'The hells,' he muttered, sounding very like a Hundred man. 'Alter that time Sweet pulled off her hood, I made sure to fasten it correctly. I'm glad you didn't!' He fixed his eagle with a possessive stare.
'Where's Volias?' she asked, surprised into speech by his volubility.
'At rest by the dead eagles. Him and the other reeve. What now?'
'No one's in charge! All the senior reeves are cursed dead, aren't they? After that first day, I don't think I exchanged more than twenty words with the commander, eh? 'How's the training going? Ofri treating you well?''
'Who will the others listen to?'
'How can you be so cursed calm! They're all dead. Volias just dropped dead. And those in the hall — the reeves, the council members, the cursed militiamen — they were cut down like sheep, stinking with it, and you can stand there because you're a cursed rotting outlander who doesn't know…' He took in the abuse that poured out of her until she ran out of breath and heaved, thinking she was going to retch out the boil of anger and heartbreak, but nothing came but dry sobs.
'Who will the others listen to, Nallo?' he said in the exact same tone.
She wiped her eyes. 'Peddo, maybe.'
He left.
'I'm a cursed idiot,' she said to Tumna, who looked over at the sound of her voice, probably to agree with her. 'You're the best raptor who ever lived. You know that, don't you?'
The bird tipped her head sideways, considering this statement.
'So you stay here, with your prizes. Eat them, for all I care, although their flesh will likely poison you. Ah, the hells!'
She stepped into the corridor and grabbed Likard and the fawkner next to him. 'Are there other murderers on the loose?'
'Those are the only two hired in within the last year,' said Likard. 'So likely they were sent in on purpose, don't you think? Cursed traitors. Wish I could strangle them myself.'
He seemed likely to go on in this vein, so she went back into the loft, untangled the hood, and approached Tumna, tapping the signal that made the raptor flutter back to her night perch and lower her head. But she couldn't bear to hood her. She turned to face a crowd of fawkners.
'What are you gawking at? Can you haul this rubbish out of here? It stinks!'
She remained by Tumna while others dragged away the corpses. Eiya! She hadn't believed Volias, had she? Just a cursed stupid thing to say, she'd thought, a crude form of arm-twisting: If your eagle dies, you die.
Tears flowing, she circled the compound but didn't find Pil. The commander's cote was empty, the old reeve who attended her sobbing so hard on the porch that he didn't notice Nallo come or go. Folk were poking spears into every hidey-hole and dark corner, making sure no one was sneaking around to strike again. Someone had set a dozen furious, frightened fawkners and assistants to guard the gate. They pointed her toward the stairs that led down into the city.
A cataract of sound poured up from Toskala. Rubbing against it in a chatter that irritated her even more, the refugees mobbing Justice Square waved their hands in the air to no purpose, jabbering and complaining and then having the nerve to yell at her as she elbowed them aside to get to the overlook. A pair of lamps hanging from posts illuminated the balcony that jutted out over the cliff face. She identified Pil's topknot. The two other reeves had very short hair, and the fourth person wore a firefighter's brimmed leather helmet and fitted leather coat. They made room for her at the railing.
They stared over the city, delineated by torches flaring in lines that snaked along avenues as the army spread out to overtake the population piece by piece. In one quarter, a fire burned, so far confined to a single block. A pair of guardsman stood at the edge of lamplight, posted at the gate marking the head of the stairs. All traffic in either direction had ceased.
'How did they block the stairs?' Nallo asked finally.
Kesta set a hand over hers on the railing. 'Some old trap from ancient days. It made a terrible noise. Eiya! A lot of people on the steps died when it was sprung.'
'Captain Ressi did that?'
Her usually lively face looked drawn and aged in lamplight. 'Neh. Captain Ressi was at council hall. A sergeant sprang it. Killed himself in the process. Knew he was going to, I think.'
'What do we do now?' asked the fire captain. He was surprisingly young, with a short-clipped beard and an annoying habit of
drumming his fingers on the railing as he started talking. 'The senior militia captains are dead in the council hall, or trapped in the city and surely dead by now.'
'You are a captain,' said Pil.
'Eiya! Through my mother's Green Sun connections, if you want to know the truth. I was so cursed proud of myself, wasn't I? Riding my gelding through the streets, strutting about with my fire hook.' He glanced at Peddo, then away. 'My kinfolk sent me up here three days ago to square the accounts on the various hall storehouses. This much water in the cisterns. That much oil. So many tey of rice. I tell you, I think they knew. I fear they sent me up here to keep me out of harm's way, curse them!' He began sobbing. 'Gods-rotted traitors!'
They stepped away from him, and he looked over indignantly.
'I wasn't in on it! As soon as the trouble erupted, I secured the storehouses and cisterns with what firefighters remain up here, in case any of this crowd decides to grab what they can.'
'Why come over here to the stairs, then?' asked Peddo. 'Since it's the only way up or down from this rock besides flying, or the baskets?'
The young man gestured helplessly, a sweep of his arm that took in the city. Overhead, stars glittered in silence; below, Toskala roared as its thousands ran or fought or hid, or simply wailed and grieved. The wind blustered, but like them it could do nothing but witness.
'What's the point of staying?' asked Kesta. 'We've lost.'
'What's ever the point of staying?' said Nallo, thinking of the day she had walked into a strange village to marry a man she'd never met, to fulfill a contract other hands had sealed in her name. 'To say you can. To show you will.'
'And what the hells does it matter, Nallo, when those demons can fly? The steps are blocked, but the demons can come back any time they want.'
'Maybe so, but if they'd wanted to kill us all, then why didn't they?'
'The winged ones carried no weapons,' added Pil, 'but the ones who died, died in blood. So then who stabbed them? Not the demons.'
'A good point,' said Peddo, smiling wanly at Pil, who blushed and looked away.
'Traitors stabbed them!' said the fire captain hoarsely. 'Any of us might be a traitor!'
'The hells you say!' snapped Nallo. 'I'm no gods-rotted traitor. And I'm not cursed ready to give up, either.'
'We need a captain,' said Pil. 'If we mean to resist. This rock is a good fort. If we can protect ourselves against demons, and ration water and food.'
'And throw the cursed traitors to their death!' screamed the fire captain with a howl of outraged grief.
Distant voices on Justice Square echoed his cries, and the guards at the stairs stirred restlessly, looking scared.
Nallo slapped the fire captain right across the face. That shut him up. Probably with his soft skin and well- kept hands he'd never done a day's worth of real work in his silk-wearing, pampered life.
'Do you think you're the only cursed person who's suffered? We either give up now, or we take stock of our situation and then we cursed well decide what we mean to do! I don't want to give up!'
The image of her husband lying dead in the road with the flies buzzing in and out of his gaping mouth sprang so vividly into her mind that she began to cry. He had stayed behind with the other men to hold off the army while the women and children ran into the forest to hide. Dazed from a day of hiding in the brush, Jerad and little Zi had not truly understood what had happened to their father. Avisha had trembled so close to hysterics that Nallo recognized only now how much strength it had taken the girl to suck it up and keep going for the sake of the little ones. And they'd done it. They'd walked away from the ruins of a life they could never have back, and by sheer stubbornness they had found other shelter. Not a safe place, for maybe there weren't any safe places left. But a
