They'll get a notion to start looking for secret Deve treasure in a minute. Then we'll have them.'
The families and their most precious possessions had moved into the tunnels and cellars undermining the quarter. If complete disaster befell, there was an evacuation tunnel running under Sonsa's south wall. Though Else was not supposed to know about that, or several other tunnels leading out of the quarter. The younger Deves often forgot to speak Melhaic when he was around.
Else had done his best on behalf of the resistance because any success might inspire Devedians elsewhere. If Sublime was busy suppressing minorities at home he might not have time to look to the east.
'Here's the man we're waiting for.'
A tall man well-wrapped in black appeared. This was the taller of the two who had come over aboard Vivia Infanti. The one Else had attacked. He seemed in surprisingly good health.
'Stand by,' Else cautioned. 'He'll use his powers to see what became of the people who should be here.'
There was some truth to the rumor that old Deves were sorcerers. Not all of them, just a few. About as many as in any similarly sized group of old people. Those with that dollop of talent had been tasked with masking the hiding places of the women and children.
A number of obvious hiding places had been singled out for the opposite effect
The tall Brother moved toward Else's hiding place suddenly, swiftly, sensing something. 'Match! Now!' Else said. He held the firepowder weapon on target. The sorcerer broke into a sprint.
The match man did his job.
There was a thunderous boom and a great cloud of sulfurous smoke. When the smoke cleared the Brother was sprawled on the cobbled street, ten feet back of where he had been when the weapon discharged, pierced through the heart by a silver ball, dead before he hit me ground.
The explosion was the signal hidden Devedian fighters were awaiting.
They made themselves known from the roofs, with a surprise rain of death directed mainly at the Brotherhood of War.
Men shouted orders to put all torches out.
Men shouted orders to belay those orders.
Devedian fighters emerged from the narrow byways, struck, faded away. Snipers up high continued to deliver misery to the intruders.
Else barked and swore at the men working the firepowder weapon. He wanted the weapon ready in case the older Brotherhood witchman turned up. But, even with three men working, it took five minutes to swab the fire tube and repack it with powder, wads, primer, iron pellets, and the silver scrap that was all skinflint Stewpo was willing to provide for a second firing.
It grew quiet outside. The Deve fighters faded away, taking their injured. They let the raiders remove their own casualties. Hope remained that it might be possible to get through this without alienating the Three Families.
'Outlander!' one of Else's team barked. 'Here comes the other one.'
Else elbowed his way to the window slit.
The mystery man from Vivia Infanti arrived shouting. Like whipped dogs the Household troops returned and began to creep off into the tight alleys and streets of the Devedian quarter.
The Brotherhood sorcerer spotted his fallen henchman. He studied the surrounding night as he edged toward the dead man. But he became so distressed that he failed to remain sufficiently alert
One of the crossbow bolts whizzing around caught a nip of flesh.
He let out a roar driven more by emotional pain than the sting of his wound. Then he began to cast a spell that had been prepared in advance.
That would be something meant to blind or disarm the snipers. Otherwise, he would suffer an endless shower of missiles. The spell would effect his own men, too. But he would not be worried about them.
'This isn't good,' Else said as soon as he recognized what was happening. 'Not good at all. Do we have any cold water handy? Do we have rags we can soak?'
His assistants wanted to know why that mattered.
'Because we've got a ferromage on our hands. This tube is going to get too hot to handle. Maybe even hot enough to set off the firepowder inside. If that happens, the weapon is useless. And we'll be dead.'
The sorcerer did them a favor, though.
While his magic was still growing, while his surviving Brotherhood henchmen were bringing out weapons made of wood or glass, he seemed to sense the source of, if not the cause of, his apprentice's misfortune.
He uttered another thunderous cry and headed toward Else and his team.
Else aimed desperately, the tube not yet too hot to rest atop his shoulder. 'Match man! Match man!'
He heard the firepowder hiss in the primer pan. The Brotherhood sorcerer seemed to hear it, too, because he made a sudden, violent effort to stop.
The firepowder exploded. Silver scrap and iron sand spewed into the night. Impact laid the Brotherhood sorcerer out in the air and flung him backward.
Something hit Else from behind, violently.
Else was out only momentarily. He recovered consciousness, found the cellar filled with smoke. It stank of spent firepowder, with a taint of smoldering timber.
The firepowder tube had exploded. He was still alive only because the match man had absorbed the blast. The Deve's blood was all over him now.
Else tried to look outside again. The view was inadequate. The target was down but did not seem mortally injured. The surviving Brotherhood soldiers were dragging him away.
The smell of wood smoke grew stronger.
It was time to find somewhere else to be. There was a whole cask of firepowder somewhere in the darkened cellar, along with all the brave, dead young Deves.
His every breath no longer monitored, Else seized the opportunity to serve his God, Dreanger, and the Sha- lug elsewhere. He abandoned the Devedian quarter by means of a deep, wet tunnel that led not to the country outside the city wall — that one would be crowded and well-guarded — but to a crypt in a mausoleum in the cathedral cemetery a hundred yards northeast of the Devedian quarter wall.
The existence of the tunnel was one of those secrets Else picked up when young fighters had not paid attention to what they were saying.
Despite the tumult in the Devedian quarter the rest of Sonsa was enjoying a quiet summer night. No moon interfered with the view of the sea of stars. A few belated fireflies still sparked among the tombstones and memorials. Neither the dead nor the living nor the Instrumentalities of the Night seemed interested in the progress of one filthy fugitive armed with a long knife and a short iron bar he had picked up during his flight.
Smoke and firelight rose above the Devedian quarter. The keg of firepowder had gone up while Else was in the tunnel. Household troops and Devedian fighters now worked shoulder to shoulder to stifle the flames.
Else took advantage of the opportunity offered by Fate's indifference. He looked for his other Sonsan contact, wishing he had sought this one first. He could have avoided all that Devedian unpleasantness. By now he could be in Brothe, employed in the Patriarch's armies. All unaware of the fact that Deve spies had penetrated the Palace of the Kings.
Rumor said the Patriarch was assembling an army to conquer Calzir. Or it might be the Emperor. Whichever, evidently, there were few takers. The campaign, if ever it materialized, would be extremely arduous while offering private soldiers little hope of plunder. Calzir was poor, agricultural, a bitter place to live. For two thousand years not much had changed there but the names of the masters.
An old joke said that Chaldareans and Pramans fought a war with Calzir at stake and the Pramans lost.
Calzir, though, did have considerable strategic significance. It bestrode the horn of Firaldia and the huge island of Shippen, gazing out at the slim waist of the Mother Sea. And it provided a Praman bridgehead on the Firaldian peninsula.
Else passed by four times before he discovered the cast bronze leopard that identified the home he sought. The leopard was no bigger than a house cat. It did not stand out. He had anticipated something more dramatic.
