and quietly enough?”
Nagy was scratching his tousled gray hair and frowning. They looked at each other across Nagy’s wife and shrugged.
“You boys can do whatever you have to do,” Magda said encouragingly, patting them both.
“Igen, sure,” Nick grumbled. “You don’t have to do any of the work!”
“She might as well, for all the work you do,” Berenyi sneered.
“Hey, watch it, you little shit!”
They began snapping at each other in Hungarian, chuckles erupting all about them. Some of the tension leaked from the chamber, and Gonji let it run its course for a few seconds before clapping his hands sharply.
“Gentils,” Michael Benedetto urged, “may we keep to the point? And do speak German, or Italian, if you will.”
“Hai, dozo—yes, please do,” Gonji agreed, smiling at the laughter evoked by his ironic use of Japanese.
Berenyi rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, there’s no quick and quiet way to hitch wagon teams, you know.” He shook his head. “No way to avoid attention.”
“Does it have to be this way?” a voice pleaded from the audience.
“Ja, that’s settled,” Wilf called out impatiently. His left hand worked at the hilt of Spine-cleaver. Strom snorted from where he sat, slumped between his knees, eyes scanning the cavern floor. Lorenz curled his lip in distaste at his younger brother’s posturing of leadership.
Gonji nodded gravely. “How’s the hand, Stefan?”
Berenyi held up the left hand, still partially wrapped around the missing little finger. He grinned. “Doesn’t seem to bother my work, but my ken-jutsu suffers a little. If I get behind, I’ll just have to make Nagy work harder.”
Some good-natured laughter, then, as Nagy reached across his wife with a gnarly hand as if to throttle his partner.
Gonji tugged at his chin thoughtfully. “We’re going to have to create a diversion for you...or perhaps use the wagons for some logical purpose, so that their appointment for travel won’t look suspicious....”
“I can’t believe you’re all really considering this,” Boris Kamarovsky suddenly declared. “Leave your homes to....”
Some heads turned toward the craft guild party, anxious faces betraying their agreement with the wood craftsman’s concern. Normally Boris would have sat with his best friend, Strom Gundersen. But Strom’s seating with his father and near the rest of the military council—particularly the indomitable oriental—had driven Boris to a rear bench with other alienated guildsmen. Boris’ speech failed him and his eyes grew large and sheepish, to see the adamant resolve of the council members.
“So how do we go about this?” the Gray knight Anton growled.
Gonji nodded curtly. “Ah—the rest of the plan. All right.... From this moment on, everyone in this room will proceed with the constant accompaniment of at least one other person now here. Every one among us will keep watch over his partners. So sorry,” he apologized to see the expressions his implication aroused, “but we have a traitor in our midst, and we must observe what security we can still muster. As moon-maddened as it may sound.”
William Eddings rose, jaw working as if he would blare an imprecation that wouldn’t come. He glared angrily at Gonji, tears brimming his eyes, but his family spoke to him softly and eased him back into his seat.
Gonji had gone on, paying it no heed: “There must be no fraternizing with Klann’s troops, either Llorm or mercenary, beyond what discourse you must have with them in the pursuit of commerce. Spread the word in that matter, as it will be strictly enforced and violations will be investigated by me personally. I do have my suspicions as to the means by which the coward snivels intelligence to Mord—”
As he spoke, Gonji’s thoughts coruscated with anger, frustration, and a sense of futility over efforts at security. In truth, he had no salient idea how the traitor plied the foul deed. It could have been accomplished in any one of a thousand ways: via notes, gestures, personal audiences with the sorcerer despite all attempts at vigilance, perhaps even by means of some mystical communication whose inscrutability might make Mord quiver with glee over the rebels’ ignorance and fumbling efforts at security.
He cursed to himself, his jaw tightening with the effort at self-control, and went on.
“Remember that I have my own operatives, and they’re aware of the signs I’m watching for.
“So we work in pairs or groups of three. Teams will be given lists of citizens they will approach with our alert plan. Each team will cover one small sector of the city and report back to the council when their sector has been completed. You will tell them to prepare at once for the evacuation of Vedun. They may take only what they can carry; space will be at a premium on the wagons and on horseback. The riding steeds go to the militiamen, whose needs are first priority. Tell them all to be ready to evacuate on the night following the full moon.”
He paused dramatically to allow the timing to sink in.
“But,” he continued, “they must prepare immediately. There will be no time for delays when the signal is given.”
“What is the signal?” Jiri Szabo asked.
“Shi-kaze—deathwind!”
The entire gathering seemed to suck in a breath.
“When messengers come bearing the word ‘shi-kaze,’ they must move the innocents at once through the chapel and down here, where they will be escorted out to await the wagons near the exit tunnels.”
“Such a clatter, they’ll make!”
“Ja, how will we disguise our purpose?”
Michael held up a restraining hand and shuffled into their midst on his crutch. “Si, we’ve thought about that. As of tonight there will be a new service at the chapel, at ten bells of evening each night. A sort of...lamentation for the newly dead.”
“Soldiers haven’t been near the chapel in the past two days,” Wilf piped up.
“Hai,” Gonji added, “mercenaries are not fond of the reminders of suffering and death.”
There was a building storm of protest and grumbling, the complexity of the task ahead becoming clear.
“Michael, do you truly agree to all this?”
“Ja—da—si!”
“Fight or die,” Gonji pressed, “by the hand of Mord. Remember that he is our chief enemy, even as Tralayn so often told us. Even Klann may not know what he’s about. Enough dispute now. There isn’t time for it. The duty lists will be prepared today. The raiding, escort, and harassment parties will be selected, and their leaders appointed—”
“What about the weapons?” Dobroczy queried. “How will we retrieve those that are at the chapel? Most of the best long-range armament sits there—”
“Si, Gonji,” Monetto agreed, “it wouldn’t do to be going in after the weapons while women and children are there.”
Cries of abrupt realization.
Gonji blew out a breath and scratched his head. “Many of you still have your edged weapons, and there’s a lot of light armor in the city, I know that. The firearms are easy enough to smuggle. You’ll have to risk that, I’m afraid. And somehow—I’m not sure how—we’ll have to use the soldiers’ aversion to the many coffins in the chapel to get the armament. By the by—that was a fine idea, Paille, moving the weapons and armor up and placing them in coffins.”
Paille petulantly waved off the compliment from where he stood with one leg on a bench near the wall. With one thumb he made small circles on the bridge of his nose, apparently lost in thought.
“How