Fifth Quarter.

by Tanya Huff.

Chapter One.

There were guards on duty at the entrance to the marshal's tent but they'd expected that and were accustomed to using less obvious entrances. Problem was, there were guards on duty at the sides and rear of the tent as well.

"Looks like they're expecting us," Bannon whispered, his mouth lightly touching his sister's ear, the esses softened to prevent the sound from carrying.

Vree nodded, right hand rising to brush at the lingering caress of warm breath, eyes locked on the flickering circle of torches that left no paths of darkness.

The guards were s.p.a.ced in such a way that removing one would alert the others.

She gestured at a sputtering flame; the thick k.n.o.b of oil-soaked hemp had nearly burned away. Soon, it would have to be replaced. Bannon signed his agreement.

They were in position, ready, when the marshal's personal body servant appeared with a new torch. As the nearest guard half-turned to watch the exchange, they rose from a sheltering hollow and raced into the skirts of shadow around the base of the tent. His gaze sweeping a heartbeat behind their movement, the guard resumed scanning his a.s.signed area.

Contorted to fit into the triangle of darkness, they could hear only one voice from inside, but as it rose and fell in a conversational cadence, they a.s.sumed the marshal had company.

Pressed flat against the ground, Vree slid under the weighted edge of canvas and continued to slide under the red-and-gold patterned carpet laid to define the floor. When she felt Bannon's touch on her ankle, she dug fingers and toes into the dirt and began to creep on her belly around the perimeter. The marshal's voice grew louder, and for the first time she heard the rough whisper that answered. Commander Neegan. She grinned. They'd expected as much and made allowances for his presence.

The crushed and dying gra.s.s beneath the carpet made breathing difficult, but Vree sucked air past her teeth and kept moving through the thick growth. A parade of heavy-footed officers had mashed the floor flat in the center of the tent, but out where the billowing walls touched the earth, it rose and fell like the dunes of Hedyve. Between the patterns in the carpet and the flickering shadows -the marshal was well known for conserving lamp oil-an extra pair of lumps in the floor would not likely be noticed. When Vree finally paused, she could feel Bannon's movement in the vibrations of the fabric against her shoulder blades. But only Bannon's movement. She froze, listening. Wood and leather creaked above and to her left. Both marshal and commander were seated, discussing possible routes for a ma.s.sed attack.

"They know we're coming; what makes you think they haven't moved the furniture around?" Bannon asked, rubbing his palms together as he peered down at the diagram sketched in the dirt.

"Two reasons." Vree sat back on her heels. "First, the marshal always sits facing the entrance. Always. That doesn't leave a lot of options with a map table that size. Second ..." She looked up at her brother and drew a circle around the sketch with one seemingly delicate, long-fingered hand. "... they don't think we can make it that far."

Bannon grinned in antic.i.p.ation. A shadow-bladed knife flickered against his palm, then disappeared back into a hidden sheath, the motion almost too fast to follow. "More fools they."

"Well, Neegan..." The marshal leaned back in the folding camp chair and set the empty flagon on the table with a sharp crack. "... second watch is nearly over and still no sign of them."

"Too early to relax, Marshal." Commander Neegan's whisper had been given him many years before by an enemy archer. The commander had not only survived the battle but seen to it that the archer did not.

Marshal Chela smiled, the expression bracketing the rounded curves of her face with deep creases. "I never relax," she said cheerfully. "It's why I've lived to a ripe old age." She reached for the flagon, remembered it was empty, and sighed. "There's another bottle in that case behind you, Neegan. Get it, would you."

"Allow me, Marshal." In one lithe motion, Bannon rose to his feet, set the clay bottle on the table, and lightly touched his blade to the commander's neck, just by the white pucker of the old scar.

Chela leaned forward slightly, eyes narrowed. "Aren't you removing the wrong target?" she murmured.

Vree tapped the older woman gently on the shoulder and laid a line of steel across her throat. "Don't move," she warned. "It's very sharp."

Apparently oblivious to the knife tip dimpling his skin, Neegan held out his hand. "You owe me forty crescents, Marshal. I told you they could do it."

"I don't want this becoming a siege; they're on springs and we aren't." Marshal Chela laced her fingers over her ample belly, the silver and ruby ring that proclaimed her a priestess of Jiir, G.o.ddess of Battles, gleaming on her shield hand. "Any suggestions?"

Commander Leesh stepped forward, her voice a bare shade off eager. "Why don't we just charge the city? They wouldn't survive an all-out attack."

"Neither would most of us," Chela pointed out dryly. Leesh was the youngest of her four commanders and anxious to prove a political promotion deserved in spite of evidence to the contrary. "And try to remember that the people of Ghoti are as much citizens of the Havakeen Empire as you are. It is our duty to attempt to find a solution that doesn't end in slaughter."

"Governor Aralt commands a great deal of personal loyalty." Neegan's harsh whisper quieted the rising mutter of speculation. "His people follow him, not a series of... misguided ideals." The dead and dying of another, earlier rebellion made themselves heard in the pause. "He promises them glory, a return to days of petty kingdoms and hollow crowns." With a graceful gesture, the commander sketched that past in the air. "What chance does the Empire's promise of peace, order, and good government have against that?" Then he spread his hands, offering the answer. "Aralt is the key. Everything revolves around him. Remove him, and this rebellion falls apart."

"And how do we remove him?" Chela asked, although she strongly suspected she knew what his answer would be. Although his most recent promotion responsibilities kept him from exercising his skills, Neegan was quite possibly the best military a.s.sa.s.sin in the seven armies. "Aralt's locked himself up tight in the governors stronghold."

"I have two who could do the job. "

Leesh snorted in disbelief.

The marshal ignored the interruption. "Aralt's no fool for all his posturing. He'll be expecting the attempt. "

"Yes," Neegan agreed.

"These the two who removed Pahbad?"

"Yes."

"You're a.s.suming that two will succeed where a single a.s.sa.s.sin might fail." He'd fought to have them trained together using that very argument and had been proven right time after time but, this time. Chela shook her head. "No. They'd never get to him."

Neegan smiled. "Would the marshal care to place a small wager. ..."

As she slid her dagger back in its sheath, Vree felt the familiar bleakness that came with the end of a mission. One moment, she and Bannon were a single unit with the use of not one pair of eyes or ears or hands, but two; the next, she stood alone. This time, the dislocation was almost painfully abrupt. This time, they had no retreat, blood singing, back to safety. This time the separation occurred just as senses climaxed at the "kill."

And there's nothing worse then melodrama in the middle of the night, she told herself scornfully as she made her way around the table to Bannon's side, ignoring with long practice the s.e.xual undertones in the original, melodramatic thought.

The marshal fought the urge to touch her throat where she could still feel the cold pressure of the blade. "I'm inclined to believe Commander Neegan's a.s.surances that you two can target the governor. When can you go in?"

"We've been mapping the stronghold since the army arrived, Marshal." Bannon spoke for them both. "If the weather holds, we could make an attempt as early as tomorrow night."

Chela nodded. At this time of the year in the southern part of the Empire, there would not be rain. "Make it then."

As they left the tent, Bannon reached out and smacked one of the guards at the entrance on the b.u.t.t. "Nice work," he said, loudly enough to turn heads.

"How'd you get in there, you little s.h.i.t!" the soldier demanded, flushing a ruddy scarlet in the torchlight.

Bannon laughed, dancing back out of his way. "I can't believe you didn't see us march right by."

Well aware that this failure would mean nights spent at other, less prestigious duty posts, the guard weighed the odds of nailing the brother before the sister reacted and decided discretion was the better part of not having his throat slit. "Sod off," he snarled.

Bannon laughed again and draped his arm across Vree's shoulders as they moved out into the camp. "How about wasting a quarter-crescent in the baths."

She glanced over at him, fighting the tremors that started under his touch, telling herself they were caused by the tension of the last few hours, nothing more. His dark eyes glittered in the charcoal mask and she could feel the brittle energy coming off him in waves. "Wasting?" she asked, pointedly wrinkling her nose.

Ivory flashed in the shadow of his face as he lifted his hand to grin at the smudge of lighter skin showing through the camouflage. "Well, there's always a bit of cold water in a borrowed helmet___"

The baths, one of the many businesses that followed the seven armies with the intent of separating soldiers from their pay, shut down at the end of the second watch. It took an extra half-crescent to convince the proprietors to keep the fires going a little while longer.

Vree lay back in the warm water and tried not to listen to the appreciative murmurs of the bath attendants as they scrubbed her brother. It made no difference that they'd murmur the same nonsense over her had she not made it very clear that she preferred to wash herself. Fingers puckering, she sighed and dragged herself out of the tub.

"You're too skinny, sister-mine. You should eat more."

Vree snorted and straightened, reaching for one of the soft cloths hanging on the line beside her. "I'll remind you of that at the next wall we have to go over."

"And I'll deny every word." He lifted an arm and tried to snake it around the slender waist of the departing attendant. She twisted lithely away, damp braid flicking a practiced dismissal as she left. Bannon turned to her companion who backed up a step.

"Forget it, Bannon," the young man declared, tossing a cloth at the tub and covering a yawn. "You're finished, and we're closing."

A few moments later, as the lamps went out behind them, Bannon rubbed a dribble of water off the back of his sister's neck and asked, "Coming with me?"

Vree shook her head. "No." He always asked. The answer never changed. After a kill, he needed distraction, but she needed quiet. "You going to Teemo's?"

The wh.o.r.es at Teemo's were regularly inspected by the army healers. An empire had not been won by either ignoring the needs of its soldiers or the consequences of disease.

"I thought I might."

"Remember we're working tomorrow night. Don't stay too late."

His sigh lifted the damp hair off her forehead as he leaned forward and smacked a kiss down on the crease between her brows. "Don't fuss, sister-mine. I'm old enough to take care of myself."

Old enough. As she watched him stride away, Vree heard the echo of a piping voice demanding to know why she always had to be older and when would it be his turn. Sometimes that one year difference stretched impossibly far. The one year between six and seven; the corporal had brought the news of their mother's battlefield death to her, she'd had to tell Bannon. The one year between fourteen and fifteen; Neegan had wanted them both in his command, had been able to pull enough strings to get them there, so she'd been held back for further training until army regulations said Bannon was old enough to be posted. The one year between twenty and twenty-one... Old enough.

Except he'd always be her little brother.

And that's the problem, isn't it? she asked herself as he disappeared into the night. Spitting the taste of self-pity out of her mouth, Vree started back to camp. Mooning about it wouldn't change anything. There wasn't anything she could change___ The baths, the brothels, all the extras, were officially outside the patrolled perimeter-although the marshal had been heard to remark on more than one occasion that she knew what the Sixth Army would rush to defend if it came to an attack. Vree slipped unseen past a sentry grown bored near the end of an uneventful watch and picked her way carefully around snoring bodies until she came to the place where the Fourth Squad, Second Unit, First Company, First Division, Sixth Army had been ordered to sleep. The weather had been hot and dry, so hardly anyone had bothered unfolding the tiny, oiled-canvas tents the army issued as shelter to the common soldiers, and she found her gear right where she'd left it, piled next to Bannon's. Others might lose possessions to petty pilfering, but no one messed with an a.s.sa.s.sin's kit.

She nodded to Corporal Emo hunched over his wineskin, then glanced up at the sky. The Road to Glory arced overhead and The Archer continued to aim away from the heart of the Empire. A priest of a.s.sot, G.o.d of Music and Prophecy, had long ago declared that the Empire would endure until The Archer turned his bow. Vree, inclined to believe that the priest had been sucking back too much sacramental wine, checked anyway-just to be certain.

Head pillowed on her arms, she closed her eyes and listened to the sound of the army. It was like being in the belly of a great benevolent beast, wrapped in protection, secure in the knowledge that if death came in the night, it would have to come a long way and through many lives to get to her.

Tensions the bath had been unable to touch leached out of her muscles. Slowly, her breathing slid into the cadence of those breathing all around her, and it was as a part of the greater whole that she finally slept.

One moment she was asleep, the next she knelt on the shoulders of a young recruit, her dagger point hovering over the wildly rolling surface of his left eye. As her brain caught up with the responses trained into her body, Vree could hear Corporal Emo and several others howling with laughter, could see the terror on the boy's face, and could smell the result of his fear.

She flipped the knife in the air, caught it, sheathed it, and stood. "You joined us just before we left the garrison, didn't you?"

The boy stuttered out an affirmative as he scrambled to his feet.

"What's your name?"

"Avotic." He noticed the moisture spreading over the front of his kilt, realized suddenly what it meant, and flushed a deep red. Although he had to be at least fifteen to have been posted, embarra.s.sment dropped his age a good four years. "Th-they call me Tic."

Vree shook her head. "Let me give you some advice. Tic. When a corporal orders you to shake someone awake who wears a black sunburst..."

Tic swiveled his head to stare down at her pack. Scuffed and faded from years of use, the six sunbursts stamped into the worn leather still showed they had once been dyed black. His eyes widened and he swallowed, hard.

"... you tell that corporal to stick his head up his a.s.s and salute it." She had to raise her voice to be heard over the laughter. "Do you understand what I'm telling you, Tic?"

"Y-yes." It didn't seem to matter that he was at least a foot taller than the woman he faced.

"What?"

"If I wake you up again, you'll kill me."

Watching from his bedroll, Bannon snickered and Vree tried not to smile in response. "Close enough. Go clean up, you stink." As the kid ran off, she turned on Emo. "One of these day, I will kill one."

"Not a chance." Wiping streaming eyes, the corporal heaved a satisfied sigh. "You're too good. And now the little s.h.i.t knows he can die. Thanks to me, he's a better soldier."

"Thanks to you?" Vree snorted, bending and dragging her kilt out of her pack. "Which brings up another question," she continued, buckling the limp, blue pleats around her waist. "Why am I always chosen to give these little lessons of yours?"

"Because you look so sweet when you're asleep," Emo told her, secure in his rank. Those of the Fourth Squad standing closest to him made exaggerated movements away. "That pointy little face of yours goes all soft and you have the cutest habit of cupping your cheek with one hand." His voice lost its false, syrupy tone, and he snorted. "Your brother, on the other hand, looks dangerous only while he sleeps."

"That's because I'm dreaming of you, Emo." Bannon stood and scratched at the triangle of brown hair in the center of his chest. His nose wrinkled at the smell of unwashed bodies, latrine trenches, and great vats of boiling mush. "Life in the army," he murmured. "Gotta love it."

" 'Cause you can't do s.h.i.t about it,' " several voices answered in unison.

"Vree? You going out tonight?"

Vree turned her head and stared incredulously at the woman standing just beyond weapons' reach. "No, Shonna. I was feeling bloated and I thought I'd check if my black breeches, my black tunic, and my black ankle boots still fit."

Shonna shrugged and rubbed the back of her neck with one hand while the other traced circles in the night air. "Yeah, well, I mean..." She sighed deeply and started again. "Look, do you think that maybe, on your way back you could pick up a chicken or something?"

"I'm on target, Shonna."

The other woman looked uncomfortable but dragged up half a grin. "So kill a chicken, too."

The food provided by the seven armies was nourishing but monotonous. A number of establishments outside the perimeter took advantage of that and for a price no one had to live on mush, black bread, and sausages.

"You lost at dice again." Vree knew her too well for it to be a question.

"Yeah, but I'll come around. It's just..."

"It's just more of the same. And the answer's no."

"Then lend me a crescent." Shonna took a step forward, hand outstretched. "Until payday."

"No."

Shonna's hand dropped under the weight of Vree's response and she wiped her palm against her kilt. "I thought I meant something to you."

A few hours of pleasure, an attempt to raise a barricade around other desires... "Not after you tried losing my money at dice."