CHAPTER 30

‘I don’t know how they did it, Sparhawk,’ Caalador replied with a dark scowl. ‘Krager himself hasn’t been seen for days. He’s a slippery one, isn’t he?’ Caalador had come in from the city and located Sparhawk on the parapet.

‘That he is, my friend. What about the others? I wouldn’t have thought that Elron could have managed something like that.’

‘Neither would I. He was doing everything but wearing a sign reading “conspirator” on his forehead – all that swirling of his cape and exaggerated tip-toeing through back alleys.’ Caalador shook his head. ‘Anyway, he was staying in the house of a local Edomish nobleman. We know he was inside, because we watched him go in through the front door. We were watching every single door and window, so we know he didn’t come back out, but he wasn’t inside when we went to pick him up.’

There was a crash from a nearby palace as the Atans broke in the doors to get at the rebels hiding inside.

‘Did your people check the house for hidden rooms or passages?’ Sparhawk asked.

Caalador shook his head. ‘They stood the Edomish noble barefoot in a brazier of hot coals instead. It’s faster that way. There was no place to hide in that house. I’m sorry, Sparhawk. We picked up all the second-raters without a hitch, but the leaders –’ He spread his hands helplessly.

‘Somebody was probably using magic. They’ve done it before.’

‘Can you really do that sort of thing with magic?’

‘I can’t, but I’m sure Sephrenia knows the proper spells.’

Caalador looked out over the battlements. ‘Well, at least we broke up this attack on the government. That’s the main thing.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ Sparhawk disagreed.

‘It was fairly important, Sparhawk. If they’d succeeded, all of Tamuli would have flown apart. As soon as the Atans finish mopping up, we’ll be able to start questioning survivors – and those underlings we did manage to catch. They might be able to direct us to the important plotters.’

‘I sort of doubt it. Krager’s very good at this sort of thing. I think we’ll find that the underlings don’t actually have a lot of information. It’s a shame. I really wanted to have a little talk with Krager.’

‘You always get that tone of voice when you talk about him.’ Caalador observed. ‘Is there something personal between you two?’

‘Oh, yes, and it goes back a long, long ways. I’ve missed any number of opportunities to kill him – usually because it wasn’t convenient. I was usually too busy concentrating on the man who employed him, and that may have been a mistake. Krager always makes sure that he’s got just enough information to make him too valuable to kill. The next time I come across him, I think I’ll just ignore that.’

The Atans were efficiency personified as they rounded up the rebels. They offered the armed insurgents one opportunity to surrender each time they surrounded a group, and they didn’t ask twice. By two hours past midnight, the imperial compound was quiet again. A few Atan patrols searched the grounds and buildings for any rebels who might have gone into hiding, but there was little in the way of significant activity.

Sparhawk was bone-tired. Though he had not physically participated in the suppression of the rebellion, the tension had exhausted him more than a two-hour battle might have. He stood on the parapet looking wearily down into the compound, watching without much interest as the grounds-keepers, who had been pressed into service for the unpleasant task, cringingly pulled the floating dead out of the moat.

‘Why don’t you go to bed, Sparhawk?’ It was Khalad. His bare, heavy shoulders gleamed in the torchlight. His voice and appearance and brusque manner were so much like his father’s that Sparhawk once again felt that brief, renewed pang of sorrow.

‘I just want to be sure that there won’t be any bodies left floating in the moat when my wife wakes up tomorrow morning. People who’ve been burned to death aren’t very pretty.’

‘I’ll take care of that. Let’s go to the bath-house. I’ll help you out of your armour, and you can soak in a tub of hot water for a while.’

‘I didn’t really exert myself very much this evening, Khalad. I didn’t even work up a sweat.’

‘You don’t have to. That smell’s so ingrained into your armour that five minutes after you put it on, you smell as if you haven’t bathed for a month.’

‘It’s one of the drawbacks of the profession. Are you sure you want to be a knight?’

‘It wasn’t my idea in the first place.’

‘Maybe when this is all over, the world will settle down enough so that there won’t be any need for armoured knights any more.’

‘Of course, and maybe someday fish will fly too.’

‘You’re a cynic, Khalad.’

‘What is he doing up there?’ Khalad demanded irritably, looking up toward the towers soaring over the castle.

‘Who’s doing what where?’

‘There’s somebody up in the very top of that south tower. This is the fourth time I’ve caught a flicker of candle-light through that window.’

‘Maybe Tynian or Bevier put one of their knights up there to keep watch,’ Sparhawk shrugged.

‘Without telling you? Or Lord Vanion?’

‘If it worries you so much, let’s go take a look.’

‘You don’t sound very concerned.’

‘I’m not. This castle’s absolutely secure, Khalad.’

‘I’ll go have a look after I get you ready for bed.’

‘No, I’ll go along.’

‘I thought you were certain that the castle’s secure.’

‘It never hurts to be careful. I don’t want to have to tell your mothers that I made a mistake and got you killed.’

They went down from the battlements, crossed the courtyard and went into the main building.

There were loud snores coming from behind the bolted door of the main dining hall. ‘I’d imagine that there are going to be some monumental headaches emerging from that room in the morning,’ Khalad laughed.

‘We didn’t force our guests to drink so much.’

‘They’ll accuse us of it, though.’

They started up the stairway that led to the top of the south tower. Although the main tower and the north tower had been constructed in the usual fashion with rooms stacked atop each other, the south tower was little more than a hollow shell with a wooden stairway rising up through a creaking scaffolding. The architect had evidently added this structure primarily for the purposes of symmetry. The single room in the entire tower was at the very top, a room floored with wooden beams roughly adzed square.