“Careful what you wish for, Swordslinger. Spirits can be as much trouble as help, no matter what the legends say.”
We soon arrived at the top of the stairs. We carried the supplies into the temple and up to the kitchens above the main chapel. Tahlis took charge of where things were put away, while Kumi starting making plans for a meal, then setting members of our band to work carrying those plans out.
The grim reality of the day faded as we settled into the comforting routines of cooking. Washing and chopping vegetables, preparing meat, mixing marinades; it was all simple yet distracting, a focus for body and for mind. I sliced carrots and peppers alongside Zedal to the sound of oil hissing as Kumi fried bean curd behind us.
Zedal pushed away a bowl of shredded greens.“What next?”
“Crush the garlic, please,” Kumi said.
“Okay, but that’s not what I meant.” Zedal started peeling garlic cloves, but her attention was on me. “I meant what now in our struggle against the cult?”
Around the room, eyes turned to me. For my part, I looked over at Ganyir, who stood to one side, looking lost amid the domestic activity. As the son and heir of a great lord, he probably hadn’t needed to cook for himself growing up, or ever been part of making a meal that wasn’t roasting meat over a fire in the camp of a campaigning army. All the bustle of preparation, into which the rest of us fell with ease and varying levels of skill, was alien to him.
That was fine. I didn’t need him to be a chef right now, I needed him to be a general.
“The army we defeated today,” I said. “Was that a large part of what they have?”
“Large enough,” Ganyir said. “It will be a significant setback, enough to throw them into retreat, for a while at least.”
“They’ll be vulnerable?”
“Potentially, yes. But they have the fortress on their side.”
“Tahlis mentioned the fortress, and I think we saw it when we first arrived. Is that where the army is based, or the guild, or both?”
“The fortress is the safest place in Gonki, our last bastion in times of trouble. When our lands have been invaded or overrun by monsters, we could always retreat there for safety. It was how the clan survived many of its darkest hours.”
“And when it’s not providing a refuge?”
“Sometimes a barracks, sometimes a prison, often both. There are cells in the darkness below, and rooms where an army can rest for a while in the fortress itself.”
“Is that where we’ll find Saruqin?”
“Probably not. The province is run from the city, so that’s where he’ll need to be.”
I turned this over in my mind. Tahlis’ talk of uniforms and the fortress had sown a seed in my mind, but I wasn’t sure what I was doing with it yet.
“Did any of the army get away?” I asked.
“No,” Tahlis said. “They were committed to their cause, right to the end.”
“So, the people in the fortress and the city won’t know what happened yet?”
“That depends upon who Mahrai talks to and what she says,” Tahlis said.
“Except that Mahrai didn’t stick around for the fight,” I said. “As far as she knows, we were outnumbered and about to be slaughtered.”
“Now, that’s something we can use,” Ganyir said.
The conversation moved on to practicalities of cooking and setting the table. Soon, we had great heaps of food in front of us: stir-fried vegetables, piles of noodles, strips of spiced meat, and bean curd. Ganyir led us in a brief prayer to the Earth Spirit before we set to eating.
It had been one of those days when action kept me from realizing how hungry I was, and it was only as I filled my bowl that I felt the desperate rumbling of my stomach. My mouth watered so hard, I was almost drooling as I got the first of the food into my mouth.
Everyone else clearly felt the same, as the table fell silent for a good five minutes while we plowed through our meals. As people reached for seconds, the frantic pace slowed, and we started talking again. Tahlis told a story about when he’d first joined the Steadfast Horn Guild after living for years alone in the desert. As a teacher, he had been expected to set an example, but he hadn’t known about the manners expected of senior guild members at meals. He’d eaten a special dish intended for the guildmaster, poured savory sauce over his dessert, and shocked the other teachers by throwing a fish ball to get someone’s attention. The staff had been appalled, the students delighted, and it had set the tone for his time in the guild.
The end of the story was accompanied by laughter and smiles. People turned to each other and shared stories about things that had happened to them during training. It became just one more meal with friends.
I got up to fetch a jug of water and used my return as an excuse to reposition myself so that I sat between Ganyir and Tahlis.
“We need to talk plans,” I said quietly, not wanting to disrupt the convivial atmosphere.
Ganyir’s expression was always serious, while Tahlis’s was always flippant, and so, they showed no sign to the room that we weren’t still relaxing with the rest.
“I assume you have something?” Tahlis said. “Or is the mighty Swordslinger going to rely on us mere mortals?”
“I have a plan,” I said. “Let me know if you think it will work.”
“Let’s hear it,” Ganyir said.
“The priests of the Unswerving Shadows will be expecting the army to return with good news. The last they knew, that force was preparing to attack us here in the temple, and it could easily have taken days for them to win. They won’t know that anything is amiss yet.”
“What do you propose, then?” Tahlis asked, serious for once.
“We make the most of that,” I replied. “We have many uniforms of city guardsmen just lying out there
