After a long fight, they had finally succeeded in getting the Keep Gate closed, bolstering it with wooden bars. In a brave move, Vil had led a small force down the wall and onto the drawbridge, laying a wall of bricks on the bridge while the Mort slept, so that by the time they woke, the mortar had hardened into a real obstacle. But yesterday, the Mort had broken the wall and gone to work on the Gate. The wood reinforcements were gradually weakening, but Vil did not seem perturbed. He was acting true to form, as a hero, not thinking of himself but of the people upstairs, the women and children trapped in the Keep. Vil might be a hero, but Javel was frightened.
From time to time, Vil would take two or three Gate Guards up to the balconies on the higher floors, where they could look out over the city. There was nothing good to see. As many Mort as swarmed below on the lawn and the drawbridge, there seemed to be twice as many out in the city proper, setting fires, carrying off goods, and much, much worse. Javel didn’t want to watch, but he seemed unable to help himself. The vantage was too good, and the sound of screaming carried easily across the lawn. But today the view was mercifully hazy, obscured by smoke from the fire that burned across the western skyline of the city.
“If only that fire would travel over this way,” Martin remarked. “They’ve got oil down there, and nowhere to dump it.”
“Fire would be just as bad for us,” said Vil. “Too much wood in here. The bridge is wood.”
Javel kept silent. The idea of being trapped in here, fire ringing them all around, was too terrible to contemplate. He wondered, for perhaps the hundredth time, why he couldn’t have been born brave like the men around him. What good had his cowardice ever done anyone? Allie’s face, set with contempt, flashed before him, and he closed his eyes, as though he could somehow retreat from her gaze.
“Has the Holy Father shown up today?” Vil asked.
“Not yet,” Martin replied. “But he’ll be here. These are his troops. The Queen should charge him with treason.”
“What Queen? Is there a Queen here?”
“I only meant—”
“I know what you meant,” Vil replied tiredly. “Enough. Let’s go down. We need some sleep.”
But when they reached the ground floor, they found not quiet, but a raging argument in front of the Gate, the entire Gate Guard toe-to-toe with a group of Queen’s Guards and a woman Javel recognized easily: Andalie, the Queen’s witch. At her side, holding her hand, was the same tiny girl who had spoken to Javel before. He shivered at the sight of them.
“What is this?” Vil demanded. “Why aren’t you at your posts?”
“The woman, sir,” Ethan replied. “She insists that we open the Gate.”
Vil turned to Andalie, his gaze uneasy. “Nonsense.”
“The Queen is coming,” she replied. “Open the gate.”
One of the Queen’s Guards moved forward, the same archer that Javel had noticed before. He was little more than a boy, but his posture was so combative that Vil actually moved back a step.
“The Mace left Andalie in charge!” the archer snapped. “Open the gate!”
He shoved Vil, and Vil fell backward. Marco and Jeremy drew swords, but they found themselves facing more than twenty Queen’s Guards, all of them armed to the teeth. Javel considered the men before them for a long moment, but he was not seeing them; instead, he saw a tall woman sitting astride a horse, a woman of many sorrows, with a crown on her head. In his mind he heard the shrieks of women and children.
It would take a brave man to open the door, Dyer’s voice whispered.
Are you brave, Javel? Allie, her voice neither cruel nor kind, honestly doubtful. And last of all, the Queen’s voice, long ago in the Keep:
Don’t you want to find out?
Javel did.
A moment later, he had turned to the doors behind him and begun to attack the bolsters in a frenzy, dragging down one wooden plank at a time. Hands were on his shoulders, pulling him backward, but eventually they stopped and he realized, gratefully, that other hands were helping him, many hands, dragging down the enormous planks of wood from the stack, slowly revealing the thick oak of the Keep Gate.
The Arvath was the first building to fall.
It fell quickly, so quickly that Kelsea almost felt cheated. She had wanted to see the Holy Father’s house drop piece by piece, the white stone first cracking, then peeling, then dropping in great chunks, the way snow fell from trees during the first good spring melt. She wanted to see the thing crumble. But the fall was very quick; she had no more than turned her mind to that rising white spire than wide cracks traveled its circumference, cracks so thick that Kelsea could even see them from here. The gleaming cross at the top went first, plummeting from the pinnacle, and within ten seconds, the entire building had gone down in a tornado of dust.
Cheat or not, it was still very good. Only now did Kelsea realize how much of herself she had given away during the past few months, how much of her personality had been dead, dampened beneath the rigid control she had imposed upon herself in order to survive in the dungeon. Everything had been painted in shades of grey down there, and there had been no percentage in letting her temper out, letting it romp. She wondered whether she had nearly gone mad, whether she would even have noticed if she had crossed the border and sunk into insanity. Maybe it would only have seemed like the next phase.