Positive intelligence just made the Protector more suspicious, though. The old cynic.

“No prisoners taken,” she said. “No corpses left behind. Quite possibly no serious casualties suffered. Nor any great risks endured, if you examine it closely. They fled as soon as there was a chance someone would hit back. What were they up to? What was their real purpose?”

Reasonably, Chandra Gokhale pointed out, “The attack appears to have been sustained with exceptional ferocity till you yourself appeared on the battlements. Only then did they run.”

The Shadar captain volunteered, “Several survivors and witnesses report that the bandits argued amongst themselves about your presence, Protector. It seems they expected you to be away from the Palace. Evidently the attack would not have been undertaken had they known you were here.”

One of my touches of misdirection. I hoped it did some good.

“That makes no sense. Where would they get that idea?” She did not expect an answer and did not wait for one. “Have you identified any of the burned bodies?”

“Only three, Protector. Most are barely recognizable as human.”

The Radisha asked, “Chandra, how bad was the physical damage? Do you have an assessment yet?”

“Yes, Radisha. It was bad. Extremely bad. The wall appears to have suffered some structural damage. The full extent is being determined right now. It’s certain to be a weak point for a while. You might consider putting up a wooden curtain-wall in front of what is going to become a construction area. And think hard about bringing in troops.”

“Troops?” the Protector demanded. “Why troops?” Her voice, long neutral, became suspicious. When you have no friends at all, paranoia is an even more natural outlook than it is for brothers of the Black Company.

“Because the Palace is too big to defend with the people you have here now. Even if you arm the household staff. An enemy doesn’t need to use any of the regular entrances. He could climb the outside wall where no one is watching and attack from inside.”

The Radisha said, “If he tried that, he’d need maps to get around. I’ve never seen anyone but Smoke, who was our court wizard a long time ago, who could get around this place without one. You have to have an instinct.”

The Inspector-General observed, “If the attack was undertaken by elements descended from the old Black Company-and the employment of fireball weapons would suggest some connection, even though we know that the Company was exterminated by the Protector — then they may have access to hallway maps created when the Liberator and his staff were quartered here.”

The Radisha insisted, “You can’t chart this place. I know. I’ve tried.”

Thank Goblin and One-Eye for that, Princess. Long, long ago the Captain had those two old men scatter confusion spells liberally, everywhere. There were things he had not wanted the Radisha to find. Things that remained hidden still, among them those ancient volumes of the Annals that supposedly explain the Company’s secret beginnings but which have been a complete disappointment so far. Minh Subredil knows how to get to them. Whenever she gets the chance, Minh Subredil tears out a few pages and smuggles them out to me. Then I sneak them into the library and when no one is watching, I translate them a few words at a time, looking for that one phrase that will show us how to open the way for the Captured.

Sawa cleaned brass and silver. Minh Subredil cleaned floor and furniture. The Privy Council and their associates came and went. The level of panic declined as no new attacks developed. Too bad we did not have the numbers to stir them up again every few hours.

Soulcatcher remained uncharacteristically quiet. She had known the Company longer than anyone but the Captain, Goblin and One-Eye, though from the outside. She would accept nothing at face value. Not yet.

I hoped she broke a mental sprocket trying to figure it out, though I feared she had already done so, because she kept wondering about the burned bodies and Willow Swan. Could I have planned so obviously that she was confused only because she kept looking for something beyond the kidnapping?

I finished the last candlestick. I did not look around, did not say anything, just sat there. It was difficult to focus my thinking away from the danger seated across the room when my fingers were not busy. I gave praise to God, silently, as I had learned was proper for a woman when I was little. Equal praise was due Sahra’s insistence on staying in character.

Both served me well.

At some point Jaul Barundandi came back. Under the eyes of the Great Ones, he was not an unkind boss. He told Subredil it was time to leave. Subredil bestirred Sawa. As I got to my feet, I made some sounds of distress.

“What is that?” Barundandi asked.

“She’s hungry. We haven’t eaten all day.” Usually the management did provide a few scraps. That was one of the perks. Subredil and Sawa sometimes husbanded some of their share and took it home. That established and sustained the women’s habit of carrying things out of the Palace.

The Protector leaned forward. She stared intently. What had we done to tickle her suspicion? Was she just so ancient in her paranoia that she needed no clue stronger than intuition? Or was it possible that she really could read minds, just a touch?

Barundandi said, “We’ll go to the kitchen, then. The cooks overprepared badly today.”

We shuffled out behind him, each step like leaping another league out of winter toward spring, out of darkness into light. Four or five paces outside the meeting chamber, Barundandi startled us by running a hand through his hair and gasping. He told Subredil, “Oh, it feels good to get out of there. That woman gives me the green willies.”

She gave me the green willies, too. And only the fact that I had gone deep into character to deal with them saved me giving myself away. Who would suspect that much humanity in Jaul Barundandi? I got a grip on Subredil’s arm and shook.

Subredil responded to Barundandi softly, submissively agreeing that the Protector might be a great horror.

The kitchens, normally off limits to casual labor, was a dragon’s hoard of edible treasures. With the dragon evicted. Subredil and Sawa ate till they could barely waddle. They loaded themselves with all the plunder they thought they would be allowed to carry off. They collected their few coppers and headed for the servants’ postern before anyone could think of something else for them to do, before any of Barundandi’s cronies realized that the customary kickbacks had been overlooked.

There were armed guards outside the postern. That was new. They were Greys rather than soldiers. They did not seem particularly interested in people going out. They did not bother with the usual cursory search casuals had to endure so nobody carried off the royal cutlery.

I wish our characters had more curiosity in them. I could have used a closer look at the damage we had done. They were putting up scaffolding and erecting a wooden curtain-wall already. The glimpses I did catch awed me. I had only read about what the later versions of those fireball throwers could do. The face of the Palace looked like a model of dark wax that someone had stuck repeatedly with a white-hot iron rod. Not only had stone melted and run, some had been vaporized. We had been released much earlier than usual. It was only mid-afternoon. I tried to walk too fast, eager to get away. Subredil refused to be rushed. Ahead of us stood quiet crowds who had come to stare at the Palace. Subredil murmured something about “...ten thousand eyes.”