Oathbreaker

Eleven

Kethry sighed, rose from her chair, and went once more to the window. She stood there restlessly, leaning on the sill, with her chin in her hand, watching the street below; a dark silhouette against the oranges and reds of a spectacular sunset.

More than a hint of weariness in that sigh, Jadrek thought sympathetically, rubbing his tired eyes. Last night was yet another late night, with both of us too exhausted at the end of it to do anything other than sleep. Tonight looks to be the same. There's never a moment to spare for simple things like food and sleep, much less anything else. I want to tell her how I feel -- that I -- I love her. But there never seems to be any time, much less the right time.

He studied the way she was holding herself, the sagging shoulders, the way she kept turning her head a little to ease the stiftness he knew was in her neck because he had loosened those muscles for her far too many times of late. His own neck felt as stiff, and he felt echoes of those same aches in his own shoulders. Gods. We're both tired, mentally and physically. She's spent more hours cajoling stubborn, suspicious merchants than I care to think about; I've spent almost the same number of hours dancing around the touchy sensibilities of priests and highborn. Not the way I would have chosen to spend our time, and both of us return from meetings so-completely drained. Conspiracy is for the young. Combining it with a love affair is insanity.

Warrl gave an amused snort from where he lay curled on his chosen spot on the hearth. :You manage well enough, wise one,: the rough voice in Jadrek's mind said.

That is solely, I suspect, because our opportunities have numbered far less than our wishes, Jadrek thought at him, feeding a little more revived just by the casual contact with the kyree's lively mind. I fear that even the supposed wisdom of accumulated years fails to keep my desire from outstripping my capabilities. The only difference between my youth and my age is that now I am not ashamed to admit the fact.

The kyree snorted contemptuously again, but Jadrek ignored him and continued. Furthermore, I shudder to think what Tarma is likely to say about this liaison when she learns of it.

:You know less about her than you think,: was the kyree's enigmatic reply. Suddenly the great beast raised his head, and stared in the direction or the palace. :A message-:

"What?" Jadrek asked aloud, as Kethry turned to look sharply at the lupine creature.

:Tarma sends her regrets, but Char requires her presence, and she seems to think that the tran-dust he intends to abuse this evening might make him talkative. Needless to say, she does not intend to miss her opportunity.: The kyree turned warm and glowing eyes on the Archivist. :She asks me to come to the stable at dark, so that she can return here afterward without worrying about spies on her backtrail. I would suggest, given your earlier plaint about not having any time to yourselves, that you might take advantage of the occasion that has been presented to you ... unless you have other plans.:

Jadrek nearly choked on a laugh at Kethry's indignant blush.

"I think we can find some way of filling in the time," he said aloud, as she glared at both of them. The hour grew late; the candle burned down to a stub, and Kethry replaced it -- and still no sign of Tarma. Jadrek regretted -- more than once -- that his ability to communicate with Warrl was sharply limited by distance.

Kethry suddenly dropped the candle end she was about to discard, and her whole body tensed.

"What?" Jadrek asked, anxiously, wondering if she had sensed some sort of occult probing in their direction.

"It's -- anger," she replied, distantly. "Terrible, terrible anger. I've never felt anything like this in her before."

"Her? Her who?" She didn't answer him, and he said, a little more sharply. "Who, Keth? Keth?"

She shook her head as if to clear it, and resumed her seat at the table, but he could see that her hands were trembling before she clasped them in front of her on the table to conceal the fact.

"Keth?" he repeated gently, but insistently.

"It's -- it's the she'enearan bond between us," she said at last. "We each can feel things the other does, sometimes. Jadrek, she's in a killing rage; she's just barely keeping herself under control! And I can't tell why."

She looked up at him, and he could see fear, the mirror to his own, in her eyes. "I've never felt anything like this out of her; she's usually so controlled, even when I'm ready to spit nails. It has to be something Char said or did -- but what could bring her to the brink like this? There's enough rage resonating down the bond that I'm half prepared to go kill something!"

"I don't know," he said slowly. "And I'm almost afraid to find out."

They stared at each other helplessly, until finally he reached out and laid his hand over her clenched ones, offering what little comfort he had to give.

After that, it was just the deadly waiting.

Finally, after both of them had fretted themselves into a state of nervous exhaustion, they heard Warrl's nails clicking on the wooden steps outside. Tanna's presence was revealed only by the creaking of the two trick boards, one in the fifth step, one in the eighth -- otherwise she never made a sound. Kethry jumped to her feet, ran to the door and flung it open.

Tarma/Arton stood in the light streaming from the door, so very still that for a moment Jadrek wasn't entirely certain she was breathing. She remained in the doorway for a long, long moment, her face utterly expressionless -- except for the eyes, which burned with a rage so fierce Kethry stepped back an involuntary pace or two.

Warrl came up from behind her and nudged Tarma's hand with his nose; only then did she seem to realize where she was, and walk slowly inside, stopping only when she came to the table.

She did not take a seat as she usually did; she continued to stand, half-shrouded in shadows, and looked from Jadrek to Kethry and back again. Finally she spoke.

"I've found out what happened to Idra."

"... so once Char had downed a full bottle of brandy to enhance the tran, he'd gotten himself into a mood where he was talkative, but wasn't really thinking about what he was saying."

Kethry tensed, feeling Tarma's anger burning within her, a half-mad fire at the pit other stomach.

Tarma spoke in a tonelessly deadly voice, still refusing to seat herself. "Alcohol and tran have that effect in combination -- connecting the mind to the mouth without letting the intellect have any say in what comes out. And as I'd been hoping, his suspicious nature kept him from wanting to confide in any of his courtiers. And there was good old Arton, so sympathetic, so reliable, always dependable. So he threw his rump-kissers out, and began telling me how everybody abused him, everybody turned on him. Especially his sister."

She shifted her weight a little; the floorboard creaked beneath her, and Kethry could feel the anger rising up her spine. Channel that -- she told herself, locking her will into Adept's discipline. There's enough pure rage here to bum half the city down, if you channel it. Use the anger -- don't let it use you!

With that invocation of familiar discipline came a certain amount of relief; the fires were partially contained, harvested against future need. It wasn't perfect; she was still trembling with emotion, but at least the energy wasn't being all wasted.

And there will he future need --

"Then he told me about how his sister had first supported him, then betrayed him. How he had known from the first that the hunt for the lost sword had been nothing more than a ruse to get her across the border and into contact with Stefan. He carried on about that for long enough to just about put me to sleep; what an ungrateful, cold bitch she was, how she deserved the worst fate anyone could imagine. He was pretty well convinced she was she'chorne, too, and you know how they feel about that here -- I had just about figured that was all I was going to get out of him, when suddenly he stopped raving,"

Kethry felt a prickle of fear when the bond of she'enedran between herself and Tarma transmitted sent another surge of the incredibly cold rage her oathsister was feeling. I've never known anyone who could sustain that kind of emotion/or this long without berserking. Had Tarma been anything other than Kal'enedral -- someone, or several someones, would be long dead by now, hacked into many small pieces....

" 'I fixed her,' he said. 'I fixed her properly. I planned it all so beautifully, too. I had Zaras bespell one of his apprentices to look like me, and sent the apprentice off with the rest of the Court on a three day hunt. Then Zaras and I waited for the bitch in the stables; I distracted her, he hit her from behind with a spell, and when she woke up, her body belonged to Zaras. He had her saddle up and ride out just as if it were any other day, but this time her destination was my choice. We took her to the old tower on the edge of Hielmarsh; it's deserted, and the rumors I had spread about hauntings keep the clods away.' "

From there, what Tarma told them horrified even Kethry, inured to the brutality of warfare as she was. And she, of the three of them, had been the least close to the Captain; Tarma's own internal torment was only too plain to her oathsister, who was continuing to share in it -- and Jadrek's expression could not be described.

Idra's torture and "punishment" had begun with the expedient most commonly used to break a woman -- multiple rape. Rape in which her own brother had been the foremost participant. Char's methods and means when that failed became more exotic. Jadrek excused himself halfway through the toneless recitation to be audibly sick. When he returned, pale, shaking and sweating with reaction, Tarma had nearly finished. Kethry's stomach was churning and her throat was choked with silent weeping.

"His own sister -- " Kethry shuddered, her eyes burning and blurring with her tears. "No matter how much he hated her, she was still his sister!"

Tarma came closer, looming over the table like a dark angel. She took the dagger from her belt, and held it out into the light of the table-candle. She held it stiffly, point down, in a fist clenched so tightly on the hilt that her knuckles were white.

"Oathbreaker, I name him," Tarma said, softly, but with all the feeling that she had not given vent to behind the words of the ages-old ritual of Outcasting. "Oathbreaker he, and all who stand by him. Oathbreaker once -- by the promises made to kin, then shattered. Oathbreaker twice -- by the violation of king-oath to liegeman. Oathbreaker three times -- Oathbreaker a thousand times -- by the violation of every kin-bond known and by the shedding of shared blood."

"Oathbreaker, I name him" Kethry echoed, rising to place her cold hand over Tarma's, taking up the thread of the seldom-used passage from the Mercenaries' Code, She choked out her words around a knot of black anger and bleak mourning, both so thick and dark that she could barely manage to speak the ritual coherently through the chaos of her emotions -- She was still channeling, but now she was channeling the emotion through the words of the ritual. Emotion was power; that was what made a death-curse so potent, even in the mouth of an untutored peasant. This may well once have been a spell -- and it was capable of becoming one again. She knew that even though she was no priest, channeling that much emotion-energy through it had the potential of making the Outcasting into something more than "mere ritual."

"Oathbreaker I do name him, mage to thy priest. Oathbreaker once -- " she choked, hardly able to get he words out, "by the violation or sacred bonds. Oathbreaker twice -- by the perversion of power granted him for the common weal to his own ends. Oathbreaker three times -- by the invocation of pain and death for pleasure."

Somewhat to her surprise, she saw Jadrek stand, place his trembling, damp hand atop hers, and take up the ritual. She had never guessed that he knew it. "Oathbreaker, I name him, and all who support him," he said, though his voice shook. "Oathbreaker I do name him, who am the common man of good will, making the third for Outcasting. Oathbreaker once -- by the lies of his tongue. Oathbreaker twice -- by the perversion of his heart. Oathbreaker three times -- by the giving of his soul willingly to darkness."

Tarma slammed the dagger they all had been holding into the wood of the table with such force that it sank halfway to the hilt. "Oathbreaker is his name;" she snarled. "All oaths to him are null. Let every man's hand be against him; let the gods turn their faces from him; let his darkness rot him from within until he be called to a just accounting. And may the gods grant that mine be the hand!"

She brought herself back under control with an effort that was visible, and turned a face toward them that was no longer impassive, but was just as tear-streaked as Kethry's own. "This is the end of it: he couldn't break her. She was too tough for him, right up to the last. He didn't get one word out other, not one -- and in the end, when he thought his bullyboys had her restrained, she managed to break free long enough to grab a knife and kill herself with it."

The fire-and-candle light flared up long enough to show that the murderous rage was still burning in her, but still under control. "I damn near killed him myself, then and there. Warrl managed to keep me from painting the room with his blood. It would have been suicide, and while it would have left the throne free for Stefan, I'd have left at least two friends behind who would have been rather unhappy that I'd gone and gotten myself killed by the rest of Char's Guard."

" 'Unhappy' is understating the case," Jadrek replied gently, slowly resuming his seat. "But yes -- at least two. Good friend-sister -- please sit." Kethry could see tears still glinting in his eyes -- but she could also see that he was thinking past his grief; something she and Tarma couldn't quite manage yet.

As Tarma lowered herself stiffly into her accustomed chair, he continued. "Our plans have been plagued by the inability to bring a force of trained fighters whose loyalty is unswervingly ours into the city. Now I ask you, who served under Idra -- what would her Sunhawks think to hear this?"

"Gods!" Kethry brought her fist to her mouth, and bit her knuckles hard enough to break the skin. "They'd want revenge, just like us -- and not just them, but every man or woman who ever served as a Hawk!"

Jadrek nodded. "In short -- an army. Our army. One that won't swerve from their goal for any reason, or be stopped by anything short of the death of every last one of them."

Now, for a brief time, they fought their battle with pen and paper. Messages, coded, in obscure dialects, or (rarely) in plain tradespeech left the city every day that there was someone that they judged was trustworthy enough to carry them. Tarma, from her position as trusted insider, was able to tell them that the few messages that were intercepted baffled Char's adherents, and were dismissed out of hand as merchant-clan Warrlng. The rest went south and east, following the trade roads, to find the men and women who wore (or had once worn) the symbol of the Sunhawk.

The answers that returned were not of paper and ink, but flesh and blood -- and of deadly anger.

The last time Justin Twoblade and his partner had entered Petras, it had been with a feeling of pleasant anticipation. Petras bad been the turn-around point for the caravan they'd been guarding, and it was well known for its wines and its wenches. He'd had quite a lively time of it, that season in Petras.

Now he entered the city a second time, again as a caravan guard. Three things differed: he would not be leaving, at least not with the traders he was guarding; his partner was not Ikan Dryvale --

And his mood was not pleasant.

He and his partner parted company with the caravan as soon as their clients had selected a hostelry, taking their pay with them in the form of the square silver coins that served as common currency among the traders of most of this part of the world. Then, looking in no way different than any other mustered-out guards, they collected their small store of belongings, loaded them on their horses, and headed for a district with a more modest selection of inns.

And if they seemed rather heavily armed and armored, well, they had been escorting jewel traders, it was only good sense to arm heavily when one escorted such tempting targets.

"What was the name of that inn we're looking for?" Justin asked his new partner, his voice pitched only just loud enough to be heard over the street noise. "I didn't quite catch it from the contact."

"The Fountain of Beer," Kyra replied, just as quietly, her eyes flicking from side to side in a way that told Justin she was watching everything about her without making any great show of doing so.

"I suspect that's it ahead of us." His hands were full; reins of his horse in the left, pack in the right, so he pointed with his chin. The sign did indeed sport a violently yellow fountain that was apparently spouting vast quantities of foam.

"If you'll take care of the lodgings, I'll take care of the stableman," Kyra offered. "We've both got tokens; one of us should hit on a contact if we try both."

"Good," Justin replied shortly; they paused just at the inn gate and made an exchange of packs and reins. Kyra went on into the stableyard with their horses, as he sought the innkeeper behind his bar. Justin bargained heatedly for several minutes, arriving at a fee of two silver for stabling, room and meals for both; but there was a third coin with the two square ones he handed the innkeeper -- a small, round, bronze coin, bearing the image of a rampant hawk on one side and the sun-in-glory on the other. It was, in fact, the smallest denomination of coin used in Hawksnest -- used only in Hawksnest, and almost never seen outside of the town.

The innkeeper neither commented on the coin, nor returned it -- but he did ask "justice Twoblade?" when registering them on his rolls.

"Justice" was one of the half-dozen recognition words that had come with Justin's message.

"Justin," the fighter corrected him. "Justin of the Hawk."

That was the appropriate answer. The man nodded, and replied "Right. Justice."

Justin also nodded, then stood at the bar and nursed a small beer while he waited for Kyra to return. The potboy showed them to a small, plain room on the ground floor at the back of the inn.

"Stableman's one contact for certain sure," Kyra told him as soon as the boy had left. "He wished me 'justice,' I gave 'im m'name as Kyra Brighthawk, and then 'e tol' me t' wait for a visitor."

"Innkeeper's another, gave me the same word. Always provided we aren't in a trap." Justin raised one laconic eyebrow at Kyra's headshake. "My child, you don't grow to be an old fighter without learning to be suspicious of your own grandmother. I would suggest to you that we follow 'enemy territory' rules."

Kyra shrugged. "You been the leader; I'll live with whatever ye guess we should be doin'."

Justin felt of the bed, found it satisfactory, and stretched his lanky body on it at full length. "It is a wise child that obeys its elders," he said sententiously, then quirked one corner of his mouth. "It is also a child that may live to become an elder."

Kyra shrugged good-naturedly.

A few moments later, the boy returned with a surprisingly good dinner for two, which he left. Justin examined it with great care, by smell and by cautious taste.

"Evidently we aren't supposed to leave," Justin guessed, "And if this stuff has been tampered with, I can't tell it."

Kyra followed his careful inspection of the food with one of her own. "Nor me, an' my grandy was a wisewoman. I don' know about you, friend, but I could eat raw snake."

"Likewise. My lady?" Justin dug a healthy portion out of the meat pie they'd been served, and handed it to her solemnly.

She accepted it just as solemnly. It might have been noted, had there been anyone else present, that neither partook of anything the other had al' ready tried. If any of the food had been 'tampered with,' it would likely be only one or two dishes. If that were the case -- one of them would still be in shape to deal with the consequences.

When, after an hour, nothing untoward happened to either of them, Justin grinned a little sheepishly.

"Well -- "

"Don't apologize," Kyra told him. "I tell ye, I druther eat a cold dinner than find m'self wakin' up lookin' at the wrong end'f somebody's knife."

They demolished the rest of the food in fairly short order -- then began another interminable wait. After a candlemark of pacing, Kyra finally dug a long branch of silvery derthenwood out other pack, as well as a tiny knife with a blade hardly bigger than a pen nib. She sat down on the floor next to the bed and began the slow process of turning the branch into a carved chain. Justin watched her from half-closed eyes, fascinated in spite of himself by the delicate work. The chain had only a few links to it when the wait began; when it ended, there was scarcely a fingerlength of branch remaining. Then, without warning, a portion of the wall blurred and Kethry stepped through it.

Kethry just held out her arms, welcoming both of them into an embrace which included tears from all three of them.

"Gods, Keth -- " Justin finally pulled away, reluc-tantly. "It has been so damned hard keeping this all inside."

"I know; none better -- Windborn, I cannot tell you how glad I am to see you two! You're the first to come; may the Lady forgive me, but there were times I wondered if this was going to work."

"Oh, it's working all right; better than you could guess." He wiped his eyes and nose on the napkin from their tray and locked his emotions down. "All right, lady -- mage, we need information, not waterfalls."

"First-tell me how you got here so fast."

"We weren't about t' let anybody beat us here," Kyra replied. "Not after that message. Sewen sent me on ahead t' tell ye that Queen Sursha give us leave t' deal with this soon's we get some of her new army units in t' replace us. The rest of the Hawks'll be here in 'bout a month."

"Ikan's out rounding up all the former Hawks we can track down," Justin continued. "We'll be trickling in the same as the Hawks will -- no more than two or three at a time, and disguised. One of the merchant houses is going to let some of us use their colors; Ikan took the liberty of taking your name in vain to old Gnumo. We have the support of Sursha's Bards, and half a dozen holy orders. We'll be everything from wandering entertainers to caravan guards. You've got a plan, I take it?"

"Tarma has; she's worked it out with a couple of highborn we can trust," Kethry told him. "All I really know about is my part of it, but generally we're hoping to accomplish the whole thing with a minimum of bloodshed."

"Specific blood" Kyra replied, with a smoldering anger Justin shared.

"Oh, yes. One of the lot we've already taken out -- Raschar's Adept. But the others -- " Kethry allowed her own anger to show. " -- Tarma's identified every person that had a hand in the deed. And they will answer to us."

Justin nodded, slowly. "What about arms? There's going to be at least half of us without much, given the disguises."

"Being smuggled in to us from an outside source, -- so that Char won't be alerted that something's up by activity in forges and smithies. We're getting everything Tarma could think of; bows, arrows with warpoints, various kinds of throwing knives, grapnels, climbing spikes, pikes, swords -- the last is the hardest, that, and armor, but we're hoping most of you will manage to bring your own. Do either of you have a guess how many there might be that we can count on?"

"Six hundred at an absolute minimum," Justin said with grim satisfaction. "That's four hundred Hawks and the two hundred that either retired to Hawksnest or that Ikan knows for a fact he can get hold of and will want in."

"Gods -- that's better than I'd hoped," Kethry said weakly. "There're four hundred regular troops here. about a hundred and fifty assorted militia, and fifty personal guards belonging to Char. There're some other assorted fighters, but Tarma tells me they won't count for much; there're Char's adherents, and their private guards, but we don't know but that they won't turn their coats or hide if things look chancy. That means we'll be going pretty much one-on-one; all the professionals starting the fight even."

"Even with his mages?" Justin asked dubiously.

Kethry raised her chin, her eyes glinting like emerald ice in the light from the window beside her. "He hasn't a mage that can come close to me in ability, and I have more power at my disposal than any of them could hope for."

"Where are you getting that kind of power?" Justin asked in surprise. "I mean -- you're alone -- "

"You -- and the Hawks. Your anger. I can't begin to tell you how strong a force I've already tapped off just you two; when I start to think about six hundred Hawks, it makes my head reel. It's the kind of power a mage sees perhaps once in a lifetime, and if I weren't an Adept I'd never be able to touch it, much less control it."

"You're Adept class now?" Justin said incredulously. "Great good gods -- no wonder you aren't worried!"

"Not with power like that at my disposal. I can channel all that anger, harvest it, and save it for the hour of striking. We're the attackers, this time. I can set up as many spells as it takes as far in advance as I need to, spells specifically designed to take out each mage; and wait until the moment of attack to trigger them. I'm assuming only half of those will work. The rest will probably be deflected. But the mages will be off-balance, and I can take them out one at a time. I know how mages think -- when they're under magical attack they tend to ignore anything mundane, and they seldom or never work together. White Winds is one of the few schools that teaches working in concert. I think we can plan that they will be concentrating on me and not on anything nonmagical. And that they won't even think to band together against me."

Justin nodded, satisfied. "Sounds like you people have a pretty good notion of what you're about. Now comes the hard part."

"Uh-huh," Kethry nodded. "Waiting."

Singly, or by twos and threes, the Hawks came, just as Justin had told Kethry they would. Each of them arrived in some disguise, some seeming utterly harmless -- a peasant farmer here, a party of minstrels there, a couple of merchant apprentices. Day by day they trickled into Petras, and no one seemed to notice that they never left it again. Each went to one of the dozen inns whose masters had bought into the conspiracy, carrying with them a small bronze coin and a handful of recognition words. Each was met by Kethry, or by one of the other "official greeters" -- Justin, Kyra or Ikan, who had arrived within days of the first two.

From there, things got far more complicated than even most of these professional mercenaries were used to.

Beaker coughed, scratched his head, and turned his weary donkey in to what passed for a stableman at the Wheat Sheaf inn. The stableman here was, like most of the clients, of farm stock; and probably had never even seen a warhorse up close, much less handled one. Beaker's dusty donkey was far more in his line of expertise. The "stable" was a packed-earth enclosure with a watering trough and a pile of hay currently being shared by three other mangy little donkeys and a brace of oxen. Beaker had serious second and third thoughts about this being the contact point for a rebel force, but the instructions had said the Wheat Sheaf and specified the stable-man as the contact.

"Ye wanta watch that one," Beaker drawled, handing the wizened peasant the rough rope of the donkey's halter with one hand, and four coins with the other -- three copper pennies and one bronze Hawk-piece. "She'll take revenge if she even thinks ye're gonna lay hand to 'er."

"Oh, aye, I know th' type," the fellow replied, grinning, and proving that a good half of his teeth had gone with his lost youth. "Ol' girl like this, she hold a grudge till judgment day, eh?" He pocketed all four coins without a comment.

Well, that was the proper sign and counter. Beaker felt some of his misgivings slide away, and ambled on into the dark cave of the rough-brick inn.

Like most of its ilk, it had two floors, each one large room. The upper would have pallets for sleeping; the lower had a huge fireplace at one end where a stout middle-aged woman was tending an enormous pot and a roast of some kind. It was filled with clumsy benches and trestle tables now, but after the inn shut down for the night, those that could not afford a pallet upstairs would be granted leave to sleep on table, bench, or floor beneath for half the price of a pallet. Opposite the fireplace was the "bar"; a stack of beer kegs and a rack of mugs, presided over by the innkeeper.

Beaker debated looking prosperous, when his stomach growled and made the decision for him. He paid the innkeeper for a mug of beer, a bowl of soup and a slice of roast; the man took his money, gave him his drink and a slice of not-too-stale bread. Beaker slid his pack off his back, rummaged his own bowl and spoon out of it, then shrugged it back on before weaving his way through the tables to the monarch of the "kitchen."

Rather to his surprise -- the inn staff of places like this one were rather notorious for being surly -- the woman gave him a broad smile along with a full bowl, and put a reasonably generous slice of meat on his bread. Juggling all three carefully, he took a seat as near to the door as possible, and sat down to eat.

The food was another pleasant surprise; fresh and tasty and stomach-filling. And the inn was cool after the heat and dust of the road. The beer was doing a respectable job of washing the grit out of his throat. Beaker was about halfway through his meal when her heard someone come up behind him.

"How's the food t'day, sojer?"

Beaker grinned and turned in his seat. "Kyra, when are you gonna get rid of that damn accent?"

"When cows fly, prob'ly. Makes me fit in here though." She straddled the bench beside him a mug and bowl of her own in hand. "Eat here ev'ry chance I get. Ma Kemak, she sure can cook. Pa Kemak don' water the beer, neither. Finish that up, boy. We gotta get you off th' street soon's we can." She set him a good example by nearly inhaling her soup.

From the inn Kyra led Beaker on a rambling stroll designed to shake off or bore any pursuit, bringing him at last to the stableyard entrance of a wealthy merchant. A murmured word with the chief stableman got them inside; from there they slipped in the servant's door and climbed a winding staircase to the attic of the house. Normally a room like this was crowded with the accumulated junk of several generations, now it was barren except for a line of pallets. There were only two windows -- both shuttered -- but there was enough light that Beaker could recognize most of those sprawled about the room.

"Beat you, Birdbrain," Garth mocked from a corner; looking around, Beaker could see that a good half of the pallets were occupied -- and that evidently, he was the last of Tarma's scout troop to arrive.

"Well, hell, if they'd given me somethin' besides a half-dead dwarf donkey t' get here on -- "

"No excuse," Jodi admonished. "Tresti and I were Shayana mendicants; we came here on our own two feet."

"Beaker, what have you got in the way of arms?" asked someone off on the opposite side of the room; peering through the attic gloom. Beaker could make out that the speaker was a skirmisher he knew vaguely, a Hawk called Vasely.

"One short knife, and my sword," he replied. "And I've got my brigandine under this shirt."

"Get over here and pick out what you want, then. Take whatever you think you can use, we aren't short of anything but swords and body-armor."

Beaker crossed the attic, picking his way among the pallets, and sorted through the piles of arms. Shortly thereafter he was being caught up on the developments by his fellow scouts.

He learned that they hid their faces by day, slipping out only at night to meet in the ballrooms and stableyards of the great lords who had also joined the conspiracy. There they would hear whatever news there was to hear, and practice their skills.

Each night, as the Hawks gathered to spar, Kethry would siphon off the incredibly dangerous energy of their anger and hate. Dangerous, because the energy generated by negative emotions was hard to control -- and attracted some very undesirable other-planar creatures. But it was a potent force, and one Kethry was not going to let go unused. She channeled what she accumulated each night into the dozen trap-spells she was building, one for each of Char's mages. She was beginning to think that she might well be able to carry this off -- for despite her brave words to Justin, she had no idea if what she planned was going to work, nor how well. She was just too new at being Adept to be certain exactly what her capabilities were.

"I wish you'd tell me what you're going to do," Jadrek said plaintively. He'd been watching her as she traced through the last of the parchment diagrams, laying in the power she had acquired that night. There were times his patience astounded her still....

"I didn't realize you'd want to know," she replied, sealing the new layer of power in place, and looking up at him with surprise as she finished. "Come around here behind me and have a look, then."

He rose, moved to her right shoulder, and bent over the table with his expression sharp with curiosity. "Well, you know I'm not a mage, but I do know some of the mage-books -- and Keth, what you've been doing doesn't even look remotely familiar."

"You know what a trap-spell is. That's this part." She leaned over the parchment and pointed out the six tiny diagrams encircling the last mage's Name, as he looked over her shoulder with acute interest she could feel without even seeing his face.

"That's just the part that's like a trigger on a physical trap, right?"

"Exactly, except that what will activate the trigger won't be something the mage does, but something I do -- a kind of a mental twist to release the rest of it."

He examined the elaborately inscribed sheet with care, leaning on the back of Kethry's chair, and not touching the page. "That looks familiar enough from my reading -- but what's all the rest of this?"

"That's something new, something I put together. There's a mind-magic technique called a 'mirror-egg' that Roald told me about," she said, sitting back. He responded to her movement by beginning to massage her neck as she talked. "It involves surrounding someone with an egg-shaped shield that is absolutely reflective on the inside. It's something you do, he told me, when you've got a projective that refuses to lock his mind-Gift down, or is using it harmfully. Everything he projects after that gets flung straight back into his face -- Roald says it's a pretty effective way of teaching someone when admonishment fails."

"I would think so," Jadrek agreed.

"Ah -- " his gentle hands hit a particularly tense spot, and Kethry fell silent until he'd gotten the muscles looser. "I thought about it, and it occurred to me that there was no reason why the same kind of thing couldn't be applied to magical energy. So I found a spell to make a mirrored shield, and another to shape a shield into an egg shape, and combined them. That's this bit." She traced the twisted patterns with her finger above the diagram. "When Jiles got here, he agreed to let me throw one on him as a test."

"It worked?"

"Better than either of us had guessed. Scared him white. You see, with most other trap-spells if you have the patience to work your way through it, you can find the keypoint and get yourself loose by cutting it. Not this one -- because everything you do reflects back at you. There're only two ways to break this one -- from the outside, or to build up such pressure inside that the spell can't contain it."

Jadrek pondered that in silence for a moment, while Kethry let her head sag and reveled in the relaxation his hands were leaving in their wake.

"What's to keep the mages from building up that kind of pressure?" he asked at last.

"Nothing -- if they can. But if they try -- and they don't figure out that they're going to have to shield themselves within the shield -- they'll fry themselves before they free themselves."

Jadrek spoke slowly, and very quietly. "That -- is not a nice spell...."

"These aren't nice people," Kethry replied, recalling all the soul-searching she'd done before deciding that this was the thing to do. "Frankly, if I could call lightnings down on all of them, I would, and take the guilt on my soul. I agree, it isn't a thing one should use lightly, and just before I trigger the traps, I intend to burn the papers. I won't need them any more at that point, and I'd rather that the knowledge didn't get into too many hands just yet."

"And later? How do you keep someone else from finding out how you did it? What if -- "

"Gods -- Jadrek, love, once a thing's been thought of -- it gets out, no matter what. So once this is all over with, I'm going to arrange for the information to be sent to every mage school I know of, and spread it as far and wide as I can."

"What?" Jadrek asked, so aghast that he stopped massaging.

"You can't stop knowledge; you shouldn't try. If you do, half the time it's the wrong people that get it first. So I'm doing the best thing you can do with something like this -- making sure everybody knows about it. That way, if it's used, it will be recognized. Mages trapped inside one of these eggs will realize what's happened and get outside help before they hurt themselves, ones outside will know the counter."

"Oh," he said. resuming what he'd broken off. There was silence for a while as he plainly pondered what she'd said.

One more thing to love about him. He doesn't always agree with me, but he hears me out, and he thinks about what I've said before making up his own mind.

"Huh," he said, when she'd begun to drowse a little under his gentle ministrations. "I guess you're right; if you can't guarantee that something harmful stays out of the wrong hands -- "

"And I can't; there's no way."

"Then see that all the right hands get it."

"And that they get the antidote. I don't know that this is all that moral, Jadrek, I only know that the alternative -- taking the chance that someone hke Zaras figures out what I did .first -- is less moral." She sighed. "I never thought that becoming an Adept would bring all these moral predicaments with it."

He kissed the top of her head. "Keth, power brings with it the need to make moral judgments;

history proves that. You have no choice but to make those decisions."

She sighed again, and reached up to lay one of her hands across his where it rested on her shoulder. "I just hope that I always have someone around to keep reminding me when something I'm thinking about doing 'isn't nice: I may still do it -- but I'd better have good reasons for doing so."

He squeezed her shoulder, gently. "Don't worry. As long as I'm around, you will."

That's what I hoped you'd say, she thought to herself closing her eyes and leaning back. That is exactly what I hoped you'd say.