Her voice was naked steel.
“That is for you to discover erelong.” The wyrm stretched out his neck, so his head closed in on the other tower. “I offer you one chance to pledge your fidelity to my master and name yourself Flesh Queen of Inys.” Fire roared behind his eyes. “Come with me now. Give yourself up. Choose the right side, as Yscalin has. Resist, and you will burn.”
Ead looked to the clock tower. She could not reach her bow, but she had something else.
“Your lies will take root in no Inysh heart. I am not King Sigoso. My people know that your master will never wake while the bloodline of the Saint continues. If you think I will ever name this country the Draconic Queendom of Inys, you will be bitterly disappointed, wyrm.”
“You claim your bloodline shields this realm,” Fyredel said, “and yet you have stepped out to meet me.” His teeth burned red-hot in his mouth. “Do you not fear my flame?”
“The Saint will protect me.”
Even the most god-drunk fool could not believe Sir Galian Berethnet would extend a hand from the heavenly court and shield them from a bellyful of fire.
“You speak to one who knows the weakness of the flesh. I slew Sabran the Ambitious on the first day of the Grief. Your Saint,” Fyredel said, mouth smoking, “did not protect her. Bow to me, and I will spare you the same end. Refuse, and you will join her now.”
If Sabran answered, Ead did not hear it. Wind rushed in her ears as she tore across the Sundial Garden. The archers hit Fyredel with arrow after arrow, but not one pierced his scales.
Sabran would keep goading Fyredel until he torched her. The blockhead must really think the wretched Saint would protect her.
Ead ran past the Alabastrine Tower. Debris cascaded from above, and a guard fell dead before her. Cursing the weight of her gown, she reached the Royal Library, flung open its doors, and wove her way between the shelves until she hit the entrance to the clock tower.
She cast off her cloak, unbuckled her girdle. Up the winding steps she went, higher and higher.
Outside, Fyredel still taunted Sabran. Ead stopped in the belfry, where the wind howled through arched windows, and took in the impossible scene.
The Queen of Inys was on the uppermost balcony of the Alabastrine Tower. It stood just southeast of the Dearn Tower, where Fyredel was poised to kill. Wyrm on one building, queen on the other. In her hand was the ceremonial blade that represented Ascalon, the True Sword.
Useless.
“Leave this city, and harm no soul,” she called, “or I swear by the Saint whose blood I carry, you will face a defeat beyond any the House of Berethnet has ever exacted on your kind.” Fyredel bared his teeth again, but Sabran dared to take another step. “Before I leave this world, I will see your kind thrown down, sealed forever in the chasm in the mountain.”
Fyredel reared up and opened his wings. Faced with this behemoth, the Queen of Inys was smaller than a poppet.
Still she did not balk.
The wyrm had bloodlust in his eyes. They burned as hot as the fire in his belly. Ead knew she had moments to decide what to do next.
It would have to be a wind-warding. Wardings like this used a great deal of siden, and she had so very little left—but perhaps, if she poured her last store of it into the effort, she could work one upon Sabran.
She held her hand toward the Alabastrine Tower, cast her siden outward, and twisted it into a wreath around the Queen of Inys.
As Fyredel unleashed his fire, so Ead broke the chains on her long-dormant power. Flame collided with ancient stone. Sabran vanished into light and smoke. Ead was distantly aware of Truyde coming into the belfry, but it was too late to hide what she was doing.
Her senses closed in on Sabran. She felt the strain on her braids of protection around the queen, the fire clawing for dominance, the pain in her own body as the warding gulped away her siden. Sweat soaked her corset. Her arm shook with the effort of keeping her hand turned outward.
When Fyredel closed his jaws, all was silent. Black vapors billowed from the tower, clearing slowly. Ead waited, heart tight as a drum, until she saw the figure in the smoke.
Sabran Berethnet was unscathed.
“It is my turn to give you a warning. A warning from my forebear,” she said breathlessly, “that if you make war against Virtudom, this hallowed blood will quench your fire. And it will not return.”
Fyredel did not acknowledge her. Not this time. He was looking at the blackened stone, and the spotless circle around Sabran.
A perfect circle.
His nostrils flared. His pupils thinned to slits. He had seen a warding before. Ead stood like a statue as his merciless gaze roved, searching for her, while Sabran remained still. When he looked toward the belfry, he sniffed, and Ead knew that he had caught her scent. She stepped out of the shadows beneath the clock face.
Fyredel showed his teeth. Every spine on his back flicked up, and a long hiss rattled on his tongue. Holding his gaze, Ead unsheathed her knife and pointed it at him across the divide.
“Here I am,” she said softly. “Here I am.”
The High Western let out a scream of rage. With a push of his hind legs, he launched himself off the Dearn Tower, taking part of the spire and most of its east-facing wall with him. Ead threw herself behind a pillar as a fireball exploded against the clock tower.
The cadence of his wings faded away. Ead lurched back to the balustrade. Sabran was still on the balcony, in her circle of pale stone. The sword had fallen from her hand. She had not looked toward the clock tower, or seen Ead watching her. When Combe reached her, she collapsed against him, and he carried her back into the Alabastrine Tower.
“What did you do?” came a quaking voice from behind Ead. Truyde. “I saw you. What did you do?”
Ead slid to the floor of the belfry, head lolling. Great shudders pushed through her body.
The essence in her blood was spent. Her bones felt hollow, her skin as raw as if she had been flayed. She needed the tree, just a taste of its fruit. The orange tree would save her …
“You are a witch.” Truyde stepped away, ashen-faced. “Witch. You practice sorcery. I saw it—”
“You saw nothing.”
“It was a?romancy,” Truyde whispered. “Now I know your secret, and it reeks far worse than mine. Let us see how far you can pursue Triam from the pyre.”
She whirled toward the stair. Ead threw her knife.
Even in this state, she struck true. Truyde was pulled back with a strangled gasp, pinned by her cloak to the doorpost. Before she could escape, Ead was in front of her.
“My duty is to slay the servants of the Nameless One. I will also kill all those who threaten the House of Berethnet,” she breathed. “If you mean to accuse me of sorcery before the Virtues Council, I bid you find some way to prove it—and find it quickly, before I make poppets of you and your lover and stab them in the heart. Do you think that because Triam Sulyard is in the East, I cannot smite him where he stands?”
Truyde breathed hard through her teeth.
“If you lay a finger on him,” she whispered, “I will see you burn in Marian Square.”
“Fire has no power over me.”
She pulled the knife free. Truyde crumpled against the wall, panting, one hand at her throat.
Ead turned to the door. Her breath came swift and hot, and her ears rang.
She took one step before she fell.
10
East
Ginura was all that Tané had imagined. Ever since she was a child, she had pictured the capital in a thousand ways. Inspired by what she had heard from her learnèd teachers, her imagination had fashioned it into a dream of castles and teahouses and pleasure boats.
Her imagination had not failed her. The shrines were larger than any in Cape Hisan, the streets glistened like sand under the sun, and petals drifted along the canals. Still, more people meant more noise and commotion. Charcoal smoke thickened the air. Oxen pulled carts of goods, messengers ran or rode between buildings, stray hounds nosed at scraps of food, and here and there, a drunkard ranted at the crowds.
And such crowds. Tané had thought Cape Hisan busy, but a hundred thousand people jostled in Ginura, and for the first time in her life, she realized how little of the world she had seen.
The palanquins carried the apprentices deeper into the city. The season trees were as vivid as Tané had always been told, with their butter-yellow summer leaves, and the street performers played music that Susa would love. She spotted two snow monkeys perched on a roof. Merchants sang of silk and tin and sea grapes from the northern coast.