They were some distance east of the river when they were buffeted by a shock wave and an earsplitting series of booms that sent Flamecaster spinning sideways, flapping madly until he could regain his balance. Jenna looked back toward the city and saw that the ship had exploded, leaving chunks of burning debris floating in the water and little else.
Adam Wolf had come through. If the emissary and all his friends hadn’t burned to death, she hoped that they had returned to their ship in time to blow up with it.
Jenna thrust her face into the rain and wind and screamed with a savagery she’d never tapped before. That was when she realized that they were losing altitude, despite the dragon’s efforts to keep them aloft. Jenna wasn’t heavy, but she was likely too much weight for a young dragon to carry. Especially one that was injured.
She leaned down to where she thought his ear might be, and said, “Flamecaster. Find a place to land. I don’t want us to fall.” He beat his wings, achieving a shallow glide. Flying east.
She fell asleep, and dreamed of Adam Wolf. Stay safe.
She didn’t know how much later it was when they landed. She jolted awake as they bounced, then bounced again, and came to a sliding stop.
They were on a beach. The rain had stopped, but the sand was still pockmarked from the recent storm. A few stars had shaken off the clouds and glimmered overhead. To the west, the moon was rising, gilding a path on the breast of the ocean.
Jenna had never seen the sea. She blinked, scraping her wet and bloody hair out of her eyes, and drank it in, her heart full to bursting. When she finally looked down at herself, the scales had disappeared. She hurt all over, especially her head. She was hungry and ferociously tired, but she was alive.
Flamecaster was obviously exhausted, too. He lay, head on his forelegs, already sound asleep. Jenna crawled into the warm shelter of the dragon’s body and closed her eyes again.
42
BACK AT THE CASTLE
Ash knew it wouldn’t be easy to convince Lila to stay behind while he returned to the castle to look for Strangward. He sidestepped the issue by avoiding the conversation altogether. He used the rope ladder at the bow end of the ship to descend to the wharf. He spoke briefly with Marc, telling him that he’d found no survivors on board, and reminded him to keep people away from the ship until the fires burned out.
The storm was still raging with a ferocity Ash hadn’t seen since he came south. Even with his blackbird cloak, he was soaked through before he’d gone a block. He was halfway up Citadel Hill when he heard it—a thunderous boom behind him. He swung around in time to see the second explosion, and the third. A fireball rose from wharfside, raining burning debris over the warehouses and taverns near the docks. Ash was glad it was raining, making it less likely that the buildings would catch. By the time the last of the charges went off, the ship was engulfed in flames.
“Sail that, Strangward,” Ash whispered. And then, “Thank you, Jenna.” He couldn’t wait to see her face.
When he caught his first glimpse of the keep, he nearly stumbled. The tallest of the towers—the one that housed Jenna’s new quarters—was broken, a large bite having been taken out of the very top. How would that have happened in the short time he’d been away?
He hurried on. Though it was the small hours of the morning, the streets grew more and more crowded as he approached the close. He began seeing chunks of stonework and masonry lying about, bits of the demolished tower. One woman was sweeping grit and stone from her stoop in the rain, her face set and angry.
“What’s going on?” he asked her.
“A demon smashed into the tower and knocked it half down,” she said. “I was asleep, mind you, so I didn’t see it. People said it lit up the whole sky, it burned so bright.”
“A demon?” Ash stared at her. “Did they say what it looked like?”
“It had wings and a long tail. It looked like a flying snake. Or a dragon.”
“A dragon,” Ash repeated numbly.
“Aye,” the woman said with the sort of grim satisfaction some people have when they’ve been proven right. “It must’ve been sent down here by the witch in the north, to punish us.” She made the sign of Malthus and continued sweeping.
“Was anybody hurt?” he asked, his heart sinking.
“You’ll have to ask them that know more,” she said, nodding toward the keep.
The dragon he’d freed had flown straight to the castle. Was that the purpose of the emissary’s visit—to carry out an attack on Arden from the inside?
And Ash had helped make it happen. He’d launched a new kind of arrow into the sky without knowing where it would land.
Within the close, blackbirds milled about, their hands on their swords as if they anticipated another attack at any moment. Some of the officers seemed to be questioning witnesses. Ash approached one of them. “What’s going on?” he said.
“There was an attack on the castle. Maybe a bomb thrown from a catapult, we don’t know.”
“Was anybody hurt?”
“I dunno for sure. I been outside the whole time. Somebody said they found a couple bodies up near the top, where the break is.”