The Hidden City

in the inner city as well. There might be a weakness there. If not, we may have to tunnel under the inner wall or try to scale it.’
    ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,’ Aphrael said. ‘We’re inside the enemy city, and the longer we putter around, the more chance there is of being discovered. If it’s in any way possible, xxx for water. The rest of you stay here. We don’t want to have to go looking for you when we come back.’
    ‘Are you mad, Gardas?’ Bergsten demanded of the massively armored Alcione knight. The Thalesian Patriarch refused to look at the pleasant-faced young man standing beside the knight. ‘I’m not even supposed to admit that he exists, much less sit down and talk with him.’
    ‘Aphrael said you might be tedious about this, Bergsten,’ the man Sir Gardas had escorted into the Patriarch’s tent noted. ‘Would it help at all if I did something miraculous?’
    Bergsten said. ‘Please don’t do that! I’m probably in enough trouble already!’
    ‘Dolmant had some problems when I visited him, too,’ Aphrael’s cousin observed. ‘You servants of the Elene God have some strange ideas. He doesn’t get excited about us, so why should you? Anyway, the normal rules are all more or less suspended until this crisis is over. We’ve even enlisted Edaemus and the Atan God—and they haven’t spoken to any of the rest of us for eons. Aphrael wants me to tell you about something having to do with the soldiers Klael brought with him. Somebody named Khalad has devised a means of destroying them.’
    ‘Tell Gardas about it,’ Bergsten suggested. ‘He can pass it on to me, and I won’t get into trouble.’
    ‘I’m sorry, Bergsten, but Aphrael insisted that I say it directly to you. Just pretend that I’m a dream or something.’ Setras’ face grew slightly puzzled, and his large, luminous eyes revealed a frightening lack of comprehension. ‘I don’t entirely understand this,’ he confessed. ‘Aphrael’s much cleverer than I am—but we love each other, so she doesn’t throw my stupidity into my face very often. She’s terribly polite. She’s even nice to your God, and he can be extremely tedious sometimes—where was I?’
    ‘Ah—’ Sir Gardas said gently, ‘you were going to tell his Grace about Klael’s soldiers, Divine Setras.’
    ‘I was?’ The large eyes were blank. ‘Oh, yes. I was, wasn’t I? You mustn’t let me ramble on like that, Gardas. You know how easily I get distracted.’
    ‘Yes, Divine Setras. That had occurred to me.’
    ‘Anyway,’ Setras pushed on, ‘this Khalad person—a frightfully clever young man, I gather—realized that there might be some similarity between the awful stuff Klael’s soldiers breathe and something he calls “firedamp”. Have you any idea at all of what he was talking about, Bergsten?’ Setras hesitated. ‘Am I supposed to call you “your Grace” the way Gardas did? Are you really that graceful? You look awfully large and clumsy to me.’
    ‘It’s a formal mode of address, Divine One,’ Sir Gardas explained.
    ‘Oh. We don’t have to be formal with each other, do we Bergsten? We’re almost old friends now, aren’t we?’
    The Patriarch of Emsat swallowed very hard. Then he sighed. ‘Yes, Divine Setras,’ he said. ‘I suppose we are. Why don’t you go ahead and tell me about this strategy Sparhawk’s squire has devised?’
    ‘Of course. Oh, there’s one other thing, too. We have to be at the gates of Cyrga by morning.’
    ‘Please, Atana Liatris,’ Baroness Melidere said patiently to Sarabian’s Atan wife, ‘we want them to make the attempt.’
    ‘It is too dangerous,’ Liatris said stubbornly. ‘If I go ahead and kill Chacole and Torellia, the others will run away and that will be the end of it.’
    ‘Except that we’ll never find out who else is involved,’ Patriarch Emban explained. ‘And we can’t know for certain that they won’t try again.’
    Princess Danae sat a little apart from them with Mmrr curled up in her lap. Her vision was strangely doubled with one image superimposed on the other. It seemed that the dark streets of Cyrga lay just behind the others here in the sitting-room.
    ‘I’m touched by your concern, Liatris,’ Sarabian was saying, ‘but I’m not nearly as helpless as I seem.’ He flourished his rapier.
    ‘And we will have guards nearby,’ Foreign Minister Oscagne added. ‘Chacole and Torellia almost have to be getting help from somebody inside the