“Night-of-blades—tsk,” Rainfall said. “Barbaric phrases, from a Thane of the Hypatian Empire.”
The Dragonblade raised his spear; its tip glowed faintly red, like cooling metal from the furnace, but the steel couldn’t have been more than torch-hot.
Forstrel knelt beside Rainfall’s wheeled chair and tied the sash about his waist, as calmly as though ten-score armed barbarians didn’t surround the house. Rainfall raised his arms a little so Forstrel could work the knot after wrapping the silk twice about his waist.
“I appreciate the call, though not the companions. You keep strange and lowly company these days, Hammar.”
“Ha!” Hammar shouted. “This from an elf with a pet dragon!”
“You come bearing arms to this estate, do violence to my animals, and attempt to murder my wife,” Rainfall said. “I suppose you know your thaneship is now utterly forfeit.”
“Glad I am to be free of the title,” Hammar said. “You will wish, before the moon reaches its zenith, that you’d shown more loyalty to me. The barbarians have admirable methods for dealing with those who show disloyalty to their lords.”
“I’ve never claimed loyalty to Hammar, only to the office of thane,” Rainfall said. “If you had a jot of your father’s wisdom, you’d know that way is better.”
A rider with a knotted beard and heavy tattooing above his eyes grunted something at Hammar.
As they spoke, Rainfall turned to Forstrel. “Good work, Yeo Lessup,” he said quietly. “Now get to the tunnel with the others.”
“My mother stands in the hall with her laundry ladle, swearing to brain the first barbarian through the door,” Forstrel said.
“Drag her down by the ear if you must,” Rainfall said out of the side of his mouth. “I want you in the escape tunnel forthwith. Don’t stand there rooted—obey!”
“Master,” Forstrel said, bowing, and there were tears in his eyes.
“Watch out for him,” Forstrel whispered as he squeezed by Wistala.
Outside, the barbarian finished his speech.
“And you shall have it!” Hammar shouted. “Warriors of Kark, Blacklake, and Turi Fell, all that you may carry off between the Whitewater and the twin hills is yours. Beast, coin, garment, bag, and babe, take what you will.”
Rainfall lifted himself out of the chair, gripped the balcony railing in white knuckles. “You know not what you do, Hammar,” he shouted, but the barbarians were cheering so loudly, Wistala wondered if he was heard.
The barbarians divided, and Wistala, peering over his shoulder, saw a contingent ride off in the direction of the Green Dragon Inn and the homes around it.
“I know exactly what I do, enemy. I’ve got men in every town of the Minelands and the Quarterings. Loyal men, and I’m declaring myself Lord. My alliances are set, and my plans are just begun. But there’s one small irritant, no more of consequence than a road pebble in my horse’s hoof, and that’s this estate. I now take what is rightfully mine.”
“You and your barbarian wife are welcome to it,” Rainfall said. “I will go in peace. Take Mossbell lock and window intact.”
Hammar turned to the Dragonblade. “Have you ever heard the like? As though he’s doing us a favor! No, that is water long since under your precious bridge. I’ll have my justice for the years of insult and hang you by the boughs of your grandfathers!” Hammar turned to the remaining barbarians. “Search this wart of a hill from top to bottom, and bring out that elf and his riches!”
Four of the barbarians—it was hard to see where hair and beard ended and where the fur of their loincloths and vests began—drew war-picks and -axes and hurried for the door. Wistala heard crashes at the back of the house.
Rainfall backed his chair into the hallway.
“A good game while it lasted, Wistala. You should break toward Quarryness. The dogs and riders won’t get over the wall, they’ll have to go back to—”
A female shriek sounded from below. “Brutes!”
“Oh no,” Rainfall said. “Don’t tell me she wouldn’t—”
Widow Lessup ran up the grand stairs with a speed that did her years credit, clutching an oarlike laundry ladle.
“Oh, sir, they’re breaking in,” she said. “I couldn’t leave, I just couldn’t, I tricked For and shut the—”
Rainfall ignored her. “Wistala!” he shouted.
Three barbarians ran up the grand staircase. Wistala extended her neck and spat her foua, its oily odor setting every fringe-tip down her spine aquiver.
The first two men dissolved in the hot spew; the third fell back down the stairs, his arms beating vainly as the liquid fire engulfed his head.
“Go now, Wistala, out the back gallery!”
The railing began to burn.
“No,” Wistala said. “Not without you.”
She whipped her neck up and crashed her head into the ceiling. A second smash—her vision went white for a moment—and she was through to the floor of the library.
Rearing up, she tore the hole wider with her sii. Rainfall pressed on a wooden panel, and a grid of steel dropped down behind them, closing off the balcony doors . . . though she imagined arrows could still be shot through.
“Up,” she said. Both hominids stood there dumbly. “To the library!”
“I’m to climb your back?” Widow Lessup asked.
“No, go up the stairs,” Wistala said, pointing at the nearby stairwell.
“But the master,” Widow Lessup said.
Wistala closed her jaws on his seat back and, neck muscles straining, lifted him through the hole.
“Should have thought of this years ago,” Rainfall said from the library.
Wistala climbed up and through the hole.
“If we’re to die, I’m glad it’s here, Wistala,” Rainfall said. “Remember when I’d read to you from—”
“Always. But we’re not dead yet,” she said, looking down into the grand staircase, where smoldering barbarians were setting wood alight.
Widow Lessup ran through the door and shut it behind her. Below, they heard doors breaking, crockery smashing, and assorted calls in tongues perhaps only Rainfall understood.
“May For have the sense to keep them in the tunnel until this is all over,” Widow Lessup said.
“I wish you’d gone along,” Rainfall said.
“Me? Crawl through all those cobwebs? I’d rather be stripped and carried off by the Hordes of Hesstur out there than breathe spider sacs.”
Wistala looked at the desk, nosed open a drawer.
“Whatever are you doing there, Tala?” Rainfall said.
“Your cord-and-seal cutter, there, the short sharp blade. Let’s have it.”
Widow Lessup ran for it. “Are we to slit each other’s throats? This is just like that play . . . ummm, the one with the old tyrant king and the three children . . .”
“No. I need my wings. It’s a bit early, but I can move them a little, even though they’re still encased. I may be able to fly.”
“How does a knife—?” Rainfall said. “Oh.”
“Widow Lessup,” Wistala said, pointing to the twin lines of raised scales on her back. “You’ll have to do it. Hard and fast, parallel to my fringe, like you’re dressing a goat.”
Rainfall grasped her by the hand and pointed.
“Oh, I don’t know—”
“Fast!” Wistala said. “But not too deep. Cut the skin along the stretch marks—that’s probably the way it would open naturally.”
Widow Lessup took a deep breath. . . .
The first one hurt. The second one hurt even more, because she still had the pain of the first lining her back. Wistala tried to ignore the pain, and concentrated on the crashing sounds on the floor below. She also smelled smoke.
She extended her bloody wings as far as she could in the library, marveling at their form. They seemed a bit undersize compared with her mother’s, but then they weren’t fully grown yet, as she was in the middle of her final drakka growth spurt.
“I take it you’re going to go up and out?” Rainfall said, looking at the crystal cupola.
Wistala plunged her head through the hole in the library floor, as though she were going for a fish through an ice hole. She locked her jaws over the head of a barbarian running with an armful of stolen linens through the corridor below, pulled him up, and flung him skyward and through the glass, which mostly shattered outward from the force with which he was thrown.
Widow Lessup sighed. “It was such a pretty thing. Why must pretty things always be smashed?”
Wistala reared up on her saa and, using the scales on her sii, smashed away the remaining bits of glass. She took a deep breath and roared out her pain and anger into the night: “Let all who would burn these books know that there is an Agent of Librarians here. Enter to curses and peril!”
“You’ll have to leave that wondrous chair behind,” Wistala said. “I’m not sure I can carry you and it, as well.”