They.
They were watching healers.
“Who are they?”
“I don’t know. We haven’t gone back since the fires. We’re making do with what supplies we have here. It’s too dangerous in town.”
He had to tell me twice. Maybe three times. I was still drifting in and out, trying to grasp his details. Taking sips of water. Coughing. Still feeling like I had a foot in an underworld that didn’t want to let me go.
He said that about two months ago there had been a bad fire. The north livery burned down. All the horses inside died. The next night there was another fire and then a raid on a caravan. More trouble came after that, but he and the rest of the settlers had stayed away, afraid of being hit on the trail, not to mention that since five Vendan soldiers had absconded with the Patrei, Vendans hadn’t exactly been welcome in town. Except for a hurried trip to get some medicine at the apothecary, they hadn’t been back. Caemus mostly kept his head down, not wanting to be noticed, but from the little he gathered from whispers at the apothecary, it seemed the Ballengers had been running everywhere, trying to stop whoever was stirring up the mayhem before an army had marched in and taken everything over.
“An army?” I asked. Each new bit of information he gave me seemed to twist into something more impossible. “What army?”
“I don’t know, but I heard there’s a lot of them. I got a glimpse of a few as I rode in.”
An army from where? A neighboring kingdom? Or had the leagues joined forces? I thought about Fertig’s gang and Kazi’s observation that they were well trained.
“And Tor’s Watch?” I already knew the answer. I had seen the broken spires, the walls. But I still couldn’t understand how. Our defenses were impenetrable. Our walls, our guards, our vantage point, and the steep grade leading to Tor’s Watch—an army with a dozen ballistae couldn’t breach our walls. Our archers would take them out before they were even in range. “How did they bring down the wall?”
Again, he said he didn’t know for sure, but he said they had weapons unlike anything he had ever seen. “Word is, the whole nave of the temple is gone and that one shot brought it down. The apothecary’s wife said they did it just to get everyone’s attention. It worked. No one’s challenging them now.”
This was not an army coming in to rescue a town. It was an invasion. Paxton, Rybart, and Truko. It had to be. They had joined forces.
I was afraid to ask, but more afraid not to. “What did the weapons look like?”
“That was the strange part,” he said. “They weren’t that large. They carried them on their shoulders.” He went on in some detail. They sounded exactly like the launchers Beaufort was designing for us—the ones we never got.
“What about Kazi? Do you know where she is? Do they have her?”
He shook his head. “Don’t know. The man who brought you didn’t say, and like I said, we haven’t been back to town.”
But I did know. They had her. She was their prisoner. That was the only way Kazi wouldn’t be here beside me. Unless—
I remembered them swarming over us, black shadows moving over the dark hillside.
“I have to get to—” I leaned over on an elbow, trying to sit up, then fell back, unable to breathe. Caemus cursed, saying I was going to break open the wounds that Jurga had stitched shut.
“You’re not going anywhere. Even if she is in town you wouldn’t be any help to her, not with the shape you’re in. And not with just one of you, and hundreds of them.”
“But my family. They could—”
“They’re not helping either. They’re all hiding inside that mountain of yours. I know that much.”
The vault. And that meant it was really bad.
“I have to get to them. They’ll know what we were up against. They’ll help me find—” But then I felt the black fog rolling back in, and my eyelids eased shut against my will. I was afraid I might not open them again, afraid that this time the underworld might pull me under and not let go.
The cellar, the musty air, the pain, everything slipped away.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
KAZI
I was returned to my room and left alone in my “fine” accommodations for two full days. I was told I would be summoned when they were ready for me. My door wasn’t locked. It felt like a test. But there was no worry that I would leave. I cracked it open and peeked out, but I didn’t dare step through it. Food was brought to me in abundance. More clothing. More medicine. But no came one to speak to me—or give me more rules. The waiting and wondering and being able to do nothing drove me to near madness. Summon me, for gods’ sakes!
My hours were filled with a thousand questions. Who had been hanged? How many had died? How could there be a warehouse of weapons? Was Gunner truly responsible for all the carnage? Had he blackmailed the town for more money as he let Rybart pillage it?
But the Patrei’s vow was his family’s vow, and as much as I hated Gunner, I couldn’t believe he would do this. Though he was impulsive. He had lied to the town and said the queen was coming.