When Raya came downstairs from her quarters in the Blue Evening Inn, her normal route toward the kitchen was interrupted by the inhabitants of the common room. There were newcomers—but most were familiar faces. Dondar had returned from Olston, she saw, and had brought eight men with him. She had only asked for a few!
“Welcome back!” she called as she approached. She was still happy to see him. But when she glanced from Dondar’s wave to the faces of the others, she realized one of them was not a warrior. One of them was Councillor Kama! “Councillor?” Raya gasped.
“Raya Ganner,” the friendly man breathed. “I’m so glad to see you’re well.” He reached out a hand for her, but she patted both his shoulders instead. Councillor Kama had always been a friend to her family, and he had been the one from the Olston Council to send Raya on her first venture to Vagren, where she asked Lotha and Viker for help in their town.
“What are you doing here?” Raya exclaimed.
Kama shrugged. “Where have you been this whole time? Last I heard, you were passing through Olston last year, and then you were involved with the revolution. When the rebels lost, we all feared the worst.”
Raya invited him to sit at a two-person table as he spoke. “I had to lay low for a while,” she blurted quickly. She didn’t think she should explain her eight months in limbo to him… the eight months she had lost to Axar’s Journeying spell.
“I’m glad it worked,” Melik Kama said with a nod. “But things seem just as dangerous in Ith right now.”
“The city will remain dangerous until some sort of peace can be restored,” Raya told him.
The caring old man leaned closer to her. “Are you certain this is your fight?”
Raya bobbed her head slowly, and glanced around the tavern. The men and women she had rescued from that Massed Alley prison were always here—many slept on the benches or floor. Hallist was watching from the bar while he ate a breakfast larger than his dinner had been for years. She looked back at Kama. “It has become my fight.”
Melik’s eyes creased sadly, but he understood. He bowed somberly, and then looked back at Raya. “Unfortunately, I have come with news that will make that even more difficult.”
Raya blinked.
“There’s an illness in Olston,” the Councillor explained. “Viker is treating it as best he can, and he’s sent for more magicians to come from Vagren to help. We think the refugees must have carried it in. Raya, your mother and father are both among the bedridden.”
The huntress leaned into her hands. “Oh no. That’s horrible. Do we know what kind of illness it is?”
“A flu of some kind,” Kama explained. “Fevers, fits, coughs, light-headedness. A few of the worst cases have had trouble keeping their food down, but no one has died yet.”
“How ill are my parents?” Raya questioned. She could not leave Ith right now. The hike to Olston took a dozen days one way. By the time she returned, the factions could have completely changed their positions.
“They are not among the worst.” The Councillor smiled reassuringly. “Your father had a fever for a few days, but Viker prioritized getting him through it. They are both just weak and are not quite on the mend.”
“I’ll write a letter,” Raya decided. She rubbed her forehead anxiously. “I cannot leave Ith at this time unless they were on death’s door. When will you be leaving?”
“In the morning,” Kama said. “Three of these guards are going with me, and three are staying to support you.”
Raya nodded. “Thank you,” she said, standing up. She needed to stretch her legs.
Despite Benn’s best efforts to cheer her up, Raya ate little over lunch. She had written her letter before lunch, choosing her words carefully. Her parents had not heard from her in almost a year, but she could not share with them everything she was doing. Fighting guards and freeing slaves, surviving in the largest city in the Known World during the greatest unrest it had ever known… these stories would have haunted her family as gravely as Novar’s crime once had. She encouraged them in their recovery and wished them the best.
She said nothing of the pressure weighing upon her.
Somehow, the afternoon meeting between her friends and allies distracted her from it. They rearranged the tables in the Blue Evening common room, and began to plot their next target. Axar had chosen out a prison in Pranan’s Hill this time. Though the wealthiest district was controlled by the City Watch, Axar was confident that the military faction would leave them be. Seeing a large group converge on a jail belonging to a two-month-slain Mage King would make it clear to the Watchmen that this was not an attack on their territory. It was a rescue.
“Would that part of the city be difficult to enter?” Raya asked.
Ailo chuckled. “No harder than any other point in the city,” the mercenary said. He lounged in an armchair beside his master. “These days, the territory lines are becoming battle lines. If we want to take out any prison, we’ll have to get through them.”
Raya wished they would have been able to speak with one of these factions, to arrange safe entry for their specific purposes. But they were still an unknown group in the city it seemed, and Raya’s old reputation as a mage-ally might have still endangered her.
“This is our best option,” Axar repeated. “The number of guards defending this jail is similar to the first. It is a more secure building, but we won’t have to overcome greater numbers.”
“I think we should overcome greater numbers,” Avri said. The young woman had been wordless throughout the first portion of the meeting, but now she planted her palms on one of the gathered tables. “Raya, your people are aggressive and ready for a fight. We want to teach our oppressors a lesson. We want to fight them.”
Hallist nodded. The man seemed too wizened to support such passionately malicious words, but he was in tune with the ex-slaves in Raya’s company.
“Do you have a suggestion?” Raya asked Avri.
“There’s a prison deeper in Massed Alley,” she said. “There’s around thirty guards there, but the place is less secure than Axar’s choice.”
“The goal is not to lose as many of our people as we can,” Axar retorted. The magician leaned back in his chair and defiantly crossed his arms. “We only number thirty or thirty-five, and we are neither armed nor trained as well as the guards. Even Massed Alley guards. The Mage Kings are dead, but their holdings remain. That should be our first goal. The other factions are too busy with each other to worry about it. The prison Avri wants us to go to is controlled by a branch of the City Watch, not privateer guards on dead men’s coin.”
Raya imagined fighting a smaller group of guards being a better opportunity for training her inexperienced troop as well. “We will consider your target a different time, Avri,” she decided. Avri stepped away from the table, but did not voice objections. They had no reason to respect Raya’s decisions in this matter, but they did.
“How should we approach it then? The prison in Pranan’s Hill,” Dondar said. The veteran guard looked a lot healthier after his adventure home. He scratched his whiskery chin and continued. “Will we be able to work a stealthy approach?”
“Not with a group of thirty,” Axar said.
Ailo, who had become the group’s primary scout, added, “And this prison doesn’t have a back door like the last one.”
“What does it have?” Dondar asked, with concern.
They soon determined that the prison they were targeting was surrounded in the front yard and back by a short garden wall, which could be roped or scaled. Though the walls would be doubtlessly patrolled, a point contributed by Hallist, these seemed to be the main weakness. Ailo and Dondar discussed the strategic details: a quick ambush over the walls would eliminate any guards in the gardens. Likely, the guards inside would block their doors instead of rushing out to help—a mistake considering the relatively similar group sizes. Then they would be trapped inside against a larger force, after the garden guards were defeated.
“They’ll have to surrender or we’ll just barge in and kill them,” Avri said, to wrap it up. “They’re defending slaves and prisoners of dead men; they’ll see reason and give in, I’m sure.”
“We’ll split into three groups then, just in case some of the inside guards come out to fight,” Raya decided. “Two quick assault troops, and a third to secure the block before joining. Dondar, you control the last. I’ll lead one of the ambush groups, and Avri the other.”
Avri didn’t smile, but Raya knew she was happy with the decision. She bobbed her head to Raya and patted the long dagger at her waist. Axar and Ailo smiled and began to jot some notes in a notebook. Dondar went to speak with the guards he had brought from Olston. Raya’s group was ready, or as ready as they would be. It was time to act. It was time to do something with all that pressure.