Last First Snow (26 page)

“You worry too much.”

“A soft victory here will not keep my city safe and whole. A slow successful siege won't do. I must remind these people what powers hold Dresediel Lex intact. The Skittersill Rising will become a lesson to this city, and to the world.”

New depths opened in his voice: the bass expanded, rumbling through Elayne's body, buzzing in her eyeballs. Blue flame licked Kopil's fingers, and sparks darted between his teeth. He grew large again, as his will distorted and shaped reality. When she blinked, she saw him as a nova of blood. Anyone in the crowd below with a lick of Craft could look up and see it, see him, a doomsday sun in the night sky.

“So why,” he said, “should I not open the ground beneath them now? Why not rain fire from the heavens? Why not descend into their midst, shadow-winged with a fiery sword, and walk from tent to tent singing slaying songs? I could ash the rock upon which they stand, dry the fountain from which they drink. I could fill the streets with poison gas and rend their dreams to shreds. Fear would stitch Dresediel Lex together again.”

“And you would have the blood of thousands on your hands.”

“That blood's already there. I'd add a fresh coat to what's left over from the Wars.”

“Do you think our colleagues will look kindly on a mass murderer?”

“What is war but mass murder? And they called me a hero for that.”

“There are other ways to rule.”

“Name one that works.”

“You're scared. Tan Batac, shot in the middle of that crowd, it scared you. Nothing wrong with that.”

“I don't scare,” he said.

Beneath them, the dancers spun faster.

“If you need a victory,” Elayne said, “take one. But don't use the Craft. Don't cross that line.”

“What do you propose?”

“Let the Wardens do their job.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“It is. They're keeping the hostages in the meeting tent, or your oracles would have found them already. You know who the ringleaders are; those are your high-priority targets. Start the press tomorrow, attack with Wardens on all sides. Concentrate the defenders' attention on their perimeter, then hit them from above. Arrest the leaders. Rescue the hostages. Move dispute to the Courts. Prosecute Zoh at the same time. The riot folds. People slink away. You get your victory. They get their lives.”

“It's risky, Elayne. Every time we fail, their power grows.”

She shrugged. “So don't fail.”

“If this doesn't work—”

“It will.”

“If it doesn't, I will need to act, to maintain order. Do you understand? My hand will be forced. Fire will fall. I'll have no choice.”

“We always have a choice.”

“I made mine already,” he said. “Long ago.”

Below a dancer stumbled, and spun out of control toward a fire. Someone caught her before she burned.

 

43

Temoc found Mina in the kitchen, swearing over a pan of eggs. The smell of fried sausages lingered on the air. “You didn't wake me,” he said.

“It took you long enough to sleep last night. I thought you might need rest. I can manage a few eggs.” A coppery burnt odor displaced the sausage smell. Mina cursed, and pulled the pan off the flame.

He left the kitchen without arguing, and walked into the courtyard. Smoke rose over Dresediel Lex, columns and billows from the northwest, and Couatl circled, peering down with raptors' eyes and raptors' hunger. Rumbles from the street: black wagons drawn by blinkered horses passed their gate. Wardens sat on benches in the wagon beds, weapon harnesses buckled across their jumpsuits, truncheons in hand. Row after row they rolled toward Chakal Square.

Gods called to Temoc, and he knew their names. Ili of the White Sails. Ixaqualtil, chanting through his many mouths from the foot of the dead sun's throne. Qet Sea-Lord sang his surf-song, and Isil sang the wind.

Caleb sat at the garden table, shuffling cards.

“What are you playing?”

“Solitaire. I lost.”

Temoc looked up at the smoke. “How long has this been going on?”

“Since sunrise.”

“Of course. They wanted to surprise people.” Temoc sat beside Caleb as his son dealt another game. “Remember that. When you sleep, you're in danger.”

“Do you think the Wardens will arrest your friends?”

“If they are lucky. My friends, I mean.”

“Lucky?”

“It's not easy to arrest someone without hurting them. Some of my friends will die today.”

He set his palm on his son's back: so small, so fragile. Kid had never yet broken a bone. He walked, ran, fell, all carefully. Thought his actions through. Someday he would learn how it felt to break. How it felt to fail. Perhaps he should have learned already. Perhaps this was something Temoc the peacemaker—Temoc who walked away from Chakal Square and left war for would-be warriors to wage—had failed to teach his son. The boy should know by now that not all wounds could be healed by shuffling a deck of cards, that some games were never won or lost, but instead cycled through the deck over and over, seeking an out that never came.

But was that what Temoc's father taught him? Or his father before? To fear the future? No. He learned this on his own, as did every man. He was still learning it. Every year. Every day.

He learned it from the smoke over Chakal Square.

“I am here for you,” he said, and tried to look like he believed it. “Whatever happens.”

Caleb smiled, and turned over a card.

*   *   *

Elayne was late to the assault. By the time she reached the war room, the King in Red and Captain Chimalli and their aides had already retreated to the vision well. Two Wardens stood guard at the double doors to the well chamber. They stepped aside for her. One saluted, the other didn't.

She opened the doors and closed them behind her without even a finger snap to betray her use of Craft.

“Troop seven to Jackal and Temal,” said the King in Red. “Looks like they're about to try a rush.”

“Troop seven, rendezvous with barricade at intersection of Jackal and Temal,” Chimalli commanded.

“Troop seven,” muttered the dreamer strapped to the bed. “Barricade Jackal and Temal.”

Under their voices rolled the distant cry of riot.

The room was crowded. In the center stood the well, an older model built of rough stone blocks stolen from a village somewhere, acid-etched with symbols and invocations. Chimalli and the King in Red flanked the well, their faces lit by the images in the water. Around them lay four stone slab beds, one for each cardinal direction. One bed was bare, and one served as a desk, spread with maps and mobbed by Wardens and attach
é
s, reviewing options and strategy with pencil and straight edge. Dreamers occupied the other beds, both bound and blindfolded. Two lines—one, for communications, tied to a dreamer in the Wardens' on-site command tent. The other dreamer ran the well. His whimpers seeped through his gag. The others ignored him.

“Sorry I'm late,” Elayne said. “The judge wanted to review our contract.”

Kopil looked up. “And you didn't tell me?”

“A pro forma request. Easily handled.”

“And?”

“No problem. This is why you hire professionals.” She thought she concealed her disappointment.

She approached the vision well. Beneath its smooth surface lay Chakal Square and its environs, writhing with hive-war motion. From this height, the crowd seemed a massive amorphous organism, one beast with a thousand backs. The Wardens, by contrast, assumed strict regimented lines. The King in Red gestured above the living map, and red arrows formed to indicate the direction of assault. He shook his head, and the arrows vanished. The dreamer's cries changed pitch.

“They're fighting you to a standstill?” Interesting. A part of her even found it exciting.

“Not at all. But the battle is more two-sided than I hoped.”

He spun the map on its center axis.

“Impressive setup you have here,” she said.

“Most people would settle with a vision-gem. We use the dreamers for post-processing and projection. Rides them hard, but what can you do?”

“You know they're making new vision wells now in the Shining Empire that don't use stolen stones.”

“Synthetics don't have the same texture. Plus, control's less fine-grained. They'll catch up in a decade or so, but for now no way's better than the old way. Especially for this sort of thing. This setup gets us per-solider resolution, about a quarter-second of time spread. Look.” Their viewpoint plunged swift as a hawk toward the battle's eastern flank, where Wardens attacked a red-arm line. Grand movements shattered into human beings. Men with crossbows shot at charging Wardens from second-story windows. Red-arms met the advance with pikes and stones and spears. Closer still the image swept, to focus on a single boy. Sweat stained his pale blue shirt. A bruise blacked his eye, and he held a captured truncheon. He'd seen combat and survived—but he did not know why he'd lived, and each new battle was a chance not to.

Elayne remembered that feeling.

Ghost-forms surrounded the boy: the well's best guess at his next half second's actions, superimposed on the now. Retreating half a step, advancing. Shifting grip on the truncheon. Crouching. Eyes closed, eyes open. Shouting defiance. Clenching lips tight.

The Wardens charged. They seemed monsters from this point of view: black uniforms and black shields, black weapons and blank silver faces, creatures boiling from some hell's depths. The boy and his comrades rushed to meet them. A hundred battle cries joined in a wordless scream.

The boy swung his truncheon, but a Warden hit him in the face with the edge of her shield. The boy fell, flailing with his stick, scrambling to his feet. A truncheon caught him in the ribs and he recoiled, retreating and striking at once, teeth bared. He didn't see the Warden who hit him from behind.

“And he's down!” Kopil's voice swelled to sports-announcer pitch. “See what I mean? You don't get that resolution with the newer models, though they're cheaper and don't make villagers so angry.” He waved his hand in a counterclockwise circle and their view retreated to safe distance: no blood here, only armies strangling in the streets.

“How goes the war?” she asked, to change the subject.

Chimalli answered. “We're pressing them on all fronts. They have limits, and we'll find them. The western camp collapsed soon after dawn, so we pulled back, redistributed. A few battle groups have had a chance to break into the main square, but we don't want to fight there yet. We've been lucky with casualties so far. When we take their people we stuff them into wagons, send them to Central for processing. Slow, but we're not trying to set a land speed record.”

“Tell her about the other thing,” Kopil said, still staring into the well.

“The other thing?”

Chimalli explained: “They surprised us a little after dawn. Launched a counterattack on the eastern flank.”

Elayne blinked. “Counterattack?”

“Around nine-thirty, they hit our eastern bases hard. We've occupied the buildings flanking the Square since we found that the rebels can travel through them to get around the demon wall—” He shot a pointed look at Kopil. “That's where they hit us.”

“Look,” Kopil said. “I know the people who own these buildings. If your friend cut your house in half to stop a pest problem, you'd be angry with him.”

“Are we calling them pests now?” Elayne asked.

“Poor phrasing. You know what I mean.”

“With all respect, sir, a little property damage in the short run might avoid more trouble later. They have been burning buildings.”

“They burn, and we'll build more. Anyway, you didn't tell her about the thing.”

“Yes,” Elayne said. “Please. Tell me about the thing.”

Chimalli looked from her to his master, and Elayne could see the layers of his frustration: with the rebels, with the riot, with Kopil. “A small corps of red-arms, better disciplined than usual, hit us at dawn. Heavy, room-to-room fighting. We fell back to protect the upper floors and our own men. That's when they ran.”

“Back into Chakal Square?”

“Out,” Chimalli said. “South and east, into the Skittersill. At first we thought they might loop around, hit our bases from behind, but they kept going and lost us in the alleys.” He spoke bluntly, not trying to hide his failure. “It's hard to track locals through the Skittersill. Couatl search could help, but there are covered alleys and markets in that region, and anyway we're saving our air support for the Square.”

“An escape.”

“That's not the opinion of my commanders on the ground. To hear them tell it, these were good fighters.”

“People fight hard to get away from fighting.”

“With respect, ma'am, I know that. But they weren't panicked. This was a planned movement, and you don't pull people who can fight like that from the line unless you think they might turn the tide. This looks like a run for supplies, or weapons. We've locked down weapons caches in the Skittersill, and we're keeping tabs—as well as we can with reduced patrols—on local criminal groups and the Stonewood refugee camps, in case they're hunting allies. If they find reinforcements, this action could get bloody. Bloodier,” he amended.

“Fortunately,” Kopil said, and motioned to Chimalli to continue. The man frowned.

“Fortunately, we have ways to track them.”

“Release the hounds!”

She ignored the King in Red. “I thought you were short on manpower. Do you have enough people to run a dog search through the Skittersill?”

“Well,” Chimalli said. “Not dogs as such.”

“As such?”

“I mean, anymore.”

“
Totenhunds
reporting,” the dreamer said. “Pursuing ten possibles.”