by Matthew Ward
Lord Trelan bowed. “Messela. Any luck with Malachi?”
“I tried. He won’t listen.” She stared back at the palace’s empty balcony. “You should have let me tell him.”
He shook his head. “I’ve been where he is. He has to take the first step alone, or he’s no good to anyone. This is what he needs.”
“We should at least talk to Leonast. Maybe Evarn.”
“At best, they’ll seek advantage. At worst, they’ll actively sabotage us.”
Lady Akadra grimaced. “You really believe that?”
“I know we can’t afford the time or the risk.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“We can only hope.” He shrugged. “Lieutenant Raldan’s playing his part well, isn’t he?”
Raldan? Kurkas glared at Lord Trelan, torn between admiration and disgust. “So this is all a stitch-up?”
“Stitch-up. Politics. Theatrics. I like to think I’ve learned something this past year.” A surge of disquiet drew his attention back to the crowd. “Speaking of which… Lady Akadra, would you mind having a change of heart?”
She bobbed her head. “At your command, Lord Trelan.” She turned again to the crowd and raised her voice. “Citizens…”
Lord Trelan retreated from the scaffold’s edge.
Kurkas blotted out Lady Akadra’s voice and followed. “So in the small hours, when I was dragging Brass and the others out of bed, you set up all this?”
“Some of it.” Lord Trelan sighed. “I don’t like it, but they have to want to take a stand. I can order what soldiers we have into battle, but we need more than that. This city’s lousy with old soldiers, coshmen, enforcers, sailors – folk who know their business when their back’s against the wall. So we show them all the reasons we can’t win. Then we tell them that we can, and hope enough believe.”
Lady Akadra fell silent, leaving the crowd subdued. A glance beyond the scaffold revealed why. The Swanholt hearthguard were no longer formed up in opposition to Lancras, but alongside. Even as Kurkas watched, a trickle of constabulary blue threaded through the crowd and joined the muster. One hundred became two. No longer alone, but a beginning.
“The vranakin mean to defile the Hayadra Grove,” shouted Lord Trelan. “To sever our connection to Lumestra so that the mists swallow us all. A thousand swords, that’s all I ask. It doesn’t matter who you are. Today you fight for your home. We fight for our home.”
The trickle of bodies became a flood. Two hundred became three, became four.
“A thousand of us went in last time. What’s different?”
The challenge came not from Raldan – who, duty fulfilled, had taken his place in the growing muster – but from a Karov hearthguard captain. Thousands of eyes looked aloft to the scaffold, and Lord Trelan’s hesitation became theirs.
Kurkas saw the problem at once. Theatrics aside, Lord Trelan was an honest soul and a poor liar. Much as he might want to, he couldn’t claim this was anything more than a last, desperate throw of the dice. But seeing the problem and knowing its resolution were two very different dilemmas.
Amber skies turned gold.
[[Because this time, I’m coming with you.]]
Josiri stared skyward, as dumbstruck as the crowds by the figure silhouetted against the rising dawn. That he recognised Ana at once did nothing to dim his awe. Nor did it help that the armour she wore over scarlet gown had unmistakeably begun life in the Prydonis armoury, just as the fennlander’s claymore strapped to her back was a close twin to Viktor’s favoured weapon. Such mundane details couldn’t distract from the golden wings that bore her aloft, nor flowing hair that crackled like fire.
For all that he’d glimpsed this side of her in the Westernport warehouse, that memory was a candle beside the sun. Save for the porcelain of her skin, she was again a serathi of legend, beautiful and grim, and terrible beyond words.
Below the scaffold, the crowd rippled as folk fell to their knees, objection swallowed by homage. A beat of golden wings sent Anastacia swooping a circle about the plaza. Skirts slit to the thigh and sleeves to the shoulder revealed steel beneath, and betrayed the gown as little more than a costume shaping romantic ideal, a fantasy in oils come to life. Hands reached skyward to greet her. Prayer became hymn.
Josiri watched it all, mouth agape. Theatrics? He didn’t know the first thing.
“She must be bloody loving this,” murmured Kurkas.
Josiri fought to contain an idiot grin, and yielded the battle. For all he’d striven to play the stalwart for Kurkas and the others, he’d been twisted by uncertainty. No longer. “I told you she’d be back.”
“You also said she’d be angry, remember?”
“She’s always angry.”
“True.”
Messela joined him at the scaffold’s edge, her eyes wide and her hands clasped to her chest to hide the tremor. “I think you’ll get your thousand swords now.”
“Yes.” What would Lilyana Reveque have said to see this?
One final circle, and Ana stepped lightly onto the scaffold. Even that small motion set the platform juddering. Josiri’s heart – uncertain since he’d first set foot on the creaking timbers – quickened. Ana’s wings faded as if they’d never been. Her golden hair remained – not fire, as Josiri had first thought, but sunlight. He went to speak, the arguments and insignificance forgotten in the joy of reunification, but the words wouldn’t come.
[[Close your mouth, Josiri. Dignity is so important.]]
“I’ve missed you.” The words did poor service to the feeling, but no others would serve.
[[Of course you have.]] She tilted her head. Gloved fingers brushed his cheek. [[It’s good to see you. We are going after the children?]]
He nodded. “That’s where it starts. It goes much deeper.”
“Putting someone else first, plant pot?” said Kurkas.
[[I can always change my mind.]] The sardonic tone was familiar. The wistful note less so.
“Can you?” asked Josiri.
She shook her head. [[So much of this is my fault.]]
“Kurkas told me. You did everything you could.”
[[That’s not what I mean, I—]]
“Josiri.” Messela pointed across the plaza to the palace balcony. “He’s here.”
He glanced behind and saw a dark figure against the white stone, the door open behind. Malachi. “Ana?”
Golden wings flickered back into life. Her arms looped beneath his. The crowd passed away below as a dizzying blur. Josiri pinched his eyes shut to soothe a twisted stomach and longed for the creaking scaffold. He opened them again just in time to avoid an ungainly drop onto the balcony.
“I’m never doing that again.”
[[Yes, dear.]]
A beat of wings and she was gone, leaving Josiri alone with a friend who’d aged ten years in a single, short week. For all that he’d hoped to have this conversation, now it was upon him he didn’t know where to begin. He should have foreseen this. He’d known Malachi had struck a deal with the Crowmarket to secure Ebigail Kiradin’s downfall, but he’d been too wrapped up in his own concerns to see how deep into the mists the other had fallen – he should have at least considered the possibility. Perhaps he could have stopped it. Now all he could do was to pick up the pieces and strive to salvage what he could.
“Malachi…”
The other approached the balcony edge, his eyes fixed on crowds that paid him no heed. Mortal man couldn’t compete with legend. “It’s all gone, Josiri. I lectured you about responsibility and look what I’ve done. Look what it’s cost me. All because I thought myself cleverer than I was.”
“It’s not over yet. I found Viktor, and…” He drew closer. “Sidara and Constans are alive, Malachi. The vranakin have them, but I swear to you I’ll get them back.”
He didn’t believe. Not at first – Josiri read that much in his expression. Too afraid it was some cruel joke. But the façade cracked, the first tears breaking through as he allowed hi
mself to hope. “And Lily?”
“I’m sorry.”
Malachi hung his head, resurgent joy in abeyance. “She should have run a mile the first time she heard my name.”
“I doubt she’d agree.” The other flinched as Josiri laid a hand on his shoulder. “Apara Rann saved your children. She said to tell you that she’d ‘never have found her way back to the path’ but for you. I don’t know what she meant.”
“It means I haven’t entirely been a failure.” He straightened, the first gleam of the man Josiri remembered showing beneath sorrow. His tone thickened with determination. “Messela was right. Hope is important.”
“It’s a start,” said Josiri, embracing him. “Time to make an end of it.”
Fifty-Eight
The muffled drums fell away. For the first time since dawn, silence ruled all. All along the overlapping barricades of mud and sharpened stakes, men and women stared east across the mist-draped meadowlands, searching for some clue as to what was to come.
Zephan Tanor stared with them, wishing the battle begun. The banner in his left hand was heavier than a lance, and its burden denied him a shield. But then, there were few enough lances and shields to go around. Few enough of anything, with so much abandoned in the retreat from the Rappadan.
Come dawn, the revenants had coalesced at the barricades and mud walls over the meadowlands’ boundary, forming up in mimicry of ephemeral soldiers. It might have been reassuring had the cold of the grave not come with them. Worse were the reports of a stranger treading the outer defences during the night. Or more precisely, two strangers. One a man in tailcoated suit and battered hat, the other an old woman veiled for mourning. Sentries who’d challenged them awoke shivering, wracked with cold no fire could warm.
Twisting in his saddle, Zephan peered past the ranks of Essamere to the dark bulk of a kraikon, frozen in the act of scooping soil to a makeshift rampart ahead of the Traitor’s Pyre’s boundary wall. Kraikon or revenant, light or shadow. He longed for the former, but better to have horrifying allies than none at all. Especially if those allies numbered in the hundreds, as the revenants did.
To the north, the slab-sided silhouette of the Dauntless was more imagination than fact. Grandmaster Mannor’s Knights Prydonis waited a half-mile to the south, their presence confirmed by a herald’s missive barely minutes before. And in between, the overlapping barricades, manned by pavissionaires and halberdiers, by marines and proctors, by militia and farmers too tired or defiant to run.
“Buck up, Tanor,” said Izack. “It’s only the end of the world. No need to look glum.”
“The end of the world, master?”
Izack swept an armoured gauntlet towards the column of revenant knights, formed up in mirror to the denuded Essamere formation – like them, an arrow aimed along the Govanna–Sirovo Road and into the heart of the expected shadowthorn advance. “Can’t be much else when the dead are walking about, can it?”
“They’re not the risen dead, master, but the Raven’s servants.”
He waved the objection aside. “Let ’em be what they want, so long as they hack the shadowthorns bloody. And you? Hold onto that banner. While it stands, so does Essamere. And while Essamere stands, so does the bloody Republic.”
A swell of pride drove back fear, as Izack had surely meant it to do. “Yes, master.”
“And the rest of you…” Izack rose up in his stirrups, his voice booming out over the barricades. “I don’t care what brought you here, or what colours you wear. I don’t give a provost’s cuss if you took the silver shilling out of patriotism, out of hunger or to avoid the noose. Today, you’re Essamere. You’re damn well going to fight like it, or you’ll answer to me.”
A ragged cheer spread. Officers and sergeant bellowed for discipline. Shields locked tight.
“I don’t know that Grandmaster Mannor will appreciate being recruited to Essamere,” said Zephan, as Izack sank back into his saddle.
“Bugger Torvan.” Izack spat into the mud. “Shouldn’t have backed the wrong horse last year, should he?”
The thunder of the drums rolled anew from the east.
Drums crashed away. The third volley hissed westward towards Govanna, its arrows swallowed by mist. Kai shifted restlessly on his horse. Would the Tressians ever know that convention had been observed, or would the mist swallow sound as readily as sight? Did it even matter? The salute was tradition, a token of respect from an Emperor to his foes, and such gifts were seldom received in the spirit they were offered. Honour came from within. It accepted no other master save the self.
{{A waste of arrows,}} crackled Jack.
He lurked a short distance downhill, ragged robes clinging to his shoulders like part-moulted skin. The rest of Kai’s entourage – Devren and Haldrane among them – kept a pointed distance. Elspeth regarded him with outright disgust.
Along the crest, golden cataphracts and silver lunassera surrendered to clinging mist. Banners sat limp in the stale air. Shieldsmen of Rhaled and Corvant massed behind, the Saran owl and the black tree of King Raeth joined by the badges of chiefs and headmen. Britonis mustered away to the north, where the valley floor fell away to the deep waters of the Silverway; Silsaria to the south, its left flank anchored on the eaves of Selnweald. Icansae, bloodied at Soraved and in all the days since, would come behind. Thirty-five thousand spears, marching as one along the valley.
And everywhere between, the unnerving, gangling forms of Jack’s children, wiry strawjacks and lithe thornmaidens. Their crackling scratched at thought and spine.
Somewhere out in the murk, hidden in landscape rendered eerie and jumbled by Otherworld’s echo, waited the outmarched Tressian army. Kai clung to the memories of dawn; Elspeth’s touch, and the vigour it brought. One day more. That was all he needed. One day, and a victory to reshape the world.
“Arrows are worthless in this muck,” murmured Devren. “Might as well spend them on salute.”
Jack twisted about. {{You wish the mists gone?}} Gnarled fingers beckoned into the mists. {{Gwenhwyfar, attend me.}}
Arms spread, a thornmaiden dipped a curtsey. {{Father.}}
His hand brushed the crude clay of her face. {{You know what is to come?}}
{{Yes, Father.}} Her voice buzzed with breathy anticipation. {{Make me beautiful again.}}
Green buds bloomed across her shoulders and back, and among the black roses of her hair, until nary a dark petal gleamed among the white. Kai’s head swam with the sweet scent of duskhazel. Gwenhwyfar turned a pirouette and pulled away, blossoms trailing behind. Elspeth’s grimace deepened.
{{Oh Father. Whatever shall I give you in return?}} Gwenhwyfar spoke teasingly, as one who knew what was to come.
{{It is a father’s place to be generous,}} said Jack. {{A daughter’s to serve and sacrifice.}}
Fire blazed green in her mask’s eyes. {{Yes, Father.}}
With a final sly glance at Kai, she danced west into the mist. Jack watched her go, the smooth expanse of his mask inscrutable.
Fresh unease gathered in the pit of Kai’s stomach. “I have always considered it a father’s place to protect his daughter.”
Jack’s laughter crackled softly through the mist. {{And yet you are so reckless with your own.}}
Kai winced beneath his helm, the last acrimonious conversation with Melanna at the forefront of his thoughts. “It’s not for me to bar Melanna’s path. She will understand, one day.”
{{You’ve no need to defend yourself to me, my Emperor. I merely repay your generosity with my own.}}
Kai’s unease redoubled, fed by the sense that Jack’s words held meaning he’d missed. Before he unpicked the elusive thought, the Lord of Fellhallow cupped his hands, a white-blue flame springing to life against his palms.
{{Service and sacrifice.}} Melancholy tone sat ill alongside the mirth of a moment before. {{Be bright and beautiful, my daughters.}}
He brought his palms together. The fire went out.
In the distance, the screams be
gan.
The mists boiled away. Two score raging blue-white fires dotted the middle distance. A black, wizened figure capered at the heart of each. Cries soared over drums renewed, at times wild laughter and at others heart-wrenching agony. As Zephan watched, the nearest dancer collapsed, but crawled on through grass that blackened as fire spread. Another fell and did not rise, the blue-tinted flames leaping higher and higher above her shrivelling corpse.
“Queen’s Ashes,” murmured Izack. “What now?”
The sweet scent of duskhazel tingled Zephan’s nostrils.
The first of the Raven’s revenants dissipated, cast into soot. Its neighbours at the barricade followed suit, drawn into Otherworld alongside fading mist. The contagion of unmaking raced along barricade and open field, until the mists were gone, and not one revenant remained. Soldiers cried out as their allies scattered to nothing.
Beyond the burning thornmaidens, behind a broken line of galloping outriders, the horizon gathered to golden scale. The shadowthorn line stretched north and south along the gentle hill, emerald banners giving way to midnight blue and ocean grey. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands.
“Never bloody easy, is it?” growled Izack.
Half the thornmaidens were down now, their bodies blazing bright. Others reached the foremost barricade. Cackling madly, they threw themselves at defenders struck dumb by billowing pollen. The fires spread. In the distance, catapults lurched. Blazing shot gouged bloody smears in braced shields or spattered across the Silverway’s rushing waters.
Blaring trumpets joined the thunder of the drums. The golden line started forward.
“What do we do?” asked Zephan.
“We’re Essamere. What do you think?” Eyes still fixed on the shadowthorn advance, Izack raised his voice. “Master Proctor? Come on, Elzar, move your idle bones!”
Ilnarov hurried over, displaying a respectable turn of speed for a man of advanced years. “The kraikons… They’re waking up.”
The nearest juddered, then froze, golden sparks racing across its body.