“Three,” she said, pointing to the stairs. “If there are too many, wait.” She looked to the door and shifted her foot against the hard rock beneath. She could feel, but it was vague and played tricks in her mind. Óraithe untied the leathers she wore and flung them away, putting her feet firm against the naked rock. A room was beyond the door. Empty, of elves at least.
She backed from the door and motioned to it. Heavy blows struck the wood and soon it came open. Metal latches and no bar. Óraithe stepped in behind the men. The wheel to the portcullis was already being worked. She could hardly believe what little care must have gone into the defense of this place. She stepped back out onto the flat and looked across the city and it struck her. The gate led to the Low District. In the room, she looked through a slit in the rock. The wagon fire had done its work and the rest were riding for the wall with as much speed as they could manage. A vast cloud of dust rose behind them.
Only two were working the portcullis wheel. They proved enough. “We need the gate.”
She raced down the steps with men at her back. They had not questioned her, even for a moment. They had not given her even a look of mistrust. The ground felt almost overwhelming against her naked feet. She had wrapped the bottoms every morning before leaving the tent. She could feel dozens of weights against the ground, maybe hundreds, all behind her in the city, not far. Watching. The men got to the gate and Óraithe stood behind them, staring at the empty streets. She did not know sands so well that she could tell anything by the feelings in her mind. The first creak of the big door moving behind her sounded in her ears and a second later, well beyond the Low District, a siren wailed.
The doors opened as a dozen in Briste’s colors flooded the main street into the city ahead of her. At her back, she felt the pounding of hooves as strongly as her own racing heart. She stared them down but they did not move to her. She could feel them, the corpses she’d left at the front. They shifted on the earth and came to her. She slid them forward, raising her chin and narrowing her eyes at the guard.
“Óraithe t-the… the—” he bit into the word as though it took all his courage to say it— “Treasonous.”
“Yes?”
“Y-you are… you… by order of Briste, Tre—”
She flung the corpses and a chunk of the earth beneath them in rage when she heard the name. The pieces rained on the guards who had come for her, guts spilling over them, knocking three to the ground and sending a pair fleeing in horror. Heads had poked from silent windows along the street and the mob behind her stood ready to kill anything she pointed them toward. But, no. The city was not only the Low District. She raised her voice so all could hear.
“Go with your lives. Tell that thing in the Bastion that I have come.” She took a step forward and the remaining guards backed away, swords readied. “Tell her I have come to take from her. Everything.”
R
Rianaire
She had woken sometime before noon. Rianaire was never quite sure of the time after waking until someone chanced to mention it in passing or some meal came around. There was little she could find wrong with such a thing, though it often offended people who felt of a station high enough to lecture her about it. To her pleasant surprise, however, it seemed that those people were growing to be in short supply throughout the Bastion and indeed had been replaced with complacent, reasonable elves who did not complain that the work they’d been put to was beneath them or not in line with their own preferences. A truth borne out by reports from Tola and Méid which were short and asked her for nothing.
Síocháin was reading them as they had lunch. Soft-boiled eggs and roast goose with a soup of mushrooms and stuffing. The drippings from the goose had been made into a gravy and poured over the eggs and meat. A heavy meal which sat nicely in her stomach on a cold day. Her mood was the best she had remembered it in recent times.
Síocháin finished the papers and moved on to a few other things that had been left aside. “You have not chosen a Binse of Lands.”
“Hm.” Rianaire poked a piece of egg, swabbed it through the gravy and put it into her mouth. She spoke before she’d finished chewing it. “A traditional position. But there is use in it, I suppose. Unless I mean to work Tola to an early grave.”
Inney gave a sarcastic huff, focused otherwise on her food. “He’d likely thank you for it.”
“I’d rather have his ire and longevity than his thanks and a new Binseman who is more a bother.” Rianaire pushed the plate away, most of her food eaten. “Have a marmar sent off to Cnoclean and have them pull candidates. None from Cnoclean proper. That ought to rile that banshee they’ve put into Aerach’s place.”
Síocháin waved at one of the waiting attendants and they came to take a note from her. “It’s a wonder you allowed them to replace the Regent themselves.”
“An experiment. Admittedly a failed one.” Rianaire grabbed her wine and emptied the glass before placing it back to the table. An attendant girl hurried over to refill it. “At
