“We have to do the thing now.”
“We can’t,” Geder said. “Basrahip—”
“The signal torch is burning,” Yardem said.
For a moment, it was as if the words were in some unknown language. He couldn’t make sense of them. Then, slowly, the air left him. He looked down toward the dueling yard. The iron brazier there glimmered like a star in the night sky. A thin cloud of smoke billowed up from it. Geder’s chest tightened more. He couldn’t breathe.
“No,” he said. “No, that’s just the sunlight. That’s just a reflection of the… of the…”
Yardem steadied him with a wide, strong hand. His voice was low and conversational. Nothing in his tone suggested that their lives were suddenly at risk. “We’ll be all right. But we have to go now.”
“We have to go now,” Geder echoed.
He gathered himself to walk, but his limbs suddenly felt as if they were made from wood. He’d become a puppet with an impatient child yanking at his strings. He forced his mouth into a smile that felt grotesque and false. The urge to run pricked him, and he had to pretend he didn’t feel it. Yardem padded calmly at his side, as if the distance from the great open windows to the door at the temple’s far end weren’t the difference between life and death. Geder tried to match the Tralgu’s stride.
The priests turned to watch him. Of course they did. That didn’t mean anything. He’d called them here. He hadn’t explained what he was doing. They were curious. Of course their attention was on him. It wasn’t because they knew.
The doors seemed to come closer, even through it was really him moving toward them. A wire-haired priest in a black robe with a belt of chain nodded to Geder. He nodded back, but didn’t speak. He couldn’t speak. They were thick doors. Hard to break through. Now he wasn’t sure of that. There were so many priests, after all. But the dragon was coming. All they needed to do was pass through the room, close the doors. There were iron bars waiting there in the shadows. He’d hold the doors closed while Yardem fit the metal across the brackets, and then they’d run. Geder could already imagine himself running down the stair so fast it felt like falling.
His heart stopped. What if they met Basrahip on their way down? How would he explain what was happening?
“We can’t,” he whispered, hoping the priests weren’t close enough to hear.
“Going to have to, my lord,” Yardem said.
The doors came closer, and Geder’s heart beat again, harder now for having lost its rhythm. It fought against his ribs like a panicked bird killing itself against the bars of its cage. He couldn’t quite believe the priests didn’t hear it. His own ears were roaring with his pulse. A dozen more steps to the doors, then the stairs…
“Remembered something important, Lord Regent?” Vicarian Kalliam asked, his voice light as a joke.
Geder nodded, acknowledging him without answering. He couldn’t answer.
“Prince Geder?” another priest said. “You look unwell. Are you leaving us?”
“I—” Geder said, and stopped.
The room was silent now. All the priests—there were hundreds of them—had shifted to face him. There were too many. He couldn’t fight his way free. He had to say something. He had to tell them everything was all right, but it wasn’t, and they’d know. He had to tell them he wasn’t leaving, but he was leaving, and they’d know. He had to lie, because if they knew the truth, they’d rip him to shreds with their hands and spill out into the world again, and Cithrin would know he’d failed. And Aster. Only he couldn’t lie.
There had to be a way. A turn of phrase and intention that would get him free, but he couldn’t think of anything. The seconds stretched, and fear with them.
He looked up into the Tralgu’s warm, dark eyes. We’re going to die here, Geder thought. I’ve done all this, come all this way, and I’m going to die here because someone asked me a question I couldn’t answer. The monstrous unfairness of it was like a torch in his belly. It hurt and it filled his nose with the scent of smoke. The anger flowed into him, an old ally come in his hour of need.
He had to say something.
It had to be true.
Fine.
“No,” Geder said. “I’m not leaving.”
The Tralgu blinked, but if there was any surprise in his expression, Geder couldn’t see it.
“I’m not leaving,” Geder said, his voice ringing out. “Hear my voice? I’m not… I’m not leaving.”
Because if I were, you bastards would know it. And if you knew, it would all be over. And I’m not losing to you again.
Yardem nodded. “I’ll let her know.”
The sense of loss was less terrible than he’d thought it would be. It wasn’t even grief, precisely. Only a profound disappointment. There were going to be days and nights in Cithrin’s company. He was going to read poetry to her, and watch Aster become king. He was going to go out to Rivenhalm with his father and spend a long day fishing at his side, the way he’d always meant to. He’d see Sabiha and tell her himself how Cithrin bel Sarcour had come and saved the empire with him, and everything was going to be all right. Only no. He wouldn’t. He was going to do this instead.
“Yes. Please tell her,” Geder said. “Tell them all.”
Then he stood silently and watched while the Tralgu walked out the doors and closed them solidly behind him. Briefly, something in Geder’s mind shrieked. This is the moment. Change your mind again. Run! But then the low growl of the iron bars came, and all hope died.
He looked around at the men staring at him. Dozens of different faces. Some were confused, some sullen and angry, some lit with hope. He smiled. It felt real this time. It was as if everything he’d ever seen had been through a dirty window, and now the glass was clean.
He was done. Nothing mattered.
“Well,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “All right. Why don’t we get started? Can all of you come here, please? Everyone from the back rooms too? Yes, good. Everybody. Come out here where you can get a good look out at the city.”
Like a nurse with too many children to care for, Geder made a show of putting them all in lines and rows. They shuffled and pushed under his guidance, jockeying for position without knowing it was their own pyre. Geder found a bleak and terrible joy in it all. Here, you’re taller, so stand at the back. Make sure everyone’s got a good view. This is important. This will be amazing. You’ve been looking forward to this, haven’t you? I can tell.
They stood in ranks, facing the open sky, and Geder took his place behind them. Their heads blocked the blue. It was fine. There, almost too small to see, but high in the open air, something was gliding. A hawk above the city walls, perhaps. Or something larger and farther away, but coming close.
“All right,” Geder said, his voice a cheerful singsong. “I want everyone to close their eyes. Everybody, now. You’ve come all this way to hear what I have learned about the goddess. So close your eyes, and relax. I want you all to feel her power within you. I want you to feel the comfort she gives you all. Can you do that for me?”
A murmur of gentle assent rose all around him.
“Think about all that you have sacrificed for her,” Geder said. The wings were larger than a hawk’s now, but not yet, he guessed, within the city. With every heartbeat, they seemed to grow just a bit wider, just a bit thicker. Like someone had drawn a pen across the clouds, and the ink was still seeping in. “Think about the trust you have put in her. The faith. You have all given your lives for her. Died out of the life you had before in order to carry her voice into the world. Without your dedication to her, you might have had wives. Children. You might have written songs or brewed beer or any of a thousand different things, but you are the servants of the Servant because you knew in your heart that this was better. Am I right? Do you deny it?”
Another wave of voices, now in negation. No, they did not deny. No one could deny the power of her voice. Some of them were swaying now. Someone was weeping, and it sounded like joy. The wings were no long
er like a hawk’s. They took a shape more like a vast and ragged bat. Not quite that, but more like. It was a beautiful creature. He could make out the dragon’s head now, and it might have been only his imagination, but he thought he heard a roar rising in the city. A thousand throats shouting in a chorus of fear.
“Think of the promises she made you,” Geder said. “The golden glow of truth. The knowledge that you were better and purer and more right than everyone else. Take a moment, and feel all the love in that promise. Take comfort in it.”
Someone in the group moaned in something like religious ecstasy. Geder bounced on the balls of his feet. His grin was so wide, it ached.
“My voice doesn’t have that power. But it can carry truth. And the truth I have for you—the one you have been waiting for and searching for, the one that will end all dispute between you, has come. Take a breath, open your eyes, and hear my truth. You don’t get to fucking laugh at me.”
One opened his eyes, then a handful, and then all of them together. They looked around in confusion, reared back, cried out. They surged for the doors, but to no effect. The iron held. The dragon’s approach shrugged off the illusion of floating gentleness. It drove toward them all like a falling stone. The great mouth opened, and Geder could see its teeth.
Inys slammed into the tower, his vast head blotting out the city, the sky, the future.
For the first few seconds, the flames felt cold.
Cithrin
Inys hit the Kingspire with a sound louder than thunder. Cithrin felt it in her chest like a blow. Massive claws dung deep into the tower’s flanks, leaving marks so wide she could see them from the gardens where she stood. His body filled like a bellows, and the roar of the fire was an assault in itself. Flames blew out, bathing the dragon’s head. They lit the windows of the Kingspire. Black smoke billowed up, rising into the sky. An announcement of tragedy. The violence of it staggered her.
Aster, unthinking, pushed himself in front of her as if his body would offer any protection. She put her hand on his shoulder. All around the grounds, the others were gaping up at the spectacle. Other voices raised in alarm came from behind her. Geder’s guards. The city watch. All the men and soldiers that Geder was supposed to have summoned making their own approach, alarmed and unsought. She didn’t know if this was a blessing, and she didn’t turn to see. The banner of the goddess fell toward them, but slowly. It burned as it fell, and seemed borne up by the heat of its own unmaking. It rained ashes below it and belched smoke above.
The dragon drew another vast breath, and the fire came again. A cracking sound, sharp as a board snapped across a knee, but a thousand times louder, came from the Kingspire.
She wanted to call out to Marcus, to Yardem. To anyone. But there was only her and the prince, and the actors who were the nearest thing to her family. The dying tower at the heart of a dying empire. The terrible grandeur was more than she’d expected. Marcus, Yardem, Geder… they’d been meant to escape the tower first. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen. Either the ground was shaking or she was. She couldn’t tell which.
The banner reached the trees, draping over the broad and leafy branches. New smoke rose up. New flames to echo the ones still glowing in the tower.
We have to get water, she thought. We have to put the fires out before they spread. It wasn’t enough to spur her into motion.
The horror and awe that consumed her shifted, and a new thought slid brightly into her mind. This was it. This was the moment she’d aimed herself toward. If they’d been in the temple, the spiders were gone now. The war that had spanned all human history was rising in the smoke above her. She wanted to see it as a victory, but she couldn’t see it as anything but an act of breathtaking destruction. That peace could come from this was an article of faith. A thing she believed because she had to.
Someone called her name, the voice almost drowned out by the sound of the flames. It took her a timeless moment to find him: Sandr waving his hands and pointing at the mechanism beside him. Cithrin shook her head, confused. The actor yelled something and pointed up, at Inys. The serpentine tail wrapped the tower.
Oh. He was asking whether they should loose the bolts and try to pull the dragon down. She turned to find Marcus, only he wasn’t there. She’d known that.
They should wait. They could deal with Inys another time, when Marcus was back. If he came back.
If you fall, I’m picking up your damned blade myself.
Humanity had driven the spiders to the edge of the world once. But it had also thrown off the yoke of the dragons. Defeating one without the other now would only be half the job. If it meant betraying Inys, it was also being true to Marcus. And the royal guard was coming near.
“Do it!” she shouted over the roar and cacophony. “Bring him down!”
Sandr nodded and turned back to his mechanism. From all around the garden, splinters of bright metal arched up toward the dragon’s glittering scales, trailing gossamer. When the first two hit, Inys shifted, swiveling his massive head in confusion. Clinging as he was to the side of the burning tower, he didn’t have the freedom of movement he might have. It was why Marcus had chosen this moment.
Inys ripped out one of the barbs as two more hit. The gossamer on the first looked like it was growing thicker as thread drew up string to draw up rope, to pull Inys down. Geder’s guards rushed past her as if she weren’t there, bows drawn. More shouts came from behind them. Camnipol rising in terror and rage, as Marcus had hoped and intended.
Inys ripped another barb free, shifted his head toward them, and opened his mouth, but the gout of fire that came from him wasn’t strong enough to reach the ground. For the space of a heartbeat, the lines burned and turned to ash. Embers in the shape of spider web, crumbling, and then gone. The dragon’s roar was louder than the fire had been. His face, even from so far away, was perfectly readable—confusion and pain, followed by a vast indignance.
More people rushed forward to the gardens. Not only guards now, but the servants Geder had ordered back. Some brandished swords and bows, but others rakes and horsewhips, stones plucked off the garden’s paths, or only raised voices and balled fists. For a moment, she loved them all. Aster pressed himself closer to her, but whether to protect her or be protected, she couldn’t say.
There was a strange nobility about it. All these people, faced with catastrophe, and running toward it. Any one of them would have been wiser to turn and flee, but instead they came together. By instinct, they would do together what none of them might have managed alone.
Inys rose, leaping up into the wide sky, his wings beating the air. The wind blew the fires brighter, and the dragon rose high above the reach of their weapons, spiraling up toward the clouds and then diving back down. Screams filled the air, and bows were drawn, ready to meet the attack. But Inys pulled out, swooping around to hit the highest point in the tower with all his weight. The burning Kingspire shook.
“It’s coming down!” Cithrin shouted. “Get out of the way! He’s pushing it down!”
Fire and stone fell together, coming faster than the banner had. It was only the highest part of the great tower that tipped over and tumbled down toward them, but it was still larger than her countinghouse in Porte Oliva had been. It hit the ground, spewing fire and dust. The screaming hadn’t stopped, but it had changed its character. No longer defiance and horror, but pain.
The dragon, hovering in the high air above the city, screamed. Cithrin thought there were words in it, but she couldn’t tell what they were. Inys spread his ragged wings and flew away to the south, far beyond their reach. They hadn’t brought him down. He’d gotten away.
“Well,” she said, her voice sounding as if it belonged to someone else, “that could have gone better.”
The royal quarter looked like a city after a sack. Stone and ancient wood burned hotter than a forge, scattered across the gardens in heaps taller than buildings. The people of Camnipol, guards and servants, divided themselves among fighting back th
e flame, tending to the wounded, and staring in open horror at the destruction. Cithrin found herself weeping with them, and didn’t know how many of her tears were sorrow, how many fear, how many relief.
Clara Kalliam stumbled forward out of the haze of dust and smoke, her huntsman close behind her. She came to Cithrin, and for a moment, each tried to find something to say. They fell into each other’s arms, embracing like mourners at a pyre. Cithrin felt other arms around her. Aster was with them, sobs wracking his body. And then Cary as well. And Kit. And Sandr, his hair singed and a thick burn over his right eye. And Charlit Soon whom Cithrin barely knew, holding her now like a sister in the wreckage. In the heart of the terror, they made a knot with each other, and the simple animal comfort of being held by others who shared her distress was the nearest thing Cithrin had ever felt to love.
“Is it done?” Clara asked. “Are they gone?”
“I think so,” Cithrin replied. “Probably?”
Cithrin felt the movement in the group, a shifting that filled her with dread before she understood it. Master Kit, his expression gentle, stood back. His hair was whiter now than it had been when she’d met him on the road from Vanai. The age in his face more pronounced. But the kindness and amusement and sorrow with which he embraced the world still glowed in his eyes.
“No,” he said. “There is one more.”
“Kit?” Cithrin said, struggling free of the others. Behind him, a vast structure within the rubble shifted, throwing out black smoke and embers like a thousand fireflies. Tears streaked Kit’s ash-powdered face.
“Don’t cry,” he said. “I have been thinking of this moment for some time.”
“No,” Cary said. “No no no.”
“Yes,” Kit said, lowering his head.
“You can’t,” Cary said. “We’ve just won. We did everything right. It isn’t fair.”
She took a step toward Kit. Her mouth was a slash of grief. Cithrin came to her side.
“It isn’t,” Kit said. “The world has never been fair. Often beautiful. Sometimes kind when kindness was not deserved. But never fair.”
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