“Stop.” Safi scuttled in close, grabbing the empress’s wrists. “You can’t break through this.”
Vaness’s eyes flicked up, thinning into violent slits. “Do you not see, Safi? The Baedyeds have betrayed me. They were the rot in my court all this time—and they were the ones who destroyed my ship and killed my…” Her voice broke, and she pushed unsteadily to her feet. “Free me,” she flung at the Hell-Bards in Cartorran. Blood trickled from both nostrils now.
“Our wards will hold,” Caden answered. Yet as soon as that statement fell, stony and unyielding, Zander turned away from his spot at the door and said, “I can’t expand the wards, sir. Not while we’re under attack—the flames below are rising too fast.”
Lev swung toward Vaness. “How would you get us out?”
“I can snuff out the flames. I have done it before.”
“She has,” Safi offered, scrabbling upright. “It’s how we survived the attack on our ship.”
Caden anchored his gaze to Vaness, and his two Hell-Bards anchored their gazes to the commander. Waiting.
Until at last Caden asked, “How do we know you will not turn on us, Your Majesty?”
“Because there is no time,” Vaness said. Yet even through the madness hitting the room, even through the heat now rising against the floorboards, Safi felt the lie in her words.
“We can’t be killed by your magic,” Caden continued, sheathing his knife. A cautious movement, as if he still debated what to do. “There is no point trying.”
“Your death,” Vaness flung back, faster now, “will not help me. Seafire burns much faster than natural flame, and we are out of time!” She slung a pointed finger toward the door, where smoke now coiled in through the cracks.
Zander swore; Lev grabbed for the wool blanket; Caden’s hands settled on either side of Vaness’s collar. His mouth moved silently until a click rippled through the room. The wooden collar cut wide.
Instantly, Vaness was moving. Out of the collar, which fell to the ground in a plank-trembling thunk, she grabbed Safi and shot for the door. “Pull down the wards,” she ordered Zander. “We cannot exit while they still stand.”
Zander looked at Caden. The commander nodded. “Do it.”
The giant’s arms rose, and he muttered softly. The room flickered and hummed, and power unwound strand by strand in a way that made no sense to Safi—Hell-Bards doing magic?
Then silver and darkness erupted, blurring streaks as Vaness called every piece of iron in the room to her. Two chunks reshaped themselves into blades, effortlessly slicing through Vaness’s and Safi’s ropes, before spiraling up into thin rapiers to be plucked from the air. One for the empress, one for Safi.
The ward fell. Safi felt it in a great eruption of noise and a violent battering of crossbow bolts against the outside walls.
“Get us out of here!” Caden barked at Vaness.
“No,” she replied. Her hands rose. The Hell-Bards’ blades turned on them and drove straight for their skulls.
Like minnows through a stream, the iron simply sizzled through and flipped out the backs of each Hell-Bard’s head—and the chains at the Hell-Bards’ throats glowed red.
Vaness seemed to know this would happen, though. She seemed to want it for the brief distraction it gave while she turned her magic to the door.
A groan of metal sent Safi spiraling away from the Hell-Bards. The door’s hinges were peeling back. The latch was releasing, reshaping. Then, before any of the Hell-Bards could stop her, Vaness’s arms flew straight up.
The door swung past Safi and Vaness. A blast of air and smoke and heat. It spun sideways before crashing into all three Hell-Bards. It flung them back against the wall, as easy as a flyswatter to three flies.
“We were only following orders,” Caden shouted. With smoke rushing over him, he looked ghostly. Skeletal. “We were only doing our jobs.”
“And I,” Vaness growled, her face striped with blood, “am only doing mine.” She spun for the empty doorway.
Safi didn’t chase after, though. She was staring at Caden on the left. At Lev in the middle. At Zander on the right. She didn’t trust the Hell-Bards, she didn’t like the Hell-Bards, yet that did not mean she could leave them to die.
“Wait!” she hollered at Vaness, and the empress paused at the door. Behind her, a wall of iron scuttled upward, plucked from hinges and nails and anything her Ironwitchery could grasp. “Let them go.”
“They will try to capture us again.”
“No!” Lev cried. The scars on her face flickered and glowed. “We will help you!”
“We cannot trust them,” Vaness insisted. She reached for Safi’s arm. Blood dripped from her chin. “We have to go, Safi. Now.”
“You can trust us.” This came from Zander, his face drawn tight as the door squashed him harder, harder to the wall. “We can prove it. Just let me remove my noose—”