“What?” I stopped, self-conscious.
“Do you not know how to eat?” She dropped a spoon and mimicked a careful mouthful, exaggerating the chew with a grim expression. Then she laughed again. “Food is not so clinical. It is an experience. A pleasure. For all the indulgences of this city, have you forgotten this?”
I dropped my own spoon and frowned. “It’s just porridge.”
An-Hadrea shook her head. “No. It is nourishment. It is a gift of warmth and of satisfaction.”
I shrugged, defensive. Food was my job, my duty. It was difficult to take pleasure in something that from an early age had been analyzed for taste, texture, and smell to prevent sickness or death.
“You are an odd person, Credo Jovan.”
I changed the subject. “What are you going to tell the others in the catacombs? Will they help defend the old city once they come over the bridge?”
An-Hadrea shrugged. “I do not know. They have chosen to live here in the city. Perhaps they will defend it as their home. But then, they are Darfri. From what I have heard, even before this siege their beliefs were mocked and belittled. Their neighbors use what parts of our culture they find useful or charming, then discard them like a fashion. At best Darfri have been regarded with condescension and derision. What have they truly in common with the rest of you?”
There was nothing to add to that, really. After all we had learned, I didn’t want to fight the rebellion, either. The best we could hope for was that we found some way of stopping the army before open battle. But the people of this city did not deserve to be murdered for the crimes of their government, and if the rebels wouldn’t listen to reason or negotiation I wasn’t prepared to lie down and let us be trampled, sympathetic to their motivations or not.
“Not everyone will come to your old city,” she added. She blew on her porridge to cool it. “What will you do about those who will not follow?”
“Well,” I said, “it’s absurd to leave people in the old city to join the invading army, especially as they know the city like the mercenaries and the countryfolk don’t.”
Silence.
“But, nothing,” I said, sighing. “Tain won’t force anyone to come over. So if your people want to join the army, we won’t stop them.”
She took another spoonful, regarding me with a tilted head. “And what about people who are too scared to come across? Who do not want to join the army, but fear beatings or worse from your citizens?”
“I hope you’ll convince them Tain will protect them, and punish anyone who threatens them. His honor is everything to him. You must have seen what kind of man he is, by now.”
She pressed her lips together; agreeing, but reluctantly.
“So trust him. And let them see you do.”
“The Chancellor wants to do the right thing, I believe that,” she said after a pause. “But I have spoken to him in person and seen his generosity of spirit. The people below only know what this city and its people have been to them. Some will not come, you must know this.”
“I do,” I admitted. “You heard us before. We just don’t know what to do about it. We can’t drag them out by force. We can only hope they listen to you, especially families with children.”
“And if you leave them there, hiding from the army and from you, what are they to do for food?”
We looked at each other for a long moment. Then I looked back down to my porridge. “I think we both know they have supplies down there,” I said quietly.
It hadn’t taken me too long to piece it together. The missing supplies, the Darfri man who had knocked me out … Hundreds of people could hardly hide under our feet without food stores. With the stolen food they could continue to hide down there even if the city above them were occupied.
An-Hadrea stirred her spoon around her bowl. I saw a softening around her mouth and eyes: the hint of a smile, free of mockery. “You are not so bad,” she said, just as quietly.
We finished our meal in silence, but it was almost companionable.
* * *
I left An-Hadrea near the entry to the tunnels. Or, rather, she left me; one moment we were walking, the next she told me, “I will go now,” and I was alone in the ghostly street. Walking back, I stared at the ground, wondering what transpired beneath. An-Hadrea had not told me what she planned to say, or even how she planned to deliver the message. We would have to trust her.
I wondered what Salvea would say when Tain told her where her daughter had gone. An-Hadrea might be confident with that wicked belt knife of hers, and she had bragged that country children all brawled for sport and fun on the estates, but her mother wasn’t quite so casual about the potential danger. As I made my way back to the east side of the lake and headed for the wall, I catalogued the things that needed doing today.
“Ho!” Pedrag waved to me from the battlements as I ascended the stairs. “Credo Jovan!”
I joined the Craft-Guilder, clasping his age-spotted forearms as I stepped onto the stone walkway. “Good morning,” I said. “How does it look out there?”
His jaw trembled as he turned back to the view. “I think they’re coming for us,” he said.
I followed his gesture, out to where the rebels appeared to be massing into organized lines. A figure in red, mounted on a graspad, moved up and down the assembling lines, waving some sort of banner—the wind whipped it around and I couldn’t make out the symbol, if any—and as he passed, the army cheered and roared, stamping their feet and bashing their weapons and shields. Behind their front lines their war machines loomed: half a dozen catapults and the great siege tower, standing the full height of the walls. I felt cold. This was no tentative foray. They meant to enter the city today.
“Have you sent word?”
Pedrag started to answer, but the attack bell rang out from the nearest tower, and within moments the sound was echoed by the other towers around the city. His gnarled fingers clutched my forearm and we both stared, transfixed, over the ramparts as the army moved forward. Though I’d spent a lot of last night lying awake, picturing this event, it still didn’t seem real to see the catapults being wheeled out like great, silent soldiers, and to hear the baying from the army, like wild animals surrounding their prey.
Our own catapults, designed and built by people who had never done anything of the sort, were in position: one on each of the north and west tower gates and one that was set back on the road and intended to throw over the wall, essentially blind. Their accuracy was untested.
The first of their catapults went off without warning. The great rock sailed through the sky from somewhere to my left, oddly graceful and silent as it flew over the heads of the approaching army. The ugly chunk of boulder hit the wall not far east of where Pedrag and I stood, and the crack made the very stone beneath our feet vibrate. A cheer spread across the army at this first strike.
“Look sharp, Credo,” Pedrag said, and his grip on my arm became an encouraging pat. “Now’s not the time for gawking.”
I blinked. Sounds returned to full force, slapping me into action. Pedrag was right; there was no time left for watching and wondering.
By the time we reached the section of wall being attacked they had struck it again. A confused scramble of disorganization met us as our people filled the battlements and massed around the area in response to the still-pealing alert bells. Marco was up on the wall and Order Guards attempted to direct the hordes below. The first of our catapults retaliated at last, sending a hunk of white rock that might once have belonged to Bell’s Bridge flying over our heads. The visible deflation of our people on the wall moments later told me it must have fallen well short of the line.