“Morale?”
“Unwavering, my queen. My men and I will die on those walls before we come down from them.”
Ashlyn nodded. It had been a rare stroke of luck that Carlyle’s men had taken such small losses, given their position on the front lines.
“What of the wardens under the command of the Atlas Coast small lords?” Ashlyn asked him. She’d been forced to put them on the front lines as well.
Carlyle winced. “I’m afraid they’ve taken heavy losses, my queen. I don’t have exact figures, but … it’s bad. I’m not sure how much longer we can rely on their support.”
Damn.
“Lord Linkon,” she prompted.
Linkon cleared his throat. “I’ve lost two hundred men. Another three hundred have been injured and aren’t fit for battle. That leaves fifteen hundred able-bodied men. Morale is strong.”
“Define strong.”
Linkon cleared his throat before continuing. “There are no deserters in my ranks, my queen.”
“Korbon.”
“I have three thousand able-bodied wardens in the city,” Doro Korbon said. “But a large chunk of those are country wardens who came into the city for your coronation, my queen. They’ve only recently sworn allegiance to me, and I barely have control over them. If they had a chance to flee the city, I believe many would take it. In another week, they’ll kill me just to get into my food stores.”
“What about you, Lord Brock?” Ashlyn asked. “What of your eleven sons and their promise to be the first on Balarian shores?”
Yulnar Brock hesitated. Looked down at his bowl. Ashlyn noticed that he hadn’t actually taken a bite of his food yet.
“My men saw the worst of the bombardments when Wallace began to move his catapults forward. Almost a thousand were killed. Less than half of my remaining wardens are in fighting shape.” He lowered his voice. “And just last night, three of my sons were killed when an explosive missile destroyed a stable where they were preparing their mounts. I’m sorry, my queen, but my men have lost heart. They have homes outside these walls. Families. There’s nobody to protect them from Cedar Wallace’s men. He could be raiding the countryside at will right now.” He hung his head. “I wonder if trying to strike a deal with Wallace isn’t the best way out of this.”
“I see.”
Ashlyn didn’t need to hear anything more to know that the wardens inside Floodhaven wouldn’t fight in a pitched battle against Cedar Wallace, let alone sail across Terra to fight a war with Balaria. Not unless something changed very soon, and very dramatically.
“Perhaps Lord Brock is right,” Linkon said. “A diplomatic solution may be the only option we have available.”
Ashlyn thought about that. She had been at the mercy of fate and circumstance for her entire life. Her brothers died and she became the heir. Her father died and she became queen. And then, one by one, Malgrave allies had disappeared, forcing her to compromise over and over again. She was sick of it.
“There is another option,” she said. “Send a messenger to Cedar Wallace. I challenge him to a duel for Floodhaven. Tell him that I will meet him inside a chalk circle tomorrow at midday.”
* * *
That night, Ashlyn spent an hour using the latest dragon-sighting reports to update her map of the Great Migration. The impatient adolescent males had already crossed the Sea of Terra. They would spend a few weeks alone in Tanglemire, fighting each other and crying out mating calls to nobody. Meanwhile, the older dragons and females were gathering all over the coast of Almira. Any day now, they would leave in a huge swarm so large that it would blot out the sun. All of them heading to Balaria.
When she was finished, Ashlyn looked through some of her older drawings, made when she was still betrothed to Silas. He used to climb up the Queen’s Tower and sneak through her window so they could sleep together. Afterward, she would bring her sketches into the bed and tell him about each dragon. Where it lived. What it ate. How it touched their world.
That time in her life seemed so far away that it belonged to another person.
If Ashlyn failed to protect the dragons of Terra, all the compromises she’d made so far would be for nothing. Sending Silas away. Getting thousands of Malgrave wardens killed. She couldn’t give up now. Not after coming so far.
She opened her chest of alchemy ingredients and emptied it. Removed a false panel at the bottom and pulled out a small lockbox. There was only one key. She took it from her neck and opened the box. Picked up the vial of Gods Moss that was inside.
One way or another, Cedar Wallace’s siege ended tomorrow.
37
GARRET
Almira, Floodhaven
Garret watched the coffeehouse. It was on the northwest side of the city, which the locals referred to as Foggy Side, and sat so close to Castle Malgrave that the building spent the whole morning in the shadow of the King’s Tower. The constant barrage from the catapults was far enough away that it didn’t seem to deter patrons, either. Highborn women passed by him in their expensive silk gowns—their hair stuck with dozens of pins and fixed into intricate designs. Wardens patrolled the streets, hands resting on heavy swords.
The coffeehouse took up half a city block—two stories and built from massive oak columns and granite stones. It had ten massive windows. Garret’s employer was inside. He circled the building once, pretending to haggle with a sausage vendor while looking for other entrances to the building. There was a serving door on the east side that opened onto an alley, and what looked like a walled-in, private well out back. One good escape route and one dead end.
Garret opened and closed his hand a few times, checking for any remaining signs of the dragon rot infection. There were none. Jolan’s tonic had worked perfectly.
He adjusted the position of his hunting knife, then went inside.
The place was crowded. Patrons were sipping their drinks happily. Garret found it interesting that while this area was full of well-dressed nobles enjoying their everyday comforts amidst a siege, he’d passed two women fighting over a dead rat on his way to Foggy Side. He’d also seen dozens of corpses in the streets—the only care they were given was the occasional mud statue molded near their final resting place.
Compared to Burz-al-dun, this city was a backwater gutter. But some things were the same no matter where you traveled in the realm of Terra. The poor always suffered first, and hardest.
“May I assist you, my lord?” A raven-haired woman with a form-fitting black gown asked him. She radiated a calculated mix of sexuality and shrewdness.
“I’m a guest of Lord Paltrix,” Garret said, rounding off his accent so he sounded like the son of an Almiran small lord. It matched the expensive silk clothes he’d stolen earlier that morning.
“I see.” The woman nodded once—as if acknowledging the sensitivity of the situation—and motioned for Garret to follow her. She headed to the back of the coffeehouse, gown shimmering as her hips moved. The woman produced a key from between her breasts and opened an oak door for Garret. She did not enter. Didn’t even look inside.
“Appreciated,” Garret said.
“Of course, my lord.” The woman nodded again, then swished away.
Garret closed the door behind him. The room was a small, circular shape but it extended all the way to the roof. The space was illuminated by a large, eye-shaped skylight, and a half-dozen candles placed on small ledges against the walls. In the middle of the room, there was a squat, circular wooden table with four cushions set up around it. A stylish lord was sitting on one of the cushions and looking at Garret. He wore a blue jacket and had long blond hair that was tied in place by a few strips of black silk.
“Lord Paltrix, I assume?” Garret asked, switching to a Ghalamarian accent. He sat down across from the man who’d hired him to splatter noble blood across the Almiran backcountry.
“We can dispense with the deception at this point,” the lord said. “My name is High Lord Linkon Pommol. You are the hangman?”
“That’s right.”
“How did you sneak past Cedar Wallace’s siege lines?”
Garret shrugged. “Sneaking past things is my job.”
“Sneaking quickly doesn’t seem to be,” Linkon said. “You’re twenty-two days late.”
“I’m twenty-two days behind schedule, but I made it very clear when we began that delays are a part of this business. If your country had just one properly paved road, it would have made things easier.”
Garret’s journey back north had been crippled by delays because the main highway had been washed out by a mudslide. The back roads had been so choked with oxen carts and farmers that some days, Garret had barely moved at all.
Linkon tapped his lips twice with two fingers. “Well, I shall not niggle. You’ve done an excellent job so far. Ashlyn was forced to send nearly all of her soldiers out of Floodhaven to clean up the messes that you made.”
“And then Cedar Wallace killed them.”
Garret had seen the wardens swaying from the trees as he came into the city.
“Indeed.” Linkon smiled. “Ashlyn is still the queen, but my wardens practically control Floodhaven now. Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Garret tried to bite back his irritation with Linkon, but failed. He could not stand the amateur mistakes that so many highborns made when they involved themselves in his work. Linkon should have kept his lordly fingernails clean and let a professional handle this.
“Beautiful is not the word I would use. Your work is sloppy, and it has made my job considerably more difficult. I was supposed to arrive in Floodhaven and assassinate a queen with no friends, allies, or army. Instead, I had to sneak into a city under siege by some war-crazed Gorgon lord, where I find Ashlyn Malgrave has surrounded herself with hundreds of Papyrian widows whose sole purpose is to protect her. I would not say that you are in control of anything.”
Linkon’s smile faded. “Yes, well, Ashlyn has proved more resourceful than expected. I could hardly prevent her from taking advantage of a Papyrian alliance she somehow formed in secrecy.”
“Do you have any idea how difficult it is to kill just one Papyrian widow? The entire point of my work in the backcountry was to erode her protection. You have stood by and let her bolster it beyond recognition. And what is this I hear about an assassination attempt at her coronation?”
Linkon cleared his throat. “Cedar Wallace saw an opening and wanted to take it.”
“That was a mistake.”
“I don’t think you realize how much worse things could have become,” Linkon said. “If I hadn’t had the foresight to send a hundred of my best archers outside of Floodhaven to shoot down Ashlyn’s bloody pigeons, she would have summoned every warden in Deepdale back here to help her. Probably would have called down a thousand more Papyrians. I am the only man in Almira who realized how dangerous those damn birds of hers are.”
“When we started this, you said that you could control Cedar Wallace. You stood for his actions, which means you are responsible for his mistakes.”
“I’ll admit things are a bit more chaotic than intended. I am more than willing to pay you extra. Say, double your initial fee?”
Just like a highborn to try and buy his way out of a mistake.
“This isn’t about money, Linkon. You have underestimated Ashlyn Malgrave and tainted my work. That cannot be undone.” Garret leaned forward. “I have tightened men’s throats for lesser mistakes.”
“Is that a threat, Garret?” Linkon put his cup of coffee back onto the table without taking a sip. “Remember who you’re talking to. I am a high lord of Almira.”
“I was hired to kill a queen. Why would killing some special lord be a problem?”
Linkon raised an eyebrow at that, but didn’t spook. “Speaking of your job, our resourceful little queen is going to do it for you tomorrow.”
Garret had to give Linkon credit, his hands were only trembling a little as he picked up his cup again, took a sip, and waited for a response to his gambit. In the distance, a stone missile crashed into a building. Screams and alarms followed.
“Explain.”
“Emperor Mercer was wise to want her dead. Ashlyn is so bent on invading Balaria that she’s willing to do anything to end this siege. She has challenged Cedar Wallace to a duel tomorrow.”
“A duel? Is she going to use a champion?”
Linkon shook his head. “We don’t have that custom in Almira.”
“Does she know how to fight?”
“She’s a woman.”
“That’s a foolish assumption. I’ve known plenty of women who were just as dangerous as men. Some, far more so.” Garret paused. “It doesn’t make sense for Ashlyn to start a fight she can’t win. She must have a plan.”
Linkon dismissed the thought with a wave of his hand. “Ashlyn thinks she can consult her ledgers and messages and outwit everyone else, but she can’t. The woman doesn’t have the stomach for this kind of work. She’d have made an exceptional steward, but she is a terrible queen. She probably thinks she can bargain with Wallace before the duel starts. She’d have more luck negotiating with an actual wolf. Trust me, she’s as good as dead.”
“I don’t trust you at all, Lord Linkon. But if you’re so confident, why did you even bother calling me to this meeting?”
“Ah, yes. Why indeed?” Linkon paused in a pantomime of thought. “You see, while I’m confident that Ashlyn will see her last sunrise tomorrow, Cedar Wallace is a separate issue. You said yourself, I don’t have him under control. I am worried about what he will do to me once he’s defeated Ashlyn.”
Garret didn’t say anything. Just stared at Linkon.
“If you kill Cedar Wallace for me tomorrow, I’ll match your fee for killing Ashlyn, who will be dead anyway. You’ll make twice the money for the same amount of work.”
“This isn’t about money.”
“Everything is about money, Garret. Anyone who says differently has never watched a fortune be squandered. They’ve never been forced to rebuild a dynasty using debt and ridicule as support beams.”
Garret dug underneath a fingernail with his thumb, thinking for a moment.
“Tell me, Lord Linkon, when Ashlyn Malgrave and Cedar Wallace are dead, what sort of king do you plan to become?”
Linkon smiled at the question. Leaned back in his chair and began a well-practiced response.
“Ashlyn Malgrave is a relic of the past. She clings to her studies and theories while our poor and backward country goes to rot atop a massive fortune of dragon oil. Once she’s gone, I will finish the trade agreement with Balaria, which she turned to shit, and begin harvesting and exporting our oil like a normal country. After my treasuries are full, I will build roads. Infrastructure. An organized government with a national army instead of this patchwork quilt of warlords. I will pull Almira out of the darkness, and into the light.”
“Hmm.” This skinny lord’s words reminded him of Emperor Mercer Domitian. Garret wondered if he might actually last more than a month or two as king. He certainly had the ambition and cunning required to rule a country. But that was not Garret’s problem. Making sure Ashlyn Malgrave actually died tomorrow was. That meant he needed to go along with Linkon’s plan.
“To get this done, you will need to bring your wardens outside the gate tomorrow.”
“Not a problem,” Linkon said. “The queen trusts me.”
“I also need a detailed map of the city and surrounding countryside and one set of your warden’s armor—mask and all.”
Linkon relaxed. “So we have a deal, then?”
“I always finish my work, Lord Linkon. Surely the emperor told you that.”
“He did. Anything else?”
“Yes.” Garret glanced out the window. It was already dusk and he had much to prepare. There would be no time for sleep. “A coffee would be nice.”
38
BERSHAD
Almira, Floodhaven Harbor
Bershad and Felgor spotted the coast of
Almira an hour before dawn. The silhouette of Floodhaven was drawn in fire against the horizon. Every few minutes, a new fireball was lobbed into the sky and exploded somewhere in the city.
“Well, that’s a sight,” Felgor said, scratching his head.
“Yeah,” Bershad said.
They’d fled Balaria on a stolen theater troupe’s schooner. Felgor said it was just like the one he’d grown up on. Getting out of Balaria wasn’t nearly as difficult as getting in, seeing as the palace was on fire and the city in chaos. They sailed straight out of the harbor. Felgor was able to cross the Soul Sea in half the time it had taken them on the Luminata—and bragged the entire time about secret currents—but they’d hit a bad storm the night before. Both sails were nearly ruined, more than half their rigging had been lost to the sea, and the rudder wiggled back and forth like a tooth that needed to be pulled. Still, they had made it.
Bershad studied the port. There was a wall of warships protecting the entrance to the harbor.
“Ashlyn summoned the Papyrian fleet,” Bershad said.
“Why’re they just sitting in the harbor?” Felgor asked, squinting. “Couldn’t they use ’em to sail away?”
“They could,” Bershad said. “But she doesn’t know that I killed the emperor, which means she still plans on going to war with Balaria. Can’t do that if she runs away.”
“Who’s doing all the siege work, do you think?”
“No idea.”
Felgor let go of the ship’s wheel to adjust one of their sails. “Well, we’re here. What’s the plan?”
Bershad studied the shoreline.
“Just head for the harbor,” he said.
“What about all the warships?”
“The sun’ll be up in an hour. There’s no room for subtlety on this one.”
“I like subtlety.”
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