“On second thoughts, keep the stone. I don’t think you can damage it.” Although I wanted the thing myself I would rather spend the next minute watching him smashing it against the banisters than spend it with me going man to men against his ugly monster.
Double rose to the bait. I didn’t expect him to. Still, I played along, shouting out an agonized “no!” as he beat the thing against the wall. Bullies are to be avoided but often their cruel streak does allow them to be manipulated. “No!” I cried, as if he were swinging my child against the doorposts. When he finally did manage to pull some minor piece free, a metal pin of some kind, nobody was more surprised than me to see the whole side clasp come away in his hand. I’d always thought of the holy stone as an iron pineapple, impervious to any harm.
“There!” He grinned. “I doubt that’s holy any more. It’s not even whole. What do you think of that, Prince Jalan?”
I don’t recall making any reply. In fact the next thing I recall is finding myself horizontal, on a bed, in a room with an oak panelled ceiling.
“What?” I’ve never been very creative with opening lines when recovering consciousness.
Lisa DeVeer’s face swam into focus above me. I jerked into a sitting position, narrowly missing breaking her nose with my forehead. Micha stood at the foot of the bed, clutching Nia to her breast. Snorri occupied the doorway, his back to us.
“Double!” I patted my hip, hoping to find the hilt of my sword. “Where’s Double?”
Lisa pointed to the left and slightly up, Micha to the right and down. Both of them seemed to be speaking at once but I couldn’t make out the words through the ringing in my ears. I lurched off the bed, found my sword on the dresser close by, and pushed Snorri aside.
An acrid smoke hung over the landing outside. Ten yards of the banister had vanished, splintered stumps of the railings punctuating the gap. The flesh-spider appeared to have been returned to a scattered collection of ill-matched limbs, and I could see that the sisters had technically both been correct about the location of Double. Some pieces of him were sticking to the wall on both sides of the doorway.
Snorri said something but the only word I caught was “exploded.”
“Holy hell!” I turned back into the room. “Let’s get out of here!”
“Where to?” I could see that Snorri was shouting though I had to struggle to make out his words.
“The Inner Palace. That’s the safest place. Garyus might be there too.” I could hardly hear my own voice through the ringing in my ears. I took one of the lanterns from the mantelpiece and ushered Lisa and Micha out of their sanctuary. “Quickly. Quietly.” And I led the way out of a place I couldn’t ever imagine would feel like home again. We walked through the scattered remains, a red lesson in how the church rewards an abundance of curiosity in its clerics. Clearly dismantling your holy stone against strict orders results in it reducing you to several hundred small and bloody lumps.
TWENTY-ONE
“How many men have you?” Garyus sat in Grandmother’s throne, propped by cushions, flanked by two of the elite guard in their fire-bronze mail. He had another ten such men arrayed around the hall, some bloodied from their night’s work.
“Sixty or so.” I stood before the dais with Snorri at my shoulder. “There are dozens more scattered about the palace. I’ve sent officers to gather them by the gates.”
Garyus regarded me with one dark eye. The other had been closed by Hertet’s fist. Uncle Hertet had come to Garyus’s tower room after nightfall. A week before I had asked my great-uncle why he didn’t move his quarters into the Inner Palace now he was steward but he had shaken his head and told me that he thought more clearly in a high place. “Also, people only bother you if it’s important. A hundred steps put a different perspective on what matters and what is just time-wasting.”
“Hertet?” I asked. “Has he been found?” He would be among the dead. The slaughter at Milano House had been thorough.
“Not yet.” Garyus touched the swelling around his eye. “There were fires at the house, and part of the rear wall collapsed. It may be that even counting the dead proves beyond us. But I’ve had no word that he escaped.” He shook his head, the sorrow seemingly genuine. “Foolish boy.” Perhaps he remembered the child and not the man that replaced him.
“I should take what men we have and get back to the Appan Gate.” The sentence didn’t sound like something I would say, but then again, if the dead broke through in numbers none of us would see the next sunset.
“I’ve a more important task for you two,” Garyus said.
I raised a brow at that and wondered if Hertet’s fist had scrambled his uncle’s wits. “What could be more important? Christ! They were over the wall hours ago. For all I know they’ve taken the gate by now. We need—”
Garyus raised a hand. “I have more recent reports. Marshal Serah is—”
“Marshal Serah? How many marshals is this city to have in one night? And Serah’s a child for godsake!” Though if I were honest she had been doing an efficient job of organizing the defence when I left.
Garyus waited, pursing his lips to see if I had any more complaints. I held my tongue. “The breakthrough is reported to have been contained. The dead remaining outside the walls grew less . . . vital . . . and proved unable to follow the others over the ramp and scaffold. Reinforcements arrived: a mercenary force in my employ together with armed citizenry, including a number who formerly made their living in the Blood Holes and other illegal fighting dens . . .” Here his eye wandered in Snorri’s direction, letting me know the story of the Northman and the bear had reached his ears. “And these reinforcements ensured the destruction of the dead that made it into the city.”
“They’ll strike somewhere else! The walls by Tannery Square are hardly standing as it is. I—”
“The firing of the outer city cremated a large number of the corpses raised against us and has severely curtailed the ability of those remaining to move around the walls. My reports indicate that the dead host lacks leadership or direction.”
“But there were necromancers . . . I saw Edris Dean myself! They must be planning something . . . The sewers!”
“You saw to that weakness yourself, Jalan, and there are no indications of attack. It seems that the Dead King has lost interest in this assault.”
“But . . . why? Because we sent his lichkin back to Hell?” It didn’t make sense. He almost had us. Why give up?
“A merchant would ask what profit our opponent sought to make.” Garyus eased himself back, wincing. “Why did he spend his strength here, against this city?”
“Because the Red Queen left us. What better time to attack Vermillion?”
“You’re thinking about what we value, Jalan, not what the Dead King values. What does he care for Vermillion? Or all of Red March? There are many cities, many places where the living can be converted into the dead far more easily than in the heart of Red March, wherever the Red Queen might be.”
“All this for the key? All this?” It didn’t seem possible, though as I said it Loki’s key turned to ice against my chest.
“What other thing would profit him more?”
“But.” I clapped my hand over the key. “He doesn’t have it. Why give up now?”
“I don’t know, Jalan. But I do know his power is not limitless and the prospect for a victory of the sort he would need in order to claim the key became slim when the lichkin fled and our defences proved more formidable than perhaps he anticipated.”
“Or he found some other treasure,” Snorri rumbled at my shoulder.
“Indeed.” Garyus showed no irritation at a barbarian interrupting. “I have considered the possibility. But what other compensation might have satisfied?”
A horrible thought unrolled itself and try as I might to pack it back into a small neat dot of possibility it wouldn’t go. “Why did they come here in the first place?”