“Not the one he was born with.”
“No.
She rolled her shoulders against the weight of her cloak, momentarily easing the dull pain in her lower back. “I should know him, Sergeant. That kind of power gets noticed. He's no novice.”
“No,” Whiskeylack replied. “He isn't.”
She felt herself getting angry. “I want an explanation. What's happening here?”
Whiskeyjack grimaced. “Not much, by the looks of it.” He raised his voice. “Quick Ben!”
The mage looked over. “Some last-minute negotiations, Sergeant,” he said, flashing a white grin.
“Hood's Breath.” Tattersail sighed, turning away. The girl, she saw, still stood at the hill's crest and seemed to be studying the Moranth columns passing into the city. As if sensing Tattersail's attention, her head snapped around. Her expression startled the sorceress. Tattersail pulled her eyes away. “Is this what's left of your squad, Sergeant? Two desert marauders and a blood-hungry recruit?”
Whiskeyjack's tone was flat: “I have seven left.”
“This morning?”
“Fifteen.”
Something's wrong here. Feeling a need to say something, she said, “Better than most.” She cursed silently as the blood drained from the sergeant's face. “Still,” she added, “I'm sure they were good men, the ones you lost.”
“Good at dying,” he said.
The brutality of his words shocked her. Mentally reeling, she squeezed shut her eyes, fighting back tears of bewilderment and frustration. Too much has happened. I'm not ready for this. I'm not ready for Whiskeyjack, a man buckling under his own legend, a man who's climbed more than one mountain of the dead in service to the Empire.
The Bridgeburners hadn't shown themselves much over the past three years. Since the siege began, they'd been assigned the task of undermining Pale's massive, ancient walls. That order had come straight from the capital, and it was either a cruel joke or the product of appalling ignorance: the whole valley was a glacial dump, a rock pile plugging a crevice that reached so far underground even Tattersail's mages had trouble finding its bottom. They've been underground three years running. When was the last time they saw the sun?
Tattersail stiffened suddenly. “Sergeant.” She opened her eyes to him.
“You've been in your tunnels since this morning?”
With sinking understanding, she watched anguish flit across the man's face. “What tunnels?” he said softly, then moved to stride past her.
She reached out and closed her hand on his arm. A shock seemed to run through him. “Whiskeyjack,” she whispered, “you've guessed as much. About-about me, about what happened here on this hill, all these soldiers.” She hesitated, then said, “Failure's something we share. I'm sorry.”
He pulled away, eyes averted. “Don't be, Sorceress.” He met her gaze. “Regret's not something we can afford.”
She watched him walk to his soldiers.
A young woman's voice spoke directly behind Tattersail. “We numbered fourteen hundred this morning, Sorceress.”
Tattersail turned. At this close range, she saw that the girl couldn't be more than fifteen years old. The exception was her eyes, which held the dull glint of weathered onyx-they looked ancient, every emotion eroded away into extinction. “And now?”
The girl's shrug was almost careless. “Thirty, maybe thirty-five. Four of the five tunnels fell in completely. We were in the fifth and dug our way out. Fiddler and Hedge are working on the others, but they figure everybody else's been buried for good. They tried to round up some help.” A cold, knowing smile spread across her mud-streaked face. “But your master, the High Mage, stopped them.”
“Tayschrenn did what? Why?”
The girl frowned, as if disappointed. Then she simply walked away, stopping at the hill's crest and facing the city again.
Tattersail stared after her. The girl had thrown that last statement at her as if hunting for some particular response. Complicity? In any case, a clean miss. Tayschrenn's not making any friends. Good. The day had been a disaster, and the blame fell squarely at the High Mage's feet. She stared at Pale, then lifted her gaze to the smoke-filled sky above it.
That massive, looming shape she had greeted every morning for the last three years was indeed gone. She still had trouble believing it, despite the evidence of her eyes. “You warned us,” she whispered to the empty sky, as the memories of the morning returned. “You warned us, didn't you?”