the black stone of the steps. Three sets of heavily booted tracks led down the steps and through the frozen mud of the path outside, circling around toward the food compounds that had been built only that week and filled within the last two days.
Gil sighed tiredly. The story was now clear.
Maia and the Penambrans would be coming to the Keep within days. The food stored by Alwir's government and hundreds of large and small Keep entrepreneurs had been moved out to the compounds to make room for them. Probably not all, Gil guessed; there were still probably hoards cached in deserted cells and back corners by those who did not trust fate and would not admit to anyone all they had. Guards, Alwir's men, and Church troops were supposed to protect the compound by day-and fear of the Dark by night.
The wetness in the tracks was not yet frozen. Caldern could easily have been lured away; since the night of the Dark's great assault on the Keep, the Dark Ones had made no further attempt to break the gate, and the post of gate Guard was generally given to the captain of the watch, simply so the other members of the watch would know where to find their leader. Who would guess, Gil thought, that somebody would actually leave the gates open to venture outside at night to steal food?
There were three of them, she thought, considering the tracks, and a fourth to distract the captain. That argued a ring - not a single man or woman, fearful for some family's hunger after the arrival of the Penambrans in the Keep, but an organized group who would steal as much as they could and lock it away, holding it until the starving spring.
It was all as clear as the moonlight that edged the steps in crystal.
Gil stood for what seemed like a long time in the diamond night, the smell of snow
and pine like ice water in her nostrils. Long ago, she remembered, she had been a scholar, and it had never been her wish to harm anyone. All that she had ever desired had been the clean solitude of knowledge, the peace of mind and heart to read, to think, to unravel riddles and reconstruct past times, and to seek the truth behind the polemics of those whose business it was to lie about the dead. Alone in the hoarfrost cold of midnight, she remembered it clearly, for knowledge had been all she had ever wanted. She had chosen it over the husbands she might have had, if she had ever bothered to seek them, and the peace of family goodwill that she had let slip by the wayside in the wake of her parents' horror at her chosen course.
But since that time, she had come to other knowledge.
She stepped silently back into the blackness of the gateway. Putting her shoulder to the massive iron bindings of the door, she pushed it to.
The guttering light of her torch threw a fitful and tarnished gilding over the rings and levers that operated the locks. She heard the muted click of the mechanism, deep within the tons of poised iron, and, as if hastening to escape from what she had done, she took her torch from its wall holder and hurried back up the passage. She walked soundlessly, all her senses keyed. It was not impossible that the Dark had slipped through the open gates and were lurking somewhere in the darkness of the Keep. Above her own fear, she felt fury at the irresponsibility of the men who had done it who had risked not only their own lives but the lives of everyone in the Keep and the integrity of the last sanctuary on earth for money.
In the weeks since the Guards had asked her to become one of them, Gil had killed dozens of the Dark Ones. The Icefalcon had said she was a born killer, a creepy sort of compliment that she wasn't sure she wished to accept. Maybe it only meant that she was naturally cold-hearted and single-minded and that she would, if put to it, rather kill than be killed. But she felt now as if she had cut a lifeline and let three men drown. She was glad she had not seen their faces and did not know who they were.
She never clearly identified the sound as she stepped out of the inner gates. It might have been cloth swishing, or the whine