“He didn’t die,” Coira went on, her voice cracking. “He didn’t. He landed on his feet, like cats do. I thought it was a marvelous trick. I wanted to know how he’d done it, so I started toward him, and he saw me…”
Coira’s voice trailed away, and Marcom waited for her to go on. When she didn’t, he supposed whatever the healer had given her had put her to sleep.
He tried to extract himself gently from her grasp, but her grip tightened on his again.
“Coira?” he prompted quietly.
“I don’t know what happened after that,” she said, the gentle frown reappearing on her lips. “I can’t remember.”
“That’s okay,” he told her. “Coira, can you tell me what the man looked like? What he was wearing? Anything at all that might help me find him?”
“He had a cloak, but under it he wore something that looked like metal but wasn’t. It had a great glass front to it that he looked out of and…”
She abruptly snatched her hand away from him and sat up.
“Okay, Coira, it’s okay, you don’t need to—”
But Coira was already off the bed. She flew across the room to her little workbench and easel.
“Coira…” Lord Kyran began, but Marcom, who had stopped just behind the girl put up his hand, and Kyran fell silent.
Both men watched as Coira’s hands moved deftly over her workspace, guided by long familiarity. She found the brushes she wanted without seeming to hunt for them. Little pots of color sprang open beneath her fingers, and she began applying sure strokes to the canvas, unmindful of the work she’d done there before.
Her face was turned toward the painting, but there was no way she could see what she was doing—not with the injuries she’d suffered, and certainly not with the bandages over her eyes. Her brushes moved with confident and practiced motions, like the fingers of a master pianist who has long ago foregone looking at the keys of her instrument. Gradually, a portrait, as exquisite in its detail as the landscape she was obliterating, appeared there.
She hadn’t been studying, Marcom realized in wonder; she was a fucking prodigy.
For a moment, he felt a stab of pain as the memory of another young girl—a prodigy of another kind—came to the forefront of his mind, complete with the sting of her betrayal. He pushed the thought angrily away. This wasn’t the time.
The man—no, the creature—coming to life before him was unlike anything Marcom had ever laid eyes on. Gray scaly flesh gave way to muscle that seemed to have been shaped from steel; eyes burned red, casting strange, hellish reflections on the glass visor that shielded its face. What in God’s name was it? Surely, this wasn’t simply a Broodsmen in disguise? Surely…
Coira threw down the last of her brushes and stumbled blindly toward her bed. Marcom gently clasped her shoulder and guided her to it, uncertain whether he was more stunned by the girl’s talent or the creature those talents had wrought upon the canvas.
The girl fell into her bed, pulling a sheet over herself and curling up into a ball.
“Thank you, Coira,” Marcom told her, but she didn’t respond.
He made his way back to the painting, studying it carefully, Kyran at his shoulder.
“What is it?” the lord asked, his voice low and unsteady.
Marcom looked over at him sharply. Kyran’s complexion had turned gray, and he seemed to be having trouble staying on his feet. He swayed, and Marcom reached out to steady the man.
“I don’t know,” Marcom admitted. “But I’m damn well going to find out.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The streets were even more packed than usual now that the autumn harvest season was fast approaching. Already, Marcom could feel the bite of winter’s promise. Samhain was coming, but he doubted, what with the mounting tensions with the Dragon’s Brood, that this year’s celebrations would live up to the anticipation that was already building in the city. There were bound to be a lot of disappointed youngsters.
He made his way southward alone, dodging horses, wagons, and peasants who seemed all but oblivious to his presence. How quickly they’d forgotten the horrors of a few days ago. Word had not yet spread about Coira—not far anyway—and for now, Marcom was relieved. A street full of gawkers would’ve made what he was going to do now much more difficult.
“Captain!”
The voice brought him up short just as he was about to turn down the coast road. His gaze flicked upward toward the sound and fell on an olive-skinned flyer man with a blue pack resting on his back between his iridescent wings.
The man dove and landed lightly on the pavement beside him, folding his wings and unbuckling his pack in a single fluid and well-practiced motion.
“Your post,” the man said, passing Marcom a folded sheet of parchment. “I was on my way to deliver it at the fortress. Lucky I saw you down here. Saved me a trip!” he chortled, his eyes sparkling merrily beneath his mop of unruly black hair. The antennae that protruded from the back of his neck twitched in an unmistakably jaunty way.
Marcom turned the parchment over between his hands. It was held closed with a blot of wax, but it bore no seal to identify the sender. That was odd. Only his name and position at Seven Skies were scrawled in a neat, precise hand on its front.
“Thanks,” Marcom said, a bit nonplussed, but the postmaster was already in the air again. He performed a sort of swoop and salute in Marcom’s general direction, and then he was gone, soaring up and over the roof of the little bakery beside which Marcom stood.
Marcom looked back at the letter, debating. If it was bad news of one kind or another, he didn’t want to be reading it out here on the bleeding street, thank you very much. He tucked it into his belt and resumed his walk. There’d be time to read it when he got back to Seven Skies.
He moved on, turning down the coast road and wondering if this seemingly endless day would ever come to a close. It was a pointless rumination; one day simply led into the next, and all the days that stretched out before him over the foreseeable future were bound to be dark and bloody.
Sooner than he’d wanted, he found himself staring up at the abandoned ruins of the old watchtower. It loomed, dark and solitary, on the edge of the sand. Beyond it, waves lapped at the shore, occasionally spraying the stones at its base with a fine mist. A few children played on the beach—some game that Marcom could almost, but not quite, remember from his youth. A snatch of their song drifted to him on the salty breeze blowing in off the ocean, bringing with it the sweet pang of nostalgia.
“First we make a ghost, of the man we love the most…”
The tower projected an aura of eternity, as though it had stood in this place since the world was born and would go on standing there until the sun winked out of the sky above it. Perhaps it would. Its stones were dark, infused with an air of loneliness that seeped into his bones like a chill. Its turrets and battlements were spattered with bird droppings from the seagulls that spent long stretches of every day perched upon them. The black holes of its windows stared back at him, the empty sockets of a discolored skull.
Dead men tell no tales.
Marcom’s eyes moved up to the tower’s apex, seeking out the place where Coira must’ve first seen the man who’d attacked her. What had he been doing up there, anyway?
He doubted anyone had bothered with the tower that morning. Everyone’s attention had been on Coira, and she’d been in no fit state to explain to anyone exactly what had happened. Was there something up there? Something to see?
He started around the tower’s base, his stride effortlessly finding the old familiar path leading to its entrance, preserved over the years by the feet of countless children. How long had it been since he’d walked here?
Once, he’d been one of those kids. He braved the tower on a dare during the long days of his twelfth—or was it his thirteenth?—summer. It seemed like an age had passed since then.
The once formidable oak doors had failed to live up to the eternal reputation of the stones around them
. They’d been reduced to a few rotting boards attached to rusting hinges. The old silver lock and handle, tarnished and caked with grime, still lay where they’d fallen at the top of the steps. He stepped over them, remembering the superstitions about moving them that had so dominated his childhood. Some habits died hard; some never died at all.
The air inside was cool and damp. There was hardly enough light to see the narrow stairs that spiraled up through the tower, and Marcom stumbled on the first few steps. Dust and sand covered everything. Cobwebs brushed his face and stuck in his hair.
It was hard to imagine Coira coming here on her own during the early hours of the morning, just to watch the sunrise. It seemed, with his adventurous adolescence so far behind him now, like an invitation for trouble.
And this morning, trouble had accepted the invitation, hadn’t it?
On the first of the tower’s three landings, he had to climb over a pile of straw and tattered blankets, undoubtedly a rendezvous location for young lovers when the weather was fair.
He heard the clatter of claws on the stones as he started up the next flight of steps. Apparently, other creatures besides seagulls, amorous couples, and prodigal young artists had sought shelter here as well.
Hell of a place for children to play, he thought. At the very least, he ought to send some of his men to clear the place of rats.
On the final landing before the top, a pair of bats flew at his face, angry at being disturbed in their daylight refuge. He beat them away, grimacing at the feel of their coarse fur and warm bodies. As one of them turned back toward him for another pass, its luminescent yellow eyes blaming blindly in the dark, he struck out and hit it harder than he’d intended. He felt its tiny bones crunch beneath his fist, and the creature fell with a sickening wet thud to the floor at his feet, its wings beating the floor spasmodically in its death throes.
“Christ,” he muttered under his breath, feeling the weight of the thick, musty air around him. Maybe this hadn’t been the best idea. And Coira came up here regularly on her own… Madness.
At last, he emerged, blinking, into the glaring sunshine at the top of the tower.
The habits of youth asserted themselves again before his vision had fully adjusted, and Marcom found himself striding automatically across the stones to the edge of the battlements without thinking.
He shaded his good eye and looked out over the ocean, remembering the first time he’d stood here as a boy. He could still see his mates, standing on the sand far below and cheering his victory; he’d braved the tower with its ghosts and lived to tell the tale. Such innocent times those had been. The world had been a different place.
He watched the children at their game, but they were too far away for him to hear their song. All there was now was the hiss of the waves and the roar of the wind in his ears.
He turned, scanning the battlements with a critical eye. If there was something up here, he expected it to be something subtle—something easily missed.
Instead, what he found was anything but. Burned into the smooth stones upon which he stood, much like that on the wall at Seven Skies, was another image.
This bit of artistry, however, was far more gruesome. The dragon was reared up on its hindquarters, its rider holding his sword aloft in triumph. Flames fanned out from the beast’s tremendous jaws, and in their midst, clearly visible, was the burned and disfigured body of a woman.
Flesh fell from her bones like an overcooked roast, revealing her ribcage and much of her skull. Only her hair seemed untouched, flowing back from her once beautiful face in a graceful fan. Nestled in its locks were a clover and a rose, prominently displayed above the cracked flesh of the woman’s forehead. It was plain who the woman was meant to be—Marianne.
For a long moment, Marcom stared, his mind racing.
This was bad. This was very, very bad. If he took news of this to the mistress now, any chance he’d have of persuading her to exercise restraint would be lost.
Damn it!
He moved to the small stone bench carved into the side of the battlements and sank down onto it. There was no hiding this. He’d need to come up with a plan. What would be the least damaging way to report this…this thing?
The attacks on the butcher and Lord Kyran’s daughter were bad enough. When the mistress caught wind of an unambiguous threat upon her person etched in stone, he feared she’d be satisfied with nothing but all out war. He’d seen her fury more than once, and he knew what she was capable of.
But Marcom had his doubts. Marianne was sure these attacks were the work of the Dragon’s Brood, yet everything he’d seen so far suggested skill and power that he’d never heard tell of the Brood possessing. They needed to be careful. They needed to be absolutely certain.
Absently, he toyed with the hilt of the sword that hung from his belt, and his fingers grazed the rough parchment of the letter he’d stored there.
He pulled it out, looking between it and the image at his feet.
Today, of all days, he’d received a letter from an unidentified sender. It could be coincidence, he supposed, but all at once he didn’t think so. He didn’t think so at all.
He broke the seal on the letter and unfolded it in his lap, revealing more of the neat, unembellished script.
Captain,
You don’t know me, and it will stay that way. You are well regarded, even among us of the Brood, as a just and honorable man.
We do not, indeed cannot, say the same of your mistress, as I’m quite sure you are aware.
As an honorable and just man who believes in the rule of law, I hope you will take me seriously when I tell you that the recent attacks on Seven Skies have not been orchestrated by the Brood. There are those among us who would carry out such attacks, I have no doubt, but these are the work of the very woman to whom you have sworn allegiance. She wants to draw us out. She wants you to believe that we must be destroyed.
I don’t expect this letter to convince you of anything. I ask only that you examine the things going on around you. Study them. Decide for yourself if you find truth in my words.
We will go on fighting for Marianne’s downfall, but war is a thief of lives, soaking up innocent blood as fast as it will run. No one wants war—not I, and, I suspect, not you either. Can the same be said of your mistress?
P
For a moment, Marcom continued to stare down at that solitary initial with which the letter’s author had closed. Was it true? Could it possibly be?
All the doubts of the last two days crowded his mind, jostling for attention. The power and scope of what had been displayed seemed far outside what the Brood was capable of. He’d already questioned Marianne’s certainty that these things were their doing. Hell, he’d been questioning it just seconds ago.
But he couldn’t believe Marianne would harm her own people. She was a hard mistress—often a cruel one—and he had found himself horrified by her actions on more than one occasion…but ruling was hard, thankless work that sometimes required one to be cruel. He just could not accept that she’d attack innocent citizens among her own people.
Why can’t you believe it? What if it is just that you don’t want to believe it? a voice whispered in his mind.
He’d spent his entire adult life in service to Marianne. If this was true, then all of it—everything he’d ever done—was tainted with dishonor. Everything was a lie.
Could it be true? Could it?
He crushed the letter in his fist, angry with himself for his own uncertainty. Of course it wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. Most of his time among the guard at Seven Skies had been spent breaking up petty squabbles and defusing rows throughout the city between the very drunk, the very angry, the very rich, or, more commonly, some combination of the three. He’d always tried to be fair, which was exactly why Marianne had named him captain.
A bell began to toll. For a moment longer, the sound was so distant and his thoughts so dark that he didn’t register the alarm at all.
And t
hen he was on his feet and running across the top of the battlements.
He reached the ramparts on the far side, leaning over them and staring across the city that stretched out beneath him. At first, he saw nothing at all; the streets seemed as they always were on an afternoon such as this one, full of folks hurrying here and there about their business.
Then there was a tremendous boom that rolled across the sky like a clap of thunder, and huge plumes of smoke began roiling up from the streets.
The city of Seven Skies was burning.
Emily
CHAPTER NINE
Emily breathed deeply of the thin mountain air. It was cold, almost burning her lungs, and she wondered if she could put off getting up for a while longer. She turned her face away from the gray sunlight, and that was when she felt something cold and wet on her cheek. It ran down her face and under the collar of her tunic, and she gasped at its chill. She pulled the blanket more tightly around herself and, with a groan, reluctantly opened her eyes.
Snow was pattering down around her, melting almost as soon as it hit the ground. A few flakes clung to the branches of the trees overhead or nestled amidst the leaves of the brush below. They seemed dazzlingly white in the gray light of dawn, and a pang of nostalgia swept over her. Autumn was closing in; in another world—in another life—school would’ve been just starting, and these would have been the weeks spent practicing with her teammates for the new hockey season. It all seemed so unreal to her now, like a half-forgotten, half-remembered dream.
Celine had bedded down beside Emily the night before, but now she was a few feet away, sitting against the trunk of a tree. She’d wrapped her blanket around her shoulders. Her hands rested in her lap, buried in Rascal’s fur, and her eyes were wide and full of wonder. For the moment, the old crone she had become was overshadowed by a childlike awe on her wizened face. She looked for all the world like a girl who had wakened on Christmas morning to find the cookies gone and a stocking full of toys.
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