Shadowborn by Alison Sinclair

innocuous an observation as it seemed? Ish thought, remembering the munitions stored in the locked cellars. In this stir, they hadn’t been able to keep the wrong people away from Mycene. But coordinated fire would have been a cursed excellent idea to have had earlier. They were too used to fighting in the open, in small bands, against a haphazard enemy.
    He sonned his captor, kneeling relaxed in the sniper’s rest, his weapon resting ready on the ledge. Ishmael hadn’t needed to correct his posture or settle him down; plainly he was one of those calmed by the approach of battle.
    “How large is this force?” Mycene said, voice barely carrying.
    “Unknown, except by measuring th’numbers they overwhelmed. Stonebridge was seven thousand people, a fifth of whom were weapons trained—” If Mycene didn’t have an idea already of how large a reserve Stranhorne retained, he would before this night was fought out. “And a good squad.”
    “And what had Stonebridge in the way of defensible positions?”
    “Only the terrain: it’s built on a hill. Th’only reason the manor is walled and built for defense against force is that Strumheller was burnt to the ground during the civil war.” By, as Ishmael recalled, an army led by one of the Mycenes.
    Mycene turned his head and sonned him for the first time. “You think we can hold this manor?”
    “Depends,” said Ishmael, surprised to find himself inclined even toward that much truth.
    Mycene returned his attention to the night. “And, of course, there is the question of magic. My father has a fixation with it; I never understood why. Always seemed unmanly to me.”
    “Nothing unmanly about th’strength needed to bring snow in late summer,” Ishmael gritted.
    “No. It slowed us detecting their approach very effectively. Have you given any thought to what a retreat from here would be like?”
    “Aye,” Ishmael said. “Bad.”
    A humorless smile turned Mycene’s lip. “Worse if there’s no planning for it, that I can tell you.”
    Mycene had suffered a dire defeat during his first campaign against an insurrection in his family’s holdings on the south coast. He’d been young—twenty-two—and entirely too confident. His father had had to issue pardons and make galling concessions to ransom his son. Mycene had never let himself be caught out again.
    Ishmael said, “Aye, nothing like one’s own mistakes t’teach one. I’ll put it to Stranhorne.” He’d be surprised if one of the Stranhornes had not already thought of it. He shrugged off the wall. He wanted another circuit, to steady anyone who needed steadying and to take a last sense of anyone holding or loading a weapon. It might be futile. At this stage, he could not tell whether someone was nervous because of him or because of what might be moving in the night. And although he had intermittently had a transient sense of something that might be Shadowborn presence or magic, it was so faint that he was almost persuaded it was a phantom of his damaged mage sense. But surely—surely if he stood toe-to-toe with a Shadowborn shape-shifter or weather-worker, he must sense that strength.
    The question as to what he would do then was one he had no answer for.
    He moved away, the guards starting to follow. “Let him go,” Mycene said, loudly enough for Ishmael to hear. “There’s no hiding for him anywhere this side of sunrise. Nor for anyone who helps him.” Ishmael nodded over his shoulder by way of acknowledgment of the sentiment, if not the fact, and continued down the gallery. Behind him he heard Mycene say, “And where by the Sole God is di Banneret?” A murmur. Mycene snorted. “He was told not to eat the sausage.”
    Ishmael spared a moment of sympathy for the hapless di Banneret, who would have the insult of his fellows’ mockery added to the wretchedness of his guts.
    He moved from rest to rest, remembering to make a little sound to warn the taut-nerved snipers that he was coming. Speaking of