in sudden remembrance to the bearded biller, Monetto, “don’t forget to mount that party of worthies today to begin reopening the tunnel to the castle dungeons.”
Monetto nodded, as he had been instructed to do.
It was a ruse. On reflection, any person who had seen the effective blocking of the tunnel in question—the supporting timbers fired, tons of earth and rock jamming the collapsed tunnel for an unguessable depth—would have known the near impossibility of what Gonji asked. The samurai had taken Aldo into his confidence in this additional minor effort at keeping Mord off balance, should their plans be conveyed to him.
Madness must be met with madness, their plans sown with red herrings and apparent illogic.
“Garth,” a man called out from behind the burly smith, “why does Klann refuse to see you now?”
“Da—were you not his trusted general once?”
Affirmations and questions echoed in reinforcement of the inquiry. Garth seemed stung by the implications, whose innuendo defamed both his present and his past.
“I tried,” he retorted sharply, “and that is that.” His ears reddened.
Lorenz rose at his side, the Executor of the Exchequer espying the accusers along his nose with courtly indignation.
“Who raises doubts regarding my father’s integrity?” Lorenz bridled. “He rode to the castle and was rebuffed at the drawbridge. Captain Kel’Tekeli refused to see him unless he wished to speak of Gonji’s whereabouts. Inasmuch as he possessed neither the knowledge nor the willingness the captain sought, he abandoned that tack. He next tried his old comrade Captain Sianno, who unfortunately hasn’t been seen in the city since that revolt of the idiots—”
Here there was grumbling at the aspersion cast on the late Phlegor, his fate still unknown to most of them. A few craftsmen leapt to their feet.
“Watch it, Gundersen. Phlegor’s a good man, and he has friends here.”
Lorenz ignored them. “Now what would you have my father do? You all know me. I’m a rational man—will you all grant me that?” He kept talking without pausing to assess the muttering. “But I’ve come to believe, reluctantly, that the militants are now right in saying that there’s no recourse but a violent one. So...we must fight.” With the single brandish of a fist, Lorenz relaxed, smoothed the creases from his well-cut doublet, and sat back down. There were shouts of assent among the groans.
Ignace Obradek, the blind wheelwright, cackled shrilly and slapped his thigh.
Gonji peered at Lorenz a moment, not liking the depersonalization in his phrase “the militants,” which in a single cleverly inflected swoop both ignored Gonji’s singular importance and voiced Lorenz’s undying contempt for the very fighting men he had spoken in support of. And the offhanded remark directed at Phlegor and the craftsmen reminded Gonji of his own guilt over having set Julian to watching them in order to deflect suspicions of the real militia’s effort.
“We’ll have no more in-fighting,” Gonji declared. “No more bickering among factions within the city. We are one, or we are nothing. As for what the craftsmen did.... They did what they felt they must at the time, believing Klann to be dead. It was a sound military principle, if ill-timed and undermanned. Now, I’m afraid, we must proceed in the belief that what Garth has told you is true—that Klann possesses more than one life.” His voice had dwindled to a near whisper, but now he raised it to a sonorous command tone. “But his troops are quite mortal! We’ve all seen that. And we are united against them. The craftsmen have laid their remaining weapons cache in the hills at the disposal of the militia, for which we thank them. And Phlegor—” Gonji’s gloom permeated the chamber, though none knew the man’s terrible fate, save Wilf. “—if we never see Phlegor again, he should be remembered as a heroic defender of his city. Along with Master Flavio, and Tralayn, and all those others who have fallen.”
A brief silence followed, punctuated by nervous coughing. Then Roric broke the spell.
“This business of the wagons, Gonji—” the provisioner advanced, “—are you sure there are enough of them to carry all the innocents away?”
Gonji turned his palms up. “They’ll have to do, Roric.”
Stefan Berenyi brightened suddenly. “Jacob Neriah’s back in town with his caravan! Just back from the east yesterday. He must have twenty sturdy wagons and a dozen drays.”
“That’s right,” Nick Nagy agreed.
“Are the draft horses kept nearby?” Gonji asked.
Both hostlers agreed readily that they were.
“Sure,” Berenyi said, “in the livery. Not all are at the Provender, though. Some few had to be sent over to the caravanserai at Wojcik’s Haven. But there are teams for every wagon.”
“Hmm.” Gonji grew pensive. “There’ll be tremendous pressure on you hostlers. You’ll have to hitch the teams with all good speed when the time has come. Can you do it quickly 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
