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  They shuffled back a little farther, glancing up at the eaves.

  Argun said, “Okay, on three. One. Two. Charge!”

  The men charged but remained somewhat of a gaggle. Their impact was spread out and, though the door bounced again under their assault, it still didn’t give.

  Argun turned his attention to the shutters over the windows. Each evening at dusk he’d seen someone from the tavern come out and close the shutters over the windows. He hadn’t investigated the shutters because he’d expected Jersey to let the team in through the door. Should’ve examined the windows as contingencies! he thought, wondering what’d happened to Jersey. Still, if they come out here to shut them, I should be able to open them, then break the glass, then... A thought niggled—that if the shutters were intended to prevent break-ins it seemed crazy to put the fasteners on the outside.

  Argun ran his hands up and down the near side of the shutter. On the side he was feeling, he felt heavy linked eyebolts that were serving as hinges. He quickly stepped to the other side. More eyebolts? he thought, confused. With dawning suspicion, he slid his fingers down along the bolts and found they passed into holes in the wall. They aren’t screwed in, he thought with a suddenly dismayed realization, they go all the way through to the inside of the wall! The bastards push the bolts through the wall then latch them from the inside.

  Furious, Argun got his fingers under the corner of the shutter and jerked. It creaked a little but didn’t splinter the way he’d hoped. He heard his men crash into the door again. It sounded like they’d managed to hit it in better unison.

  Argun felt surprised they’d gotten their act together without him. He looked over. The door remained undamaged.

  He jerked on the shutter again, feeling a little give. He yelled at team two, “The door’s not gonna give! Get over here and help me pull on this shutter. Maybe we can get in the window.”

  One of them laughed.

  Argun turned on them, furious over their lack of respect. He saw two of them were on their knees, clawing at their eyes. What he’d thought was laughing was violent coughing. They looked like they were having trouble breathing. What the hell?! he wondered frantically. I’ve got to get out of here!

  Argun turned to flee, but before he took his first step away from the wall, a sense of great peace came over him.

  He turned his back to the wall.

  Sliding down the wall he sat.

  Relaxation swept over him.

  Grave embarrassment surfaced as he thought about what he and the men had been doing. I was going to steal from these people? he thought. When did I start thinking that was okay?

  Argun’s head slumped to the side as his consciousness faded.

  ~~~

  Jadyn looked up when Mr. Hyllis came pounding back down the stairs. She realized with a little surprise that Hareh, Rrica, and Kazy were dropping the big oak bar into its cleats at the back door. A glance to her left showed that Daussie, Eva, and Seri were doing the same at the front door. Remembering that Daum wanted her to tell him what her telepathy had learned from Jersey’s mind, she spoke loudly, “They’ve got three archers with fire arrows about thirty meters toward the city. This guy expected us to give up on the threat of fire, but they’ve also got teams of six men waiting at both the front and back doors.” And we should give up, shouldn’t we? Jadyn thought. We’ve just locked ourselves inside a big wooden building that they’re about to set on fire!

  Daum was running across the room and into the kitchen. He shouted, “I already shot the archers but they did shoot one fire arrow at us. Daussie, figure out where it went. Hareh, pepper the guys at the front doors. Kazy, stop the ones at the back.” Bursting back out of the kitchen Daum ran back to drop to his knees by Jadyn. He had a roll of heavy cord. Grabbing Jersey’s wrists, he jerked them back and started lashing them together.

  In a commanding tone, Daussie said, “Seri! Help me with the fire arrow. Mom, two of the guys from the back headed for the kitchen door. Stop ‘em.”

  For a moment, Jadyn worried whether Eva’s telepathy was strong enough to stop someone through a wall. She doesn’t have to put them to sleep, Jadyn realized, she can just make them not feel like attacking us. And if it doesn’t work she can just ask for help.

  Daum looked up into Jadyn’s eyes, “I’ve got him Jadyn. See if you can help control the people at the front door.”

  Jadyn stood and ran to the door. Hareh was running up and Jadyn’s ghirit showed a couple of those men were already coughing. Presumably, Hareh’d teleported some cayenne into their throats. Seri was taking a stance, braced against the wall. Daussie started clambering up over her to stand on her shoulders. Jadyn’s ghirit showed her a fire arrow burning on the outside wall about a half-meter above Daussie’s head. Suddenly the arrow fell to the deck. What? Oh, Daussie cut it off next to the wall.

  The arrow almost went out on impact but then it flickered back to life. Seri knelt with her head against the wall just on the other side from the arrow.

  It flickered again, then went out.

  Seri curled up, holding her hands to her head. For a moment Jadyn didn’t understand what’d happened, then she realized Seri’d used her telekinesis to cool the molecules of the arrow’s rag below flammability. Which was possible, but the wad of cloth on the arrow was big enough that it must’ve taken all of Seri’s ability and would’ve left her with a ripping headache. Ouch, she thought sympathetically. She knew those use-of-talent headaches were bad and the kind of effort Seri had to have given would’ve made for a really bad one.

  Remembering Daum had tasked her with helping control the men outside, Jadyn felt embarrassed for gawking. She cast around with her ghirit, looking for problems. Oh, there’s another guy over by the window! She stepped that way and sent her ghirit into his mind, calming him. She put him to sleep the way she’d done Jersey. It’s strange to be fighting, using something I learned to do to help patients, she thought.

  Argun?! Jadyn wondered as she explored the man’s mind. My God, it’s Argun!

  Horror came over her as she saw in Argun’s mind what he’d been doing. Should I change him? she wondered, then thought of Kazy’s ethics for telepaths. He’s been committing crimes—she searched deeper—but not capital crimes. Though, setting this building on fire with people in it… If he’d succeeded it would’ve killed people and that’d certainly be a capital crime.

  With resolve, Jadyn thought, He needs to be changed!

  She shook her head, But I shouldn’t be the one who does it. Sure as hell the first person I try to change shouldn’t be my ex-boyfriend. I’ll just keep him asleep and Eva or Kazy can fix him later.

  ~~~

  When Argun woke he felt relaxed. More relaxed than he’d ever felt in his life. I’ve never felt so good, he thought, wondering what’d happened. Then his memories started seeping back.

  Remorse set in.

  I’m vile! he thought with dismay.

  ***

  Tarc started back into Realth. He wanted to talk to Sylvia Martin about her father. Somehow, the fact that he’d saved Martin’s daughter made him feel like her dad couldn’t be as bad as Pongo said he was.

  From behind him, Lizeth’s voice called, “Tarc, wait up.”

  After the arguing they’d done last time, Tarc was not at all sure he wanted Lizeth with him. Nonetheless, he stopped and waited for her to jog up to him. He said, “Hey Lizeth. You’re off duty too?”

  Lizeth nodded, then looked down at the blanket-wrapped bundle he was carrying. “You’re bringing your bow?”

  Tarc shrugged, “Just in case.”

  Lizeth sighed and turned her eyes to the city. “Last night I went in and made a circuit around the palace, trying to figure out whether that S.O.B. recaptured the girls.”

  “What’d you find out?”

  Lizeth snorted, “That I can’t tell one girl from another with my ghirit.” She shrugged, “The king didn’t have any girls with him though, so… I’m hoping that means they’re okay
.”

  Tarc said, “Last time I was in the city I checked with Kali. She said they were all still at their homes. Her family’s worried about her though. She might join the caravan for the next few legs. Her dad wants to send her to live with her uncle in Denton’s Crossing.”

  Lizeth shook her head, “I get a sick feeling every time I think about leaving that bastard Uray alive. I don’t think that… abomination of a man’s going to change just because you threatened him, made him dizzy, and punched him in the nuts a few times.”

  Tarc hesitated, then sighed. “Yeah, I think you’re right.” He hesitated, then continued, “I’ve talked to… some people who should know. They agree with you. If I punish him some more, he might behave for a few weeks, but once he hasn’t heard from us for a while… Once he thought we might not be watching…” Tarc shook his head, “then they think he’ll go back to his old ways. Maybe worse. It’d be bad.”

  Lizeth gave Tarc an eager look, “You’ve changed your mind? You’re gonna kill the son of a bitch after all?”

  Tarc shrugged, “Maybe? I’m trying to figure out whether there’s a way to keep them from having a massive fight over the succession. Getting hundreds of people killed to keep a few from getting raped…” He shook his head and gave her a pleading look, “What the hell’s the right and wrong of questions like that!”

  “Yeah,” Lizeth said, “I think… I think you should do something more than just killing Uray. But I sure as hell don’t know what.”

  “I’ve talked to… someone in the palace guard,” Tarc said. “He thinks one of the guard lieutenants would make a good king. Family man, good tactician, good listener, ethical. He says this lieutenant wants to turn Realth into a democracy.”

  They walked in silence for a minute or two, then Lizeth said, “I can see how you could kill Uray. But I don’t have any idea how you’d put a lieutenant on the throne? A few well-placed arrows aren’t going to make that happen.”

  “Arrows might stop some of the other people who’d try to take the crown for themselves.”

  “Kill a few to save hundreds?” Lizeth asked. “I guess that sounds… okay.”

  “I’m trying to think of it as killing a few evil men to save hundreds of good people.”

  “But you don’t know who’s going to go after the throne.”

  Tarc lowered his voice because they were walking past the guards at the city gates, “Actually, my source in the palace has some pretty good guesses as to who’d make an attempt.”

  “How’s he know that?”

  Tarc felt somewhat surprised to realize talking to Lizeth was helpful. She may be bitchy and difficult, but… Oh hell. I have no idea why I like talking to her about this stuff. He looked at her, “‘Know’ might be too strong a word. But, probably if you lived here and worked in the palace you’d have some ideas yourself, right?”

  Lizeth frowned, “I don’t know. I’m not good at politics. Who’s he thinking might take a shot?”

  “Well…” Tarc paused, wondering if he should be telling Lizeth this stuff, then realized he should trust her at least as much as he did Pongo and Harris. He continued, “This is really unsettling, but I’ve got two people telling me that Sylvia’s father might be the biggest problem.”

  “Sylvia? Sylvia the girl Uray was holding? Wait! The one whose father wouldn’t cooperate with Uray?”

  Tarc nodded.

  “Didn’t the girl say her dad didn’t care about her?!”

  “I don’t remember it exactly, but, yeah, I got the impression she didn’t think she mattered much to him. Um… my palace source said her father called her ‘the little whore.’ Told Uray he could do whatever he wanted with her.”

  Loathingly, Lizeth said, “A father who says things like that needs to die.”

  Tarc shrugged, “Maybe it was just a negotiating ploy?”

  “I’ve got one of my sick feelings that it isn’t.”

  “Your feelings?”

  “Yeah, you know, those sick feelings people get about how things’re going to turn out.”

  Tarc felt goosebumps. “I thought you didn’t get little tingles of warning about earthquakes and stuff?”

  “I don’t. But, like everybody else, sometimes I think whatever plan we’re following sucks ass. Of course, we soldiers always think the boss’s plan sucks, but sometimes it’s worse than usual. We may always bitch about the plan we’re handed, but when I get one of my especially sick feelings about whatever Norton’s got us doing, things usually go exceedingly sideways.”

  Tarc gave her a wide-eyed look. “Maybe your precog does go farther than a few seconds into the future. You should try to come up with some way to measure how accurate those feeling are.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Lizeth said rolling her eyes. “Every time something goes in the shitter all the guards sit around afterward saying they knew it was going to happen. It isn’t precognition, it’s just after the fact bitching. Looking for someone to blame.” She paused for a moment. When Tarc didn’t say anything, she said, “It isn’t precognition, it’s common sense. Shitty plans lead to shitty outcomes.”

  Tarc shrugged, “You’d have to write it down ahead of time. Rate your feelings as bad, worse, and terrible; then score it afterward to see how your feelings correlated to the outcomes.”

  Lizeth snorted, “Don’t go getting all big-brained on me. You can’t score feelings.”

  They reached the palace and started walking around it. Tarc kept his ghirit out in the palace but found himself mostly thinking about whether Lizeth really did have some kind of longer-term precognition.

  Just as he was wondering whether he’d been paying enough attention that his ghirit would’ve actually noticed anything important, he realized the king—or at least a huge man—had just entered his range. He turned to say something to Lizeth about it, but realized Uray was still too far away for her to sense. She’d looked questioningly at him. Rather than say something about the king and make her realize how much farther he could sense things, he asked, “Have you noticed anything interesting yet?”

  She pointed into the palace grounds and said, “I think there’re women in the room I’m pointing at. Can you tell?”

  Tarc focused his ghirit along the line she was pointing to and found a room with several smaller sized people. “They might be small men, but I think you’re right, they’re women. Those aren’t the rooms they use to hold prisoners though.”

  “What if they’re holding some girls there, using different rooms so we won’t notice?”

  “Um, that’d only be a good strategy if they knew we can sense things from a distance. I sure hope they don’t.”

  Lizeth gave him a look, “They know you’ve got some kind of witchy powers. Talking at a distance, making people dizzy, etcetera.”

  Tarc shrugged, “Listen in that room. See if they sound like young girls who’re being held against their will. I’ll keep going until I find the king, see if he sounds like he’s doing something he shouldn’t.”

  “Okay,” Lizeth said, stopping and leaning up against the palace wall.

  When Tarc got close enough to listen to the king, he felt dismayed to realize Sgt. Pongo was in the room. When he, Harris, and Pongo had finished talking the night before, Tarc had insisted he wanted to do a few things—specifically, he needed to take his guard shift and he wanted to make sure Martin was as bad as Pongo thought he was—before they proceeded with their plan.

  Harris had said he needed time to feel out his possible supporters anyway.

  Pongo hadn’t said anything about what he was going to do, but Tarc had naïvely been thinking the sergeant simply wouldn’t go in to work. What an idiot, Tarc thought. Of course, he had to go to work. He had to be there when Lt. Gordon’s death got reported or they’d send people to his house to get him. If he wasn’t there they’d take his family.

  The first thing Tarc heard was Pongo saying, “No, sir. After talking to Shibone, Lt. Gordon and I separated to make our own ways home.”

>   The king said, “I thought you guards were supposed to work in pairs at a minimum?”

  “Yes, sir. But we were off duty at that point.”

  “Shouldn’t matter. If you need to be together in pairs to protect one another when you’re working, you need to be in pairs when you’re off duty.”

  One of the other men in the room growled, “They are supposed to stay together. At least until one of them drops the other off at their house.”

  The king said, “Is that right?”

  Pongo answered, “Yes, sir, it is. But, um, Lt. Gordon often had, um, errands he wanted to carry out after we went off duty. It wasn’t at all unusual for him to insist on walking home alone.”

  Tarc managed to pick up from Pongo’s inflections that Gordon’s “errands” were unsavory deeds he wished to keep private.

  Apparently, the king did as well. In a grim tone, he said, “I’ll bet he did.” He didn’t sound as if he doubted Pongo’s assertion.

  There was a moment of silence Tarc feared would be filled by one of the other men’s doubts regarding Pongo’s story, but it didn’t happen. Instead, the king said, “So, what was Shibone’s story? How did they screw up the mission at the Descartes’ place?”

  Tarc realized that the king must fully trust the other three men in the room if he was discussing what’d happened at Descartes’ in front of them.

  Pongo’s voice said, “Shibone’s pretty emphatic about how he wants to know what happened as much as we do.” Tarc’s ghirit showed him Pongo’s shoulders shrugging, “He says he has no idea since none of his guys lived to tell him what happened. He was pissed and I’m sure he wasn’t faking it.”

  One of the other men in the room rumbled dyspeptically, “Nobody seems to have any freaking idea what happened at Descartes’ place.”

  Pongo said, “From what I hear, all but one of Shibone’s guys were stabbed in the eye. Same thing happened to Lt. Gordon. I’m betting the same people that killed Shibone’s men, they killed Gordon too.”

  The rumbling man said, “There ain’t no swordsman, here or in hell, that can stab people in the eye and nowhere else. Any fool who’s ever been in a real sword fight knows there’s no way to have that much control. In a fight, you’re pokin’ and whackin’ every which way, just trying to kill before you get killed. Stickin’ all of ’em in the eyes and only in the eyes ain’t possib…” He ran down realizing the fact that it’d been done meant it had to be possible. “Um, it ain’t human!”