‘Land us at the beach!’ snarled Thorn, clinging so hard to the rail her knuckles were white.
In brooding silence they rowed, staring up towards the city, gaps torn from the familiar buildings on the steep hillside like teeth from a lover’s smile, each an aching absence. Houses burned to shells, windows blank as corpse’s eyes, charred skeletons of roof-beams stripped obscenely bare. Houses still coughing up a roiling of dark smoke, and above the crows circling, circling, cawing out gratefully to their iron mother.
‘Oh, gods,’ croaked Koll. Sixth Street, where Rin’s forge had been, where they’d worked together, and laughed together, and lain together, was a streak of blackened wreckage in the shadow of the citadel. He went cold to the very tips of his fingers, the fear so savage a beast in his chest he could barely take a proper breath for its clawing.
The moment the keel ground on shingle Thorn sprang from the prow and Koll followed, hardly noticing the cold, nearly floundering into her on the sand she pulled up so quickly.
‘No,’ Koll heard her whisper, and she put the back of one hand to her mouth and it was trembling.
He looked up the slope of the beach towards the howes of kings long dead. There was a gathering there on the dunes, among the thin grass lashed by the sea wind, a gathering of dozens, shoulders hunched and heads bowed.
A funeral gathering, and Koll felt the fear grip him tighter.
He tried to set a hand on Thorn’s shoulder, for her comfort or his he couldn’t have said, but she twisted away and ran on, sand kicking from her boot heels, and Koll followed.
He could hear a low voice droning out. Brinyolf the Prayer-Weaver, singing songs for Father Peace, for She Who Writes and She Who Judges, for Death who guards the Last Door.
‘No,’ he heard Thorn mutter as she struggled on up the dunes towards them.
Brinyolf’s words stuttered out. Silence except for the wind fumbling through the grass, the faraway joy of a crow on the high breeze. The white faces turned towards them, gaunt with shock, glistening with tears, tight with anger.
Koll saw Rin and gave a gasp of relief, but his little prayer of thanks died as he saw her lips curl back and her face crush up and the tears wet on her cheeks. He followed Thorn towards her, his knees wobbly, at once desperate to see and desperate not to.
He saw the great pyre, wood stacked up waist high.
He saw the bodies on it. Gods, how many? Two dozen? Three?
‘No, no, no,’ whispered Thorn, edging towards the nearest one.
Koll saw the dark hair stirred by the wind, saw the pale hands folded on the broad chest, old scars snaking up the wrists. Hero’s marks. Marks of a great deed. A deed that had saved Koll’s life. He crept up beside Rin to look down at the face. Brand’s face, pale and cold, with a dark little bloodless slit under one eye.
‘Gods,’ he croaked, not able to believe it.
Brand had always seemed so calm and strong, solid as the rock Thorlby was built on. He couldn’t be dead. Couldn’t be.
Koll squeezed his stinging eyes shut, and opened them, and there he lay still.
Brand was gone through the Last Door and that was all there was of his story. All there would ever be.
And Koll gave a silly snort, and felt the pain in his nose and the tears tickling his cheeks.
Thorn leaned down over Brand, the elf-bangle on her wrist gone dark and dead, and gently, so gently, brushed the strands of hair out of his face. Then she pulled off her chain, cradled Brand’s head and slipped it over, tucked the golden key down inside his shirt. A best shirt he’d never worn because the time was never right, and she patted the front, smoothed it softly with trembling fingers, over and over.
Rin clung tight to him and Koll put his arm about her, limp, and weak, and useless. He felt her shuddering with silent sobs and he opened his mouth to speak but nothing came. He was supposed to be a minister’s apprentice. He was supposed to have the words. But what could words do now?
He stood just as helpless as when his own mother died, and lay stretched out on the pyre, and Father Yarvi had spoken because Koll couldn’t. Could only stand staring down, and think of what he’d lost.
The silent crowd parted to let Queen Laithlin through, her hair whipping about her face and her brine-soaked dress clinging to her. ‘Where is Prince Druin?’ she growled. ‘Where is my son?’
‘Safe in your chambers, my queen,’ said Brinyolf the Prayer-Weaver, chin vanishing into his fat neck as he looked down sadly at the pyre, ‘thanks to Brand. He set a bell ringing as a warning. Druin’s guards took no chances. They dropped the Screaming Gate and sealed off the citadel.’
Laithlin’s narrowed eyes swept across the corpses. ‘Who did this?’
Edni, one of the girls Thorn had been training, a stained bandage around her head, spat on the ground. ‘Bright Yilling and his Companions.’