He smiled, just a little. “Do I have to keep getting stabbed all the time?”
“I can’t say you won’t,” I said. “Hope that’s not a deal breaker. Here,” I said, placing a small object in his hand. “I want you to have this.”
He looked at it, puzzled. “A charm from your bracelet?”
“The gryphon is noble and loyal,” I said. “This one was lost to me for a while. But somehow, miraculously, I got it back.” I cleared my throat. “It seems appropriate that you have it.”
He closed his fingers over the gryphon, but before he could reply, there were sounds farther down the wall—shouts and crashes. Kellan lifted the glass and turned to scan the wall again. “That’s it. Our cue.”
Toris’s guards stationed on the wall all started running toward High Gate.
“Let’s go,” Kellan said.
All ten of us rushed across the open space and stopped at the foot of the wall to secure their grappling ropes to their hooks.
“Do you all have your invitations with you?” I asked. “Bring them out. Since you can’t climb and hold the invitations, it is my recommendation that you put it somewhere secure, and touching your skin.”
As I went from soldier to soldier, I continued, “Even with the weakening of the wall, crossing will likely be extremely unpleasant. Which means you don’t want it to catch you while you’re still on the rope. I will go up first, so that I can steady Kellan from above. Then we, in turn, will steady two more of you as you go up, and so on until we’re all past the border.”
“You ready?” Kellan asked, and I set my jaw and gave him a determined nod. He and the others gave their rope-threaded hooks several synchronized swings, and they all flew high over the wall and caught. Kellan tugged on the rope to make sure it was stable, securing one end around me and knotting the other around himself. With him anchoring and belaying me from below, I was hoisted up and over the battlements with little difficulty. Then I gave Kellan the all-clear signal; it was time for him to follow me up.
He had made it two-thirds of the way up the rope when the lines from the invitation’s bloodmark began branching up his neck like lightning. He cried out, and I yelled, “Don’t let go! You have to get over. Don’t stop. Come on!”
Somehow he managed to climb the rest of the way, even as the searing lines of magic traveled under his skin and into his blood. I pulled him over and held him as he thrashed in pain. When it was over, he lay prostrate on the wall’s walk, breathing heavily. “I thought being stabbed and falling off a cliff was unpleasant. I was wrong.”
“We’ve got to help the others,” I said.
The next two cadets had a similar experience to Kellan’s, but the third began convulsing before he even made it halfway up.
“Hang in there, Warren!” Kellan called. “Keep going!”
The cadet lasted for another fifteen feet before the pain became too much and he let go with a scream, landing with a sickeningly liquid thud on the ground below.
I wanted to look away, but I forced myself to bear witness to his death—he was one of my soldiers, here at my request. I owed him that dignity. His spirit materialized beside his body, and looked up at me on the wall. “Thank you for your service, Lieutenant Warren,” I whispered. “I won’t forget your sacrifice.”
He gave me a ghostly salute and was gone.
The remaining six soldiers stared at their fallen friend with grim faces.
“There’s got to be a way,” I said. “There’s got to be a way to make it easier.”
As I drew my knife, Kellan said, “What are you doing?”
“Whatever I can,” I replied, before drawing a quick line across both of my palms. I felt the magic inside me stir. “Tell them to climb. All of them. I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to do this.”
“Do what?” he asked, but I had already knelt and pressed my palms to the stone of the wall.
The magical current whirring in an endless loop inside the wall seemed to eddy at my touch, humming as if it recognized me. I allowed the magic passage through me, as if I were just another part of the conduit, and began to stretch my perception to where my soldiers were ascending. There I pulled back on the current, letting the magic part and swirl around them, like rocks in a river stream. It strained against my hold, and I began to sweat and pant with the exertion.
“Hurry!” I said as prickling numbness spread from my fingertips up into my arms. “I can’t hold it much longer.”
And then Kellan said, “They’re here! They’re all up!” And I let go. The magic I’d redirected snapped back into place, and all six of the soldiers were knocked to their knees, writhing in agony as it scorched their insides with vengeance.
“I’m sorry,” I said as they slowly came out of it. “I know it’s terrible. But at least you made it over first. At least you didn’t fall.”
“Warren was a brave man and a good lieutenant,” Kellan said to the rest. “He died in service to the princess, which means he died in service of the queen. May the Empyrea keep him.”
“Empyrea keep him,” the others intoned.
When we made it off the wall and into the city, everything was eerily quiet. “Where is everyone?” one of the soldiers asked.
“They hold their public events in the square by the castle,” I said. “That’s where they’ll be.”
We zigzagged through the abandoned streets, listening as the sound of the crowd grew from a buzz to a murmur to a loud hum. We approached the square from the east, keeping to the alleys to stay hidden from the guards. Swords drawn, they had formed lines on each side of the square, penning the people within it like cattle.
Kellan motioned to a ladder on the back of one of the buildings. We climbed it and scrambled across the sloping roof to view the scene from behind the peak.
At first I couldn’t make sense of it. Zan and Lisette were facing each other, holding their bleeding hands together. Toris was standing behind them, clutching his beloved Book of Commands. And that’s when I understood.
This was a wedding, and the entire city had been invited to watch.
Toris’s voice was loud enough to carry across the square. “It is by the authority given me as a magistrate of the Great Tribunal—”
“I won’t do it,” Zan declared.
“. . . that I do bring this man and this woman together now to join them as one in name, blood, bone, and purpose. Do you, Lisette de Lena, take this man, Valentin Alexander, as your husband, willingly, now and forevermore?”
“Wai—” I tried to cry out, but Kellan clapped his hand over my mouth.
“Don’t.” Zan closed his eyes, shaking his head. “Don’t say it.”
Quaveringly, she said, “Yes.”
Toris turned to Zan. “And do you, Valentin Alexander, take this woman, Lisette de Lena, as your wife, willingly, now and forevermore?”
“No.” His voice was loud.
“Say yes, boy,” Toris commanded. “Say yes now, or regret it.”
I struggled against Kellan’s grasp. He put his finger to his lips and pointed to the Achlevan guards on the ground. To my horror, I saw that every single one of them had a citizen under his arm, swords drawn.
“No,” Zan declared, more vehemently.
Toris turned his attention to the crowd.
“How many people do you think are here today? Several thousand, I’d say.” He gave a nod to the guards lined up on the stairs. Each one moved into the gathering and picked someone out at random, ripping them from their families and dragging them back up the stairs. An elderly woman, a middle-aged father, a youth with the first shadow of a beard . . . The guards returned to their stations to stand at attention, swords held at a perfect perpendicular to each person’s neck. Toris’s hand hovered in the heavy air for several tense moments, as if he were an orchestra conductor extending the last note for a little too long. And then he let his hand fall. In perfect synchronicity, the guards moved their swords across each victim’s neck with all the p
racticed elegance of musicians in a murderous symphony.
Order in all things.
The exodus of nearly a dozen spirits at once hit me like a wave; I felt their passing from the material to the spectral planes in the vibration of my bones. It made my sight blur, my ears ring, caused hazy shapes to form just outside the edges of my vision while whispery words circled me like vultures. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. I pressed my hands against my ears. Go away. Leave me alone.
Kellan was shaking me. “Aurelia, snap out of it! Look at me. We have to do something!”
Through bleary eyes, I saw Toris calmly asking Zan again, “Valentin Alexander, do you take this woman, Lisette de Lena, as your wife, willingly, now and forevermore?”
“Stars forgive me,” he said brokenly as Toris lifted his hand, ready to signal another slaughter. “Yes.”
“Stop,” I tried to yell, but my voice came out a crackling whisper.
“With the great Empyrea as witness above, your two lives are now entwined into one. Exchange the rings now, as king and queen.”
This was the first image of Aren’s last vision: the exchanging of the rings. I fought through the disorientation left by the bloodshed and climbed, unsteady, to the top of the roof. “Stop!” I yelled again, louder. I needed to draw blood, let the magic carry my voice. I cast around in the layers of my uniform to find my knife.
“It is done,” Toris said triumphantly, snapping his book shut. “All these years, all these preparations, and just like that—it is done!”
“No power is worth killing your own child,” Zan said. “May your remaining life be tormented by it.”
Got it. My hand closed around the knife handle.
Lisette was crying. “Don’t, Father. Please don’t hurt me. You’ve gotten what you wanted. You have control of Achleva now—”
Toris turned a glassy stare on her. “I am not your father,” he stated.
And with predatory dispassion, he drove his knife into her heart.
I screamed, drowned out by the shocked cries of the crowd. Lisette.
Zan had tried to pull her back into the safety of his arms, but there was nothing he could do. Blood swept across the bodice of her dress as he lowered her down, her hair fanning out on the stone steps, and she reached for him even as blood began to well up in her throat and drip from the corners of her lips. “I’m sorry,” she said, choking, trying to return the wedding ring to Zan with bloody hands. “I never wanted to hurt you. I lo—” She sputtered blood. “I love—”
“It’s all right,” Zan reassured her. “Hush now, be still. I’m sorry, too. I’m so sorry.”
“Nihil nunc salvet te,” said Toris.
Zan laid a soft kiss on Lisette’s brow. “Go in peace,” he told her. “Empyrea keep you.”
She closed her eyes.
The wind howled, and a pulse of light burst from her body and rolled like a shock wave through the air until it hit the wall’s cylindrical shield and spread across it like an ulcerous cancer.
Lisette’s spirit stood beside her body, staring sadly down at it. Don’t linger here, I thought. Find serenity in the arms of the Empyrea, my friend. She gave a slight nod, as if she had heard me, and then walked slowly, gracefully up the stairs toward the castle, fading away a little more with each step. She was gone before she reached the top.
“The queen of Achleva is dead!” Toris announced, smiling. “Long live the queen!”
35
“Toris!” My voice cut across the square like the fall of a scythe. I’d drawn a drop of blood and sent the resulting magic out in waves, not as heat or fire but as sound. I climbed to the high peak of the roof and stood like a pillar against the wind as the clouds went black and began to churn in circular rotation, lightning crackling in their angry depths.
Toris, who had been advancing on Zan, his knife still slick with Lisette’s blood, snapped his head toward me. His guards, too, began to surge in our direction as I defiantly raised a vial of blood into the air.
“Have you been looking for this?” I trumpeted. I pulled the stopper from Victor de Achlev’s blood vial. “The blood of the Founder. The last remnants of Cael’s essence. His magic. If those guards come any closer, I will spill every last drop.”
Toris froze. When his men did not, I let a single drop fall.
He screeched, “Halt!”
I lifted my voice. “I have what you want. You have what I want. I suggest a trade.”
On his knees, Zan wore an expression of naked emotion; hope, fear, and fury fought side by side with a longing so keen and clear, it nearly broke me. Toris yanked him to his feet. “I would request we begin our negotiations inside. Will you join me in the Great Hall, dear Princess?”
I did not respond. Instead, I tipped the vial of blood a second time.
“All right,” he said testily. “We can negotiate here.”
“If you want this blood returned to you, you must first open the gates,” I said. “Let these people evacuate the city. You and I both know that you kept them inside only to motivate Prince Valentin to marry Lisette. Their purpose has been served. Let them go.”
Toris waved off the guards, and they stepped aside to allow people to pass, though nobody moved. Then he cocked his head to the right, anticipating my follow-up demand for Zan’s release. He knew I would ask; I knew he would refuse. If there was one thing to be said about Toris and me, it was that we understood each other.
“When the city is empty, I will exchange the Founder’s blood for Prince Valentin. If any of these people are not allowed to go freely from the city, I will spill it. If any of your men harass any of mine, I will spill it. And if Valentin dies before I come to make the exchange and the wall comes down, I will die spilling it. Am I clear?”
“You’ve been making so very many demands, dear Princess. For this to be fair, I must be allowed to make some of my own.” His voice lost its jovial lilt. “We’ll meet at the top of the tower at dusk. Come alone. Come alone and I will accept the terms.”
The Founder’s actual blood was still hidden at the top of the tower. If I meant to barter for Zan’s life, I’d need the real vial. “We are in agreement.”
“No, Aurelia! Get out! Go!” Zan cried as Toris fastened his hands behind his back and yanked him to his feet. Then, with his luneocite knife still poised at his neck, Toris withdrew toward the castle.
“The tower!” Toris said before he disappeared, with Zan, behind the great castle doors. “Before night falls.”
I turned and bellowed, “Open the gates!” As I said it, a bolt of lightning sailed down and struck a high, steepled window less than a block behind me. In little more than a second, the aged timber lit up like a torch.
The crowd became a stampede as lightning struck again. And again. Wails of fear and frustration were drowned out by the ear-splitting blasts of thunder. A number of Toris’s implacable guards tried to funnel the furor toward the gates and were quickly trampled underfoot.
“We’ve got to get down there!” Kellan said as sparks flew past our faces and landed by our feet. My soldiers and I scrambled over the roof’s edge to the ladder and onto the ground just as the thatching began to smolder. The alley was narrow but provided a thin window to the forested mountains of Achlev’s eastern segment. The mountains were shimmering with heat as the fire advanced across them in delicate, curling patterns, like red-gold glitter trimming black net lace. I marveled at how swiftly it had begun.
“Cover your face!” Kellan demanded. “Don’t breathe the smoke!”
We combed the streets, sounding the alarm and searching for stragglers. Those who couldn’t make it to High or Forest Gates we brought with us as we headed to the docks even as great arcs of lightning were striking at increasingly short intervals. I found myself counting the seconds, knowing that my chances of saving Zan and the spaces between each strike were dwindling at the same exponential rate.
We were a hundred feet from the pier when lightning struck the mast of a
moored battleship, igniting the black powder of its cannons, and the entire thing went up like a great ball of fire, showering us with burning ash and dust. We rushed the final distance only to find that the pier was gone and the churning water was polluted with debris: shattered planks and scraps of canvas and bits of tattered clothing. The last large piece of the ship’s hull was still on fire on top of the water, scattering orange light across the red waves. There were bodies in the water, too—people who’d been on the pier, waiting to board and get themselves to safety and never had the chance.
I gripped Kellan’s sleeve. He said, “These remaining boats have taken too much damage. They won’t get to the gate before they sink.”
“There’s a private pier not far from here,” I said. “The Corvalis pier. There were plenty of boats there.”
“Some of these people are still alive!” one of my soldiers shouted. “Look!”
Kellan was a good swimmer; he and his men dove into the water to drag some of those farther out back to safety, while I and the other refugees scuttled around the edge, pulling out those who could swim on their own. Person after sodden person, we lugged and yanked, slipping on slick timbers and straining every muscle. For some of them, it was too late. The waterfront was choked with surprised, despondent spirits watching their bodies sink into the depths.
“We have to go,” Kellan said, hauling up one of the last survivors and climbing out. “The storm is getting worse. If we wait any longer, we won’t be getting out.”
“The boats I told you about are that way.” I pointed. “Get everyone there as fast as you can.”
“You’re staying?” He asked. “You’re still going to the tower?”
“I’m going for Zan,” I said. I would not leave the city again without him.
I expected Kellan to object, to plead for me to listen to reason and head for safety while I still could. He didn’t. Instead, he turned and began barking orders. “Move out! We’re heading west, to the ships at the Corvalis pier!” He moved to the head of the group, giving me one last nod from over his shoulder before leading them out of sight.
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