“I don’t know what’s in it,” he said.

“Fine,” Marcus said. “How about we set it on fire?”

“No!” the seedie screamed. “No fire. Please. It’s . . . it’s powder.”

Marcus found Andy in the group near the rear of the wagon and met her eye. She nodded grimly. Just like the others.

“And where is it going?” Marcus said, raising the tip of his sword until it was level with the man’s eyes.

All the fight had gone out of the militiaman. “Over to Kara Doulson’s place, just up the road. I don’t know why. I really don’t!”

“I believe you.” None of the other Patriots or seedies had known the purpose of their cargoes. Maurisk is playing this one close to the chest. “Walnut, can you handle dumping this in the river?”

“No problem,” the big man said. “What about this lot?” He indicated the unconscious and captive seedies.

“Take their weapons and turn them loose, unless they need a cutter.”

Marcus looked at the wounded Patriot Guard, who had subsided into a sobbing ball. Gut wound like that, he’s a dead man. He caught Walnut’s eye and jerked his head in the dying man’s direction, and Walnut nodded, his expression souring.

“These seedies aren’t much in a fight,” Andy said as Marcus hopped down from the wagon and the other volunteers gathered around them. “Boys and fat old men.”

“That makes us just about even,” Marcus said, grinning at his little squad. They laughed, including the boys and the old men.

One of the women sniffed. “Hardly even,” she said, provoking another round of laughter.

Marcus had to admit that without the Docks’ women, they’d be dangerously undermanned—outnumbered, he corrected ruefully. The Borelgai refugees were no fighters, being mostly domestic servants accustomed to a quiet life, but the Docks seemed to have an extensive supply of stocky, muscular matrons who were used to hard labor beside their husbands and not averse to cracking skulls when necessary. At Raesinia’s insistence, he’d taken on any who volunteered, along with men older than his father and boys who’d never needed a razor. So far, their confrontations with the seedies had been extremely one-sided, but that wouldn’t last. Maurisk will send more Patriots, with better weapons.

It didn’t have to last, though. Not long. Janus was coming. We just have to figure out what the hell Maurisk is planning to do when he gets here.

“More powder?” Viera said.

“More powder,” Marcus confirmed, setting the long rifle down on the table. Viera was working in the church’s ever-busy kitchen, chopping vegetables for the endlessly boiled cauldrons.

“Flash powder, or ordinary gunpowder?”

“I wouldn’t be able to tell by looking,” Marcus said, “but the barrels looked the same as all the others.”