Aridatha dispensed with introductions. Sugriva did not need to know his visitors. Chances were, he recognized a few of us anyway.

Aridatha told his brother, “Our father is dead. He was murdered a few weeks ago. Strangled.”

Sugriva was the elder by a decade. He remembered the Narayan Singh who had sold vegetables and doted on his children before the invasion of the Shadowmasters. He was stricken as Aridatha had not been stricken. “And that should be no surprise, should it? Is that what you mean?” Sugriva said through tears that might have been due as much to rage as to pain.

He needed a few minutes to collect himself.

To his credit Sugriva Singh did not rail against the inevitable. He understood exactly how his arm was being twisted and, though events were not going to proceed quite like Aridatha had led him to expect during his previous visit, he chose to cooperate. He wanted to get it over as fast as he could, then he would pray that the new administration would be as indifferent to him as he was to the one presently in place.

Things were not exactly working out the way Aridatha had hoped they would, either.

Sugriva said, “You haven’t chosen the best night to do this. The moon is going to expose anyone moving toward the city from outside.”

Tobo chuckled. “You might be surprised. The night is our friend, brother Sugriva.”

“I rather expect you’ll find that my father believed the same thing, young man.”

And his father’s son? Sugriva had been unhappy, even angry, when we turned up, but not really surprised. What kind of vegetable dealer was not surprised to be wakened in the night? Inside a city that closed its gates with fanatical devotion when the sun’s lower limb touched the western hilltops?

Could Aridatha’s big brother be some sort of crook?

Aridatha told his brother, “The reason we’re troubling you is that we don’t know how the gatekeeping is managed.”

“You told me before. I looked into it. There’s a company of soldiers assigned to each gate. The west gate is the most closely controlled because it sees more traffic than the other three put together.” One of Dejagore’s quirks was that most of today’s roads to the city joined outside it, to the west, so there was not much traffic elsewhere. The north and south gates were used only by people involved in agriculture and its produce.

“The east gate looks like it should be the easiest to seize and control,” Sugriva said. A true road did connect with the east gate but there was little out that way but a few distant villages. “The guards are slackers, at all levels. None of them are natives. None of them are old enough to remember the last time Jaicur was attacked.” Sugriva had adopted the local accent and the local name for the city when he had assumed a Dejagoran name.

The trouble with the east gate was that Blade was west of Dejagore. But he was well ahead of schedule. There was time, before sunrise, if he hustled.

Tobo suggested, “Lady, why don’t you go tell Blade that it has to be the east gate?”

“Because I’m going to be getting dressed.”

Widowmaker and Lifetaker were coming to the party. They had been away for far too long.

Half a minute later Shukrat said, “I guess it’s time to find out if you can really trust me, Tobo.”

I jumped in before the boy could speak. “I suppose so. Tell Blade not to waste time. We need as much of the night as we can get. And we won’t stay unnoticed long once we start. Tell him we’ll be waiting when he gets to the gate.”

A smile tickled Shukrat’s freckled, almost pudgy face. She bounced up onto her toes and gave Tobo a peck on the cheek. Bold, bold behavior by any standard in this part of the world. They must do things differently among the Voroshk.

She bounced away. Tobo was completely flustered. I grinned till Lady poked me in the ribs. Evidently I was enjoying the bouncing part a little too much.

Murgen said, “I suggest we get to work here, folks. I don’t want to be inside these walls a minute longer than I have to.” He was holding it together but the strain was obvious.

Thai Dei was frazzled, too, and with even better reason. A lot of people very close to him had died here during the siege. No matter how tough a man pretends to be, such losses gnaw at his soul. Unless he is not human at all.

“The man has a point,” I said. “Start getting ready.”

Lady and I had the most to do. We had a big show to put on. We retreated into a small separate room, colder than the main shop. As we strove to turn ourselves into walking nightmares I asked, “Hon, have you really got that post-riding stuff figured out?”

“It isn’t that hard. Except for staying on. Any idiot could do it. There are some little black rods and slidy things you move around. You go up or down, or faster or slower, or whatever, when you do. Why?”

“It occurs to me that it might be better for us and him both if we got Aridatha back to Taglios. He’s been gone a long time. Mogaba needs to have him back where he can show him off before news of tonight’s business gets around.”

She did not stop donning the Lifetaker armor but did look at me in a way that I do not see often. It was like she was looking right through me, at all the secret places inside. It was frightening sometimes.

“All right. We’ll have to move fast if I’m going to be aloft before daylight.”

“Will the log make it that far?” Not knowing how those things worked I did not know what you might have to feed it, like a horse. The posts did seem to work on a different principle than Howler’s flying carpets, which required a strong-willed, powerful sorcerer to drive them. They demanded his undivided attention every moment they were aloft.

“I’m sure it will. What do you want me to tell Mogaba?”

The long-time taunt, “My brother unforgiven,” came to mind, along with, “All their days are numbered.” But this was not the time.

My original intention had been to make a huge show of our invasion. I do like a big ration of drama. Lightning. Thunder. Fireworks. But I waited until we had the gate open to let it start.

Early on there were alarms from the south wall as a tide of darkness and whispers passed by. But no sentry saw a single horsemen. They spied only vague shapes that stirred secret fears of things far darker and crueler than any conquering soldier.

The city was restless and troubled but remained unaware of our presence. It did sense approaching change.

The thunder and lightning came after Blade’s men started coming through the gate, six hundred men in Hsien’s strange armor, under strict orders not to betray their humanity until the city was captured. Most Dejagorans were Gunni. The Gunni believed in demons who could take human shape to make war on men. And most of the people of the outlying Taglian Territories had by now heard that the Company was allied with ghosts and devils.

Each soldier had a bamboo wand carrying a banner affixed to his back. The color of the banner declared the man’s unit affiliation while characters painted on the banner stated that unit’s martial slogan. Widowmaker and Lifetaker rode at the head of the invading column. She carried a burning sword. Widowmaker carried One-Eye’s spear, which was crawling with maggots of light. His shoulders bore a salt-and-pepper set of oversized ravens.

And, even so, much of the city slept on.

Ugly worms of fire crawled over our hideous armor.

Bannermen marched ahead flailing big flags supposed to be our personal ensigns.

Witnesses brought out by the flash and boom and the rattle of horseshoes remembered old stories and ran away weeping.

Yet most of the city slept on.

Doj, Murgen, Thai Dei and Swan remained at the gate, holding the hostages we had taken there. Aridatha stayed out of sight at his brother’s place. Howler, Tobo and Shukrat circled high above. Howler’s glass bowl continued to contain his shrieks. We hoped he would remain a secret for a while.