“And because thanks to those lessons you’ve been getting from my Weapons-Master, I know you’re one of the best shots in the manor,” Kordas told her, and felt a brief moment of amusement at her startled look. “What, my insouciance got you fooled into thinking I don’t know what’s going on under my own roof? I’d appreciate it if you’d add sling to those lessons. Maybe quarterstaff. In my humble opinion you’re too small to risk close-quarter combat, but I’ll leave that up to Weapons-Master Klemath. The Plan will go right on ahead. Get the first, temporary Gate up, get Ivar across to scout the position for the one we’ll actually use, and start moving people out as soon as the main Gate is established.”
Wis cleared his throat, getting Kordas’s attention. “On that note . . . we might as well tell you now that Jonaton’s had a brainstorm.”
All eyes turned to Jonaton, who cleared his throat uneasily. “Well, anyone could have had it,” he demurred.
“But the fact is, you did, not anyone. So?” Wis prodded.
“Once Ivar has the location for us, I can have a new Gate up and powered and running within a day,” Jonaton said modestly. “Maybe two at the worst.”
Kordas stared at him. “But—how?” he stammered. So far as he was aware, the construction of a major Gate took a fortnight at the very least.
“I did some probing to the West after the Circle and I got the two stones linked and I could work through them,” said Ceri. “There’s an ancient reserve of power in the immediate area that I am fairly certain we can draw on. It dates back to that ancient conflict you were asking about not long ago; somehow it managed to not get caught up in a Change-circle, scattered to the winds, or contaminated.”
“And I found a way to make Gates quickly,” Jonaton said proudly. “It turns out you don’t have to make a Gate entirely out of stone. We do it that way because that’s the way it’s always been done, but that doesn’t mean it’s the way we always have to do it. In fact, the only reason we make Gates out of stone is because timber doesn’t last. I’ve tried horn, wood—even wax! They all work. They all work well. It’s just that the weaker the material, the faster the Gate degrades. One made of wood won’t last a year.” He laughed. “And those made of wax last just about long enough for one trip.”
“So we make two arcs out of timber, right here, in our workshop. We carry them through the temporary Gate with their foundation stones, set them in place, power them up, and—” Ceri spread his hands wide. “We don’t need a Gate that lasts. We don’t want a Gate that lasts, because we don’t intend to go back.”
“In fact, it might just be a very good idea to have a Gate we can burn behind us,” Sai pointed out.
“This—is unexpected good news.” Kordas managed not to stammer. Then he took a deep, deep breath and settled his mind. “Right, then. We always knew our deadline for getting the last of us out was going to be the Regatta. This is just a minor deviation from the Plan. I’m not that powerful a mage that you can’t do this without me.”
“But—” Isla bit her lip. “What if you’re still under the Emperor’s eye by the time of the Regatta? How will you get out?”
“The Plan isn’t about me,” Kordas said, with force, so he could be sure they understood he meant this. “The Plan was never about saving whoever was the Duke. The Plan was always about getting the most of us out that we can. I’ll do my level best to join you. If I can’t, I’ll do my level best to hide somewhere, even if I have to live the rest of my life as a stablehand.” He did not mention what would happen to him once the Emperor discovered their deception and escape if he was ever caught. He didn’t have to. But he preferred to be optimistic.
And after all, the life of a stablehand wasn’t all that bad.
“Now, let’s see about working out a clear schedule,” he said. “There literally is no time to waste.”
* * *
—
Delia hardly knew what to say during that meeting. Over the course of the past couple of days she had somehow gone from being essentially her sister’s hanger-on to one of the lynchpins of a desperate plot.
But what bothered her the most about all of this had nothing to do with her. Because all she could think about was the peril that Kordas was walking into. Willingly! And he knew very well what he was doing!
This is insane . . . .
But if it was insane, it was the sort of insanity that made more sense than the “sanity” of the Emperor’s toadies.
She found herself agreeing to help Jonaton and the Six with the creation of the temporary and “permanent” Gates—apparently she was useful, not because she was a mage, but because she was not. She wouldn’t be affected as much, or at all, if certain things went wrong, it seemed. And once the big Gate was up, she had an even more important job, since it would be her task to carry messages from Isla to coordinate the exodus . . . .
“I don’t understand how this is going to work,” she finally confessed to her sister, as Kordas left the planning group to consult with Grim about the tribute-horses, Hakkon and the other non-mages went off to continue the charade that the only important event in the entire Duchy was that the Emperor had demanded his tribute early, and Jonaton and the Six went into a huddle to decide exactly how they were going to create two curved, wooden horn-like objects that were two stories tall.
“You don’t understand how what is going to work?” Isla asked, motioning to her to follow.
“How are we going to keep the Emperor’s spies from noticing that people are disappearing?” she asked as they headed for Delia’s rooms—those rooms being the ones least likely for anyone to be using as a scrying point to spy on the people in the manor. After all, who was she to the Empire? A mere female of no importance.
Isla shrugged. “They won’t notice, mostly because so far as the people in power are concerned, the ones that will disappear were invisible in the first place.” Isla opened the door into Delia’s rooms, motioned her inside, and shut the door again. “Let’s just take Lord Merrin as an example. He is the Emperor’s spymaster in Valdemar. As such, he is a very minor functionary in the Emperor’s service. Do you think that outside of his hand-picked spies, his personal body-servant, and perhaps his steward and his seneschal, he actually knows any of the people who serve him?”
“I—don’t know,” Delia confessed.
“Well, I can tell you for a fact that he doesn’t. Because I have three spies of my own in his household. One is a housemaid, because housemaids are almost literally invisible and yet see and hear an amazing amount. One is a gardener for the same reason. And the third is one of his minor clerks. He might take notice of the clerk, but only because he might need something written or fetched from the library or archives, and even then, all he’ll see is a pair of hands. The others? For him they are faceless nonentities, to the point that my housemaid was once forced to stand on a staircase facing the wall because he paused on that stair to have a long and quite interesting discussion with one of his spies, and a housemaid’s orders are to draw no attention to herself, ever, which she would have done if she’d tried to go down past him. It literally never occurred to him that as she stood there, as dumb as her broom, she was busy listening to every word he said.”