Socia opined, "We should've kept on going to Khaurene. Or even into the Altai." She watched a siege engine loft a huge stone almost directly toward them. This crew were not yet expert in their craft. They had not scored a solid hit yet. This stone flew way long. When it landed it shattered like a thrown dirt clod.

Local field stone was soft and broke easily.

"You may be right," Brother Candle said. The absolute confidence of the besiegers troubled him. This was no mob of Grolsachers, nor an undisciplined mix of fanatics and adventurers like the Arnhanders who had come and gone. These men all had jobs, knew how to do them, and worked hard at them. And their efficiency and competence were being shown deliberately.

"They can't last," Socia decided. "There isn't enough food and fodder. We just need to hang on."

Food and fodder were likely to be problems inside Castreresone, too. Every refugee from farther east had been allowed into the city, where the Maysalean partiality for sharing was strong. Useless mouths would consume stores better reserved for fighting men.

Uncharitable of him, to think such things.

He should put the world aside and go into retreat. He was no longer Perfect. Not even close. The mundane had insinuated itself too deeply into his being.

The people of the White City mocked the Patriarchals. Their confidence in their walls remained high. And the enemy had not surrounded the city. For all his numbers, he was not that strong. Round to the northwest and southwest, where new suburbs had been added on, people came and went as they pleased. The enemy did not interfere. Both suburbs, the Burg in the northwest and the New Town down south, had their own walls, extending from the older main walls. Theirs were lower and thinner.

"They may not be entirely serious," the Perfect Master mused one afternoon. "This could be a show of strength meant to awe the city into giving up. They do say this Captain-General is n.i.g.g.ardly with the lives of his men."

"They say he's pretty clever, too."

News of the extermination of the G.o.d grub on the Ormienden side of the Dechear River had reached Castreresone shortly before the Patriarchal vedettes. People did not want to believe that the Captain-General had faced down and destroyed a major Instrumentality. But he had captured Sonsa easily. Had taken Viscesment and Immaculate II by surprise, so quickly that Immaculate's bodyguards had offered only a token defense. His sub-commanders were at Antieux and Sheavenalle, now, the latter chieftain enjoying unantic.i.p.ated success.

A week after the Patriarchal army arrived the White City's mood began to turn. The enemy had begun systematically capturing nearby towns and fortresses. The swiftness of their fall was frightening.

The mood blackened further when news spread that the darkest brethren of the Collegium accompanied the invaders.

Sorcery explained the failure of so many strongpoints.

Sorcery and treachery.

The Patriarchal Society for the Suppression of Sacrilege and Heresy had people planted everywhere. Those traitors worked their wickedness.

Bernardin Amberch.e.l.le was a crude, cruel man, not without cunning. His agents had penetrated the Society. On the eighth day of the siege one of those betrayed a plan to seize and open a hidden postern. Amberch.e.l.le's status ballooned after the traitors had been thrown off the taller barbican tower. Seventeen priests and lay brothers. Including an otherwise innocent Brothen Episcopal priest who had the nerve to beg mercy for the captives.

There was no central power in the city. Roger Shale had not been replaced. The magnates could agree on nothing. Isabeth was en route from Navaya with a hundred of Peter's knights and all their train. Having planned to land at Sheavenalle, then march up the Laur. But much of Sheavenalle was in the hands of the Patriarchals already. An attempt to land would be risky. So the ships were back at sea. They might put in at Terliaga, two-thirds of the way back to Platadura, whence they had sailed.

Wind and rain returned. The bee-busy Patriarchals had created their own rude city by then, employing local labor. The Captain-General had done the same during the Calziran Crusade.

Though the Patriarchal army had arrived without a tail of camp followers, it was acquiring them now.

People did what they must to survive. And most country folk did not care who occupied the castles and cities. The ruling cla.s.s were all the same, seen from a charcoal maker's hut.

Bernardin Amberch.e.l.le summoned Socia Rault and Brother Candle on the fifteenth day. Amberch.e.l.le seemed pensive. Unusual in a short, wide man best known for smashing his way through puzzles.

Several of Amberch.e.l.le's odd a.s.sociates were in the background. Likewise, a dozen leading Castreresonese, including Berto Bertrand, Roger Shale's longtime companion and deputy, now castellan till Isabeth arrived. Brother Candle surveyed the a.s.semblage with a jaundiced eye. There was not a leader among the locals, evidently. Else why defer to half-mad outsider Amberch.e.l.le? Simply because the man had the nerve to commit ma.s.s murder?

What about those lurking, dusky men with the odd accents, now believed to be Artecipean?

"Thanks for coming," Amberch.e.l.le said, proving he could find manners when he wanted.

"At your command," the old man replied. "Though I'm baffled. What can I possibly contribute?"

"Advice."

"If I'm able. Though you have more practical minds here than mine."

"Back to you in a moment, Master. We have a question for the Count's betrothed."

Socia was learning. She had not yet blurted something irrelevant just to establish her presence. She awaited Amberch.e.l.le's question.

"Miss... Did you get any replies to your requests for help?"

Socia sneered. "Not one. Though King Peter is sending Isabeth to a.s.sert his rights."

"We feared as much. Master. The enemy won't talk. They've ignored every proposal for negotiations."

"Sublime says there's nothing to negotiate."

"We have spies moving in and out of their camp. They don't seem interested in Sublime's opinions, either."

The Captain-General would expect his local laborers to include spies. Evidently he did not care what they learned. "And?"

"The enemy are confident that they can stay the winter- if the city refuses to yield. We may have to if they cut off communications completely. And they have started hara.s.sing anyone bringing in food or supplies."

The old man repeated, "And?"

"We're consuming food much faster than it can be brought in."

"That happens during a siege."

Socia said, 'Turn out the people who don't contribute. Let the enemy have to deal with them."

Brother Candle said, "We'd better pack, then, hadn't we, girl?"

Socia glared.

The old man said, "She does have a point, though. Seeker refugees could slip out and go to Khaurene. Or into the Altai."

"a.s.suming the enemy lets them."

"a.s.suming that." The Captain-General might decide that overcrowding and starvation were useful weapons. Or he might want terrified refugees to carry panic to the rest of the Connec. "But you have something else on your mind, don't you? You don't need me to tell you that."

"The Night," Amberch.e.l.le murmured, like a boy caught doing something he should not. "The Night is... isn't... Whatever happened on the Dechear, the Night now seems to be afraid afraid of those people. Despite being ten times as active as it was only a year ago." of those people. Despite being ten times as active as it was only a year ago."

Brother Candle frowned. What he knew about that event was limited to exaggerations heard in the street. Why was Amberch.e.l.le concerned? Or was it his odd friends who were? Those friends, he had learned, had taken flight from Viscesment after the surprise appearance of Patriarchal troops.

"I have no intercourse with the Night. I'm a philosopher, not a sorcerer or priest. If the Night shuns the Patriarchals, it stands to reason that they're afraid they could share the fate of the thing that perished on the Dechear."

Amberch.e.l.le sighed. "I didn't think you'd tell us much. But I hoped." He shook his head vigorously. That did no good. "They've got Princ.i.p.ates with them."

That was no secret. "They're substantially overrated, I suspect," Brother Candle said.

"He's right. We are."

The voice came out of nowhere. Socia squealed. The Connectens gaped and gabbled panicky questions. Some thought it was a practical joke. But Amberch.e.l.le's dusky friends panicked. Several produced weapons they should not have been carrying. They slashed empty air. Others fled the chamber.

"Master," Socia said in a scared little-girl voice. "Something just touched me. It put this in my hand." She held up a ring.

Brother Candle took the ring to the brightest lamp. Two outsiders nearby blanched when they saw it. The shorter staggered as though suddenly faint. "What is it?" the old man asked.

He got no reply. The chief foreigner herded his gang out of there. Berto Bertrand, Bernardin Amberch.e.l.le, and Socia crowded Brother Candle.

He said, "It's a signet ring. Like none I've ever seen. Uhn." That looked like specks of dried blood. "I've seen these symbols somewhere before." In the mountains north of Khaurene, the Altai, come to think. Back in the dark woods, where Eis, Aaron, and their fellows were come-lately and the Old G.o.ds, though no longer worshiped, were not forgotten.

"Bernardin. Find out why your friends are upset." He wanted to quiz Socia about how it had come into her possession.

He did not want to accept her claim. Even he might panic if he believed there were invisible men afoot in Castreresone.

Amberch.e.l.le growled, no longer as pleased with his a.s.sociates. Berto Bertrand said, "I'll spread the word that people who have somewhere else to go should do so."

Bernardin Amberch.e.l.le was not in charge. The consuls of the city, its magnates, and its urban n.o.bility listened only because he was Count Raymone's cousin. They nodded politely, then did things their own way. Rejecting the presence of a large enemy army as any reason to create a strong central authority.

The sixteenth morning word spread that the enemy was doing something new. Several thousand forty-day men had arrived from Firaldia. The Captain-General meant to take full advantage. Later that same day a messenger from Sheavenalle brought word that the port city had surrendered.

Observing from the wall when he heard, Brother Candle mused, "That's what they've been waiting for. They can barge supplies up the Laur, now." He wondered about the fate of the Seekers of Sheavenalle. And of its Devedian and Dainshau minorities. The Captain-General's men were not fanatics, but the Society followed right behind them.

The seventeenth morning the invaders a.s.saulted the Burg and the New Town, surprising defenders who had been warned that an attack was coming. The attackers got over the New Town wall and captured a gate immediately. Fighting spread across the suburb. The defense collapsed by nightfall. The Patriarchals immediately began using tall buildings as vantages from which to hurl missiles into the city.

In the northwestern suburb, the Burg, the defenders held the top of the wall but failed to prevent two breaches created by clever masons. The defenders recaptured those and closed the gaps under a hail of missiles from wooden towers the besiegers put up with astonishing speed. Heavy ballistae atop those flung blazing spears deep into the suburb.

Brother Candle told Berto Bertrand, "I'm no soldier, but I don't think a sally would be wise." Small raids had been attempted almost daily. None had turned out well.

"We'll counterattack in the New Town tonight," Bertrand said. The consuls and magnates had decided. "And go after the towers bombarding the Burg, too."

Only light defensive artillery had been mounted on the walls of the suburbs. None of Castreresone's defensive weaponry had done any good yet. The stone throwers still lacked ammunition. Those who made decisions remained confident in the White City's wall.

Brother Candle feared Roger Shale's improvements would go to waste.

Bertrand added, "We'll hit their main camp tomorrow. They won't expect that. We'll push them back across the river and capture the towers they've built to control the bridge."

There was more. It was a grand and complex scheme. The enemy's unseasoned levees would be trapped this side of the river and destroyed...

Beyond ignoring the certainty that any complicated plan will stumble, those who had created this one had forgotten that voice out of nowhere.

Brother Candle thought chances of surprising this enemy were nil. He did not stay awake to watch the disaster unfold. He did not want to live with the pain.

SOCIA COULD NOT CONTAIN HER EXCITEMENT. SHE BURST into Brother Candle's cell. She bounced up and down while he collected himself.

"It isn't seemly for a woman of your station to be here." Count Raymone had made little provision for her other than to trust her to the wisdom of the Perfect Master. "But you're here, now. Pull yourself together. Try to make sense."

"Everything is going the way they planned! They've retaken the New Town. They pulled those towers down that were shooting into the Burg." Her excitement faded. "They haven't put all the fires out, though."

Brother Candle slept on a reed mat. He sat there now, his ragged blanket pulled around him. It had turned cold during the night. 'There was an actual surprise?"

"Completely!"

He was unprepared to believe that was not an enemy ploy. "Back out of here for a minute. Let me get dressed." Soda's life at Caron ande Lette had been rude, simple, and relaxed. That would not do in Castreresone. The Count of Antieux could not have his betrothed acquiring a tail of rumors.

"Come on!" Socia enthused as the old man left his cell. "I want to see!"

He refused to be hurried. He stopped to break his fast: bread smeared with a dark, heavy, almost bitter honey. By the time the girl chivvied him forth from the keep there was light in the east as well as the north, where the Burg continued to burn. "I suppose we should head for the eastern wall."

The streets were filled with nervous men, all under arms. The a.r.s.enals had been emptied out. These men were supposed to capture the Laur bridge and its defenses.

Brother Candle believed he was looking at walking dead men.

The families were out and underfoot as well. Their fear was thick. They knew some of these fathers and husbands would not be coming back.

Would any? Brother Candle dreaded the answer.

He offered a blessing when requested, for anyone who asked, Maysalean or otherwise. Most Episcopals were not unwilling to take what they could get where they could get it. Though priests loyal to Viscesment would be waiting near the gate, to bless the faithful as they streamed past.

Brother Candle doubted that Sublime's priests would reveal themselves, though devout Episcopals of the Brothen stripe were among those about to fight for their city.

They had their doubts and fears, as men do in the hour before battle. But they had faith in the righteousness of their cause.

Brother Candle suffered the doubts and fears while enjoying none of the confidence of unquestioning faith.

"Socia. Dear girl. Once we're done here I fear I must leave you."

"Don't be... What are you talking about?"

"I've forgotten what I am, child. I'm lost. I have to put the world aside and find myself again. I'm losing my soul."

Socia used his own past remarks to argue with him.

The soldiers began their sally before the pair reached a good vantage. The rush through the gate almost caught them up. Socia's lack of manners saved them that unexpected adventure.