Forging the Sword (The Farsala Trilogy) (35 page)

“But will it be doing him any good?” asked the peddler softly.

“What do you mean?” said Soraya.

“Now that we know what Garren plans, is there anything we can do to stop him?”

Kavi had answered her question, but he was looking at Jiaan.

“I could bring the army out of the desert,” Jiaan said. “If we attack them before they reach Mazad—they’ll be untrained peasants armed with clubs—we could kill a lot of them. Maybe even enough to keep them from making a difference in the battle. Our casualties would be high, but … if we kill those men, even if Garren is the one who forced it on us, are we any better than he is? Patrius isn’t the only one with an army’s honor at stake. Not to
mention five hundred prisoners that I’m going to have to release or murder in cold blood if I can’t feed them.”

He looked older than his eighteen years, and so like Soraya’s father that sudden tears rose in her eyes.

“Unless,” said Jiaan slowly, “Garren doesn’t send for the Kadeshi at all. Unless he can’t, because the gold is gone.”

Soraya’s gaze turned to the peddler. He had anticipated this, she thought. There was a bit of smugness in his expression, but mostly it was sober. She suddenly found herself wishing that the mischief would return.

“When that gold leaves for Kadesh, every guard Garren can spare will be watching it,” said the peddler. “And I don’t know this, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Siatt sent some troops, real warriors, to escort it as well. And the problems with taking your army away from Mazad still apply, don’t they?”

He had an idea. Soraya could see it in his face. She and Jiaan stared at him.

“So we’d have to be taking it before it’s shipped out—from the very heart of the old gahn’s palace, right under the noses of all Garren’s guards. What are you staring at me for? I’m a peddler, not a burglar.”

Soraya and Jiaan stared at him, and he gave up and grinned. “But I know someone who is.”

·   ·   ·

“W
E’VE GOT GOOD
information about the way they’ve organized their security at the palace,” said the middle-aged laundress, setting several large rolls of parchment on the table where she folded dried linen. “But it’s tight. I don’t know how you could even get into the vault, much less be getting anything out.”

They were meeting in the laundry instead of in the house next door because the laundress, Nadi, had young children, and she didn’t want them to wake up and overhear something they shouldn’t know. Hama, of course, already knew everything.

Soraya had only agreed to meet with Nadi in the first place when she learned that the laundress was Hamas mother—and even then she’d had to convince Jiaan. But once Jiaan met Nadi himself … there was something in the woman’s lined face, a forthright endurance, that all but compelled trust.

The laundry was filled with tubs and long lines of drying linen. The rustling quiet, the shadowed corners where the lamplight didn’t reach, the empty, hanging shirts and shifts made the room feel eerie to Soraya. But the great furnace, which was kept burning to help dry the clothes even when it wasn’t heating water, made the room warm—and on this dark, dripping night that was worth a bit of eeriness.

Since Nadi’s workers had left for their own homes before the curfew, their privacy was assured. The Hrum patrols, Nadi had said, would think nothing of it if they saw lamplight around the shutters, for she and her older children sometimes stayed late to do
a bit of mending or mix a batch of soap. The only one Kavi seemed worried might find out about them was someone named Sim. But when Nadi said she’d taken care of that, the peddler had shrugged and taken her word for it.

“I’ve got an idea for getting the gold out,” said Hama quietly. “The governor only moved into the palace when he learned that the committee was coming. It was supposed to be the symbol of his final victory, moving in.” A smile tugged at her lips. “When he heard about the committee arriving, he went and declared his victory early. For us that’s good,” she added. “The Hrum know exactly how to keep their camps secure, but this big, sprawling palace is new to them, and they’ve had to set up new procedures. I haven’t tested them, but I bet there’s a lot of confusion. And confusion is something a burglar can always use.”

Jiaan looked dubious. He had only met Hama briefly last fall when she had brought Kavi news of the siege towers, and a sixteen-year-old girl speaking so confidently about burglary did sound odd. But Jiaan hadn’t seen her slip out of the bushes and onto the cart, as smooth and silent as a serpent, or the speed and deftness with which she’d opened the slaves’ shackles.

Soraya smiled at her. “So what’s your idea?”

“First, let’s consider the obstacles,” said Nadi, unrolling the parchment on the long table. It held a large, wonderfully proportioned drawing of the palace and its gardens.

Soraya caught one corner of the parchment and studied it. “This is incredible. It’s as if you were a bird looking down on the palace, except with all the ceilings gone so you can see inside.”

“It’s a builders drawing,” said Jiaan, pressing down another corner. “How did you come by this, Mistress Nadi?”

“My husband’s family were masons,” said Nadi. “His grandfather helped build one of the wings of the palace—the new wing, they’re still calling it, though it’s more than a hundred years old now. I’m not exactly certain how he came by it, but he kept it for its craft, and his pride in having built part of the gahn’s own palace. What he’d think of the use we’re putting it to …”

The peddler laughed. “If he was anything like his great-grandchildren, he’d be cheering us on. What’s your plan, lass?”

“Obstacles
first
,” said Nadi firmly, and Hama grinned.

“Yes, mother,” she said meekly. “The only real obstacle is the guards, but there are a lot of them, even if Garren has been forced to spread them thin. The grounds are so big, he can’t cordon them off the way the Hrum do their camps. And why should he care if someone gets into the gardens? Which the town boys are doing all the time, on dares. That’s the first bit of good news. If the Hrum who patrol the grounds see someone going out over the wall, or coming in for that matter, they’re not going to fill them full of arrows and ask questions later. Hrum or no, they’ve no desire to shoot down foolish children.”

“Good for the town boys,” said Kavi.

“Yes, but it doesn’t gain us much,” Hama went on. “It’s around the outside of the palace that the real security begins. You can think of it as a series of rings, though they’re not round. The first ring is the guards on the gate and the grounds patrols. The gate guards “will ask your business, and if you’ve on the list of people they expect to see, they’ll pass you in and give you an escort to lead you through the rest of the security. If you’re not expected, they send a man to whoever you’re wanting to see, and you wait till the message comes back before they admit you.”

“What about servants?” asked Soraya, who had been one not so long ago. “And the people who bring in wood and eggs and so on?”

Nadi gave her a look of startled approval, but Hama shook her head.

“Folk like that are allowed in,” said Hama, “but only as far as the kitchen, and the kitchen is outside of the palace proper—outside the second ring of security. The building isn’t connected to the palace, so the Hrum only keep the servants under casual watch. The Hrum officers who come and go from inside the palace are given new passwords every morning, for they change them every day.”

“So that’s why the food at the palace feasts was never hot when it reached the table,” Soraya muttered.

The peddler’s grin surprised her. “The terrible price of power. But it sounds like we could get through this first ring without much trouble.”

“That’s true,” said Hama. “But the next ring is a real cordon of guards around the buildings of the palace.”

Kavi’s brows rose. “A solid line of soldiers? That’s a lot of men for Garren to be keeping on guard duty.”

“It’s not solid,” Hama admitted. “But they’re posted so they can see each other, and they carry whistles so they can call in the roving patrols to help them. They’re not supposed to be leaving their posts to help each other,” she added. “So if you’re thinking about causing a diversion in one part of the line so that someone can slip through in another, you can forget it.”

The peddler’s expression of chagrin was almost comical.

“I thought of it too,” said Hama consolingly.

“This isn’t a contest!” Nadi snapped. “It isn’t a prank! This is deathly, deathly serious, and if I could keep you from it, lad, be sure I would.”

Soraya knew that the first condition Nadi had placed on her agreement to help them was that Hama would not, under any circumstances, assist them with anything but the planning.

“You needn’t fear for me,” the peddler assured her, with a warmth in his voice Soraya had never heard before. “Enough Hrum know my face that I can’t be going among them either.”

“Well, someone has to go in,” said Hama. “Because the second ring of guards, and all those stationed past them, ask everyone for the password that applies to that security level on that very day. If you don’t have the right passwords, you’re caught—and outside of the gardens you’re likely dead, as well. The inner guards will shoot you full of arrows and be asking questions later,” she finished somberly. “According to our sources, you have to have three passwords to get as far as the wine cellar. It’s likely more than that to reach the vault, and the cells where the prisoners are kept, but no one we could reach has ever been that far in.”

There was a moment of daunted silence.

“So the first thing we need is a day’s worth of passwords,” said Kavi. “As many as we can get. Could your people bring them out to you?”

“No,” said Nadi. “The steward keeps the passwords. He only gives them out if he has to send someone into the palace on an errand, and mostly he goes himself. Our folk have only gotten them occasionally. And if some Hrum guard starts asking questions …”

“So one of us will have to go in,” said Jiaan. “Someone who is, for instance, marked as a Hrum spy so he can reach a high-up official. An official in the center of the palace, so he’ll hear all the passwords on his way in. I’m just wondering if you set it up that way deliberately.”

“Then you can stop wondering,” said the peddler sharply. “It
can’t be me. Didn’t you hear me telling Nadi that too many of the Hrum would recognize me?”

Looking at their stiff faces, Soraya wondered if they would be able to work together long enough to bring this off.

“But those Hrum are still at Mazad,” she said, before Jiaan could say something worse. “Aren’t they? The ones who got to know you before you escaped from Barmael’s camp?”

“Yes, but that still leaves the ones who saw me when I was selling Arus’ camp bad beer,” said the peddler. “And there were a fair few of them.”

“But they were all sent to hunt Shir’s bandits,” said Soraya. “So they won’t be here either.”

Jiaan’s corner of the parchment rolled back toward the center, and Soraya glanced at him. She couldn’t interpret the expression on his face.

“What is it?”

“Nothing.” Jiaan smoothed the parchment back into place. “You told me that all you did was leave Barmael’s camp without permission. By the time Garren left, his attack on Mazad had been defeated. Do you think he’d remember to tell his people here to watch out for you?”

“Likely not,” said the peddler slowly. “He might not have been told that I escaped, though I’d not care to bet my life on that. But even if he was told, the defeat at Mazad would probably put it out
of his head. So all I’d need to worry about are those who met me when I was dealing with Patrius—and odds are they still think I’m a loyal spy.”

“What about Garren?” Nadi demanded. “He may not—may not—have remembered to warn his people about you, but if he sees you himself …”

“Yes,” said the peddler thoughtfully. “I’d have to pick a time when our Garren’s so busy that no one would even think of taking me to him. And a report that’s urgent enough to be getting me in deep, but not so urgent they’d interrupt the governor’s business.”

“You could tell them you heard folk in the city planning a riot to show the committee that Setesafon’s not really conquered,” said Hama. “Not killing anyone—that might bring you to Garren’s notice—but shouting insults and throwing filth.”

“Or you could tell them you heard a rumor that I’m in the city,” said Soraya. “Or better yet that you’ve seen me, somewhere in the countryside. There’s still a reward for my capture, isn’t there?”

Jiaan said nothing.

“Yes, and I wouldn’t mind claiming it either,” said the peddler. He didn’t look at Nadi’s tense face, but he laid his scarred hand over hers where it held the parchment. “All right, I’m the best one to go in for the passwords. I’ll get through all the layers I can, but I doubt I’ll learn enough to get you into the vault. So how do we
reach the gold? Not to mention carry it off without getting ourselves caught.”

“That’s where my idea comes in,” said Hama. She let go of her end of the palace drawing, allowing it to roll toward Jiaan and Soraya, and after a moment’s hesitation her mother did the same.

“This is a drawing of the cellars.” Hama unrolled the next parchment. “It doesn’t show where the guards will be posted, or how many there are, but it does show the wine cellar, which is connected to the vault and cells through this short corridor, here.”

“What’s this?” Jiaan asked, pointing to what looked like a corridor, though it ran onto the map at an angle and ran off the page on the other side.

“That,” said Hama proudly, “is the basis of my plan for getting the gold out. Those are aqueduct tunnels, bringing clean water in under the palace and taking sewage to the river.”

“Can’t we go in through the aqueducts?” Jiaan asked, his expression brightening. “We could bypass the guards entirely!”

“Unfortunately,” said Nadi dryly, “the Hrum thought of that too. The aqueduct and sewer tunnels are also guarded—the soldiers complain about that duty, especially the ones who have to take the sewer side. They don’t put a lot of men down there, but they all have whistles. If they sound so much as one chirp, you’ll have patrols parked at each end of the tunnel in minutes,
and they can send in men to hunt you down at their leisure. Once you’ve in those tunnels, there’s no other way out.”