A Country Falls (Greatest Thief 3)

Chapter Thirty-Two

In the city, the effects of the Co Navy's blockade were far more evident than they had been in the castle or prison. We skirted the marketplace, and it was eerily empty. Even at night, there should have been stands and carts prepared to open in the morning. Instead, the clearing was completely bare. We walked past a tavern with shattered windows which were messily boarded over. A building that looked like an apothecary had been a bit more proactive—the windows and doors were firmly covered with neat planks of wood.

There were people out, even late at night. I tried to avoid them, but the few times we were spotted, the Deorans scurried away or quickly hid. The reason for their fear became perfectly clear when we came across a rowdy group of guards, hollering outside of a house while one of them pounded his fist on the door. Kassia's choice to barricade herself in the throne room with Vali and wait for our army to take the city began to make more sense. Deorun was crumbling. I couldn't help but think of the crumbling building I had woken up in after being shot.

Maybe Deorun had been crumbling for a long time. Maybe the war had been King Idavari's last-ditch effort to gain support from his people, before their capital city fell apart.

I didn't know the way to the city gates, but Deorun was shaped like Zianna, East Draulin and Navire—rings of walls with a main road connecting all three sections of the city. The prison let us out into a corner of the lower city. After passing through the marketplace and shopping district, we found the gates to the main road deserted. I made the men wait in the shadows while I climbed the wall beside the gate to get a better look at the main road.

Normally, the road would be crawling with guards. Some patrolling, and many of them standing in front of the various gates. What I saw was quite different. Instead of guards stationed along the whole road, a full-blown camp had cropped up between the lower city gate and the main city gate. Rows of tents were tightly packed together against the walls of the road, with a narrow path to walk along down the middle. In a few places, campfires flickered and I could make out the silhouettes of men. To make matters worse, the men I could see patrolling looked alert and disciplined.

Whatever remained of Deorun's army had gathered right between us and our destination. The city guards were running rampant, but someone had control over the army, and they had chosen to defend Deorun against our armies.

Beyond the camp, Deorun's huge walls and main gates were all that stood between the small Deorun camp and the huge Ziannan-Navirian camp. A gate stood between these sleeping men, and Tandrin and Queen Navire, who were waiting right outside for our signal.

I considered walking along the wall, going up to the huge chains I could see hanging from both guardhouse towers, and trying to find the crank myself. It was just a dream, though. Realistically, I would never be able to manage the cranks on my own. So it was with reluctance that I climbed back down the wall to report on what I had found.

There was a thoughtful pause after my description. Tannix broke it with a single, impossibly difficult question.

"Do you think we can get through?"

I stared at him as the question circled around my head. Could I get through? Yes, on my own, I could have snuck past the tents and patrolling guards, hardly making a sound. But could they get through? I was far less confident in the results. There were too many of them. They were all bigger than me, wearing armour and carrying weapons. They wouldn't be mistaken for a Deoran at first glance. No, they couldn't get through, not without a fight.

But they were good at fighting. And even though I had spent the whole night trying to come up some other way to accomplish what we had come in for, I couldn't. And we just had to get to the gate. Get to the gate and open it, and then the whole Ziannan-Navirian army would be there. There was no other option.