Chapter 35 — Three Days

Graeme lunged for the concealed rear passage with the poisoned dagger still in his hand, and Arlan reached him before the second step. The hand-and-a-half sword left its scabbard in a short movement, not a full cut; Arlan struck with the spine of the blade across Graeme's wrist.

Bone broke with a dry crack; the dagger flew into a roof beam and remained there quivering. Graeme screamed, and Arlan kicked his rear leg out, drove him facedown onto the floor, and put a knee between his shoulders before the man could use the hidden passage.

"How many more?" Graeme spat a curse, and Arlan pressed the flat of the sword against the side of his neck.

"How many Caron agents are inside FireStorm?"

"Enough."

"Names."

Graeme laughed through the pain. "Elton will bury you." Arlan looked at Wayne.

"Chain him."

The captain bound Graeme's hands behind him with iron links rather than rope and searched the hidden passage before anyone entered it, and it led toward the same side of the settlement where the cut fence opened into the forest.

The search of the hut produced more than the stolen scraps; contact marks were hidden beneath a loose board. A list recorded shifts near the storehouse, kiln, and west wall, and the intact glass plans were not there.

Wayne found a narrow strip of parchment covered with simple marks instead of names, and Morton recognized several as work crews and guard rotations after comparing them with his own ledger. Graeme had reduced people to patterns: when the distillery changed watch, when the kiln workers slept, which nights the western wall had fewer experienced men.

The small rear passage had been dug or widened recently; it opened behind the livestock sheds and joined the route toward the cut fence. That gave Graeme a way to leave his hut without walking past the main lane where neighbors might remember seeing him.

Graeme had either passed the missing kiln plans onward already or hidden them elsewhere, and Arlan did not force the evidence to answer which.

The difference mattered; if the plans were still inside FireStorm, sealing the gates might recover them. If a courier already had them, the problem had moved beyond the wall and every minute spent searching the wrong place gave House Caron more time, and Wayne sent riders only as far as the nearest road junctions with instructions to watch, not chase, until the internal search was complete.

By midday, Wayne's other teams had turned up two additional refugees connected to Graeme, and both carried small Caron tokens used for recognition. Hidden Red Sun Flame had been found under one bed beside a poisoned dagger; seven more refugees admitted that Graeme had approached them about opening the west gate in exchange for money and protection; they had agreed to some degree but had not yet acted.

The seven told different versions of the same recruitment; some had been promised coin. One had been told House Caron would kill every refugee after taking FireStorm unless he cooperated early, and another had believed Graeme's claim that Arlan would abandon them the moment Storm's End demanded it. Their weakness did not erase their choice, but neither did agreement to a plan equal arson or murder already committed.

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Arlan ordered their statements taken separately, and if they copied one another too neatly, he wanted to know. Morton read the notes twice. "Three days," he said.

A message recovered from beneath a floorboard described the intended timing: within three days, the recruited refugees were to defect and open the way for Caron soldiers and Bloodhand men. The earlier arson had not been the final attack.

It had been preparation; Arlan ordered the entire population into the central square before rumor could rewrite the discoveries. The burned fields were visible beyond the western roofs, and smoke still clung to the back hill. Graeme stood in chains between guards while the two other accused men were held separately.

Arlan climbed the low stone platform.

"This man served Elton Caron inside FireStorm," he said. Noise rolled through the crowd.

"He helped arrange the attacks on our stores and fields. He stole kiln plans, recruited men inside the walls, and killed Will after using him. Evidence found in his hut includes Caron contact marks, Red Sun Flame taken for arson, pieces of the stolen plans, and records of our patrols."

Someone threw a stone; it struck Graeme's shoulder. Others bent to pick up more, and Arlan raised one hand. "Stop." The next stone stayed in a villager's fist.

"If you kill him in anger before the evidence is read, you learn nothing except that a crowd can kill a chained man." The square settled by degrees.

Morton stood beside Wayne with the recovered evidence in separate bundles, and the arrangement looked almost absurdly orderly compared with the anger around them, but Arlan wanted the people to see that the accusation did not rest on his mood. A burned cork came from one place, a Caron token from another, patrol notes from Graeme's floor, testimony from recruits questioned apart; each piece had a source.

Graeme lifted his bruised face and smiled at the people around him.

"You think this boy protects you? Nightsong has ruled these marches longer than any of you have been alive. House Caron will own this mud when he is dead." Several villagers surged forward, and Wayne's guards braced.

Arlan did not look away from Graeme. "You were promised stewardship." The smile faltered slightly.

"Yes."

"By a lord who now knows you can testify that he armed raiders, burned a vassal's stores, planted false evidence, and tried to steal a profitable craft." Graeme's eyes narrowed.

"You believe Elton keeps witnesses when he no longer needs them?"

"He promised me."

"Raymond Weil had promises too." That landed harder than shouting would have; Graeme's jaw tightened.

Arlan continued. "A man useful because he betrays one master is not trusted by the next. If you had delivered FireStorm to Elton, you would have known too much and proved too willing to sell what you knew. Steward was the bait, not the reward."

Graeme began denying it, but his voice had changed; the square heard the change. Morton lifted the blood-marked note recovered beneath the floorboard. Arlan took it and held it where the people nearest the platform could see the writing. Within three days, incite the refugees to defect; open the way from inside. FireStorm was to be razed. He looked from the instruction to the people gathered below.

"Tomorrow morning," he said, "the accused will be tried publicly. Every charge and every piece of evidence will be read." Graeme's certainty finally disappeared.

The crowd remained angry, but the anger had changed, and instead of turning randomly from one refugee to another, people were looking at the bundles of evidence beside Morton and at the three men already under guard. The distinction was fragile; Arlan intended the public trial to make it harder to destroy next time. Fear had already nearly turned neighbors against one another once, and another hidden agent would try to use the same weakness if given enough time, silence, and frightened accomplices willing to listen to promises in secret.

The recruited men would be questioned separately again before judgment, with their statements compared against the letters and coin already seized; Arlan wanted no shared story built after the fact.