I’d been adamantly opposed to killing Jannoula; that seemed naive now. In a surge of desperation, I rushed her, trying to catch her off balance and disrupt the trap somehow.
Without even opening her eyes, she blocked me with the collective mind-fire and slammed me back against the parapet like some irritating insect.
Gianni Patto, grinning toothily, broke the line and approached me with his big hands extended. I’d hit my head; I couldn’t dodge. He tossed me over his shoulder, which stabbed me painfully in the stomach. For a moment, the world seemed to stand still while I saw everything: the blue slate rooftops of Castle Orison, armies crawling across the plain, dragons drifting in the air around us like autumn leaves on a pond. Jannoula laughing.
Then Gianni hauled me down the tower, skittered across the flagstone courtyard on his big chicken feet, and lumbered into the palace. He hit my head on a door frame coming in, and then on another at my final destination, some disused suite on the third floor facing south. He dumped me unceremoniously on the bare wooden floor and banged the door shut behind me.
I scrambled to my feet and tested the door. It wasn’t locked. I opened it a crack, only to see Gianni Patto sitting on the floor outside. He turned his big ugly pumpkin head to grin at me, and I slammed the door in his face.
I took stock of where I was. There was a broad bed with no linens, tall windows with no drapes, empty shelves, an empty cedar chest, an empty fireplace. The suite had only two rooms, the smaller of which, a dressing room, had south-and west-facing windows.
There were no sheets or drapes I could use to climb out a window, and no hidden doors, but I could watch the war from here. Jannoula had thought of everything.
The battle was unfolding before my eyes. The Loyalists flew past the city, doubled back sharply, and clashed with the Old Ard in the overcast sky. The Old Ard had been so close on the Loyalists’ tails that I hadn’t distinguished the two waves until the Loyalists turned. Dragons grappled and flamed above the city. St. Abaster’s Trap brought down dozens from both sides.
Dropping our allies was no accident. Jannoula knew what she was doing.
On the plain, Samsam hit Goredd’s flank; Josef had apparently decided to punish us. The knights left the Samsamese to the Ninysh and Goreddi foot soldiers; their job was to engage the dragons. During the Age of Saints, they’d had ways to fight dragons in the sky—missiles and wings—but these arts had been lost to the ages, or had died with the banishment of our knights. Nine months had not been long enough to revive them. The dragons of the Old Ard stayed high and focused intently on the Loyalists, out of range of our dracomachists for now.
What was happening to Comonot in the north? Had he already struck at the Kerama, only to find it held more strongly than anticipated? I dreaded to think what the result would be if he was defeated.
Jannoula had played all sides against one another. I should have killed her weeks ago. I’d had abundant time and opportunity.
I’d been so certain I could find another way.
If only I could have unbound my own mind-fire, surely I could have made a difference. I flopped onto the bare bed, meditated until I found the garden gate, said the ritual words, and entered. My garden, once so full of life and promise, looked like nothing more than a weed-strewn lawn around the Wee Cottage, with a swamp at one edge of it. There was a rail fence around the whole thing—that was absurd. I might have kicked a rail fence over in the real world, but this one had me bound up tightly. I circled the perimeter—a five-minute walk, if that—and even came up with a silly ritual chant: Unbind, unbind, dissolve, dissolve. Nothing happened.
I looked at my garden denizens, scattered across the lawn like twigs. The little Abdo twig was upright. Maybe it was a sign. I took his tiny hands and whirled out into a vision.
He was still at that roadside shrine, surviving on offerings. In fact, he seemed to have acquired a following; someone had put a knit cap on his head, and there were scraps of parchment tucked into his tunic. Those would be prayers and intercessions. Someone who could meditate as long as he had must have Heaven’s favor.
Abdo had evaded Jannoula for weeks now. If I escaped, the two of us together could figure out how to release each other and fight back.
I returned to my garden, and it occurred to me that there might be a way to walk through my wider mind along the other side of the wall. I’d never tried to see my garden from there; generally the gate just appeared, as if out of a fog. I stepped out and turned to face it. Spreading to either side were the high, crenellated battlements of a castle. This was what held me in, not the rail fence.
I wasn’t going to tumble this wall by walking around it, although I did try. It was all I could think to do.
A knock at the door yanked me out of my head abruptly. I flailed around the bed, disoriented. The room was dark; night had fallen without my noticing.
I felt my way to the door, opened it, and then stood there blinking at lamplight from the hallway. A shadowy figure loomed before me, lit from behind so I couldn’t see who it was. There were two palace guards behind him, and Gianni Patto was nowhere to be seen.
“Why are you sitting in the dark?” said a familiar basso voice, and I thought my heart would break.
Now that my eyes were adjusting, I recognized the beaky nose and piercing eyes. He wasn’t wearing his false beard, and his shrubby hair had been trimmed in some kind of monk’s tonsure—in fact, he was wearing the mustard-colored habit of St. Gobnait’s Order. “Orma,” I managed to whisper.
He glanced behind him as if he were concerned the guards had heard me. They just looked bored. Orma cleared his throat. “Brother Norman,” he said. “I was sent with a message.” He held out a folded parchment letter, sealed with wax.
“W-won’t you come in for a moment?” I said. “And bring a lamp, uh, please. I have no light in here.”
Orma cocked his head to one side, considering. I could have wept at that dear, familiar quirk. The scruffy guards seemed amused. One took a lantern down from its wall niche and passed it to Orma. “Take your time in there, Brother,” he said with a wink.
“Take all night,” said the other, waggling his bushy brows.
Orma, looking perplexed by the innuendo, followed me into the room and closed the door behind us. He set the lantern upon the cedar chest at the end of the bed, and I saw, behind his right ear, the telltale excision scar. I did weep then. I turned my back to him and broke the seal on the letter, sniffling and trying to keep my breath even, wiping my eyes on my linen sleeve. I held the letter so it caught the light, and read in Jannoula’s blocky hand:
I almost forgot that I had another birthday present for you. Well, not exactly for you. Everything you love is mine. That’s how it has to be. Who has hurt me more than you? Who showed me loving kindness, let me dream of freedom, only to snatch it all away? This monster helped, of course, but he’s just an empty shell now. I can’t hollow you out the same way, but you’re going to wish I could.