A figure appeared, instantly and without warning, on the grassy verge just beside Zala. She jumped in shock, her hand reaching for the sword she no longer wore.

It was Helbin, sweeping back the folds of the loose, dark cape that covered him from head to toes. He seemed to appear out of thin air.

“How’d you do that, Red Robe?” Casberry piped.

In reply, he drew the front of the cape up around his eyes. When the motion of the moving cloth subsided, he all but vanished. If Zala looked very closely, she could see the pale oval of his forehead.

“A cloak of invisibility, eh?” said Casberry, sitting up in the barrow. “I could’ve used one of those in Silvanost, a few years back. With garb like that, why do you need us to get you in?”

Helbin folded the cape’s edges back and stood revealed again. “It’s not a cloak of invisibility. Such garments are written of, but they’re fiendishly hard to come across. This is a lesser artifact, a Mockingbird Cloak. It mimics the colors around it, hiding the wearer. It works fine as long as you stand still, but movement, especially against a changing background, renders its mimicry useless.”

“Come along,” Zala told him. “If I can pass as a mother, you can be a father.” The queen of Hylo chuckled, but Helbin looked appalled.

Zala hung her head and slowed her footsteps. She didn’t have to feign weariness. Pushing the barrow in the smothering heat was exhausting, and the sweat was streaming down her face.

A score of paces ahead, the soldiers heard the barrow’s squeaking approach. Their desultory talk died. By the time the newcomers entered the torchlight, the guards were standing ready, swords in hand. Their vigilance made Zala sweat even more.

“Kind of late for travelin’,” said a sergeant with brass chevrons on his helmet. “What’s in the wheelbarrow?”

“Only my darling Cassie.”

Warily, the sergeant parted the blankets. The queen of Hylo pretended to be asleep, sucking her thumb and clutching the cloth doll close to her cheek.

The soldier’s eyebrows shot up, and he recoiled as if slapped.

“Sweet Mishas! That’s your child?”

“Spitting image of her father, she is,” Zala said, turning a glowing smile upon Helbin. The wizard shuffled his feet and looked at his toes. Fortunately, beneath his cloak he wore plain attire and not the robe of his Order.

The sergeant motioned a corporal over. This second soldier bent to see Zala’s passenger and guffawed.

“Someone shaved a gnome!”

Indignant, Zala presented her glean. “This night air isn’t good for Cassie. I must get her home.”

Shaking his head over the young mother’s homely offspring, the sergeant noted their entry in his log.

“You can go, once I search the wheelbarrow,” he said, handing the log to another soldier.

Zala’s breath caught. “Search? For what?”

“Contraband. Folks try to smuggle goods into the city every day, to avoid paying the merchants’ tax.”

Zala’s terror did not show on her face, but her mind was racing. If the soldier found the swords hidden in the barrow, she and her party were doomed. Worse, if they looked closely at Casberry, they’d know for certain she was no child. The three of them would end up with the prisoners they had come to liberate.

The sergeant had only begun to feel among the blankets when he suddenly stepped back, a look of disgust on his ruddy face. He fanned his nose with one hand.

Helbin made a gagging sound, but Zala cooed loudly, “Poor Cassie! Do you need changing?”

“She needs burying!” the corporal replied catching a whiff.

The sergeant gestured vigorously for them to pass. “Go! Pass on, at once!”

Once in the city, Zala wheeled the barrow quickly into a dark alley and whisked away the blanket. Casberry sat up, tugging the bonnet from her head.

“Faw, what did you do?” Zala hissed, as Helbin continued to make retching noises.

“Kender learn many things, wandering the world. For example, a sprig of frogbone root, snapped open, gives off a remarkable stench.” She held up a dry bit of broken twig.

“Throw it away!” Helbin gasped, waving a hand desperately. The queen flicked the offensive root into the gutter.

They shucked their disguises and retrieved their weapons from the barrow. Zala’s cotton undershirt was thin and sleeveless, which felt good after the sweaty confinement of her long dress.

Helbin would have left them at this point, but Zala pulled him up short. He insisted he must go and find other Red Robes.

“No,” she said flatly. “You’ll stay with us until the prisoners are freed.”

Away from the well-patrolled streets just inside the city wall, Caergoth was busy. Refugees and leaderless soldiers prowled the wide lanes seeking diversion. As there weren’t enough taverns to accommodate the flood of newcomers, enterprising residents had set up pushcarts and peddled bread rolls, cold meat pies, and a variety of cheap drinks: raw young wine, cloyingly sweet mead, and fizzy beer. In some of the lesser city squares, where the press was especially thick, Casberry mourned the loss of her frogbone. Its odor would have cleared a path through the throng in no time. Helbin shuddered at the memory of the loathsome stench.

For her part, Zala paid close attention to the people around them. The general mood was one of disgruntlement. The refugees had been driven away from their farms, forges, and shops into a city that had no use for them. They wasted their days drinking, gambling, and fighting. Theft was common, as was Governor Lord Wornoth’s harsh justice. For a first offense, a thief lost a finger. Second offenders lost a hand. Anyone caught a third time lost his head. Many heads decorated the high wall of the citadel.

Soldiers in the crowd were bitter. As Riders of the Great Horde, they were used to sweeping all enemies before them. Now, having been defeated by a swarm of barbarian nomads, they were reduced to cowering inside stone walls. It was no life for a warrior. More than a few times Zala heard Wornoth cursed as a miserable coward. The emperor in far-off Daltigoth had forgotten his loyal hordes, so they rotted in the peasant-choked streets of Caergoth.

Zala and Casberry kept Helbin between them, to be certain the wizard wouldn’t be tempted to use his Mockingbird Cloak to evade them. Casberry sampled a pocket or two on the way, but found the pickings uninteresting. The refugees were as poor as they complained they were.

Luin’s Field was lit by clusters of torches, set around the vast cage complex in its center. Pairs of guards on foot stood watch by each set of torches, while mounted warriors circled the fence. The smaller cage by the temple of Corij, which held the condemned, was better illuminated. In addition to the torches, bonfires burned at each corner. Zala doubted anyone in the cage could sleep with the glare of light and constant noise.

She wondered how they were to get close to the prisoners. Helbin offered to go, but the half-elf quickly vetoed that idea.

“You don’t know my father, or the Dom-shu,” she pointed out.

“I know Miya, wife of Lord Tolandruth.”

An argument threatened, but Casberry put an end to it by giving Zala a shove.

“Get under that cloak, girl, and both of you go!” she hissed, then turned away, melting into the shadows beyond the firelight.

Helbin was slightly taller, so Zala stood in front of him while he drew the Mockingbird Cloak around them. The intimacy inside the cape would have been disturbing had she been sharing it with Tylocost or Lord Tolandruth, but Helbin radiated nothing but indifference.

“Walk very slowly,” he whispered. “The cloth must have time to adapt to its surroundings.”

At a snail’s pace they moved toward the condemned cage. The ensorcelled fabric gradually took on the bloody orange hue of the bonfires. Peeking through the open slit in the front of the cape, Zala saw the dark outlines of sleeping prisoners inside the pen, which smelled worse than she remembered.