I chose fire.
In the moment before I ignited the Threads I’d woven around them all—the priests, the warriors, the Adept—the Chorl woman tensed. Through the tears blurring my eyes, I saw her frown, a fireball half formed before her. She sensed something. A ripple on the Threads, a disturbance on the ether. Or perhaps she’d heard the sob that had escaped me.
It didn’t matter. I didn’t give her a chance to react.
I let the fire loose, roared as I ignited the Threads that bound the twelve Chorl men and the Adept together. A roar of grief, of pain that would never end, formless and harsh and guttural. Eyes clenched shut, I felt the shock of the priests and warriors and the woman in the single breath before the fire struck them, before it consumed them, flinging them back with its force, scorching through clothing, through flesh, through bone, as the fire that had charred the flesh from Olivia and Jaer and Pallin had done. I poured all of my sorrow into it, all of my rage, all of the feelings of uselessness and despair I’d felt in the last two weeks as the peace of the Frigean coast collapsed under the Chorl onslaught. And when I felt the last breath of life flee, when the thirteen charred bodies lay around me in a grisly circle, I collapsed to my knees, panting, head bowed, tears still streaming down my face, hands clenched in fists at my sides.
Because the pain still beat with my heart. It burned through my veins, prickled in my skin.
I sobbed.
I should have died with them. I should have died protecting Olivia, my body shielding her from the fire, not the other way around.
I lifted my head, stared at the blackened bodies, felt the rage boil up again, bitter as ash, then turned to gaze up into the lightening sky.
It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.
I stood slowly, rage settling around me. A calm rage filled with nothing but grief. With nothing but visions of Olivia on the veranda, held in my arms. Of the scent of her hair, the smoothness of her skin. Of the sounds of Jaer and Pallin shrieking in delight as they played around us.
I turned, cloaked in memories, and waded into the Chorl forces from behind, trailing fire and death behind me.
* * *
I woke with a gasp and an ache in my chest like a hand gently crushing the life from me. I tasted hot, fresh tears, realized that I’d been crying as I slept, my muscles stiff with tension, my body drained, overwhelmed by grief.
But not my own grief. Someone else’s. The man in the dream; a man I knew.
Cerrin.
I dove beneath the river, hope surging forward, the dark room before me shifting subtly, becoming gray and partially visible with the Sight. I could see the edges of the bed I slept in, could see the settee where the Servant Marielle instructed me in writing and math, could see the tables and chairs and the bowl that contained water so I could wash my face. A breeze blew the curtains back from the doors leading out to the balcony, scented with ocean salt and spring night. The balcony overlooked the city of Amenkor. My city, for I was the Mistress.
And we’d survived the winter . . . and an attack by the Chorl.
But at a cost.
I closed my eyes, reached out on the river toward the Skewed Throne, toward the symbol of Amenkor’s power. Cerrin had been a part of the throne, one of the personalities that had been trapped within it, one of the original seven Adepts that had created the throne almost fifteen hundred years before, when the Chorl had first attacked. If I’d been dreaming of him, had lived out one of his memories, then perhaps . . .
The hope that quickened my heartbeat died.
The throne wasn’t there. I couldn’t touch it, couldn’t feel it enfolding me with its power.
Because it was dead. Because I’d destroyed it in order to save Amenkor from the Chorl. From their leader, the Ochean.
I opened my eyes, pushed myself up and to the edge of the bed with a sigh. The tightness of grief in my chest had receded, but not much. I knew I wouldn’t sleep anymore, so I rose and moved across the room to the curtains, stepped out onto the balcony.
As in the dream, the sky overhead was just beginning to lighten with dawn. If the balcony had faced east, I would have seen the eastern mountains lined with golden light.
Instead, I stared down into the husk of what once had been Amenkor, watched the details of the damage done by the Chorl attack emerge as the sun rose. The watchtowers at the ends of the juts of land that protected the harbor were nothing more than heaps of broken stone. The Chorl had destroyed them first, stone and debris arching up and out into the darkness: our first warning that the Chorl had arrived. I shivered at the memory, at the raw power it had taken to destroy them. So much power it had left vortices in the eddies of the river for days afterward.
Then the Chorl’s black ships had knifed into the harbor, where they’d been met by the trading ships, and the real battle had begun. What ships remained from that attack were anchored off the shattered piers, both Amenkor and Chorl ships alike. In their haste to retreat, harried by Amenkor guardsmen and militia, the Chorl had left some of their own ships behind. Small boats ferried men to and fro between them even now. The wharf itself had been utterly destroyed when the Chorl drove their ships into the docks.
From there a clear path of destruction wound upward, from the wharf up through the lower city, through the twisting streets, through the marketplaces, to the gates of the outer wall of the palace. Buildings had been consumed by fire, stone walls collapsing under the heat. Hastily constructed barricades had been breached, the chairs and tables and crab traps used to make them tossed aside. The Chorl had destroyed everything as they came, might have razed the entire city in their fervor, but they’d been intent on reaching the palace, on reaching and seizing control of the throne.
They’d almost succeeded. The gates to the three walls that surrounded the palace had been breached in the span of an hour, the Ochean and the Chorl Servants—the women like me that could wield the river; the women Cerrin had called Adepts in the dream—had blown the gates apart. Only Eryn, the previous Mistress, had been able to slow them, and only then with my help.
I stared down at the jagged holes in the three walls, tasted again Eryn’s desperation to hold against the combined strength of the Ochean and her Servants. They’d linked their powers somehow, so that the Ochean’s power had been augmented by her Servants.
We’d never had a chance.
But we’d prevailed in the end. After I’d killed the Ochean—and in the process destroyed the throne—Captain Catrell, Keven, and the rest of the guardsmen and militia had driven the Chorl back to their ships, had driven them back out to sea. The Chorl had retreated, and hadn’t been seen since.
On the balcony, overlooking the blackened buildings and streets of Amenkor, I straightened, felt a tightness in my chest. We’d survived the winter, the late winter planting ready to be harvested in another few weeks, the early spring planting already in the ground. The shipment of grain from the northern city of Merrell—promised to us at the beginning of winter—had finally arrived over the treacherous northern road. The Dredge was intact, left untouched by the Chorl, as well as the eastern portions of the city.
We were wounded, but we’d survived.
I knew the Chorl would be back. They wouldn’t stop attacking the coast, couldn’t stop. Because they couldn’t return to their homeland. I’d seen it destroyed through the Ochean’s eyes when she’d attempted to seize control of the throne. The Chorl had simply retreated to the Boreaite Isles off the Frigean coast. To regroup, to plan. They couldn’t stay on the Isles forever. There were too many Chorl for the islands to support.
But for now, the fact that we’d survived their initial attack was enough.
I took one last long look out over the charred city, plans already forming in my mind. We’d had two weeks to burn the dead, to grieve, to clean up and take stock, to begin drilling the citizens in their own defense in case the Chorl ret
urned. It was time to start building again.
* * *
“No, no! Take the reusable stone over there. The rest pile up on the side street so that we can cart it off later.” Avrell shook his head, one hand on his hip. The other arm was tied up in a sling across his chest, his shoulder hurt during the attack on the walls. The First of the Mistress, Avrell oversaw the administrative details of Amenkor, which included its rebuilding.
He turned as he heard my escort’s approach, his posture stiffening, becoming more formal as he raised one eyebrow in question. He would have folded his hands inside the sleeves of his dark blue robes if he could have, but the sling wouldn’t allow it. “Mistress? How may I help you?”
“Actually,” I said, “I came to help you.” I reached down and picked up a chunk of shattered stone, what had once been part of the outermost wall of the palace. We stood where the gates had held the Chorl at bay . . . for approximately ten minutes. Weighing the stone in one hand, I glanced around at the jagged edges of the wall to either side, at the debris that lay in a fan spread outward from where we stood into the outer ward. I could see how much force had been behind the explosion in the pattern of stone, could see where the stone arch over the gates had collapsed in upon itself once the wall had been breached. Buildings to either side of the wide street leading up to the palace had been shattered in the blast, walls caved in, windows and doors nothing but gaping, empty holes. One entire building had sagged inward, on the verge of imploding. It reminded me of the Dredge. Except this damage was new, fresh. The pall of dust still hung in the air, the broken stone sharp with edges. On the Dredge, everything would have been coated with the slick ruin of age, would have reeked of decay, would be worn smooth with defeat.
A narrow corridor had been cleared through the debris immediately after the attack, to allow access between the city and the palace, but other than that, everything lay where it had fallen.
I turned back to Avrell with a grunt. “And I brought helpers.” I motioned to Keven, my personal escort, and the remaining guardsmen behind me. They shifted in surprise, until Keven gave them a harsh glare.
“You heard the Mistress,” he barked. “Let’s move some stone! Arcus, you take the left, I’ll handle the right. Move, move!”
I grinned as Avrell’s eyebrows rose in surprise, then reached down and picked up a few more chunks of stone, moving to toss them into the discard heap. All around us, the men and women of Avrell’s work detail paused in surprise as well, then grinned as the guardsmen joined them. They’d gotten used to the guardsmen being in the city since the attack.
Avrell watched until he was satisfied the two groups were working well together, then turned back to me, taking up a position halfway between the pile of stone I was digging into and the heap that would be carted out into the city.
“You shouldn’t be doing this,” he said in disapproval.
“Why not?” I gasped, straining as I hauled a stone a little too heavy for me to the reusable heap.
“Because you’re the Mistress.”
I snorted. “And . . . ?”
Avrell pursed his lips but didn’t answer.
I motioned to Avrell’s work detail. It was composed of only fifteen men and women, all of them still lean from the harsh winter, most from the lower city—the portion above the wharf but below the walls. I knew there would be other work details like this one spread throughout the city. Catrell would be at the wharf, overseeing the cleanup there; Nathem—the Second—would be doing the same on the Dredge, which had been left mostly untouched, and in the lower city. Darryn was in the marketplace, training any citizens who would come in the basics of swordsmanship and self-defense. “You need the help, Avrell. And we don’t have enough people to let anyone rest.” I paused as the words sank in. “How bad is it? Do we have anything other than estimates yet?”
He frowned as he glanced around at those working. “Nothing precise. But at this point I don’t think we’ll ever have anything precise. We lost almost half of the militia in the attack, mostly men from the Dredge. Darryn’s men.”
I grimaced. Darryn had been a dispossessed mercenary, relegated to the Dredge when the White Fire had scoured its way across the city and sent the trade routes into a death spiral, cutting off his source of income as a guard-for-hire. I’d gone against Baill’s and Catrell’s wishes and put him in charge of the militia after he’d helped quell one riot and interceded in another to save Avrell’s life. But Captain Baill had ended up betraying us to the Chorl, and Catrell had changed his mind after training with those from the Dredge for a few weeks.
And Darryn had done well, keeping those on the Dredge alive as best he could, protecting the warehouse and kitchen we’d set up there to feed them. During the Chorl attack, he’d led the Dredge in a raid on the Chorl’s flanks, had kept the Chorl out of the slums altogether.
Since then, the people of Amenkor had been calling him Lord of the Dredge. Not the most gratifying title, but fitting. It was also the reason he’d been chosen to teach the citizens how to fight. They already trusted him, and he could relate to them better than Catrell.
“And what about the people? What about the guardsmen?” I asked.
“There were casualties among the people, but it’s hard to judge how many. If we include the Dredge, we never had a viable count to start with. We lost some to starvation, others to disease, and then the Chorl arrived. . . .”
I stopped hauling stone, caught Avrell’s gaze. “How many?”
“Three to four hundred. Maybe more.”
I winced as if punched in the gut, the sensation similar to the pain that Cerrin had felt over the loss of his wife and daughters. Similar, but not the same. Not as visceral; not as deep.
“And the guard?”
“A third of the men died in the attack, about eighty overall.”
I lowered my head a moment, closed my eyes, then straightened and returned to sorting stone. I’d known the losses had been bad. I’d watched the columns of oily black smoke rise from the stockyards to the east of the city, where the bodies had been taken to be burned to prevent the spread of disease. Some of those burned had been Chorl, but not all.
The smoke had marred the sky for four days.
“What else?” I asked, shrugging the grisly image aside.
“We’ve cleared the majority of the streets between here and the wharf as you directed. I have men inspecting the watchtowers now, to determine what’s necessary to make repairs there. The engineers are already arguing about how to repair the three gates and the walls.”
“Good,” I said.
“May I ask why?”
I halted, wiped sweat that had mixed with grit and dust from the stone from my forehead. My shirt stuck to my back, my hair lying in sweaty tendrils across my forehead and neck. “What do you mean?”
“Why rebuild the watchtowers, the walls, when we know the Chorl can destroy them so easily?” he spat, his free hand motioning toward all the debris, his face twisted into a scowl. He shifted where he stood, unable to look at me. “Why waste the effort?”
The bitterness shocked me, and hidden behind that, the fear.
Then I remembered. He’d stood on one of these walls during the battle, had watched the Chorl approach, had felt the wall crumbling beneath him.
And he’d been helpless, unable to do anything but choke on the dust and escape before the shattered stone crushed him.
“Because,” I started to say, then hesitated. Avrell needed more than a flippant answer.
I moved toward him, caught his gaze, held it, my expression stern, harsh. “Because the Chorl will come back, Avrell. And the Chorl—the warriors themselves—can be stopped by the walls, by the watchtowers and the gates. The Ochean and the Servants destroyed the walls last time, and the Ochean is dead.”
“There will be another,” he said hoarsely.
“But we’ll
be better prepared for her and the Chorl Servants next time. With Darryn’s training, the citizens will be better able to defend against the Chorl warriors. I’ve learned a few things about the Chorl and their Servants since then. And I intend to learn even more.”
He heard the emphasis I placed on the last sentence. His brow creased in confusion, then smoothed in comprehension.
We’d found more than the dead in the debris of Amenkor. But only a few knew about our captive—Keven, Eryn, Avrell, Catrell, and Westen, the captain of the Seekers; the Seekers and Servants who guarded her; and the guardsmen who had found her, of course.
Avrell’s eyes searched mine, and then he nodded.
“What about the wharf?” I asked, brushing dust off of my clothes.
“The engineers and carpenters say it can be rebuilt easily, in comparison to the rest of what needs to be done.”
“Good. Have them start on that as soon as they’re ready.”
“And where are you going?” he asked as I moved toward Keven.
“To visit Erick,” I said, and then, my voice laced with hatred, “and after that, our . . . guests.”
* * *
There were two guardsmen outside the door to the chambers I’d had Avrell set up for Erick, one of them a Seeker. He nodded as I approached, murmured, “Mistress.”
“Tomus,” I said. I knew all the Seekers by name; had trained with them under Westen’s direction. “How is he?”
Tomus didn’t need to answer, I saw it in his eyes and felt something grip my heart and squeeze.
The Throne of Amenkor Page 73
