“Even if we infiltrate, there aren’t enough of us to try anything resembling a face-to-face fight, even for a few moments. We could go in on the airship,” he said thoughtfully. “Rappel down from the gondola, and then—”

John Hordle made a sound like a hippo with a stomachache.

“Are you bloody barking mad? Rappel down into the courtyard of a bloody fortress, with the buggering blimp on a level with the towers, which will be shooting bloody flaming bolts at an ’ydrogen-filled bag, then fight our way through a couple of ’undred guards, all sodding sixteen of us, and then fight our way back and climb up the ropes? But before we try this lark we all bend over and kiss our arse good-bye, roit?”

“Sorry, old boy. Just taking a shot into the blue sky. It wouldn’t do, would it?”

Astrid nodded. “I’m afraid so, bar melindo. If we get Mrs. Thurston and Janie and Shawonda onto the airship, they almost certainly won’t shoot at it. But before then . . . very big target. If we do it at all, it has to be a lightning strike. Even so, we would need more swords than we have now. There would probably have to be a sacrificial rearguard, now that I’ve looked at the ground myself.”

Major Hanks was there too, still looking worn from his own swift journey south, though he’d done some of it on the rails.

“I’m afraid Lady Astrid is right. The hydrogen isn’t quite as inflammable as you might think; it has to be mixed with air to burn quickly, and when it leaks it leaks up. But an incendiary bolt or a spray from a flamethrower . . . sorry. And it’s only really dirigible, steerable, in a dead calm. But about the rearguard, ah, that might be done.”

“Let’s concentrate on how we’re going to get the people we want out of the compound first. And we can’t take just Cecile or just her daughters,” Eilir said through Ritva. “That wouldn’t do at all. Almost better to do nothing.”

“Wait,” Astrid said again. “Wait . . . what was that you said about Juliet Thurston drinking a good deal?”

Gleam nodded. “That’s the rumor. Well, the complete rumor is that she and Martin had some hellacious fights. Then he beat her, and she stopped fighting and started drinking.”

“Wait a minute,” Ritva blurted. “He beat her?”

She obviously wasn’t translating and the leaders stared at her.

“Hiril, I was here, remember,” she said. “I have relevant observations.”