“There ain’t gonna be trouble today, and it’s not your job, Dalivan. Get rid of it…now.” The continued lack of feeling in Marcom’s tone was worse than if he’d shouted. With a disgusted scowl at Emily, Dalivan carried the beetle across the room to the door, drawing the curiosity of many of the inn’s patrons. Marcom sighed.
Dalivan was another contradiction of Seven Skies. How could people with such diametrically opposed personalities all end up serving someone like Marianne? Every time she felt like she could let that question lie, some new situation flared up to stir the embers of her doubt.
There was a clunk on the bar behind her, and she turned to find rough wooden plates piled high with eggs and ham. Cups of steaming hot coffee were beside each.
The sight of the food erased the image of the beetle from her mind, and she reached for the coffee with eager anticipation. She raised it to her lips and sipped the hot liquid gingerly. It was black, and strong, and bitter. She doubted it was anything that would put Starbucks out of business, but at that moment, it tasted divine. She closed her eyes and savored it like a fine wine.
As she began to take another sip, a hoarse shout cut through the din.
“For the dragon!”
Emily started to turn toward the voice, still holding the cup in her hand. It seemed to have come from the stairs at the far end of the bar, but she never saw to whom it belonged.
Before she knew what was happening, she was hurtling over the smooth surface of the polished bar. Her cup flew from her hands to smash with an explosion of crockery on the stones. Drops of hot coffee stung her face. She rolled helplessly over the wood, sending her and Marcom’s plates flying. A thunderous roar blotted out all sound, and the dim room was suddenly as bright as day.
She tumbled to the floor behind the bar, and the entire thing came crashing down on top of her, wedging her body between the bar top and the first shelf beneath it. Bottles that had been stored there shattered all around her, showering her in fragments of glass. The sharp scent of alcohol mingled with the acrid smell of smoke. Pain lanced across her forehead, bright and hot, and suddenly she was staring out through a red curtain of blood.
Scrambling, she wiped the blood from her eyes and wrestled to pull herself free of the narrow space. The roaring had died to a low rumble, and she could hear screams above the loud crackle of flames. Everything sounded far away and muffled, as if her ears were stuffed with cotton. Bits of broken bottles sliced into her hands, and her torn and bleeding flesh sang with agony as the alcohol seeped into the wounds.
Her bow had been snapped in two, and she yanked the remnants of it from her shoulders, letting the pieces fall to join the other debris beneath her. She managed to pull herself clear of the bar, now splintered and broken into three long pieces. Firelight danced and flickered throughout the room. Most of the wall at the end of the bar was gone, and bright sunlight filtered in through the smoke, over a pile of broken stones and brick. Where was Marcom?
Her hand dropped to the hilt of her sword as she turned on her heel to survey the chaos around her. She could see very little through the flames, smoke, and the blood that kept running into her eyes. She swiped it away frantically. She needed to get the hell out of here, but flames danced madly between herself and the doors. Out through the hole in the wall, then.
She began climbing over the remains of the bar. As she got to her feet again on the other side and started forward, she tripped over a pile of so much kindling that had been the stools they’d been sitting on.
Cursing, she fell to her knees with a jolt, and more blood ran into her eyes. She wiped it away, blinking to see through the smoke.
She found herself kneeling in a pool of blood beside William’s severed head. His face was spattered with scrambled eggs and bits of broken crockery, frozen in an expression of surprised alarm.
The world started to go gray around the edges of her vision.
Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it, she told herself through the shock. Shaking her head, she struggled to her feet and found herself staring into Marcom’s face. Most of his hair had been burned away. His eyepatch hung in tatters, and he stared at her from one bloodshot eye and one red and empty socket. Blood ran from his mouth, and he was covered in ash.
He grabbed her arm and hauled her roughly along with him as he forced his way across the floor toward the hole that had been blown out of the wall. There were no more screams. There was only the roar of the fire as it incinerated everything but the stones, and the thick stench of burning flesh.
As they clambered over the rubble, a terrible rending sound cut through the crackle of the flames, and burning planks and fragments of stone began to rain down upon them.
Coughing, Emily stumbled onto the pavement outside the inn, where a crowd was gathering. Her chest burned with the smoke, and her skin felt hot and raw. Marcom released her arm, wiping his single streaming eye.
Shouts echoed up and down the streets. Somewhere in the distance, she heard a bell ringing furiously. Everywhere was chaos.
Someone had untied their horses at the rail and moved them away from the inn. A crowd had gathered around them, coaxing and soothing the terrified creatures. William’s steed let out a piercing whinny that sliced through the roar of the crowd, as though he understood the fate that had met his master.
Numbly, she staggered over the stones that marked the far side of the road. Marcom steadied her with a hand on her shoulder, and together they turned to look back at the inn as it burned. Debris rained down all around them like hail, and thick clouds of white smoke billowed up into the blue summer sky above. Slate shingles shattered on the cobbles at their feet, exploding like miniature bombs. The chain that held the inn’s sign let go, and it fell to the cobbles with a dull clang.
With another deafening roar of thunder, what remained of the inn collapsed in upon itself. A few loose stones tumbled free and rolled into the street, sending bystanders scattering in all directions.
Emily felt someone beside her, and she looked over to find Dalivan, staring dispassionately at the burning pile of rubble that had been the Stay Inn. Distantly, she wondered how he could watch something so terrible—so many lives snuffed out in the span of mere seconds—and still seem so calm.
She looked back at Marcom, who was wiping the blood from his chin. He was composed, but she could see fury brewing in the set of his jaw and the lines of his face.
From somewhere far away, amidst the towers and taverns of the city, she heard another voice cry out.
“For the dragon!”
Chapter Thirteen
“I want you to go with Dalivan,” Marcom told her, “back to Seven Skies. Get your wounds tended to.” It was clear he was far more comfortable giving orders again. He stood staring down at her, framed by the flames that still roared behind him.
“I want to help,” she protested, feeling something recoil inside her at the thought of turning her back on the scene around her. There were people hurt. Surely, Marcom needed every pair of hands he could get.
“You haven’t had the experience to deal with this yet. Christ, you’ve only been in training for a few days. Go and get yourself seen to. We are goin’ to need you over the next few weeks, no doubt, and you’re gonna have to be rested. Now, go and do as I say.”
She stared into his pale and angry face, and her heart broke a little. Something of what she was feeling must have shown in her expression, because Marcom softened, and he leaned toward her and spoke gently.
“Em…I’m your captain…and I’m also your friend. Your time’ll come. We’ll need you. Please.”
He turned to Dalivan. “Take her back, and come back quick as you can with the top tier from the guard. Understood?”
The big man nodded wordlessly, and Emily followed him down the street to their horses.
He clambered onto Storm’s back, and Emily mounted behind him, feeling a strange sort of numbness. She knew she should feel repulsed by the nearness of this despicable man, but,
for the moment at least, shock had left her feeling detached. Only a vague sort of hollowness filled her. It was like ice.
She watched the throngs of people crowding the streets as Dalivan guided the mare back in the direction of Seven Skies. Most were craning their necks, eager to catch a glimpse of what was happening at the Stay Inn. Why would they want to see that? Who would want to become intimate with those horrors? She’d been too young to really remember September eleventh, but her mother and anyone else who she’d ever heard speak of it, only seemed to want to forget that nightmarish morning in New York. Emily understood why now.
A man with the same insectile wings as the woman she’d seen earlier swooped past them, only inches above the heads of the multitude. His antennae curled around the backs of his ears, their points accentuating his bright gold eyes. She wondered how many more shocks she could take from this world. She was tired of this feeling; she was tired of the confusion and her inability to shape things, to control her own destiny.
By the time they reached the stables, some of the fog had lifted from her mind, and she slid from the saddle when Storm had scarcely stopped moving.
Corbbmacc took the reins from Dalivan, shouting questions at him about what had happened. News travels as fast here as it does back home, she thought disconnectedly, and without listening to Dalivan’s response, she made her way through the corridors of the guard tower and back into the courtyard of Seven Skies.
It was like she was moving in a dream again. The world around her seemed simultaneously too bright and as if everything were moving in slow motion. Unlike the feeling of contented unconcern she’d experienced in Marianne’s tower, this was not a pleasant sensation.
The garden was deserted. The fortress felt like the burnt-out husk of a haunted house. The only sounds were the rustle of the wind in the trees and the ceaseless babble of the fountain.
The fountain, with its gruesome sculpture of the mermaid slitting her own throat with a sword; the gold coins, with their macabre imprints of the mermaid clutching her decapitated head to her breast. Disturbing images both.
Her feet carried her to the fountain of their own accord, and she stared down into its depths. When she’d first seen the statue, she’d found it grotesque. Later, the look on the mermaid’s face had struck her as sad. Now, staring into those cold and haunted stone eyes, she found it unspeakably terrifying.
Without thinking much about it, she dug into the pouch that hung from her belt and drew out one of the holders Marcom had given her. The coin glinted in the palm of her hand. She raised it to her eyes and stared at it in the faint rainbow shimmer created by the sunlight in the fountain’s mist.
She closed her fingers around it and leaned into the spray, looking down at the sculpture at the fountain’s bottom. With a soft sigh, she thrust her hand forward and flipped the coin up and out over the water with her thumb. It tumbled end over end, reflecting the sunshine before splashing into the water near the mermaid’s face. Circular ripples fanned out from where it vanished into the roiling water. Emily closed her eyes and wished. She wished as hard as she ever had when she and Casey had, as young girls, thrown pennies into the duck pond in the little park at the end of Casey’s upperclass suburban street. She wished to know; she wished to understand why she was here and whether or not she could trust Marianne and the people who served her; she wished to understand what terrible depths of a human soul could cause the destruction and death she’d witnessed at the Stay Inn. She was tired of the confusion and doubt.
The water cooled her hot face. It dampened her hair and finished clearing her mind, but the knowing did not come. There was no tremor in her muscles—no whine in her ears. There was only the hiss and gurgle of the fountain and the steady beating of her heart.
She turned away at last and crossed the garden toward the apprentices’ tower.
The tower was silent and still. She saw no one. She climbed the stairs to the room that she and Celine shared and found the girl propped up in her bed, the Wizard of Oz open before her.
She looked up as Emily came in, and her face drained of color. She leapt from the bed, sending the ancient book tumbling, unnoticed, to the floor and ran to her.
“What the devil’s ’appened to yeh! Jaisus!” She clasped Emily’s hand and all but physically dragged her to the bed and forced her to sit down.
“What?” Emily asked, bemused.
“What! Are yeh feckin’ kiddin’ me! Yeh’re covered in blood!” Celine brought a rag from her wash basin and began wiping gently at Emily’s face. With each pass, the rag came away streaked with red.
“I’m okay,” Emily said, trying to take the cloth from her, but Celine slapped her hand away.
“The ’ell yeh are. Yeh’re gonna let me do this and tell me what the ’ell ’appened,” she snapped and continued wiping away the blood. Emily opened her mouth to protest again, but before she could, Celine hissed between her teeth, and her eyes went wide.
“What is it?”
Celine only shook her head. Fresh blood trickled past Emily’s left eye, and she swiped it away like an errant tear.
She got up, raising a hand to forestall Celine’s remonstrations. “I’ll be right back, and you can…do whatever you want to do…okay?”
Reluctantly, Celine nodded, and Emily went to her trunk. She pulled out her backpack, which she’d hardly touched for the last two weeks, and began rummaging through it. It was strange; the ordinary bits of detritus that had accumulated in it since the start of the school year all seemed alien to her now—pens and pencils, paperclips, an eraser, and some of her school books.
She found what she wanted in a side pocket. It was a small compact she’d bought at the start of term, when Casey had been trying to get her to start wearing makeup.
She brought it back to the bed, sat down, and flipped it open.
In the tiny mirror set into the back of the lid, she saw someone she hardly recognized staring back at her. Her hair was in tangles, and it glittered with bits of broken glass. Blood streaked her face like warpaint, some of it a sickening pink where it had mixed with the spray from the fountain. Strangely, the pink seemed much worse than the red.
Worst of all, and what had clearly been the source of Celine’s dismay, was the blood that had clotted in her hair over her left eye. Whatever had cut her there—and Emily could no longer remember what it had been—had made a crescent-shaped gash in her flesh two inches long. Her scalp had fallen to one side, and the white of her skull was clearly visible amidst the blood and hair.
“Okay,” she said through numb lips, and she snapped the compact closed. “Okay,” she repeated as the compact slipped from her fingers onto the bed beside her.
Celine watched her apprehensively. “Are yeh gonna faint, Em? ’Cause mayhap it’s better if yeh do and let me finish cleanin’ it when yeh can’t feel what I’m about.”
“Okay,” Emily said again, and she gave her head a little shake. “I’m okay. It’s not that much different than some of the injuries I got playing hockey. I’m fine. I’m fine I’m fine I’m fine…” Her voice began to waver out of her control, and she stopped speaking.
She wasn’t precisely fine. There was something distinctly not fine about looking in a mirror and seeing an open window in your flesh that gave a clear view of your own skull.
She felt Celine’s hands on her shoulders and the gentle pressure as Celine forced her to lie back on the coverlet.
“Lay yeh still now, Em, and let me clean yeh up.”
Emily did as Celine asked, staring up at the ceiling while the damp cloth passed before her eyes again and again. It stung, but not as much as she would have thought. The image of that bright patch of skull kept intruding upon her thoughts, and she forced it away with a shudder each time.
At last, Celine paused, and with a steady hand that would have made any surgeon proud, guided the flap of Emily’s scalp back into place. She let go, and Emily felt a strange tugging sensation in her hair that made her stomach roll
as the flap fell away again.
“I need stitches,” she said to the ceiling.
Celine let out a shrill, breathless laugh. “I ain’t got no needle nor thread to stitch yeh up. Gonna ’ave to find somethin’ to use for a bandage. Turn yer ’ead toward the wall.”
Emily did as she was bidden, staring at a long crack that ran between the stones. She felt Celine’s fingers in her hair, followed by the gentle stomach rolling tug again. More blood ran down her forehead. She felt the gentle pressure as the swatch of skin was moved back into place once more.
Celine pressed a little harder, holding her fingers there for a moment and perhaps hoping the blood would help keep it in place.
A lance of the brightest, most white hot pain Emily had ever experienced in her life shot through her head. Her vision doubled, tripled, then began to fade to gray. Her body convulsed in response, and she screamed, only dimly aware she was doing so.
The pain filled her every pore, and her muscles went taut with it. Her veins filled with needles, and her nerves seemed to be on fire. An invisible hand was reaching into her guts and squeezing them in its iron grip. Her eyeballs pulsed with pain, sending bursts of multicolored stars across her vision. It was as though every soft part of her anatomy was suddenly being compressed, and her body screamed in protest against the torment.
The agony seemed to go on forever, though she knew only a few seconds must have passed, and then the pain evaporated as quickly as it had come. Emily lay on her bed with her knees to her chest, panting. She shook uncontrollably for a few seconds more, and sweat ran off of her like someone in the deepest throes of a monstrous fever. Her stomach roiled sickeningly, cramping and releasing in time with the beating of her heart.
At last, her muscles relaxed, and she took a deep, shaky breath. The tremors slowly subsided, and she opened her eyes to find herself staring into Celine’s white and frightened face.
“Are yeh a’right?” Celine asked in a choked whisper. Her face was so pale and her eyes so wild that Emily feared that she would be the one to faint now. She sat up, surprised at how easy it was to do so. Her muscles felt loose and limber, the way that had told her she was going to have a great game. Sweat cooled on her face.
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