The Way Into Chaos (25 page)

Cazia felt almost reassured to see the princess take over. “I’ve never done this,” she said, afraid the younger girl would mock her.
This one is not highborn or necessary, is she?
“I’ve never gone into the wilderness without an armed guard.”

Vilavivianna strapped a long knife to her belt beside her other two. On her, it looked like a short sword. “Good. You have saved my life here in this fort, and you have done everything for us with your magic. When we get beyond the walls, I will have a chance to repay your valor.”

The word
valor
shocked Cazia. Valor? All she could remember was the uncontrollable anger she felt as she slapped the girl’s face like a bully, her cry of surprise when Vilavivianna spoke up from between the cabinets, and her flinches.
 

Her expression must have showed her confusion, because the princess said, “Have I offended you again?”

“No. Not at all. Thank you.”

The little girl nodded. “I have not seen armor.”
 

She was right. What was the point of an armory if there was no armor? They peered around the room. Racks of spears and knives, jars of oil, cloaks, a whole wall of shields... Why was that tapestry there?

The tapestry concealed an unbarred door, and they found armor behind it. Cazia had to cast a second light spell in this smaller room. There were three rows of iron cuirasses along one wall and four racks of iron greaves on the other.
 

“Tyr of the Sleeping Earth,” Vilavivianna said, her hands opening and closing. “So much iron, just sitting here.”

Cazia almost said,
We’re not going to steal from the fort,
but that would have been ridiculous. No one had given them permission to take what they already had. “We’re only going to take what we need.”
 

“Of course,” the girl said without taking offense. “I am a princess of Goldgrass Hill, not a thief. Still, with just two rows of those breastplates, one could buy a whole valley in my land. But they would only weigh us down. We need boiled leather, and it must fit us or we must leave it.”
 

Cazia did find a boiled leather vest that fit her, even if it did was tight around her chest. Vilavivianna wasn’t as lucky; not even the smallest of the fleet squad armor sat comfortably on her, and she had to make do with a thick quilted jacket. “At least I will be warm,” the girl said. Cazia dug through the pile until she found one her size.

After that, they found a chest full of broad-brimmed cloth hats waxed against the rain, with iron caps sewn inside them. Cazia thought they looked ridiculous, but Vilavivianna carefully wrapped up her hair to make the smallest of them fit. Maybe, if she escaped back to her own people, it would buy her a great big garden plot.
 

They went back to their packs. Then the princess took a sword belt from the floor beside her. “You must wear this.”

Cazia didn’t know a thing about swords except that you held them by the blunt end. “I don’t need it.” She patted her quiver of darts.
 

“Those will go into your pack,” Vilavivianna said. “You can not wear them in the Sweeps. Not if you want to live.”

Great Way, the girl was right. Even in the heart of the empire, scholars went everywhere with an armed guard. If the two young girls in the wilderness came upon a mining camp or herding clan, they might receive hospitality. But for a scholar, kidnapping and ransom was the
best
possible outcome.
 

“You’re right,” Cazia said. “But not until we’re clear of the grunts. I don’t know how to use a sword, and these darts are my only weapon.”
 

“That makes sense. Let me finish packing. You must choose a spear for the journey--do not argue. You must.”
 

The spears were back near the gap she’d created in the wall. The howling of the grunts had not lessened--did the cursed things ever tire?--in fact, it seemed to have doubled. Clearly, they were attacking both doors now.
 

Cazia should never have left this hole in the wall. She swept the rubble in toward her feet, and with the sound of fists bashing on stone echoing around her, she cast a new block into the wall. It didn’t fit as well as it should have; she was getting better at creating stone blocks, but she had a long way to go before she’d be ready to build a wall.

Worse, the gaps made her nervous. A too-small block would not catch the grunts’ attention, but little gaps with lights flickering through?
 

“Are we ready to go?” Vilavivianna said. “I assume we will use your stone-breaking spell to escape through the wall.”

“I have something to show you,” Cazia said. She led the princess to the tapestry again. Together, they stood in the doorway and looked eastward down both rooms. “Do you see it?”

“No,” the girl admitted, growing impatient. “Are you taunting me or teaching me a lesson?” Her tone suggested there wasn’t a lot of difference between them.

“It looks to me as though the rooms are different lengths,” Cazia said.
 

Vilavivianna looked again. “Yes! Such a thing never occurred to me. But what does it mean?”
 

Cazia examined the eastern wall. She didn’t find anything interesting and extinguished the light as they went back into the main room. In the far southeastern corner, the wall had no racks on it. It took Cazia a few heartbeats to find the latch, and the hidden door creaked as the wall swung inward.
 

She extinguished the light in the main armory, letting darkness fall over them. Only the faint glow of lightstones shone up at them. Vilavivianna rushed down the stone stairs into the tunnel, and Cazia hurried to keep up.
 

“This is too long to connect to the great hall, yes?” The princess seemed excited. “It must go to the commander’s tower beyond. Too bad Commander Gerrit couldn’t get to it.”

“Let’s keep our voices low. There might be ventilation pipes.”

This was a safe place, Cazia realized. If they brought their rations down here, they would have light and safety for as long as their supplies held out, or until the empire retook the fort. Surely someone would try that, considering the value of the hostages?
 

She stopped suddenly. Vilavivianna stopped, too. “What is wrong?”
 

There was no rescue coming—or rather, if soldiers liberated them from Samsit, it would not be a rescue. Every tyr in the empire was probably hunting for her, and for the little princess, too. The Italgas had treated her gently--even kindly, at times--in part because of Lar and in part out of a sense of honor.
 

But tyrs took hostages all the time. Sometimes, they demanded ransoms or forced marriages, or just dropped people into pits and forgot to feed them. Someone who wanted leverage over the tyr her father, far away, would find her to be a very useful fulcrum.
 

And Vilavivianna? She would almost certainly be forced into a marriage she didn’t want, and Fire take the idea of waiting for her to come of age.
 

Not all tyrs were ruthless Enemies, but most were. No matter how tempting, the girls couldn’t hide down here. They had to get them out of the fort as soon as possible.
 

“Quickly,” she whispered. They ran to the end of the hall, their boots gently scuffing the stone floor.
 

There was no stairwell at this end, only a ladder chiseled into the stone. Cazia put her finger to her lips and started to climb. Her pack was a burden, but thankfully, the passage was wide enough for her to pass without scraping loudly against the stone.
 

From there, they came to a set of curving stairs. The darkness here was absolute once she passed out of sight of the stone ladder, but she had climbed the secret stair in the Scholars’ Tower many times. This was no different. She crouched low, using her hands on the stairs as she went up.
 

Faint glimmers of light showed her the hidden doors, and she knew which she needed. At the third floor, she paused to listen and, hearing nothing, unlatched the door.
 

This was the commander’s Far Counsel, where he kept the mirror. Cazia had never used one herself, but she had been present for the message to the tyr her father, as well as some of the other tyrs--Fire and Fury, was it really just six days ago? The one in the palace was big enough to match the weight of ten men--to make it hard to steal, Lar had said--but this one was only mounted on a thick lead base.
 

So, she knew what to do. She stood before it, making sure her entire face was visible in the polished silver, and said “Tyr Gerrit.”

She’d worried that it wouldn’t work because
Tyr
was a title, not a name, but the mirror glowed brightly anyway. After many breaths, a man’s face appeared within it.
 

She would never have guessed he was related to the commander. He was about fifty, with a receding hairline and a gray beard that he had twisted into a dozen small braids. His eyes were narrow and cruel, and Cazia was heartsick at the idea that this was her best hope for an ally. Tyr Gerrit had fought for the king so many years ago. If he wasn’t a decent man--

“What are you doing, girl? Playing? I’ll have you whipped! I’m a busy—”

His voice echoed in the stone chamber. Cazia shushed him, and while that made his face turn red with anger, something in her expression convinced him to take her seriously. “Fort Samsit has been taken.”
 

His expression didn’t change. “I’ve heard no reports on this. Who captured it?”

“Grunts. It happened a few hours—”

“
Grunts
! Animals stormed a fort of the empire and overwhelmed two hundred spears and bows? Where is Ranlin?”

“Commander Gerrit is dead!” Cazia hissed. This was not going at all as she expected, and she wasn’t sure what to say next.

Before anything came to mind, another voice came through the mirror, from a man she couldn’t see, “It’s a prank. No, it’s a ruse to make us keep our spears behind the walls of our holdfasts. May I?”
 

“This is not a prank!” Cazia’s voice became louder, and the princess laid a hand on her elbow to calm her.
I have the flinches,
she wanted to shout, but would that convince them the danger was real or would that make them doubt her further? One thing was certain: it would not earn her any sympathy. There was no feeling rarer among the tyrs than sympathy.
 

Another face moved into view. He looked somewhat younger than Tyr Gerrit and had curly black hair with a triangular face. He looked vaguely familiar to her, although his expression was, if anything, more cruel than Gerrit’s. A stage actor wearing that sneer would have been mocked for overacting. “Do you know me, girl?”

“Tyr Bendertuk,” she said without thinking.
 

“Quite correct. Where is my son, Timu?”

“I don’t know.” Cazia turned to Vilavivianna, but she didn’t know, either. “On a sleepstone, last I saw. He was injured in the fighting when we escaped from Peradain.”
 

Tyr Bendertuk didn’t think much of that. “That’s what Treygar and the prince claimed five days ago. Has he not come through yet?”
 

“He had broken bones,” Cazia said, hating that she stammered a bit. “But I don’t know where he is now. I haven’t seen him since the alarm gong went off.”

“So he’s dead, then.” Tyr Bendertuk’s expression was contemptuous.
 

“Great Way, I hope not,” Cazia said. “Timush is my
friend.
Listen to me, please: the grunts overwhelmed the guards inside the fort. I don’t know how. I can hear them howling down in the courtyard, but I don’t know if you can hear it, too.” Bendertuk’s expression didn’t alter; he couldn’t--or he refused to--hear the grunts outside. “They rounded up the others and are holding them in the great hall—”

“As captives?” Tyr Gerrit said from somewhere out of sight.
 

“
Yes.
” Cazia tried to sound as forceful as possible, but the only response was laughter. “These aren’t like the ones who came through the portal at Peradain. They’re different.
Listen
!”

“I’ve heard the story,” Tyr Bendertuk said with a dismissive wave. “You weaken it by changing it midway. I’ll bet Treygar abandoned my son in Peradain, just as he abandoned Rolvo’s daughter. Well, tell your prince, if he’s not cowering out of sight in the room with you, that he can not control me through Tyr Freewell. I will not withhold my spears just because the Italgas hold a knife to a Freewell throat, and if he thinks otherwise, he’ll be Fire-taken like my heir.”

“Enough,” Vilavivianna said. “You have warned them. You can not make them heed.”

“And who is that?” Bendertuk said. Gerrit stepped back into the frame of the mirror, gently moving Tyr Bendertuk aside.
 

“Yes,” Gerrit said, his voice sharp with the habit of command. “Step forward and show your face.”
 

The princess’s shoulders straightened. Before Cazia could react, she stepped in front of the mirror. “I am Vilavivianna of Goldgrass Hill, daughter of—”

“I know who your father is,” Tyr Gerrit said. His cruel face seemed to open just enough to show his greed. “So, you
are
there! The Italga boy hasn’t married you yet, has he? Has the prince taken you to his marriage bed?”

Vilavivianna’s lip curled with disgust. Cazia pulled the girl aside, sparing the princess the sight of Gerrit’s open mouth. “That
Italga boy
you keep talking about isn’t a prince. He’s your king.”
 

She threw a cloth across it, breaking the connection. The glow was extinguished in moments, and Cazia was startled to realize that the shutters on the south wall were open. She’d just lit up this room like a candle in a tomb.
 

Cazia rushed to the window and looked out. She couldn’t see anything down in the unlit yard, not by starlight. The sound of the grunts had not changed. This window faced south, toward the empire, while the beasts were in the eastern yard. For once, she’d gotten lucky.