Bastion

took surprisingly little time. As he had suspected, although he and Bey had been using the language of the Sleepgivers all this time, Bey spoke passable Valdemaran, and he switched to it except when he didn’t have a word for something. That wasn’t very often. It was the Sleepgiver tongue that lacked Valdemaran words, usually, not the other way around.
    Bey exerted a formidable charm and managed to win all of them over so fast that Mags would have suspected Mind-magic if he hadn’t known Bey didn’t have any. Even Lita was caught in his charisma. Or so he thought, anyway.
    The Bard was not as enraptured as she seemed. But she also was well aware that their options were limited to Bey’s plans and Mags giving up.
    “I thought you said I was an idiot,” Mags whispered to her, as Bey queried Bear earnestly about various supplies.
    “What choice to we have?” she whispered back. “We’ve got no guarantee that even if you do turn yourself over to these Sleepgivers, they won’t turn around and slaughter us anyway! They’ve already killed Jak, as far as they know. They won’t hesitate to do the rest of us, considering they plan on wiping your mind clean of you anyway.”
    Mags nodded soberly. That was a very real possibility, and one that he and Bey had discussed, albeit briefly. Now that he knew that these Sleepgivers didn’t give a toss about what Bey told them . . . once they had him in their clutches, they had no incentive to be merciful and plenty of incentive to make sure there was no one to sound an alarm until it was too late and they were back across the border.
    Well, this way, if I go down, I go down on my own terms, and ain’t no Ancestor-thing going to be walking around in my body, after.
    •   •   •
    They’d all settled in and around Lita’s sleeping nook. The fires were being allowed to die out. Jakyr was sitting up with help from cushions, looking alert but clearly in pain.
    “So this is our plan, friend-of-my-cousin,” Bey said cheerfully. “We have made inventory of our options, and they are better than I had thought. The Sleepgivers above are in a worse position than we. Their food is only what they can catch on the hills above; they are reduced to shooting those thin little black birds that flock to sleep in the trees at night. They will not be able to break a path to a village to threaten anyone for some time, and they have a dilemma. They can break the path and chance us escaping, or they can lay siege to us and hope that we break. Also, they do not know I am with you. They are hungry and cold. They like this snow no better than I, which is to say, not at all. So, they think they have killed one of you. I think they think that you are not well provisioned either. If I were a fool like they, I would say lay siege, they will come out and we shall kill them one by one except for Meric. So. We give them something they do not expect.”
    “What’s that?” Jakyr asked.
    Bey smiled, but it was Mags that answered. “Silence. Now, that means we’re gonna be a mite uncomfortable here ourselves. We let the fires burn out, so there’s no more smoke above, where they can see it, and no light comin’ outa the cave mouth at night. All of you pull back into that dead end where the steam bath is, even the horses an’ the Companions. You’ll all have blankets and the food’ll be cold, but we gotta make ’em think that we run outa provisions, we all died, or maybe we got sick, or somehow we escaped. And they won’t know which, till they come down to look the situation over. We make ’em come to us.”
    Bey took it up from there. “They will not all come. And they are not all of one mind, which will do us good. Some are loyal to the Shadao entirely, others favor a nephew that might be made heir were I not to be. They will send three of mixed faction, which will mean they do not fight with one mind, but singly, each hoping to be the one to say I am the one that took Meric . We will kill them, Mags and I, silently, and with no sign, for Mags has shared my memories and, thus, my skills. We will take the bodies off and conceal them and all signs that they were slain. And then we will wait. When the first three do not return, another three will come. We will do the same. Now their numbers will be halved; they will send no more, and we will have to consider another strategy.” Bey waited, with an air that he expected them all to agree that this was a brilliant plan. Into the