Bursts of Fire

by Susan Forest

  And still. Meg was in Coldridge.

  Thunder cracked—from the battlefield?—and impossibly far away, a shower of stone sprayed from the king’s keep.

  Curious.

  There was nothing for it. Rennika took the horse across the bridge and, leaving the road, skirted between the river and the milling chaos. Perhaps she could slip past the distracted men in the dark.

  “And where are you going?”

  Or, perhaps, not.

  An upriser detached himself from a knot of men bending over a casualty, running forward to catch her horse’s halter. He peered up at her face. “Sulwyn left you back at the camp.”

  “I wanted to come. Help. I can make healing potions.” She looked up at the town, its walls a pale smudge against the dark sky. Meg was inside.

  The sentry eyed the saddlebags and rolled pallet behind her saddle. “Get down. We don’t have a man to spare to take you back.”

  She sighed and lowered herself from the horse.

  A roar of shouts went up and the sentry turned. “Ranuat.”

  The town gates had opened, and a river of soldiers poured out.

  “Stay in the healer’s tent, then,” he shouted, mounting the horse. “Make yourself useful.”

  Wenid brushed past the page announcing him into Eamon’s outer chamber and closed the door on the child. “What is it? I was busy.”

  “They’re shooting.” Eamon paced, his complexion pale with fright. “We’re under attack. And there’s something—huge. It’s shaking the keep.”

  The thunder. Not thunder. Wenid had ignored the first rumble, and the second, fixating on the Falkyn magiel. But since Eamon’s page had pleaded for him to come, there had been two more explosions, and it was true: the blasts shook the very stones of the tower.

  “We have to go to Heaven. We have to pray for our lives.”

  The boy was overreacting. “Such prayers are best done before a battle begins.”

  Eamon stopped pacing and stared at him. “Well, we didn’t, did we?” He shoved his hands through his hair. “And when it started, no one could find you,” he accused.

  “Huwen has forbidden us to use the Ruby.”

  “What?” Eamon whirled. “He’s mad.”

  “He says professional soldiers and a strong keep can repel peasants.”

  Eamon returned to pacing. Wenid had rarely seen the boy show more than indifference in almost any circumstance. This agitation was unlike him. “Do you believe him?”

  “Actually, I do, in this instance. They have no magiel.” He had Janatelle Falkyn, though her presence raised the question of what had happened to her sisters. “No prayer stone.”

  A blast resounded overhead, and again, the candlesticks rattled. “What’s that, then?”

  “Noise.”

  This seemed to calm the boy a little. “I still think we should pray. I’m going to the shrine.”

  “I want to be alert over the next few days. As should you.”

  “Why?”

  Because. He didn’t trust Huwen. The lion cub had discovered he had teeth. Small needles, to be sure, but Wenid was not just sure how sharp his nip could be. “It’s late. You should sleep.”

  Eamon’s brows lifted. “In this?”

  “It won’t affect us here.” He considered. “Do you need a sleep draft?”

  Eamon sat abruptly on a chair before the fire, tapping on its arm. “No.”

  “A dram of whiskey to calm your nerves?”

  He gave a short, sharp shake of his head. “No.”

  “Well, with your leave, Your Highness, I believe I will retire to my chambers.”

  The boy’s head turned. “Now?”

  “Yes.” The girl in the cell did not need Wenid to watch her; the guards would be sufficient as she slept. And it would be morning before she woke and gave him what he wanted. Besides, the cell was cold. Huwen had commanded Wenid to follow him like some kind of puppy, but Wenid was disinclined to cooperate. A nip of whiskey would help a natural sleep to find him. And the ungodly trebuchets the peasants were using were loud.

  Stay in the healer’s tent? Rennika had to smile. In what world did he expect her to do that?

  Meg.

  Was she still in the town, or had she escaped? Where would she go if she’d freed herself?

  Report to the king. Unless she was hurt.

  Uprisers surged up the hill, pushing with spell-fueled daring into the maze of buildings that clustered outside the town wall, to engage the new forces streaming from the gates. Only a few clusters of defending uprisers remained on the churned muck of the farmers’ fields near the healers’ tents, the command tent, and the war machines.

  Rennika flitted into a healers’ tent. Meg was not there. She left before she could be called upon, and ran to the next. She had to think like Meg.

  The Ruby. In Coldridge. A magiel and royal could use it to defeat the army with little or no fighting. Meg had gone to kill the magiel. Had she succeeded?

  How long had the battle been waging? Rennika looked up at the stars. Not long, but victory for the rebels had to be fast and decisive, or everything, the people’s stolen lands, their death tokens, everything, would be lost. Meg would be lost.

  But the prayer stone had not been used yet, or the battle would not still be engaged.

  Why had the king not used it?

  An explosion boomed almost beside her. Rennika dove to the earth, ears ringing, as a cart bearing a smooth iron log leapt on its wheels. Far behind the town wall—behind the castle wall—a shower of stones sprayed from the keep.

  The weapon she’d heard of in the camp. From Aadi.

  A strange-looking fat man directed a crew to reposition the machine.

  But if this little man could crush the keep—the king’s personal apartments—he might kill the city’s sovereign. The Ruby would be useless but safe. As long as it was elsewhere.

  How many more missiles could he launch before whichever royal governed Coldridge used the Ruby? Not many. The keep walls needed to come down on his next ball, or perhaps the one after, or the royals would use the prayer stone.

  “Sieur.” She scrambled forward.

  “Out of here.” Two heavy hands landed on her shoulders and she was lifted and shoved away from the machine. She stumbled over her heels into the mud. A soldier glowered down at her.

  The fat man had not heard her but continued to direct his men.

  “I can help,” Rennika cried. “I’m a magiel. I can—”

  The soldier snorted his disbelief. “Get away, urchin. We haven’t time to give you a proper beating right now.” He lifted a foot to kick her.

  She scooted back, out of range.

  But she didn’t need to tell this man she was a magiel. And she didn’t need permission.

  Tracing the wall lightly with her fingertips, Meg felt her way, one step at a time on the uneven stones, down the passage. Six doors identical to her own might have led to other cells or storage rooms. Then her foot bumped a stone step and she began to climb. She was wide awake and alert with a deep inhalation of Heartspeed. She played through her memory to construct her hasty descent.

  As she climbed, the stairs became more regular in height, and a gray light seeped around her when she reached a landing. Narrow corridors extended in two directions, one faintly illuminated from some distant light source—possibly a torch ensconced on the wall. Far off sounds of fighting reverberated off the stone. She must be in a servants’ stair. And the servants? Gone, called to their masters’ sides.

  The stairs continued upward into darkness. She followed them.

  A second landing, then a third, both similar to the first, all echoing with boots and shouts and the clash of swords. Following her memory of Wenid’s apartments, she felt her way along a passage, hoping she was traveling in the correct direction. At an intersection she recognized the corridor where she’d been arrested. Here, the sounds of fighting echoed only faintly from far below.

  In one direction, the hallway
ended at a double door. She turned in the opposite direction. Several closed doors stood between her and the central sweeping staircase, but no guards stood watch. Odd—she would have expected soldiers.

  A thunderclap boomed overhead, and the floor shivered, rattling statuary. Had the morning’s cold drizzle changed so radically to the violence of thunder and hail?

  Wenid’s door was the last one before the central staircase. She could not waste time creeping. Heart thumping, she walked as quickly and silently as possible along the tiled floor.

  The magiel’s double door. She’d been here—this morning?—with a vase of wilted flowers. Mouth dry, headache pounding, she reached for the door handle.

  Panicky voices from the floor below were more distinct, a soldier giving instructions, sending men to various points on the castle wall. Sulwyn’s army must be drawing the royal guards from their posts. A stroke of luck. So...the battle had begun. Those thunderclaps—trebuchet strikes? No, not from this distance.

  No matter. She had no time. She opened the door to Wenid’s suite.

  Within, a candle burned, its light glittering on gold leaf and marble, mahogany, and porcelain. A page dozed on a chair next to a door in the far wall. A fire burned low on a grate.

  She entered, easing the latch into its seat behind her.

  The candle flickered. Did the boy move?

  No.

  She barred the door to the corridor, wondering if doing so would protect her from interruption or trap her.

  She still held the Memory Loss crystal in her hand. Not an easy spell to administer: the boy would have to swallow it.

  But he slept on. Maybe there would be no need.

  Meg crept across the carpeted floor to the door by his slumped shoulder.

  The handle turned soundlessly beneath the soft pressure of her fingers.

  The boy started, eyes and mouth wide with surprise.

  She shoved the crystal onto his tongue, and he sputtered. Had he spit it out? She rammed her hand over his mouth and leaned on him, pushing him back in his chair.

  The page struggled under her weight, breathing sharply through his nose, trying to bite her hand and cry out. He wriggled down the chair, loosening her grip. “Help! Magiel!”

  No!

  She shoved him with both hands and he stumbled, knocking his head against the wall.

  She flung an arm out, catching his elbow as he scrambled past her, knocking over a small table, trying to reach the door to the corridor. She gripped his arm. He stumbled, and she fell on him.

  She rolled him onto his back, sat on his stomach and pinned his arms beneath her knees as he screamed and tried to kick her. “Stop screaming,” she whispered, and covered his mouth. He bit her.

  She pressed her thumbs onto the soft spot of his throat where his death token collar sat.

  His eyes bulged, tongue extended, and he redoubled his struggles, almost knocking her away.

  She held on, elbows locked, her full weight on his arms and throat.

  A clap of thunder blasted her ears and the room shuddered. No, not thunder. Something demonic.

  Gradually, his kicking weakened. His eyes lost focus. He stilled. She pulled away, panting, watching for him to twitch, but he lay still, staring at nothing.

  There was a long, narrow cloth on the table. She flicked her gaze at the door to the corridor. No sound. She pulled the cloth from the table and wrapped it as tightly as she could around his mouth. Any sounds he made would at least be inarticulate. She tied his hands behind his back with his decorative sash. The trussing might slow him down.

  The boy lay disheveled and inert when she was done. The smudge of ghostly interest fluttered near him.

  Had...

  Had she killed him? Her pulse sped.

  No. She wasn’t strong enough for that. She hadn’t held his throat closed long enough. She couldn’t have.

  Time. No time. Someone would hear, send reinforcements. Her magic would catch up with her. She left the boy, hastening to her feet. Still no pounding from the corridor, no sound from the bedroom.

  She entered Wenid’s chamber.

  By midnight, the uprisers had breached the city wall, gains far beyond Sulwyn’s imagination.

  Then Coldridge’s gates opened and spewed forth a stream of royal infantry. Now the folly of night warfare surrounded him, a melee of bodies impossible to distinguish in the dark. Still mounted, he urged his mare forward into the fray, dispatching two men with disabling cuts, his horse turning in the chaos. His man-at-arms fell and was trampled trying to free his death token. Sulwyn was too far engaged to intervene. The stink of horses and blood and excrement and mud stained the air.

  A lull in his immediate vicinity.

  He drew back to survey the battlefield—

  Someone in the middle of the field, sprinting. Toward the broken battlement.

  A girl?

  In the faint starlight, she ran across the field from Orville’s cannon, ducking past the odd skirmish that still raged there.

  Sulwyn had the sickening feeling...

  Gods. It was Rennika.

  An explosion sounded from the cannon, and the horses screamed, his own mare dodging sideways.

  An Arcan horseman bore down on him with his sword. Sulwyn parried, turned in his saddle, his horse bumping up close to the man. He shoved his dirk into the man’s gut. Warmth gushed over his knee.

  He whirled, trying to see the girl again. “Waymond!” It was no use. None of the men could hear him in the din. None could extract himself.

  She was a child. A magiel, a Falkyn.

  An upriser foot soldier took a blade to the neck, and blood fountained into the air, spurting over Sulwyn’s boot and jacket.

  There was a gap. Ahead. He spurred his horse.

  A horseman—a royal?—charged him from the side. Sulwyn pulled his mare short and he took a stinging cut to his arm. Someone sliced the man, shoulder to gut.

  Again, Sulwyn spurred his horse toward the gap, through the city gate, now remarkably free of fighting. He turned his beast into the lane, skirting clashes. Flames crackled from the upper windows of a shop, and his mount shied.

  Rennika, if it was her, must have entered the town west of him, where the wall had been breached. Why? By all the Gods in Heaven—

  ...she’d come to find Meg. Of course.

  Where would she search?

  He urged his horse along the interior of the city wall, slashing at any who engaged him.

  There. The mound of rubble that had once been the town wall. Rennika could enter...but she wasn’t here. He turned his horse in a circle. Where...

  The castle. She’d deduce Meg had gone to the castle.

  Rennika and her sisters had lived in Coldridge a year ago. She would know the streets. He turned his mount up hill.

  CHAPTER 41

  The upriser cavalry and infantry surged toward the city gates, where royal reinforcements spewed from the city. Rennika darted across the almost-deserted field and up the bushy hillside to the first houses at the edge of the town. A blast behind her and a high whine overhead preceded an explosion somewhere in the city. Reflexively she ducked, and staying low, kept running. She reached the shops on the crooked streets of Coldridge’s outer town. As she dashed from corner to doorway to step, swordsmen seemed to take her for a frightened child in the dark, and ignored her.

  She climbed the mound of broken stone that had once been a battlement and scrambled up among the legs of the clashing warriors, ducking their blades. More than once she used her talent to find a moment in time when a passage between two scuffles opened briefly, through which she could scurry. She made her way, stumbling on fallen stones, through the inner town, from the wall toward the castle. A weird ruddy light painted the streets as buildings crackled with flame. Despite living here for weeks or more after leaving Orumon, twice she became disoriented in the flickering dark and found herself in dead end alleys.

  But the keep, thick-walled as it was, was built into the castle
curtain wall. She flattened herself against its fitted stones just as a barrage burst overhead. A spray of rock and pebbles flung themselves into space, raining down on the cobbles.

  She closed her eyes, pressing as much of her body against the frigid wall as she could, reaching in, feeling for times when ill-fitted niches, crumbled corners, and shifts of restless foundations sent cracks up through its structure. Found them, multiplied them, held one time against another, against another, against another...

  Held the cracks, held them, waited...

  Until an iron ball overhead struck the crenel.

  Meg slipped through Wenid’s door, closing it behind her and willing her trembling to stop. She scanned the lavishly-appointed room in the ruddy light from the hearth. The bed was massive, enclosed by heavy velvet curtains. Four tall windows admitted no light, and the chill spring night was kept at bay by embers on the hearth.

  There. On a table stood the remains of a meal. A goblet.

  She fished the poison from its hiding place in her small clothes, uncorked the vial, wafted the sickly scent to confirm its identity, and poured the contents into the goblet. She added a few drops of whiskey to the cup to mask its smell and crept across the thick carpets. Opened the bed curtains.

  In the gloom within, a figure snored softly beneath a down duvet.

  “Your Grace,” she said in a low voice.

  The magiel slept on. How could anyone sleep in this clamor?

  She touched his shoulder, a gentle rousing. “Chancellor Col.”

  He shifted, snorted, started to rise and fell back onto his pillow.

  “Sire. Your medicine.” She slid an arm under his shoulders, prompting him to raise himself, and touched the cup to his lips.

  He grunted and opened his lips, frowning.

  She tilted the goblet and he swallowed, gagging on the whiskey.

  “A bit more,” she soothed, tilting the cup higher.

  He gulped, choking, and she upended the cup.

  “There.” She pulled the cup away. That was surprisingly easy.

  The magiel thrashed in his tangled bedcovers, choking. “I have no medicine!” he managed, furiously extracting himself from the snarl.