by Patty Jansen
Johanna pushed through the crowd, looking for Father’s blue coat. She called him and asked people if they’d seen him. No one had.
Then a man on the front porch yelled, “There!”
A woman shouted, “Oh, look! Is that near our house?”
Another woman shrieked.
Several people started yelling at once.
“What is that thing?”
“It’s a work of evil magic.”
Johanna was in the back of the crowd and could only see the orange glow of the fire against the pillars of the entrance porch, but she’d seen the fire devil.
There was a commotion outside, voices shouting, horses neighing, the crack of whips.
A gust of wind brought a wave of heat from across from the city. It filled the foyer and blew open all doors in the entrance hall. Curtains billowed; the candles blew out. A scent of fire wafted on the wind. People around Johanna pushed and screamed. The wind pricked with magic.
Several people turned around and ran back towards the palace, but the palace guards were just shutting the doors and wouldn’t let anyone in.
One guard called, “Everyone go home, go home now!”
Outside on the steps, groups of nobles were still waiting for their coaches to turn up. A long line of them filed out the gate. The horses were nervous and several grooms had trouble keeping their charges under control.
The animals could smell magic. They had been smelling magic all day.
Johanna walked up and down the stairs, yelling for Father, but she didn’t see him and no one knew where he was. She couldn’t imagine that Father would have gone home without her. Where was he? Father was the only family she had left. Panic clamped around her heart.
She ran up and down the stairs along the line of people waiting to be picked up by coaches.
All the nobles were agitated, looking around for family, craning their necks to see if their coaches had arrived yet. She spotted Julianna Nieland, crying on the shoulder of her brother. At least they were together. Other nobles, too, were in panic, wondering aloud about the safety of their houses. Older people talked about legendary fires of the past, most of which had resulted in significant damage to large parts of town. That did nothing to ease people’s minds.
Some people were too nervous to keep waiting and walked out the gate. The church bells were still ringing. Horses neighed and their handlers shouted. Over the top of all that noise came the occasional pop of flames.
Father had to have been left behind inside the palace. That was the only conclusion Johanna could reach. Maybe if she asked the guards, they would open the door for her.
The moment she decided to go back, there was a tremendous crash, followed by a growl, and splintering of wood. One of the solid palace doors had burst open in a jagged hole of splinters. Metal flashed in the darkness underneath the porch. A guard shouted, his voice suddenly cut off in a snarl.
A woman screamed. Several dark shapes came out of the wrecked door and bounded into the forecourt. They were soft-footed and agile like cats, but much bigger.
People were pushing back up the stairs. Johanna was in the middle of the mad crowd, barely able to see where the steps were. She stumbled several times, each time afraid that she would fall and that the crowd would trample her.
A young woman fell and couldn’t get up because other people were stepping on her dress. Nobody seemed to care. Johanna tried to reach out to the woman, but her arm wasn’t long enough and the crowd swept her away.
A horse in the forecourt reared, kicking its front legs. The coach behind it tipped on its side. The cabin splintered. Several of the dark creatures ran to it. One grabbed the horse by the throat. There was a woman’s high-pitched scream—cut off. A snarl.
“Oh, by the Holy Triune,” a man called out.
It was surely a sign of despair that nobles were invoking the Triune.
Johanna gathered the folds of her dress around her, but the awkward hoops made it hard to move. She couldn’t see her feet. Couldn’t see where the steps were. People pushed her in all directions. Some were trying to get down, others, like her, wanted to get up. There was screaming. There were snarls. Harsh voices of men in a foreign language in the forecourt.
Johanna reached the porch, ran between the marble columns and stepped through the wrecked door. The bottom of her dress caught. The wind had blown out all the lights in the foyer. Snarls and growls and screams continued behind her.
She ran across the foyer with its floor covered with glass and splintered wood, into the big hall where it was dark but where mere moments before everyone had been dancing and laughing. She went out the side door into the garden room, dark, too, with a lingering scent of perfume where Queen Cygna had been. A sharp breeze cut in through the open doors on the far side of the hall. The glass lay in shards on the ground. Someone ran in, carrying a sword. He stopped.
“No! Go back!” His voice was rough with fear.
Johanna pressed herself against the wall in an alcove. She didn’t think his shout was directed at her.
Several figures ran into the gallery from behind her, over Princess Celine’s gravestone. Three—four men with long spears. With them was a dark, round-backed and long-haired creature that broke into a flat-footed run. It spotted the guard and grabbed him around the throat before he could run. He screamed as he fell, and the animal snarled, shaking its head vigorously so that the dead man’s legs flopped from one side to the other like a rag doll.
One of the bandits whistled hard. The creature lifted its head and loped back to its owners. It halted in a rectangle of moonlight that fell into the gallery through a window. It had small, furry ears, little beady eyes, and a long nose that wriggled as the animal turned its head and looked from side to side. A bear.
It passed not a few steps from where she hid. She pressed herself into the alcove as much as she could. The door to the main hall was at her back and it could open at any time. Worse, the wood showed her what was happening on the other side of the door.
A couple of citizens had entered the hall. Silhouetted against the glare from the fires outside, she counted two men in uniform and a group of five or six nobles, judging by the clothing. A woman in the group was crying, holding her companion, a man in a ruffled shirt. Another group followed them, these ones running from whatever pursued them outside.
A second bear bounded into the entrance, followed by two tall men in furs with long hair.
“It’s following us!” one of the women screamed.
A men yelled, “Be gone with you, demon!”
But the bear jumped for his throat with a snarl. The man’s shout turned into a scream. While the two bears rounded up the nobles in the far corner, the bandits who had walked past Johanna had entered the hall where they met up with their comrades with claps on shoulders. One of the men whistled.
As one, the two bears leapt into the group of nobles.
Johanna hardly dared breathe.
People tried to run, but the women wore stupid dresses that were not suited to running. The men were unarmed, had never held a weapon and had no idea how to defend themselves. None had any magic, except Johanna, and she had no idea how to use it to help them. She couldn’t stand it any longer; she had to step away from the door.
In the chaos of the garden room, the panicked shouts became screams of terror, mixed with unearthly snarls. Something fell with a thud across the open doors into the hall, a few steps away from her. It was one of the nobles, dressed in court finery. The side of his head hit the ground hard. He twitched and didn’t move. A dark stain spread out from under him.
Johanna pressed herself against the wall, careful not to touch the wood. She didn’t dare run towards the garden. Once she was there, she was trapped because with this dress she couldn’t even begin to try climbing the walls as Kylian had done. But the bandits would discover her soon.
The screams became less and trailed off altogether. The only sounds now were the foreign voices, and the snorts an
d sniffles of the bears.
Those voices became, too, became softer, as if the bandits were walking out of the other side of the hall. Johanna pressed her hand to the wood once more, just in time to see the silhouettes of bandits and the bears in the doorway as they walked into the foyer.
What now?
Johanna sneaked to the door and looked around the corner.
A single torch still burned in the hall close to the door. She stepped carefully around the body of the nobleman and slipped the light out of its bracket.
Holding it aloft, she slowly turned around. The floor of the hall was covered in bodies, noblemen in their finery with bloodstains spreading on their white shirts, noble ladies with their dresses ripped.
A wave of dizziness overcame her.
Father. She desperately didn’t want to look at the dead, but took her torch to each body on the floor. All those fine clothes covered in blood. Several victims had their faces ripped off.
Father was not there.
Dazed as if in a bad dream, she went into the entrance hall, where she found the bodies of five guards in puddles of blood. No one left alive there either.
The palace steps were empty, orange in the glow of the fire.
In a corridor off the hall, she found another body in brown robes. One of the Shepherd’s helpers. Her head reeled with the idiocy of it all. Who in their right minds would kill a harmless priest?
But a chill took hold of her. Priests were probably what the attackers had been after.
The door to a room on the right stood open. Johanna went inside. Her footfalls were soft on luxurious carpet. This appeared to be an audience room of some sort, with a number of chairs around a low table.
Even before she saw them, Johanna knew by the tang of blood that there were dead people in this room. Part of her wanted to run away. She had seen enough blood to last her a lifetime, but part of her had to know who the victims were.
On the couch, a red stain spread out from the body of a woman in a long black gown with lace. Queen Cygna’s veil had fallen off, and her open-eyed face looked surprised. There was a second body on the carpet. Johanna didn’t need to see the Carmine cloak to recognise the king.
She brought her hand to her mouth to stop herself crying out. Her head was reeling. What had King Nicholaos done to justify this carnage?
Worse, somewhere in the palace, the men were still on their rampage. They would find Roald. He would not be able to defend himself.
Saarland was finished. Everything was lost.
Chapter 13
* * *
SURPRISINGLY, Johanna’s head remained clear enough to think.
First, the crown and staff were symbols of the Carmine House, and no bandits should get their hands on them. She dropped to her knees to fish the crown out from under the table. The staff, though, was under the king’s body. Carefully, she rolled the king over. She had to do her best not to focus on the gaping wound in his stomach or she would surely faint, or throw up, or both. His face was undamaged, with his eyes half open. Carefully, she unfolded his fingers, still warm, and removed the staff. She took it and the crown into the corridor. A few doors down was a broom cupboard. Johanna stumbled in, upsetting a bucket with the bottom of her dress, and placed the precious items on the top shelf. She pushed the door shut. There. At least the bandits would have to look for the symbols of Carmine power.
Next, she had to get out and save herself and Father and the house. Then they would take the Lady Sara upriver and go to Mother’s family.
It felt improper to walk away from the King and Queen, who could have been her parents-in-law, but she could do nothing except whisper a few lines of prayer. King Nicholaos would have liked that.
The hallway was still empty. As fast as she dared without making too much noise, Johanna ran out the door. The steps were awkward because she couldn’t see her feet in that stupid dress. Then through to the forecourt, now a mess of ruined coaches, dead horses, bodies and fine clothes covered in blood. Already, flames licked the top of the palace roof.
She stopped briefly at each body, but saw none that looked like Father.
A man with a bear stood at the gate. It gave a low grunt, probably because it smelled Johanna. The man said something and the animal settled.
Johanna slipped out of a side gate.
First she had to go home to get changed out of this ridiculous dress.
She ran through the streets of the merchant district. Many people ran through the streets, some carrying packs and children. A coach driver was trying to control his panicked horse while a noble family got into the cab. Where would they be going? These bandits were destroying everything in sight. The sky was orange with the glow of the fire that would lay all of the inner city to ashes. This was worse than the big fires of the past.
Johanna ran. The hoops of the dress flopped awkwardly around her legs. Her shoes hurt. She wished she had her clogs.
Once she spotted a group of men with two hairy and flat-footed bears.
One pushed in a shop door with ease, before a man threw a burning torch inside the shop. Within moments, flames burst out the windows and the glass broke. The men laughed in their guttural, foreign voices.
Johanna ran.
Her house. Father, Nellie.
The houses at the far end of her street were already on fire. Against the glow, a group of people were fighting in the street. Women screamed. A dark shape lay motionless on the cobbles.
Fire reflected in the upstairs windows of Johanna’s house, still untouched but probably not for long. She ran up the front steps, pushed the front door open. Her heart jumped. Would Father have made it back here?
“Nellie, Father?”
There was no reply, except the sound of breaking glass from further down the street.
“Nellie, where are you?”
Johanna walked into the kitchen—empty—the living room—empty, too. Koby would have gone home. Nellie’s sewing work lay on the table in the living room, but obviously, she wasn’t here either.
It was useless. There was no one here, and too little time to look for them. Johanna ran upstairs, pulling at the laces that held her bodice together. The bodice loosened, but she couldn’t reach all the buttons. She pulled the bodice down, and then tried to lift it over her head, but it was no use. She pulled at the skirt with the hoops. The dress was stuck. “Nellie!”
There was no reply. She pulled again, but the fabric was too tough. She stumbled down the stairs into the kitchen. Now where did Koby keep the knives? She rummaged through the drawers, eventually finding a pair of scissors. They were old and blunt, and cutting through the fabric was hard, but she freed herself from the skirt with the hoops and then managed to wrench the buttons loose. Sorry, Mistress Daphne.
Then she went back up the stairs in her underclothes.
People were shouting in the street. The smell of smoke drifted under the door. She took her comfortable everyday dress from the cupboard and slipped it on. Then her vest over the top. Then she collected a handful of other clothes in a soft travel bag that she had used to go to Lurezia.
Then back to the kitchen, grabbed a tea towel, and yanked the handle of the pump until water came out, wet the towel and tied it over her nose and mouth. Then she grabbed Father’s long coat from the stand, wet it as well, and put it on. It was freezing. Then her clogs. And her second-best shoes just to be certain. She buttoned up the bag.
She opened the front door. A cloud of acrid smoke billowed through the street. Several people ran past at high speed.
She pulled the front door shut behind her and ran down the steps, down the street the way she’d come. Fire was already eating at the neighbour’s house.
Down the street, into the marketplace, past burning shops. A woman called her name. “Johanna, stop, Johanna!”
She stopped, seeing a thin figure run towards her.
“Nellie!” She swept Nellie up in her arms. She smelled clean and warm
&n
bsp; “Oh, thank the holy spirit, Mistress Johanna, you’re alive.”
“Where is Father?”
“Didn’t he come back with you?”
“No, I ran from the palace. I couldn’t find him anywhere.” A deep sense of guilt took hold of her. She should have looked better. Father would be around there somewhere looking for her. What if he was injured and needed her help?
“I was looking for you and Koby,” Nellie said. Firelight reflected in her eyes. “And then I saw the fires and saw those creatures. I didn’t know what to do. Those are the demons, right?”
“They’re bears. They came into the palace,” Johanna said. “The king is dead. The queen is dead.”
Nellie clamped her hands over her mouth. “What about Prince Roald?”
“I don’t know, Nellie.” How many people had been killed there?
“Let’s go home and wait for the master.”
“We can’t. There’s fighting in the street. The house will burn soon. No one is even trying to put out the fire.” All the houses were built mostly of wood. There would be nothing left of the city.
“No. Then where can we go?” Nellie’s voice sounded small.
“I was going to the Lady Sara.” But a sense of dread took hold of her. She had wanted to take the sloop upriver and wait out the trouble, but without anyone to handle the cows, could she even get it out of the harbour?
They ran through the streets. Every time Johanna saw the silhouette of a man, she hoped it was Father. Maybe he would have gone to the harbour as well. Several times, they had to hide away from bands of men with bears.
There was fighting at the quayside as well, and men were breaking windows of merchant offices. A fire burned in a warehouse, and its reflection of the flames in the water was gold.
Father’s office was still safe, but a fight blocked Johanna and Nellie’s way to it.
The fire in the Deim warehouse had spread to neighbouring warehouses.