Again, Clement limped slowly down cobbled streets turned black with ash, past smoking ruins of charred timbers. Soldiers sprawled here and there, the dead difficult to distinguish from the exhausted living, all dressed in ashes and masked with soot. At a well where the ground was still awash from the spilled water of a fire line, some soldiers took turns dunking their singed heads into a bucket of water. Clement joined them, took a turn with the cake of soap, and looked up from rinsing the grime away to find the gathered soldiers giving her demoralized salutes. One of them took her hat and polished the soot from her insignias. “Lieutenant‑General, the Lucky Man says anyone who sees you is to tell you he’s in the general’s quarters.”

She went there. Gilly had taken over Cadmar’s table, since Commander Ellid’s quarters had burned to the ground. He and the garrison clerk had opened the log and rosters, which, being singed in places, apparently had been snatched out of the flames. Soldiers came and went, to tell the clerk and secretary the names of soldiers dead or wounded. Soon it would be Clement’s turn to deal with that dreadful paperwork. Perhaps this would be the disaster that finally forced Cadmar to close a garrison for lack of soldiers. And then the Paladins would realize the Sainnites’ secret weakness.

“Come with me,” she said desperately to Gilly.

She brought him his cane and helped him to his feet, and walked him past a newly arrived soldier, who was so tired he could scarcely tell the clerk the name of his fallen comrade.

As they walked down the hall, Gilly, leaning more heavily than usual on his cane, said admiringly, “The clerk actually ran into a burning building to save the records. If she hadn’t, we would be in quite a tangle.”

Clement looked at him in disbelief. Gilly’s ugly face twisted with an ugly grin, and Clement began to laugh. Laughter whooped out of her aching chest: mad, mysterious. She laughed until she choked, and Gilly, still grinning his dreadful grin, pounded her too roughly on the back. She sopped up the tears that were running down her face. “Gods! Don’t do that to me again today! It’s been a hellish night!”

Gilly grunted. “The soldiers think we were attacked by magic.”

“Cadmar did too, until I reminded him of Annis’s Fire. They say that Annis was a genius with explosives.”

“Was?”

“Apparently, even her family believes she’s long dead, accidentally killed by Paladins. Her rockets and her fire haven’t been used since she died, but I guess she told someone her secret after all.”

They found Cadmar holding the clenched hand of a woman whose face had been burned to the bone. The infirmary stank of burned meat and sounded like a nightmare. The medics went around with smoke pipes to quiet the agony of the ones they judged were dying, but those that might live continued to scream.

“By the three gods!” cried Cadmar in a fury, once they were outside. “The Paladins will regret this cowardly attack!”

They had nearly reached the refectory before Cadmar had raged himself into silence. Clement then ventured to say, “Commander Ellid will have enough to do just solving the practical problems of recovering from this attack. Let me handle the counter‑attack. We must have a strong reaction–an intolerable one.”

Cadmar said, “You’ll need a detachment to serve under your command.”

As they entered the refectory, Gilly muttered to Clement, “You think the Paladins won’t target you now? You could be dead before midsummer.”

“I’d rather be dead than have to deal with the duty roster after this disaster.”

“What kind of revenge do you have in mind?”

“I’ll take their children,” Clement said, “and raise them to be soldiers.”

Gilly looked stunned. But later, as they ate gummy gray porridge with Ellid, her lieutenants, and some of her captains, and Cadmar’s resilience began to display itself in energetic conversation, Gilly leaned over to Clement and said softly, “It’s brilliant! But if we start stealing children, you’ll put that courtesan of yours out of business.”

The commanders were piecing together a chronology of the night’s events, all of which Clement already knew or had surmised. Cadmar announced that anyone who knew anything about the attackers was to be sent to Clement. They decided to go as a group to view the sites of the heaviest fighting.

The ten of them made slow progress across the garrison. Teams of soldiers methodically sorted the living from the dead, and the streets that before had been littered with bodies were now busy with exhausted soldiers being herded to food and shelter, injured soldiers being carried to the infirmary, and old veterans with buckets of soapy water, washing the faces of the dead so they could be identified. They passed an improvised paddock, where hysterical horses rescued from the burning stable were being soothed and treated. Shock had already given way to efficiency.

Gilly was obviously in pain, and seemed glad to have to pause again to let some litter bearers pass. He was accustomed to pain, and it only seemed to give his sharp mind a certain ruthlessness. He said, “This troubles me, this attack. It’s not like the others. It goes against Mabin’s directives, and the local Paladins’ own disinclination to do anything that might lead to retaliation. They pride themselves on their long view, don’t they? And on their caution.”

Cadmar and Ellid had paused ahead of them, and Captain Herme was narrating how the well‑armed attackers had lain there in ambush and had–he seemed reluctant to admit it–defended their position with determination and courage. Some ten of their bodies lay tossed contemptuously into a pile. Did the officers care to view them?

“What for?” asked Cadmar.

But Gilly had already limped over to the pile of dead bodies. “They are so young,” he said. “This also is not right.”

Clement stopped looking at the wounds and turned her attention to the faces. “And Paladins sneer at us for sending children to war,” she said.

“What is that on his forehead? Wipe off his face, will you?”

Clement had nothing to wipe anyone’s face with, but Gilly produced a voluminous handkerchief, and she bent over to smear away the soot and gore from the young man’s forehead. What remained was a mark, painted in what appeared to be black ink. Gilly examined it silently and intently, and then stood back, looking first bemused and then unnerved.

He said to Cadmar, who grimly waited, “I would guess these fighters all have the same mark on their foreheads. It is a glyph, the one that is called the Pyre, or Death‑and‑Life.”

“What does it mean?” asked Cadmar.

Gilly shook his head, his ugly face unreadable now. As they resumed their progress, Clement tucked a hand under his elbow to give him some help in walking. She said, “You suspect something.”

Gilly said, “Councilor Mabin herself wrote in her book that she was at Harald G’deon’s side when he died. She observed that he did not vest a successor. These rumors we’ve heard about a Lost G’deon–Mabin has to be certain they are untrue.”

“So?” Clement felt nearly hysterical with exhaustion, and strangling Gilly seemed better than listening to him recount irrelevant history.

“So I must conclude that these people who attacked us last night could not have been Paladins. That glyph on the dead man’s face is the sign that used to be carried through Shaftal whenever an old G’deon died and a new one was vested: Death‑and‑Life, meaning that the G’deon burns in the pyre and yet the G’deon lives. Mabin would never allow her people to display that sign.”

Clement was silent. She had paid little attention to the rumors of a lost G’deon, and was trying now to remember when she first had heard them. It had been less than five years ago, but Harald had been dead for twenty. “You think these people who attacked us believe Harald vested someone before he died?”