The Way Into Darkness: Book Three of The Great Way by Harry Connolly Page B

brought here to me. And bring eight spears with you in case they resist.”  
    “Eight?” Redegg seemed surprised, but he stared meekly at the floor while he spoke. “Surely four would be enough to defeat two.”  
    Tejohn scowled at him. “Four could kill two, yes. Eight will convince two to surrender without a fight. Your people are going to need every spear--”
    The doors boomed and swung open. Everyone turned toward the light. A soldier with a green cloak and a comb on his helmet marched into the hall, a Twofin shield on his arm and a dozen soldiers at his back. “Who usurps the Twofin chair?” the man in the comb shouted.
    “No one,” Tejohn snapped back. “Who are you?”
    “Commander Lowtower,” he said, glaring at Tejohn with his head tilted to the right. He wore an eye patch, also green, over one eye. “What Fire-taken fool are you?”  
    They had all taken Peradaini names. “Tyr Tejohn Treygar. Your tyr confessed to a crime and I executed him.”  
    The bureaucrat Findwater cleared his throat. “I’m going to see to that matter now.” He gave a steady look to the commander that seemed full of meaning. Young Findwater waved at several of the tyr’s guards and hurried out of the hall.  
    The dozen soldiers who had entered with the commander held the points of their short spears level, and aimed them at Tejohn. While the room was silent, the commander crossed to Iskol Twofin’s corpse and spat on it.  
    “Give me a good reason,” Lowtower said as he came back to middle of the hall where Tejohn stood, “not to kill you where you stand.”  
    “Because you won’t survive the coming war without my help. Now tell me why I shouldn’t strike you down! You knew what your tyr was planning; why did the task of ending his rule fall to a stranger?”  
    “I knew,” the commander said. “The Twofins didn’t dare order me arrested for treason, but the tyr would never let me come within fifteen feet of him, even without arms…not that I could have touched him while he held my wife and daughters in his prison. He never left this building, was never without his guards, and tried to bribe my own soldiers to knife me in my sleep. His rule was thin enough to snap until his Fire-taken brother showed up.”
    “Send three of your spears into the cells and free your family. Go with them if you like, but I’ll need you to give command of the rest of your spears to me.”
    Lowtower’s body jolted as though he’d been struck. He clearly wanted to go to his family immediately, but instead, he grabbed one of his men by the shoulder. “Find them. Take them to my home. Tell my wife I’ll join her there when I know it’s safe.” The young man ran off. “There are more,” the commander said to Tejohn. “Many more.”  
    “Perhaps we should not be hasty in freeing them all,” Redegg said. “This is an uncertain time, and if we could first get oaths of loyalty—”  
    “Fire take that,” Tejohn said. “The old tyr’s hostages will be sorted from the real criminals and freed. Let the steward extract what oaths he can get. But that has to wait. The tyr’s brother is still alive, somewhere in the holdfast. He has to be found and killed before he goes after the Twofin heirs. You three!” Tejohn shouted to the ones Twofin had called whisperers. “Come here. What role do you play in this court?”  
    The three women looked at him, then each other. Their hair was tinged with red and their complexion was fairer than most. Where they sisters? There was too much Tejohn didn’t know about the relationships here. The shortest of the sisters stepped forward and bowed like a man. “We listen to the people, low and high, for the benefit of our tyr.”  
    Spies. “Good. I need you to tell me where to find Doctor Twofin. Where has he gone? Where are his secret places? He may have been here only a short while, but he has to have secret places.”  
    The women shrugged in unison, as though they shared a