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oughtful. "Will the Bisrans come here?"
"No, they'll strike at Lodun. It's closer to their border, and they have to eliminate the sorcerers there before they advance any further. If they move fast, if our crown troops are still trying to retake this city, they just might succeed." Lodun had been a small town before the founding of the university. It had since outgrown its confining and protective walls and depended on the strength of the border garrisons for its defense against possible attack from their longtime enemy. With the capital in chaos and unable to send provisions or fresh troops, those garrisons could be swept away. "There are some powerful sorcerers there, but without troops to back them they can't hold off a large assault. The Bisrans would have to cross a countryside where there would be a peasant in every bush with a matchlock; but of course that wouldn't do more than delay them. They would finish us, then tear through Adera and Umberwald." It would be a long bloody war.
"Human sorcerers," Kade said suddenly.
"What?"
"I was wrong. The enemies of the Unseelie Court are the Seelie Court, iron, and human sorcerers."
"Which Lodun is well supplied with. Grandier could have told them that he would destroy Lodun. And he will. Bisra will do it for him." It was a neat bit of reasoning, but it didn't explain Denzil's position. Could he possibly be bargaining to be a puppet princeling under Bisra's domination? There wouldn't be anything left worth ruling; the Bisran Church would condemn as a heretic everyone from Lodun sorcerer-philosophers to the peasants who kept a sprig of rowan over their doorways. "Right now Grandier has us over a barrel. We're on the defensive, forced to react to whatever he chooses to do. If Bisra invaded again, we would have to forget an attempt to retake this city and use the troops to fortify Lodun and the border."
"But Grandier must hate Bisra, hate it worse than anything," Kade protested.
Thomas reined in. "There's something coming