going to be coming-from everywhere.”
“An’ if’n it don’t?” Shiey demanded.
“We bum the stables around us.”
They grumbled but they had been listening as well; none disagreed. Moria held
the outer door for the men while Shiey gave her cupboards a final inspection.
“Took my best cleaver, didn’t he?” She prowled quickly through the cutlery,
slipping her favorite implements through the leather loops of her belt. “Here,
lady.” She spun around and flipped a serrated poultry knife the length of the
room. Moria felt the hardwood hilt smack into her palm before she’d consciously
decided to catch the knife rather than dodge it. “Ain’t nothin’ can’t be hurt
wi’ a good knife,” Shiey informed her with a grin.
* * *
Walegrin shoved the trencher to one side. Whatever the barracks’ cooks had
thrown into the dinner pot smelled as bad as the smoke he had breathed all
afternoon, and tasted worse. He had men still out in the streets-more than a
dozen good men, not including Thrusher, who had yet to return from his special
private assignment. Maybe the palace had good reason for wanting plague sign
splashed over every other color of graffiti out there; he hoped they did. The
populace was reacting with predictable panic.
He’d kept his men busy fighting but now the sun was down. A Rankan oar-barge
flying Vashanka’s long-absent standard had tied up at the wharf, its passengers
and cargo under imaginary quarantine. No one had yet seen a disease-slain
corpse; rumors were getting wilder and darker with each retelling. So far
Walegrin didn’t believe any of them, but some of the men were showing doubt at