If his preparations did not fail.

Prince Jaspid and Elgart accompanied him. Jeck led them. Malder watched their backs. Spliner and Boy were already in the depths, poised to do whatever they could to keep the caravan-master alive.

The King had lost a few riflemen to the enemy’s archers, and more when the Decimate of earthquake had breached the walls. By now, Magister Astride and her comrades should be waiting to escape through the tunnel when it was completed. His soldiers had other orders.

Many of them were the Fist’s former guardsmen. They knew its passages. The King had instructed them to scatter and hide, shooting only when they caught the infantrymen by surprise. He wanted them to feign a desperate defense. “But,” he had told them, “do not risk yourselves. Know your paths to the cellars. We cannot suffer more losses.”

Skipping down stairs three at a time, Bifalt hoped that most of his men would rejoin him. Hells, he hoped for all of them. But he did not expect that they would be so fortunate.

“I can do it, Majesty,” said Jaspid, not for the first time. He could have matched the King’s pace for hours. And he hungered for grand gestures. He believed that only he could do what was necessary and live. “I am faster than you.”

King Bifalt did not waste his breath answering.

He may have heard shots. He could not be sure. The slap of moccasins on stone obscured more distant sounds.

Three riflemen caught up with him. Then another five. He wished for more. But he had left the balcony while most of them were still spreading through the Fist. It was too soon to fear for them.

He and his companions slowed as they reached the only entrance into the Fist’s foundations: an archway like a maw near the ceiling of the vaults. Two steps beyond the arch, the stairs clung to one wall, a hard turn to the left. Anyone foolish enough to rush through the opening would miss the turn and fall twenty feet to the floor.

Jeck and two riflemen hurried downward. King Bifalt paused with Elgart and Prince Jaspid to scan the forest of pillars that supported the whole of Belleger’s Fist.

From the archway, those pillars prevented Bifalt from seeing his workmen and the mouth of the tunnel, but he knew where Set Ungabwey would be. The caravan-master had been placed half-reclining behind a column directly below the entrance and perhaps forty paces away. Alive or dead, he would be invisible to Rile’s men when they reached the entrance and looked out at the vaults.

Alerted by footsteps and panting on the stair, Boy and Spliner stood beside Master Ungabwey to greet the King. They had the Magisters of earthquake with them. One had been lost when the wall of the old city fell. Now the remaining seven men and women waited anxiously, unsure of what to expect—or of what they might be asked to do. An earthquake here would kill them all.