Dragonfire, p.33
Dragonfire, page 33
“It’s true. The wells are open,” Thorne said. “All of them.”
Quill turned his hair across his head. “Stars-damned opportunists.”
“Not opportunists. Strategists,” Maleck murmured from his seat against the pillow, reclining beside Cistine. “The Bloodwights have orchestrated this from the start.”
“And what is our strategy?” Ariadne demanded. “There are hundreds of wells across Valgard. We have one. They’ve likely spent the last week harvesting night and day.”
“Both sides are topfull with augments for the first time in two decades,” Thorne said. “Both will be reckless using them.”
“Is that supposed to scare us?” Quill folded his arms behind his head, leaning back against the pillows on Cistine’s other side. For the first time since Pippet’s injury and Faer’s death, eagerness edged his voice. “I’ve been tired of running for months. It’s long past time we had the kind of fight our ancestors took for granted: face to face on a battlefield.”
“I agree,” Ariadne said, “but what about Cistine?”
The question plummeted through dead silence, and Aden watched Thorne’s face, knowing it would be the first to betray any hint of an answer.
The pain in his eyes said it all.
“We’re leaving her behind?” Ashe snapped.
“We have no choice.” Thorne’s gaze dragged reluctantly to her. “We’ll leave her in the care of the medicos who stay behind. Pippet, too. She’ll be safer than anyone else in this kingdom on the day of the battle.”
“And what if she wakes up terrified or in pain without one of us here?”
“I hate to be the practical one,” Tatiana said, “but we have no reason to believe she’s any more likely to wake up in the next week than she did in the last one. And we can’t postpone a war on her behalf.”
“If she does wake up, she’ll find Pip,” Quill added. “They’ll have each other.”
“Asheila,” Maleck said gently, “the battlefield is no place for an unconscious princess. She cannot come.”
Ashe scowled. “I know that.”
“Then there’s no conversation to have.” Ariadne pushed herself up from the wall. “One of us should see personally to who cares for her, Thorne.”
“I’ll do it,” he said. “Ashe, rally the Wing Legions and meet me in the courtyard, I have a mission for you. Tati, see if there’s anything the Guild can do for us. Ari, the visnprests. And the rest of you…”
“Pray,” Ariadne murmured. “With all your might.”
A drum of footsteps sounded in the hall, their weight and bearing familiar, and Sander burst into the room with robes askew and hair disheveled, the crackle of a wind augment still hanging in the folds of his robes. “Thorne! What in the stars is happening? I heard that the wells—all of them are—”
“Aden, you tell him.” Thorne’s gaze was fixed on the bed, on his unconscious valenar.
Aden rose and slung an arm around the High Tribune’s shoulders, steering him out into the deserted hall. They walked some distance in silence, passing frantic elites moving through color-glazed sunlight falling from the mosaic windows, and at last they found an empty hall on the lowest level of the wing.
“Welcome back,” Aden said at last. “How is Mira?”
“Fine, hale, and whole.” Sander shrugged him off. “This is not about her. Tell me what you know.”
They halted, facing one another, and Aden back his hair. “It’s true. The wells are open. At week’s end, we move our forces to Eben and finish this.”
Sander fell back against the wall, a trembling hand passing over his mouth. “I just…I can’t—stars damn it all, Aden. Mira is with child.”
Aden stared at him, struggling to make sense of those words. “Your child?”
“Well, it’s certainly not yours, baesj-for-brains!” Sander snapped. “Yes, mine. I…after Braggos, I could hardly think, much less eat or sleep. It was a difficult night and I…had a wind augment…”
“You stole a wind augment to go tumble with your valenar?”
“Oh, spare me. We both know Mira is more than worth breaking a few laws for.”
“Be that as it may…no, nevermind, your idiocy isn’t worth my breath.” Aden pinched the bridge of his nose, praying for patience. “How is she?”
“The sickness just started a few weeks ago, and she’s become much more moody. Did you notice when you visited Holmlond?”
“I’ve always thought she was moody.”
Sander struck him upside the head. “That’s my valenar you’re speaking of.”
“I know.” Aden rubbed his head. “I know. And I’m sorry you have to do this, Sander. But we have no choice, we’re Tribunes. Our Chancellor and our Court need us.”
“Do you think I’m unaware?” Sander’s eyes flashed with anger and frustration, sorrow and fear. “If there’s anything this war has taught me, it’s that love in times of peace is a gift. Love in times of war is a death sentence.”
“I don’t believe that. Love, any love, keeps us alive.”
“You didn’t see Mira’s face when I left. What my absence does to her, what this war does to us…it’s tearing me apart, Aden. But I can’t afford to put her wants before the kingdom’s needs, can I? Even if it destroys us both.”
He’d never heard such pain in Sander’s voice, as if he carried a weight suddenly too great to comprehend. As if leaving Mira behind had cost him everything.
“You do not break,” Aden growled, and Sander’s tawny eyes cut sharply to him. “For her sake. For your child’s sake. For Thorne’s. For mine. You are our High Tribune, and you do not break. We stand together, we win this battle, we end the war and come home, and you raise that child knowing their father is a hero. Victory is only possible if we hold fast to who and what we are. And what we fight for.”
Sander held his stare for a long moment. “A better Chancellor.”
“A better future.” Aden gripped his shoulder. “I still believe in that.”
Sander nodded. “So do I. Moreso now than ever.”
“I can’t imagine,” Aden snorted quietly. “Congratulations to the both of you. It’s high time we had some good news.”
Sander surged forward, trapping Aden in an embrace so fierce he did not push back from it at once; and Sander, with a tinge of humor his voice, murmured, “This is from Mira.”
They stepped back awkwardly, dusting off their clothes, and Aden grumbled, “Don’t you have patrols to assemble? Things to do?”
“Apparently, yes. The first of which is to call a meeting of Kanslar’s Tribunes to assure our Chancellor has everything he needs.” Sander winked. “I’ll see you in the dining room in half an hour.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
IT WAS TOO little time, and somehow endless as well. Ashe hardly slept during her mission from Thorne, which took all of the two days they had to spare; when she returned, it was a wild reunion with Maleck, a welcoming back and a farewell she tried not to think of too deeply. She woke from a short, deep slumber to him already awake, sitting on the edge of the bed and yanking on his clothes. Sweat streaked his back, another nightmare rattling his body and the mattress beneath him.
Frowning, Ashe laid a hand on his back. “Mal?”
“It’s time,” he said gruffly.
He was right; there was a hum within the city’s heart, the movements of thousands of warriors traveling on barges and dragonback beyond the curtain wall where wind augments would carry them to Eben’s plains. Some had already begun to call the place of their meeting the Deathmarch, from an ancient Valgardan story…a place where gods clashed with their enemies, where battles decided fates of whole kingdoms.
Fitting…and terrifying.
The tremors found Ashe too when she rolled from the bed and pulled on her armor, fumbling with the familiar clasps and buttons, cursing when her rattling fingers failed to tie her armored scarf. She’d been in plenty of battles, this one shouldn’t frighten her so much. But with everything they had to lose, and everything they were leaving behind…
She felt Maleck behind her even before he spoke, his warmth folding around her. His fingers brushed hers, stilling her uncoordinated movements. “Let me.”
He drew the knot loosely at her nape, fingers grazing her neck when he tucked the scarf into her collar. Then his hands slid down her shoulders, down her back, and rested on her hips. She shut her eyes when he banded his arms around her waist from behind, draping his chin over her shoulder.
“We will survive this,” he murmured against her ear.
Her heart kicked out of beat, stepping into a familiar dance with reckless, senseless hope. “You don’t know that. None of us do.”
“I do. We’ve always found our way back to each other.”
She reached back for him, wove her fingers into his warrior braids and held his cheek against her head, breathing in the cedar and charcoal scent of him. And she hated every gods-forsaken second she’d wasted over the past year, waiting to love him with her entire heart.
She should have known better. She should have stolen thousands more minutes with him.
Down the hall, someone shouted for them. Another shudder spiraled through Ashe’s body, tightening her fingers in Maleck’s hair, and a secret slipped over her lips. “I’m so gods-damned terrified we’re going to lose this battle.” The mission Thorne had sent her on was pure desperation. It had made it clear just how dire their circumstances were.
Maleck pressed his lips to the hollow behind her ear. “Mereszar. Remember what you are.” He rested his face in her hair for a moment, then took her hand and tugged her around to face the door. For perhaps the last time, they went to meet their cabal.
They’d agreed already where they would convene before Kanslar’s departure, and there was a funeral stillness inside Cistine’s room when they entered. No one looked as if they’d slept well; dark circles stamped under every eye, faces harrowed, mouths downturned. For Thorne, her heart broke the most. He leaned against the edge of the dining table, head bowed into one hand as if he lacked the strength to raise his eyes to the bed and see Cistine lying there, so gaunt and lifeless, knowing he would leave her behind.
“Well,” Tatiana said after a beat, “it’s time.”
“Pip will be here the moment she wakes up this morning, and she won’t leave until we come back,” Quill added.
Ashe swallowed at the memory of saying farewell to Pippet the night before so she wouldn’t have to rise and watch them go; how tightly they’d clung to each other, how Pippet had made her vow to come back. She prayed the girl would sleep straight through the morning, through the battle, and wake to a world free of Bloodwight shadows.
One by one, the cabal stepped forward to pay their farewells to Cistine in lingering touches and whispers on a deaf ear. Ashe was sharply aware that every goodbye could be their last; some of them might not return from this fight. And even if by some intercession of the gods they did, Cistine might not be alive when they came home.
She couldn’t move to the bed even when Maleck did, squeezing Cistine’s shoulder and murmuring in her ear. It was only when Thorne gestured her forward that Ashe realized he was waiting for her to give them a moment’s privacy; she finally forced herself to sit on the bed, chafing her necklace chain against her throat. “A year ago, I would’ve been relieved to have some excuse to keep you safe from a fight. Now there’s nowhere I’d rather have you than guarding my back. I just can’t believe you’d sleep through the end of the gods-forsaken world.” She stripped the starstone from her neck and tucked it into Cistine’s limp fist. “So this is for you, just in case you want to come and join us on the Deathmarch. Eben’s plains, Princess. Where they took Julian from us. I’ll be waiting.”
She kissed Cistine’s knuckles and strode to the door, pausing to clap Thorne on the shoulder in passing. “I’ll keep everyone moving in the right direction. Take as much time as you need.”
When Ashe glanced back from the doorway, he’d already lowered himself onto the bed, bent with his brow pressed to Cistine’s. His words were too low to hear, but judging by the unsteady rise and fall of his back, he was weeping.
Quietly, Ashe shut the door.
CHAPTER
FIFTY-SEVEN
T
HE SPRING RAINS came sudden and hard, soaking the army and leaving Tatiana sour in mood while she waited with the cabal outside the city to travel to the Deathmarch. Packs of augurs moved the army in batches, ripping across the plains in a matter of moments, gobbling the rain in swirling vortices along their wake.
She hoped they weren’t all being dropped into the middle of a massacre, but who knew? Maybe they were all going to die on the same ground where Julian had given up his life.
Shaking the rain from her curls, she glared up at the heavy sky. If she’d been superstitious, she might’ve wondered if the gods mourned the end of Valgard at the dawn of the Bloodwights’ ascension to absolute power.
Quill paced at her back, raking a hand through his hair. “Does it make me a terrible person if I wish Cistine were here?”
“Knowing her, she’d wish the same thing,” Ariadne sighed.
A horn blew from the wall, signaling them to make the journey to the plains. As one, the cabal broke the wind augments against their armor—all but Maleck and Ashe, sliding onto Bresnyar’s back. At last, their Chancellor looked away from the horizon, eyes skipping to each of them in turn, full of sorrow and resignation.
“I hope you all know how much I love you,” he murmured. “With everything I am. It’s been an honor greater than any Judgement Seat to have fought and lived with you. And it will be a privilege to die beside you if that is our fate today.”
There was no fear in their faces, only solemn acceptance and the quiet surety that wherever they went today, to Nimmus or Cenowyn or beyond, they’d go together.
“The honor has been ours, Thorne,” Sander said.
“And the privilege,” Kristoff added. “To see you all become the warriors you were born to be.”
“To Sillakove,” Aden said. “To a better tomorrow.”
“To a future,” Quill finished. “No matter the cost.”
Tatiana laid a hand on her empty womb. To your future.
With eyes shut tight, she let the wind carry her off to war.
The sky was pitch-black fringed in scarlet, the echo of every thunderclap like bone drums resounding above Valgard’s army on the Deathmarch.
Before them, the enemy lines arrayed beneath the coming storm.
Blood Hive criminals. Corrupted children. Blinded prisoners of the Lightless Pit who felt their way ahead by skeins of augments. Balmond leashed by Svarkyst chains that would be loosed in an instant. And somewhere behind those ranks, the Bloodwights, saddled with more power than they had any right to possess—the greedy theft of Cistine’s sacrifice.
Disgusted, fearful murmurs rippled down the Valgardan lines, punctuated by the sharp draw of steel. On Tatiana’s left, Maleck grimaced, wiping his knuckles across his brow. “This wetland burns with augmentation.”
“Is this going to be a problem for you?” Quill asked.
Maleck hesitated for a moment, and Tatiana gripped her blades tighter, nerves rattling.
“Stay with me, and I’ll endure,” Maleck said at last.
“Whatever comes,” Aden swore.
“Even that?” Sander gestured forward, and Tatiana shaded her eyes against the rainfall. Her pulse kicked when she spotted a dark shape gliding ahead of the ranks, toward the middle of the Deathmarch.
“Bloodwight,” Ariadne said softly.
“The Aeoprast,” Maleck murmured.
As one, the Chancellors stepped forward, each flanked by a pair of guards. When Tatiana glanced at Thorne, he flicked his head to her, then beckoned to Aden.
Her stomach fluttered with fear when she crossed the field at his side.
“Chancellors,” the Aeoprast greeted when they halted before him. “I see you know of the wells.”
“What do you want?” Bravis growled.
“To offer you an opportunity to surrender. Benevolent gods require no unnecessary sacrifices.”
“You aren’t gods yet,” Adeima spat. “Nor will you ever be.”
The Aeoprast swung its skulled head toward her. “I would be careful if I were you. You’ve seen what we do to your kind.”
At Adeima’s flanks, two of her spies, Astrid and Liv, fingered their weapons. Adeima fixed the creature with an icy glare. “You will pay blood for blood today.”
“A Chancelloress should not make promises she can’t keep. It discourages confidence. And you need them confident and compliant, because if they do not follow your orders to stand down now, they will be slaughtered without mercy.”
“And if Valgard surrenders, what then?” Valdemar demanded.
“Then you may join us in bringing the other kingdoms into subjection as willing warriors in our army.”
“You already have an army,” Bravis said.
“We will need more when Talheim and Mahasar oppose us.”
Thorne slid a step closer to the Bloodwight. Aden unleashed his sabers, and Tatiana tensed to strike. Quill’s gaze branded her back; if she raised her weapon an inch higher, he’d be at her side in a heartbeat, and the battle would begin.
“Let me make this very clear to you.” Thorne’s voice was dark, deathly soft. “Talheim is mine to protect. You and anyone else who dreams of breaking their borders will have to break through my guard first.”
The Aeoprast canted his head. “Such a loyal sentiment. Where, I wonder, is the one who was born to protect Talheim with her very blood? Didn’t she come with you?”
Tatiana gripped her sword so tightly, her knuckles ached. Aden’s arm brushed hers, a steadying motion commanding calm.
“You may have killed my father,” Thorne said, his countenance unbreaking, “but I am not him. You shouldn’t underestimate me.”
