“He has been busy nonetheless,” said Lanther, escorting her into the ground-floor room of the guard tower on her left.
After the heat of the day’s sun, the dim, cool light of the round stone room was a welcome relief. Other people thought so, too, for the room was crowded with injured men and women sitting on the floor or at the tables usually used by the tower guards. A girl from a tavern nearby served ale to the defenders from a barrel donated by her father.
Lanther worked his way through the crowd to a small narrow stair leading down to the lower level. The small room below the tower was mostly used for storage, but tucked away in the darkest space was a set of holding cells.
“Ah,” Linsha breathed. “Your prisoners.”
“I just wanted you to see them. They are in no position to talk at the moment.” His lips pulled back in the dim light to reveal his white teeth like a snarl. “I had to be a little rough on them.”
She followed him forward and looked over his shoulder at two men sprawled on rough blankets thrown on the floor. Both men looked battered and bloody, and both wore a makeshift emblem of the blue dragon on their sleeves. One, a rugged-looking plainsman, scrabbled back into the darkest shadow when Lanther approached and huddled there, his breath rasping through his swollen nose and mouth as he stared fearfully at the Legionnaire. The other man did not move. The skin on his face hung slack and his half-opened eyes stared unseeing at the ceiling.
Lanther muttered something under his breath that Linsha could not understand, then louder he said, “That one didn’t make it. I’ll have to get someone down here to get him out.”
He turned and ushered his companion up the stairs before she had a chance to say a word to the other prisoner.
Linsha felt her irritation rise. Surely, he had not dragged her away from the Legion Gate and some much- needed sleep just to get a quick glimpse at a dead man and a battered prisoner. “Why did you want me here, Lanther? What did they tell you?”
He said nothing. Passing by the barmaid, he whisked two cups off her tray and held them out to be filled. Still without a word, he took the brimming cups of ale and led Linsha outside, past a row of sheds and huts left by the wall builders, to a clump of shrub hazel growing in the foundation of an old ruin. He sat carefully on a fallen pillar and indicated a seat beside him.
“No prying ears out here,” he said quietly.
The ale looked so good to Linsha that she would have sat anywhere just for the chance to drink it. She accepted his offering and sat beside him where she could keep a watch on the comings and goings at the distant gate. Far to her right, she could see a burial party hastily burying some of the dead before the summer heat took its toll on the bodies. To her left, she saw a troop of human militia taking advantage of the lull in the fighting to bolster their flimsy defenses with rocks and sand bags. She wondered briefly where the centaurs were and if young Leonidas was faring well enough.
“What do you know about the brass eggs Iyesta was guarding?”
If Lanther had thrown a bucket of ice water on her, Linsha could not have more stunned and surprised. She choked on the ale. “What?”
“I know Iyesta took you somewhere the day the triplets disappeared. Some place that left smudges of dirt on your face and the smell of damp on your clothes.”
Linsha glared at him. Good gods, where had this come from? “She took me into Thunder’s realm to see him. I told you about that.”
“Yes, you did. But I know Chayne and Ringg came back long before you and Iyesta. The dragon took you to another place.” He narrowed his eyes and stared at her; his blue eyes gleamed cold like the water at the foot of a glacier.
Linsha felt his gaze bore into her brain to the very back of her skull, and she felt a shiver run up her back.
Fiercely, she closed her thoughts and shuttered her eyes and brought her pulse back under control. He had taken her by surprise but it would not happen again. “Iyesta and I spent some time in her garden talking. She was worried about the triplets and furious at Thunder. She wanted someone to listen.”
A flash of speculation tightened the lines around Lanther’s eyes, then he smoothly changed his tone. “I’m sorry. I should have approached this from a more discrete direction. Those men we hold told me Thunder is looking for eggs. He has ordered his entire force to search for them as soon as the city falls. This was news to me. I had no idea Iyesta had a nest of eggs around here.”
“What makes Thunder think there are eggs?” Linsha countered, but the answer came to her with sickening certainty. The three young brasses. If the giant blue captured and tortured any one of the triplets, or all of them, he could have used his greater, more malevolent power to wrench the knowledge from their minds.
“Dragons have ways of learning things,” Lanther said. “The men did not say how Thunder came by this information, only that he had it. Is it true?”
Linsha felt a cold sickness creep through her and settle in her stomach. She took a long swallow of her ale, but it tasted flat on her tongue. Of all the dreadful possibilities to endanger the eggs, it had to be Thunder. She did not doubt Lanther’s information. There was no reason that he would make up something like that and several reasons to believe his sources.
“I don’t think we need to worry about it,” she said, trying to sound casual. “If there is a nest, it is too well hidden for anyone to find.”
Lanther rested his elbows on his knees and gazed deep into the golden depths of his ale. “Not if there are enough people looking for it.” He stopped and looked at her again. “Just why did you want to go to Iyesta’s lair so desperately after we freed you from the Citadel?”
“To look for Iyesta. I found her, too. Remember?”
“Linsha, we cannot let Iyesta’s eggs fall into Thunder’s control. He will destroy them.”
“What about Iyesta's skull? It seems to me we should be more concerned about Thunder collecting dragon skulls. Did you ask those men if he is building a larger totem?”
“Yes, I asked. They did not know. All they would tell me is that Thunder plans to move into Iyesta's lair as soon as it captured.”
“Like Chaos he is!” Linsha snapped. She shot to her feet.
Lanther grabbed for her arm. “Where are you going?”
Linsha was too quick for him. She twisted out of his grip and backed away. “To the palace. I can fight as well there as anywhere. I will not let that foul monster use her lair as his own!”
With a speed that belied her aches and exhaustion, she tossed him the empty cup, spun away, and jogged into the last golden streaks of the setting sun toward the palace of the dragonlord.
Lanther made no move to follow. He watched her go, his face impassive, until he could no longer see her in the gathering twilight. Only then did he allow a faint smile to lift his lips.
19
Thunder’s forces launched a second attack just before midnight. From the hill of the ruined Citadel came a great horn blast that soared out over the city and, in the quiet of night, was heard from Legion’s Gate to Iyesta’s palace west of the Garden District. A roar rose up from the enemy surrounding the beleaguered city, and in almost the same movement the Brutes and the mercenaries gathered by Thunder threw themselves forward against the fortifications and walls. Rank after rank pressed forward, their spears and swords gleaming in the light of hundreds of torches. Their trampling feet made the ground tremble. Grim and angry, the defenders held their ground. Falaius had placed most of his available troops in a line across the Northern District and the Artisans District to block entry into the heart of the city through the missing sections of the walls. During the lull in the fighting that evening, they had built hasty fortifications and barriers, and there the centaurs had placed themselves foremost before the barricades, counting on their size, strength, and speed to help beat back the attackers.
