatch. The Sarge led the way with the tower shield, gripping the straps with what remained of his left hand. Ty carried the Duchess after binding her limp hands with a cord from a water-skin, and Rickard and Phin split the provisions. There were not enough of them to be much bother.
Phin asked where they were going and the Sarge told him to shut the hell up. The four men spent the next several hours moving in silence, walking down the middle of dark streets and heading generally south, though the irregular angles of many city blocks forced their course away from true. Initially everyone kept a wary eye on the vacant buildings to either side, the doors of which seemed all to have been bashed in at an earlier Opening. Only once did they see any movement and that was from a party of adventurers, spearmen and archers, moving in formation a couple of blocks over. Phin was beginning to believe the tales he’d heard of a city stuffed full of fearsome creatures had been greatly exaggerated, and the legionnaires eventually picked up their pace from a careful creep to something like a march.
Sometime after noon the Sarge called a halt for a short rest and to get his bearings. Ty lowered the Duchess across a stone step halfway up to the landing of a building and sat down heavily beside her. The Sarge stood in the next intersection gazing grimly down the five streets that met there, while Rickard rolled up his own tattered trouser leg and looked with interest at the mess of scar tissue where his wound had been that morning. Phin again knelt by the Duchess and looked with concern at her slack, yet still fine, features.
“She should be conscious by now,” Phin said.
“Wake her ass up then,” Ty growled. “She can carry herself the rest of the way.”
Phin reached around the side of the Duchess’s face and gently slid his fingers into her tousled brown hair, which in spite of everything felt rich and clean. He eased the tips of his pale fingers to the bump on the back of her head, wondering if it might be possible to actually feel a skull fracture. The moment one long finger brushed the goose egg, the Duchess’s steel-grey eyes flashed open.
What lovely eyes, Phin had time to think, just before the Duchess twisted on the stairs and brought her knees to her chest. She drove both feet hard into Phin’s sternum.
Black stone and gray sky spun through Phin’s vision as he toppled backwards with his arms spinning like two windmills. He crashed to the stone sidewalk on his back, landing more or less directly on his spine. The only reason the back of his head didn’t crack the ground was that it overhung the tall curb. Phin gasped for breath as Rickard bolted past him and pounded up the stairs, then the Sarge’s grim visage loomed over him.
“Are you all right?” the Sarge demanded, and Phin nodded though he couldn’t speak.
“Jackass,” the Sarge added before rushing off after Ty and Rickard, who had chased the Duchess into the building through the gaping doorway.
When he could breath Phin rolled to knees and elbows and tottered to his feet. Legionnaire profanity boomed out of the doorway and a breastplate banged as someone ran into a wall. More swearing. Phin’s back throbbed and his chest hurt in two roughly boot-shaped areas, but he mounted the stairs and hurried into the building before the escapee could get herself killed.
Three halls left the entryway but all the noise was coming from dead ahead. Phin moved that way and in the light from the open door he saw the Duchess bolt by through his own shadow, with Ty right behind her. They ran out of Phin’s sight and there was another crash, the sound of splintering wood, screaming and clattering.
Phin entered a long room with a free-standing staircase, just in time to see the Duchess disappear into the darkness above. The big armored man Ty had broken through the bottom steps, and Rickard was trying to extricate him from the jagged remains while both continued to swear. The Sarge loped in from another room and yelled at them to shut up.
“Find another way up,” he said to Phin, then shouted up the broken stairs.
“Miss, what you are doing is a bad idea. This place is not safe! I guarantee that anything you run into in here will be far worse than us.”
Phin ran into the darkness of an adjoining room and immediately barked his shin on something hard. He limped back to the broken base of the stairs.
“We need light,” he said, but Rickard had already freed Ty and the two were tearing open a bundle of torches and candles. The Sarge yanked on the first intact stair but only brought down three more with a crash. He growled darkly, but then shouted some more in what Phin supposed was meant to be a friendly voice.
“Your Grace? This is not what you think. We are Codians, ma‘am.”
He was fingering the hilt of his sword as he said it.
Ty struck steel to flint and Rickard got the first torch lit. Phin snatched it from his hand and ran back into the next room, maneuvering around piles of decrepit furniture and kicking up clouds of fine gray dust as he went.
He passed through two more rooms connected by low stone archways, ducking each time before reaching what must have been a kitchen judging by the sagging counters and a wide fireplace. The archway in the back wall gave into a round nook with stone block steps ascending a shaft. Phin opened his mouth to call back to the legionnaires who he could still hear knocking about back by the front door, then realized that was a terrible idea. He remained silent and slid along the wall up the stairs.
The Sarge’s clear voice from down a hall let Phin know that way led only back to the front of the building, so he moved to the right through another room. He walked across wooden doors lying flat on the floor, as the iron hinges had been scavenged. In the next hall he saw clear marks on the dusty floor and squatted to hold the torch
