He stood up, resting the knuckles of both hands on the edge of the table. “My love, I will give you the same advice you would give me in this situation. Gina is not the only Champion we have sent out. There are others who need your attention, as well. She is both trained and intelligent. You have done all you can.
Now, turn to another, and know that whatever happens in Acadia, we have done what we can.”
She sighed, and cleared the vision in the bowl with a wave of her hand over the water, making it once again crystal clear. “I’m afraid we’ll only really know what has happened when either the spells against my scrying clearly vanish, or darkness comes over the whole land.”
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“You still won’t be able to do anything about it,” he pointed out. “And what is more, we have the troop and the Children of the North Wind ready to take us there if the boundary protections do come down.” He came around to her side of the table and clasped both her hands in his. “Trust in your training. Trust in your intelligence. And most of all, trust in the people you yourself trained to do their work.”
She sighed, looked into his eyes and squeezed the hands holding hers. “Aye,” she said. “You’re right.
You’re right. Now, who else do I need to look in on this night?”
He kissed her, long and deeply, before letting go of her hands. “Sir Micahel, that we sent into Vraimont to stand as Champion to the Lady Sephira. He should be there by now, if you, of your courtesy, could look…?”
She smiled again, and took up Micahel’s token of a sword in flames. Clasping it between her palms, she invoked the essence of the veteran Champion and gazed deeply into the bowl, as the clear image of the countryside of the Kingdom of Vraimont appeared. Together she and Alexander leaned over and peered into the miniature landscape.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It was time. Things were spiraling out of control in Acadia, and they couldn’t wait any longer.
The final straw—the final sign—was that the last of the so-called virgins that Adamant had collected was nothing of the sort. Clenestra was someone from Cassiopeia’s court that Andie knew by reputation. A rather…tarnished reputation to be precise, and Andie could not for a moment imagine how the girl had passed as a virgin until she calmed down and started talking to them instead of shrieking at the top of her lungs.
And at that point, Andie knew that Solon or her mother—probably both—had to be stopped. Because Clenestra made it abundantly clear that there was no possible way that her being chosen for the sacrifice was due to chance.
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She made the point, in anger so vivid and raw it practically scorched as effectively as dragon-flames, that she was not and had not been for some time, a virgin. That in fact, she had gotten a half-dozen lovers to swear she wasn’t, and still they took her away and left her for Adamant.
She knew very well why she had been chosen. It was because her mother had been a little less than flattering about Cassiopeia’s increasingly open infatuation with Solon. “She called the Queen a doe in season,” Clenestra said bitterly. “But it was me who paid the penalty for Mother’s loose lips. It wasn’t more than a day later when they came for me, and they didn’t even pretend it was due to the lottery.”
So the Queen and Solon were no longer attempting to hide the fact that those who were chosen to go to the dragon were not chosen by lot—they were chosen by whether or not they had offended the Queen and her Chief Adviser.
The Sisterhood knew now that if they did not act soon, they would never be able to act at all.
The next night was moon-dark. There would be no better night for their purposes.
Andie spent a long night weeping on Peri’s shoulder. Not just because of what was going on back in Ethanos, but because no matter what, she was about to face changes that she didn’t want to deal with.
No matter what, she was going to lose Peri. And it felt like the bottom was about to drop out of her world.
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sobbed into his neck, her eyes so raw she could hardly see out of them, listening to his comfort and encouragement, how could she tell him that her despair came from her loving him more deeply and more surely than she had ever loved anyone before?
“You’ll be fine….” he whispered.
I’ll be alone! her heart wailed.
“We’ll beat this sorcerer….”
And then you and Adam will fly away forever.
“You will be a great and good Queen.”
And I’ll live the rest of my life at the side of some man I barely know, who I could never love half as much as I love you….
His soothing words helped not at all, and she could not tell him why.
Neither of them slept. And the next day, both dozed fitfully while Adam and Gina put the Sworn Sisterhood through the last training drill they would ever have, studied the map that Andie had created for them, and looked worried while trying not to look worried.
As the sun set, they all gathered in the arena. Peri stood at the top of the grassy bowl and looked down on all of them, a circle of torches at his feet. Andie’s heart ached to see how regal and noble he looked.
How like a King.
Far more like a King than she could ever look like a Queen.
She would give anything to have such a King at her side. Anything.
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intoned, his voice pitched to carry. “We have all, all of us been used and abused by the tyrants. There are countless others in that city who could say the same, but none of them have the courage and the conviction and the love of Acadia that we have. We will fight these tyrants. We will take the battle into their own halls. And we will win, because we can do nothing less. We strike for ourselves, for our homes and for Acadia, and we will strike for the heart and kill this tyranny it its bed.”
The girls erupted into cheers, although at this point, the cheers sounded so nervous that Andie suspected they would have cheered almost anything.
Andie had expected a longer speech than that, but Peri was probably a better judge of how long he could hold a nervous audience than she was. It was going to be hard enough on most of them as it was, waiting for their turns to be flown in. The dragons could only take three of them at a time, each—crammed in uncomfortably on their backs in front of the wings. Gina was one of the first six to go, of course, because they were going to have to take the watch-post up on the top of the cliff, and do it before the Guard there could raise any kind of alarm.
And that was when the fox unexpectedly presented himself. “Take me,” he said, staring up at Gina and Adam insistently.
Adam looked down at him. Andie expected him to ask why—but he didn’t.
“I was hoping you would volunteer,” he rum-
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bled, “but you are a tiny thing, and I did not want to assume.”
The fox pulled himself up to his full height. “I may be small, but I can do things no one else can do.
I will scout out the Guards for you,” he said. “I will lead the Sworn Sisterhood to them. I can do this. I want to do this.”
Adam blinked down at him. Despite her distress, Andie had to smother a smile at the little fox’s deadly seriousness.
“You can, and you will,” Adam replied, with a little bob of his head. “And you will show all of us how even the smallest of us can be as brave as a lion.”
And so, when the first lot left, it was with the fox held on Gina’s lap.
Andie waited with the rest in the arena, pacing the grass nervously. Ethanos wasn’t that far as the dragon flew, actually. According to Peri, the road she and Gina had been forced to take wound back and forth and around so many times that it covered ten times the straight-line distance. He and Adam had assured her that th
ey could get all the girls into place before midnight.
Yet the time crawled by, and the longer they took, the more certain she was that something had gone horribly wrong. If Peri was hurt—worse, if Peri was dead—
“Fewmets,” said a voice in the air above her, and she ducked her head as Peri backwinged down to land with a thud beside her.
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“What—” she started to wail.
He turned his head toward her and huffed out his breath reassuringly. “There wasn’t one Guard there, there were two. One watching the seaward side, and one watching the land. Adam and Gina and I had to devise a whole new strategy. We landed and clung to the cliff face just below the top. They went up the stairs and surprised the guards, then we took off and landed again with the girls and managed to subdue them.” Peri shook his head like a wet dog. “Harder than I thought it would be, but no one is hurt.”
She just looked at him fearfully, thinking of all the people in the Guard that were her friends.
He touched her cheek with his muzzle. “No, not even the Guards. Bumps on the heads, but no permanent damage and not a lot of blood lost.
Scratches at most.”
She sighed with relief and threw her arms around his neck, and he curved his neck to hold her against his chest for a moment. But a moment was all he had—the next lot had to go, and go quickly, and so he was off again.
Andie was in the last lot of five, and had to share Peri with the newest girl, Clenestra, who was going not because she knew how to fight, but because she’d be in more danger if she was left behind without the dragons to protect her from the things in the Wyrding Lands. And the flight was—strange.
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clung on for dear life as he leapt into the sky, expecting him to jerk upward with his surge of wings, only to drop back between wingbeats.
But he didn’t. Once the initial surge got him into the air, he flew more like a butterfly than an eagle; it was almost as if he were weightless, and his wings were only there to propel him forward. The flight as a consequence had a curiously dreamlike quality to it, quite as if she and Peri were gliding along in the darkness between the stars—
It was spoiled only by the other girl clutching at her middle until she was practically squeezed in two.
How Peri was able to see in the dark she had no idea. She didn’t even know they were near the cliff until she looked down and saw the lights of the Palace, city and harbor below them. Then it was a long, slow spiral downward, like a leaf falling from a tree, a sudden bout of buffeting as Peri backwinged to a landing, and then—they were down.
Cleo was waiting for them, but no one else. She shoved a dagger into the new girl’s hand and took them to where the two Guards were tied up, unconscious, in the shelter. Neither of them looked like anyone Andie knew, but for a moment, when she saw how heavily they were sleeping, she feared the worst—
Then she caught a strong smell of wine from them.
“What…” she began.
Cleo grinned. “Helena’s idea. She stood over them and made them drink until they were stupid and passed out. They should be safe enough for you to One Good Knight
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keep an eye on, Clenestra. Princess, we need you to persuade some of these fellows that they need to come over to our side. Or at least see if there is anyone you recognize among them who might recognize you. Come on—”
Peri was already gone, so she followed Cleo down the switchback stairs she knew so well, her heart pounding and the sour taste of fear in her mouth, with no idea of what to expect when she got to the bottom.
What she found was half a dozen of the Sworn Sisters holding torches, looking grim-faced and businesslike, and at least two dozen Guards trussed up like geese going to market. And one, at least, she recognized.
“Thesus!” she exclaimed, but in a whisper.
At the sound of her voice, the guard jerked his head around and stared. His face grew white. He gasped.
And he fainted.
It took some time after he had been revived to assure him that she was not a ghost nor an illusion, nor some kind of baleful spirit masquerading as Andromeda.
It was only when she reminded him how her first, clumsy set of lenses looked that he got some color back, and began to look convinced.
“You are my Princess,” he said, and bent his head in homage as best he could.
She took a chance then, since there was no one there to tell her not to, and cut him loose. He shook out his muscles and went to one knee, looking up at her.
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“Princess,” he said gravely. “Since you—in the past weeks things have been bad, very bad. Most of the Guard has been replaced with street-sweepings and scum from the docks.” He glared at some of the men who were within his range of vision. “There are a few men here whom I trust, if you will trust me to take them down into the city.” His head was up, and his eyes were fixed on hers. “We can find the rest of the Guards that were dismissed. We can rouse our friends, and they can rouse theirs. By morning, we will have an army.”
By morning, all this will be over, and if it is not, it will be too late, she thought. Well, too late for her.
Perhaps not too late to save Acadia, though.…
“Go,” she told him. The others looked at her nervously but didn’t contradict her. He cut four more men loose—
Then he and those four ruthlessly and efficiently knocked each of the others unconscious with the blow of a sword-hilt to the temple.
“That will keep them quiet, Princess,” he said, then kissed her hand. “Farewell. When you see me next, you will be Queen.”
He and the four with him vanished into the night.
And that, of course, was the moment when the entire Palace seemed to erupt with cries and the sound of fighting.
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through the halls in all directions, shrieking and screaming. Some clutched belongings (or loot), some held nothing at all, some were clearly Guardsmen and just as clearly were looking for whatever they could find to steal. There were small fires burning here and there, but fortunately the Palace was mostly made of stone, which meant the fires were largely confined to draperies or furnishings. But the stench of burning filled the air, the corridors were thick with black smoke, and people were blundering into one another, fighting without even knowing who they were fighting or why.
It was a nightmare, and Andie was alone in it.
By choice.
She wanted to try to reach Cassiopeia before the others found her. If there was any chance that her mother was innocent, duped, she had to know. And if she wasn’t—if she had done all these horrible things of her own free will…
Well, Andie had to know that, too. And she had learned that slung stones could kill.
Somewhere, Gina and the best of the fighters were trying to find Solon. The rest had followed the fox when he had called for help, so presumably if they hadn’t reached Gina they were at least trying to. The fox hadn’t been at all clear about what exactly had gone wrong—he had babbled something about monsters and Gina needing them, and then led the rest off to Gina, probably assuming that Andie was following.
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Palace. If there truly were monsters out there, then Gina and the rest would have to lure them out to where the dragons could be of some help.
In the cacophony, Andie couldn’t tell what was going on. She was just going to have to trust that Gina knew what she was doing…that she and Adam had some sort of plan in case everything went wrong…and that Peri was somehow safe.
Twice, when she saw lone Guards that stood between her and the Queen’s chambers
, her sling-shot eliminated that obstacle, and she could only hope as she passed their prone bodies that she had only knocked them unconscious.
She had gotten in via the kitchen, and had blundered around desperately, dashing from one bit of cover to another until she found herself in a corridor she recognized. Now, with her stomach knotted in fear, her eyes burning from the smoke, she watched helplessly from behind a column while the two Guards at the door to the Queen’s Chambers shoved panicking nobles and servants aside and slashed at anyone that even looked like he was going to attack.
With shaking hands, she readied her sling and tucked a lead bullet in the pocket. But even if she took down one, the other would be warned and he would probably come straight for her.
They’ll kill me before I can even get close.
But even as she thought that, a huge wild-eyed brute also in the uniform of the Guard appeared at the other end of the corridor and charged them.
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They turned at the last minute and saw him.
Andie screamed in horror and hid her face behind the column, the sound of her cry lost in the noise as anyone else who happened to be in the corridor decided it was the wrong place to be and elected to climb over or bludgeon the others with pieces of furniture.
Then, suddenly, there was silence.
At least, in the immediate vicinity.
Andie peeked around the column, and her stomach twisted. She shoved her hand against her mouth as bile burned her throat.
Half a dozen bodies at least were lying in front of the door to the Queen’s Chambers—the three Guards, and whoever else had gotten mixed up in the fight and couldn’t get free before they were cut down.
No…
She wanted to sit down and howl. She wanted to weep until there were no tears left in her. Most of all she wanted to run away, run far, far away from all of this until she came to a place that had never heard of Solon, Cassiopeia or Acadia.
But she did none of those, because this might be her only chance. While the corridor was still empty, she dashed down it, tried the door, found it unlocked and hurled herself inside.
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