Magebane (67 page)

Falk, standing in a street of New Cabora that ended in the snow-drifted parkland surrounding the Lesser Barrier, watched yet another Commoner family being rousted out into the icy street, this one consisting of a young couple with two children, a wailing babe in arms and a small girl who clung to her blanket-wrapped father, silent and wide-eyed. The guards searched the tiny house with ruthless efficiency, overturning beds and tables, opening cupboards and dragging their contents onto the floor, thrusting spears into the attic through the thin plaster of the ceiling, ripping up floorboards. They were in and out in five minutes, leaving behind chaos and wreckage and the door hanging loose from one bent hinge, and moved on to the next. The young father gave Falk a look of pure hatred before taking his family back into the shattered remains of their home. Falk ignored it. The hatred of Commoners meant nothing to him. Finding Brenna was all that mattered.

They were moving rapidly through the city, but he was painfully aware that their quarry could have already fled ahead of them. He had sent men to guard all of the roads into and out of the city, but New Cabora, which sprawled four or five miles in every direction, did not have a wall, and so there was nothing to stop anyone from simply heading out into the prairie . . . nothing except for the winter cold itself.

Still, Mounted Rangers were patrolling the city's perimeter, and since neither Brenna nor the Prince were outfitted for or accustomed to the harsh realities of winter travel, Falk believed they would hide in the city instead of risking the open. But he could not be certain, and that uncertainty ate at him, driving him to periodically yell at the guards to move faster.

With speed came, of necessity, brutality, and it wasn't long before the first Commoner, bodily hurled from his home, clad only in a nightshirt, got to his feet with a scream of rage and charged at the guard who had manhandled him. The guard responded with a quick flick of his hand that hurled the man across the street with a flash of blue flame. The foolish Commoner hit the wall of the building opposite with a wet, crunching thud, blood spattered bricks and snow, and a naked corpse, nightshirt ignominiously twisted around its ruined head, slid to the ground and lay still.

It was the first corpse in the streets that night. It would not be the last.

And yet, three hours later, with half a dozen Commoners dead and a hundred Commoner homes and businesses left in near-ruins, no sign of the missing Heir and Prince had been found, and none of those questioned, no matter how thoroughly, had admitted to knowing anything about them.

Then, as the guards started down yet another street and the first doors on it were kicked open, a guard on horseback galloped up to Falk and reined his horse in sharply, its sides steaming and great clouds of vapor rising from its flaring nostrils. “A report, my lord,” the guard panted. “A Commoner near the Square, late home from a tavern. Saw three people, two large men, one a much smaller boy or woman, slip into the nightsoil collector's stable. Couldn't imagine why anyone would go into any place that vile, he said.”

“Was he sober?” Falk snapped.

“Sober enough by the time we started questioning him,” the guard said.

Falk turned in his saddle. “Call off the search!” he cried. “Captain Fedric, to me.”

Fedric shouted to his men to halt the search. Up and down the street the orders repeated. As some Commoners ran back into their houses and others farther up the street peered out of their doors with hope and relief plain on their faces, Falk ordered the captain to surround the nightsoil collector's establishment. “No one gets in or out,” he said.

“Understood,” Fedric said, and issued his orders.

Falk turned to the man who had brought him word of the sighting. “Take me there,” he said.

THE STREETS OF NEW CABORA WERE far from deserted this night, Anton realized as he moved the glasses back and forth across the approaching town. There were guards in the streets near the Palace, and one or two buildings seemed to be on fire, their smoke rising thicker and blacker than the moon-silvered smoke from the city's many chimneys. Here and there Anton glimpsed movement in open spaces, and, of course, he had no way of knowing what was happening in between the buildings where he could not see. Dogs seemed to be barking everywhere. Some of them were no doubt barking at the strange object in their sky, but anyone hearing them would surely think they were barking at the guards in the streets. They wouldn't look up. Why would they? Until very recently, there had been no possibility of anything being in the night sky but the moon, stars, and clouds.

He focused on what seemed to be the main locus of activity. The airship was drifting closer and closer, but also lower and lower, which in turn hid more and more of the streets behind the walls and roofs of buildings. But in an intersection he saw a man on horseback whose posture and bearing seemed familiar even without the binoculars. With them, there could be no doubt:

Lord Falk.

As he watched, another man on horseback galloped up and exchanged words with Falk. Falk, who had been sitting still, suddenly seemed galvanized, wheeling his horse, shouting something loudly enough that, though he couldn't make out the words, Anton heard a hint of the sound, two or three seconds later.

And then the guards began streaming through the streets.

Lower and lower Anton sank, closer and closer he drifted. He would have to make up his mind soon to either land in the Square or lift again and perhaps circle back. But that would take time, and setting off the burner and starting the propellers would announce his presence in a way Falk could not miss. And in the back of his mind, Anton couldn't help wondering just who it was Falk was searching for through the streets of New Cabora in the middle of the night. He wasn't privy to all the security concerns of someone in Falk's position, of course, but he could certainly think of one person Falk would turn out all the guard for.

Anton judged his rate of descent against the Square. He would make for it, he decided. He could abort his landing up until the very last moment. The night was still, and the airship silent. As he got closer, he might hear something that would confirm or deny his suspicion . . . if the damned dogs would shut up long enough . . . and then make a final decision.

The Square, still bordered mostly by crumbled ruins—the buildings Falk had singlehandedly destroyed, Anton remembered with a quiver of apprehension—slipped slowly toward him, growing larger and larger. A few blocks from it, a good two miles north of the Lesser Barrier and the bridge into the Palace, the guard had now formed a cordon around a nondescript building with a tall central chimney, and a lot of wagons drawn up around it.

I'll have to make my mind up within ten minutes
, Anton thought. He aimed his glasses at the gathered guards, and waited to see what would happen.

Brenna had begun the day well north of Berriton, spent most of it riding in the tense silence of Falk's magecarriage, been dragged socked-footed through the Lesser Barrier and into the snow, and now, in borrowed boots and cloak, had hurried through the streets of New Cabora to the one place that, for all her interest in the city during her previous visits, she had somehow never thought to ask to be taken to: the stable of the nightsoil collector.

The place didn't smell as bad as she feared, but she suspected that was due mostly to her good fortune—such as it was—to be making her visit in midwinter rather than in high summer.

Silent wagons stood around them now, still some hours from being harnessed to horses. They were black, to slip as unobtrusively as possible through the dark streets—and to hide any unattractive stains, no doubt. In the back of each were sealed wooden barrels, empty now. It occurred to Brenna that one way to sneak out of the city would be to ride inside one of those barrels, but the thought sent a shiver of disgust through her.

Fortunately, that was not what was planned. Vinthor took them down the line of wagons on one side of the huge echoing space in which they stood, a long, narrow building with the wagons at one end and stables for the horses at the other. After one brief whinny and a few snuffles, the animals had accepted their presence, and now stood silent and sleeping.

Behind the stable area was a chamber containing a furnace, used not to provide magical energy—this was a strictly Commoner enterprise—but to burn some of the refuse that a second fleet of wagons in another long stable on the other side of the furnace collected each evening. That which could not be burned or salvaged made its own journey, to a tip a mile or so east of the city.

The nightsoil went several miles farther, as a matter of good public hygiene, to a noisome pit where it was buried by Commoner laborers.
A horrible job
, she thought,
but they're probably glad to get it. At least there they work for Commoners instead of Mageborn.

Vinthor halted behind a wagon that appeared exactly the same as all the others to Brenna's tired eyes. “Help me,” he said to Karl, and together they lifted down the empty barrels. Vinthor reached underneath the wagon and pulled or twisted something that made a loud click. Then he put his hand underneath the wagon's back end and lifted.

The floorboards, hinged at the front, raised to reveal a space swathed with sacking, just deep enough for someone—provided they didn't have a large belly or breasts, Brenna thought in horror—to lie in. “We'll smother!”

“No, you won't,” Vinthor said shortly. “I've ridden in these myself. It's not pleasant, but it certainly isn't fatal.” He looked around. “The night watchman is a Causer. And we'll need him to seal us in. But I haven't seen him since we entered.”

Brenna peered around in the darkness. The only light came from a couple of lanterns in the central space between the wagons and the stable, and two more at the other end, one on either side of the big double doors that would swing open to let the wagons exit. Nothing moved in the gloom, but down in the stable, a horse stamped its foot and whinnied. As though that were a signal, all of the horses suddenly became restless, shifting in their stables, making loud snorting noises. Another horse whinnied, a shrill cry of challenge . . .

. . . and from outside the stable, that cry was answered.

Vinthor whirled at the sound. “Someone's outside!” he said. “I'll—”

Whatever he would do was lost in a huge, splintering bang as the double doors blew inward, hurtling through the air like fallen leaves caught in an autumn gale. One door crashed into the wagons on the far side of the stable, snapping the axle of one and bringing it thudding to the ground in a cloud of dust. The other skidded down the center of the wagonry. Karl and Brenna were beside the wagon with the false floor and thus out of its path, but Vinthor wasn't so lucky.