Chapter 14

We were faced with two choices: try to figure out where Lady Flir would strike next and meet her there, or go to the source to learn how best to thwart her plans.

There were downsides to both plans. If we went after Flir directly, we had about a one in seven chance of finding the right target. That also assumed that she went for an obvious target. After attacking Galoch, there was a decent chance she’d obfuscate again. That trebled the possibilities, and left picking the right target down to random chance.

If we went to Pesden, we could narrow down the list of targets she would absolutely need to hit, pick our spot, and prepare. We would also lose another month and a half getting to him, and as much as a month traveling to meet Flir.

In the end, we decided we needed to know more.

For now, time was on our side. Flir hadn’t actually destroyed any keystones yet, or the Crown would have pulled out all the stops. If my math was correct, she was well short of the number she needed to induce a resonance cascade. Destroying three keystones would be a problem, but she needed at least ten to free the key line, and they had to be destroyed within seconds of each other to set up the resonance.

A campaign like that would take years, maybe decades. Granted, she had time. Her leaders were all fairly young, and elves aged far more slowly than humans. She would see her thousandth year before a gray hair. She could play the long game.

If she could play the long game, so could we.

Assuming we made it out of Sawa unmolested.

“Papers.”

The watchman had the bored look of a trained killer who’d rather be anywhere else, doing literally anything else, than guarding a gate. He eyed my musket with calculated disdain. Swordsmen often did.

I kept my expression equally bored. He was looking for signs of agitation. I gave him none. Instead, I handed over the papers Lugar forged for us without a word.

The watchman looked them over, then looked Kaze and I over. His eyes stopped when he saw her knives. It was warm out, so she had her cloak stuffed into her bag.

No swordsman wants to tangle with a knife witch. There are cleaner ways to commit suicide. Less painful, too.

“Gods, but you two make a pair;” he said. “Destination?”

“Herage,” I lied. No point in letting our enemies beat us to the finish line.

“Better them than me,” he muttered. “Gods be with you, travelers.”

“And you, sir,” Kaze said, nodding. “May the light of Soeh guide your path.”

“Now I’ve seen it all. Bloody catfolk finding religion…”

I half-led, half-dragged Kaze from the gatehouse before she could ask the guard to expound on his opinions of catfolk. He was rude, not to mention racist, but we had a ways to go if we wanted to clear the city’s outskirts before nightfall. Getting arrested would slow us down too much.

The inner city was ringed by high walls, some twenty meters high and ten meters thick. They were built before the Schism, when coastal raids were far more common. Everyone who wanted to enter the heartland from the docks had to cross through the citadel. That meant passing through checkpoints. Anyone caught trying to evade them was automatically assumed to be guilty and hanged outside the nearest checkpoint as a warning to others. If they were very lucky, the noose went around their neck.

We were pretty sure the watchmen wouldn’t give us too much trouble. Professionals knew the difference between enforcing the law and courting mass destruction. Even if our wanted posters were hanging in the gatehouse, they wouldn’t risk a brawl inside the citadel.

The slums that surrounded the city proper were another story altogether. The nobles conspired to burn them down a few times a decade. Each time, they built back. If we had a price on our heads, they wouldn’t think twice about setting an ambush out here.

The timbre of the crowd noise changed completely as soon as we cleared the gate. Beggars lined the streets, crying out for alms. A good chunk of them were beastfolk or halfbreeds, denied a chance at life in the city by their blood.

Kaze hissed at an orphan who tried to pick her pocket. Boy or girl, it was impossible to tell. They were too filthy and skinny to tell, the putrid rags that clung to their emaciated frame stinking like piss.

I “dropped” a copper at the child’s feet as we passed. Any more and they risked a beating from their fellow urchins.

“This is why I followed Lady Flir,” Kaze growled. “That the Crown allows such horrid poverty in one of its richest cities is disgraceful.”

“It’s not the principle I disagree with,” I replied, my voice pitched to her ears alone.

“What would it take to add regime change to your to-do list?”

“An army or three. I’m good, but I’m not that good.”

“Bah. You lack ambition.”

Truth be told, I had tentative plans to put a bullet through the king’s skull. What I lacked was a means to shape the chaos that would follow into something productive. The Schism taught me what happens when tyrants are deposed without a replacement waiting in the wings. That wasn’t a mistake I intended to make twice.

Gradually, the slums grew less dense. Hovels stopped butting up against each other. Plots of land large enough to support gardens popped up. By supper time, the air no longer smelled of sewage.

Kaze and I ate on the march, chewing strips of jerky layered between flatbread, with the occasional sip of watered wine to wash it down. Between the salt and the bone-dry bread, I would have gladly drained my wine skin. There was no telling when we could get a refill, though, and neither of us trusted the water so close to a city.

As night fell, the hovels started to look more like houses, spread out far enough that neighbors couldn’t look into each other's windows without trespassing.

“There should be an inn a few kilometers up the road,” I said. “Want to try for it, or would you rather make camp?”

“Camp. I’ve had my fill of inns for the time being.”

There was a copse of trees a little ways off the road that didn’t seem to belong to anyone in particular. I set out some tripwires while Kaze made camp. No mines this time, just some noisemakers to alert us to anyone trying to be sneaky. I didn’t want to obliterate some poor farm dog just trying to do its job.

Kaze was already in bed by the time I got back. I settled down and tried to quiet my mind.

“Garan?”

I sighed. So much for that plan.

“Yeah?”

“How could anyone let their fellows live like that?”

“That can’t have been your first time seeing slums.”

“No, but…no one in Lady Flir’s camp was worth asking.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” I said. “The folks in the slums could probably lift each other up if they worked together, but they can’t see past their own misery. The people on the other side of the wall could always share, but they can’t help everyone if they want to keep food on their own table. The rich bastards with the money and power to fix it are more worried about other rich bastards. Whole system is rotten from top to bottom, but you can’t just burn it down. What follows is worse. Trust me, I’ve seen it.”

“Ray of sunshine, you are not.”

“Just being honest.”

“You make it sound like there’s no point in trying to fix anything.”

“Nah. There’s a way. Either of us could cut the head off the snake if we set our minds to it. What comes after is the hard part. Building something better, it’s too much for one set of hands. You need to convince thousands of people you’ve never met that it’s worth the effort. I couldn’t do it. Could you?”

“I won’t know if I don’t try.”

I reached over and scratched her behind the ears.

“Tell you what,” I said. “Once Lady Flir is dead, and we don’t have to contend with the end of the world, you put the pieces together. When you’re ready, I’ll cut the head off the snake. How’s that?”

She leaned into the scratches.

“I’ll hold you to that,” she warned.

“I hope you do.”