“It’s still only a stopgap,” Sothe said. “We can’t feed the entire population of the Docks.”

“It only needs to be a stopgap. Janus is coming.”

Janus is coming. That had been the refrain of the refugees, the mantra recited on every street corner. Janus is coming. Even the official papers could no longer deny it, though they continued to insist that only a few traitorous units accompanied him. Raesinia wondered if Maurisk, in the barricaded offices of the Hotel Ancerre, repeated it to himself. Janus is coming.

“What about your side?” Raesinia said, looking down at the map.

“As far as the streets go, I’m just filling in what Marcus has already sketched out. The Patriot Guard are preparing some kind of explosives in the buildings on the Green Road between the Lower Market and the Grand Span, but we don’t know why.” Sothe paused. “I did get a bit more information about the Thousand Names, but I’m not sure if it does us any good.”

“You know where they are?”

“Yes. As you might expect, the Patriot Guard moved them by wagon into the basements of the Hotel Ancerre not long after the raid on Willowbrook. Most of them don’t know what they moved, of course, but the total picture is unambiguous.” Sothe frowned. “Maurisk’s people talk too much.”

“You can critique their operational discipline after we win,” Raesinia said. “I take it we can’t get to the Names?”

“We might be able to get there,” Sothe said in a way that made it obvious that by “we” she meant “I.” “But then what? Spirit away eight steel plates that weigh tons? We’d effectively have to take and hold the hotel, and we don’t have the strength.”

“But if Maurisk is just going to sit on the Names, we don’t need to worry. We’ll get them back when Janus crushes him.”

“Unless Janus loses.”

“If Janus loses,” Raesinia said, “I think the Names will be the least of our problems.”

“Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like Maurisk is planning to sit tight,” Sothe said. “He’s keeping it very quiet, but there’s a big Murnskai trading boat, the Rosnik, currently tied up by the water batteries. She was confiscated when the war broke out, and she’s been sitting there quite some time, but now it looks like the Patriot Guards are getting her ready to sail. And from the cargo they’ve been told to expect, he’s going to load either the Names or some very oddly shaped cannon.”