Petrodor: A Trial of Blood and Steel, Book 2 (57 page)

“Good,” she said.

Arele pulled the rope. Rhillian ran to a side window this time and peered
out in time to see the flaming projectile strike the house wall to the downhill side of the catapult. Flames erupted, and perhaps thirty men disappeared in that terrible glare, a sea of fending arms and desperate dives for cover. But the flames roared mostly past the catapult, decimating the crowd to one side and behind, but barely singeing the artillery men. And now, those men were lighting a flame of their own.

“Artillery!” Rhillian yelled at the top of her lungs. Fire flared on the end of the catapult arm, and then the arm unwound with a rush. The projectile arced toward them, burning against the dull grey sky. Falling short, Rhillian saw, with satisfaction.

“Come on, reload!” she called to Arele and Calia, who were already doing so. “We'll get one more shot at—”

A mighty flash of flame cut her short, roaring up from the courtyard below. She ducked low, feeling the heat of the rising fireball through the open windows. From the streets beyond, the mob roared its bloodthirsty approval. As the heat died, Rhillian risked a stare down at the courtyard gardens below. They were a mess, bushes and trees ablaze, flowers withering in the heat, and smoke rising everywhere. Another roar, and the mob were charging once more; only this time, she could barely see them come. Again, a storm of serrin arrows resumed from the Palopy rooftop, now a question of aiming and hoping. Many would hit, no doubt, but now the mob had a chance.

Rhillian slammed the shutters closed once more.

“Where did a ragged mob of crazed worshippers acquire serrin oils in that quantity?” Arele muttered as he worked, a new urgency in his hands.

“I don't think it was serrin oil,” Rhillian said grimly, running to the back of the ballista and working the winch herself. “The colour was different. I think they made this themselves.”

“Errollyn warned of this day,” Calia said quietly. “He warned that one day humans would match us in our crafts.”

Rhillian gritted her teeth and winched fast. She could hear new shouts from above, dim though they were above the howls of the crowd at the wall and the resumed hammering at the gate. She finished the winching, and dashed from the room, up the hallway stairs, and up in a crouch on the rooftop. Acrid smoke darkened the air, and there was a foul smell to every breath. Serrin, carrying buckets, dashed behind the
talmaad
at the firing wall, keeping low as occasional return fire still flew from Armadi House. They were dashing west, upslope…Rhillian looked that way and stared.

Bottles, burning at one end, were falling from the top of the western cliff face. As they hit the flat, tiled roof, they broke, and burst into flame. Already there were lakes of flame burning across the western Palopy roof. The property
above was that of Family Gershelden…an old Ameryn Family, and allies to Family Maerler. She had not expected treachery from that quarter. But loyalty to Maerler, of course, did not necessarily dictate complete obedience. There seemed no end to the steady fall of bottles.

Talmaad
threw buckets of water on the fires, yet the flames clung with unnatural persistence. More were erupting every moment. Tiles would crack with prolonged heat. Roof beams beneath would burn. If not extinguished, the roof would collapse and the fire would spread below. She could move
talmaad
from the firing wall to help extinguish the flames, but every archer was needed or the wall would fall. There was so much smoke now in the air that some of the mob could possibly scale the wall without being seen and open the gate from the inside. She had forty
talmaad
in Palopy, and thirty human staff, most of whom weren't much in a fight…that seemed short-sighted now. But hiring cripples and other unwanteds had won them such goodwill from their families. Had she been wrong to continue the policy? What good had goodwill done them? Who amongst the locals would rise to save them now?

Aisha could smell smoke on the wind as she ran, ducking fast along a winding alley. She was south of Sharptooth. Above her The Crack ran upslope toward the high Petrodor Ridge. She caught glimpses of grand mansions lining The Crack as the slope began to rise, a ridge intersecting the Petrodor Incline. She paused only to listen at the way ahead and avoid the mobs. The roads were swelled with armed men, mostly Riversiders to look at them, but not always. Saalshen's properties were ablaze from one end of Petrodor to the other. She had caught a glimpse of the roads around the old Saalshen house of Tiraen—heard the furious chanting of a thousand angry voices, a song from her darkest nightmares come to life. All the smaller Saalshen properties had been abandoned to the defence of Tiraen, Palopy, Cresfel and Edana. All the
talmaad
of Petrodor defended those four properties now. Now, she doubted that all the
talmaad
in Petrodor would be enough.

Her breath came desperately hard, and her legs cried protest at the sight of a new slope rising before her, but she could not have stopped if all the elders of Saalshen had demanded it. Terror drove her, and picked her back up after she missed a step and fell. She dashed across the next winding road, and ran along the shadow of a wall until she found a new alley entrance and darted within.

Before Tiraen, she'd stopped at House Berendani, one of Maerler's main allies.
There she had met not Patachi Berendani himself, nor one of his sons, but a common soldier. Her pleas had fallen on deaf ears. No Berendani soldier would move against the mobs, he'd said, with stony formality. The mobs marched in the name of the archbishop. They wielded the Verenthane star. No Berendani man would stand against the will of the people of Petrodor and their gods. Saalshen, alliance or no alliance, was on its own.

They'd lost, Aisha realised, as she panted up the steepening slope. Two hundred years of Saalshen's presence in Petrodor was at an end. This game of powerful houses had been just that—a game, until someone had invoked religion. There, the game of calculation had ended. Now it was a rabid, mad orgy of violence that threatened to destroy everything, friend and ally alike. No wonder the patachis all retreated into their mansions and locked the gates. No patachi could withstand power like this. The archbishop had shown them all their place. The archbishop's weapons were not elegant, but they could crush everything and everyone, if he chose. Now, they all learned.

Patachi Maerler was her final hope. The Nasi-Keth were confined to Dockside, well aware that they would be next once the serrin were dealt with. They would be barricading Dockside for the attack that would follow, the attack that she knew the archbishop, and some others, had been urging Patachi Steiner to make for some time. Patachi Steiner had sensibly refused, and now events propelled the archbishop to mobilise his ragged army of the faithful to reclaim what had been displaced by the previous political games. The Docksiders stood a far better chance than did Saalshen's properties, that was certain. If she could not convince Patachi Maerler himself to help, then Saalshen would soon be receiving news that its entire Petrodor
talmaad
was dead. A slaughter to foreshadow the slaughter in the Saalshen Bacosh…and then, perhaps, within the borders of Saalshen itself.

She came upon a pair of dead men in the alley, recently killed. One had been cut nearly in half by a single stroke. Riversiders for certain, Aisha saw, leaping quickly over the vast pool of blood. They had that raggedy, unwashed look about them, even in death. And slope-dwelling locals avoided these alleys for a reason; at least it seemed there were still some other nightwraiths out on this grim afternoon.

Ahead, the slope became a cliff, rising like a single, yellow tooth from the harbour. Aisha stopped and counted the pyres of smoke across southern Petrodor. She counted nine. There were ten Saalshen properties south of Sharptooth. Tiraen, she guessed, was the last one left. Below were the many ships docked at the port of Angel Bay. Here, below the looming cliffs of Sharptooth, smaller trails of smoke made a black smudge against the ocean. Even in calamity, the funeral pyres burned. The dead waited for no one.

The last lane along The Crack emerged onto the road to Maerler Mansion. It was a dead end, well chosen and well exploited—a single, narrow road overlooked by the walls and archery positions of friendly houses. Any large force advancing this way would be annihilated one piece at a time. Whenever Aisha had visited before, she'd come the back way, up the passage from the base of Sharptooth cliff, but if she took that route today, Palopy and Tiraen could easily fall before she reached Patachi Maerler.

She took a deep breath and emerged from the lane mouth. Atop the walls, men with crossbows manned battlements not unlike the old castles of Enora. Aisha saw their weapons pointed down at her and wondered if she should say a prayer. Papa had. Mother had never entirely swayed Papa from his Verenthane beliefs, although she had tried. Helen hadn't thought that fair, and they'd argued.

Serrin were supposed to be completely accepting of human faith, Helen had said. Mother wasn't doing that. Mama had replied that she had no problem with Papa's faith, but as serrin, she would challenge any inconsistency that troubled her. To which Helen had accused her of completely misunderstanding the nature of human faith. To be faithful, she'd insisted, was not to question, but to accept. Mama hadn't liked that, and the argument had gone on long past dinner, until the coals had begun to dim on the fire grill, and Papa had gone off to bed. Papa had never been interested in such debates. He worked his lands, and if it did not help with farming, Papa wasn't interested. That, ironically, was why Mama had fallen in love with him in the first place. Mama said that he listened to the music of his own soul.

Approaching the Maerler gate, Aisha realised that she did not need to pray. If she were about to die, impaled by human arrows far from home, she would die with thoughts of her family in her mind, and love for them and her fellow
talmaad
in her heart.

The grille on a small side gate slid open before she could knock. “If I let you in,” a low voice growled, “Patachi Maerler will have your hide. You're supposed to use the
other
gate, serrin.”

“If you don't let me in,” Aisha replied, “it's unlikely my hide will last the day regardless.” Silence beyond the grille, then a muttered conferring. “No one saw me come, except your loyal allies here.” She jerked her head back along the street. “But you can trust them not to tell who's been visiting you, surely?”

The gate squealed open and Aisha slid within. Immediately opposite was a second gate, from which came the sound of many bars being released. Soldiers opened the inner gate, and Aisha entered onto a stone walk between gardens of carefully raked gravel. Above loomed the great limestone face of Maerler Mansion.

More soldiers at the huge main doors swung them open as Aisha trotted up several flagstone steps, beneath huge, square pillars made from piled granite pieces and mortar. Whatever Maerler's claims of greater sophistication than their Steiner enemies, there was little sophistication about the mansion's exterior. While Steiner Mansion was reputed to be a pleasure palace, this was a fortress pure and simple.

Within the main doors, however, the effect lightened. Guards escorted Aisha along the grand central hall, where chandeliers shone light on tapestries and paintings.

The hall opened into a great circle, above which towered a perfect dome. More guards, and hurrying servants passing. From somewhere distant, echoing through the halls, the sound of raised voices. Aisha strained her ears as she followed the guards but could not make out the words.

“Wait in here,” said a guard, opening a door. She found herself in a sitting room, with two tall windows overlooking the sea. She walked across, as the door shut behind, and gazed out at the view. Below, there was nothing but ocean, the mansion walls making a sheer drop. Here below to the right, Angel Bay, the funeral pyres and the docks. The docks, at least, looked empty, many tall ships abandoned in their bays, and the decking cleared of merchandise. Beyond was mostly warehouses. The Southern Stack had never allowed many dockworkers and fisher folk to set up house directly beside the water, and so the docks culture had never truly developed south of Sharptooth. Thus, the Nasi-Keth held far less influence there. In the south, people were more conservative, and the families still ruled the poor folk's loyalties. Perhaps if Sharptooth had not divided those people from the north, there would have been more ideas exchanged, and things would be different. Geography was destiny, it seemed. Amongst humans, anyhow.

Her eyes moved to Alaster Promontory beyond, and the waves heaving against its rocky shield. Then across the teeming slope to the many fires. She could see Tiraen from here, one large mansion, though small at this distance. Nothing looked amiss, as surrounding buildings blocked all view of the roads. Nothing seemed to be burning, yet.

To help relieve the cold tension twisting her stomach, Aisha tried the adjoining door, but found it locked. She paced for a while, then went back to the windows. She should have been back there, fighting with her friends. She had never felt so helpless.