by K.M. Weiland
Chapter Forty-Three
The city’s cobblestones rang beneath fleeing footsteps and the clatter of hooves as Allara followed Quinnon through the Taïs Quarter to the palace. People mobbed the streets. Hailstones crashed all around them, some big enough to chip the cobbles. A window exploded overhead, and the glass fragments caught in her hair.
The Rievers huddled against her back. “Ricotée,” the older one grated, “Mactalde won’t even need to float out his artillery after this bombardment.”
The younger Riever, the one called Pitch, picked the shards from her hair. “What if Orias and Chris can’t get across the bridge?”
“They’ll get across.” She made herself believe it.
Only a few of the panicked citizens fought the current to bolster the defenses at the bridge. Most of them jostled east toward the protection of the capitol buildings and north toward the inner city districts of the Hub.
“Move yourselves!” Quinnon bellowed, but the crowd’s uproar swallowed his words.
A hefty man, dressed in hose and a black velvet doublet, shoved a boy against Allara’s horse. The animal, already irritated by the press of the crowd, humped its back and kicked. When the boy screamed in fright, people cursed both Allara and the man in the velvet doublet.
Her throat clamped around a cry of frustration. Was this what Lael had come to? A country of arrogant cowards? Once upon a time, every man in Lael would have been proud to fight for his country. Now, they either prostituted themselves as Nateros’s spies and saboteurs, or they fled like children running from goblins.
She urged her horse forward. The crowd shrieked and scattered, but they opened a path to the square in front of the palace. In the square’s center, the fawa-radi fountain sprayed a circular curtain of water from its heart of fire. Both water and flames whipped in the wind. The hail broke against the fountain’s center sculpture, and chunks of ice and granite splattered into the basin. She guided the horse to the fountain, and he leapt onto the wide stone ledge. The Rievers grabbed at her coat collar to keep their balance.
She raised her hand to the crowd below. “Outside our walls, our soldiers are falling by the hundreds! We must hold the bridge to give them time to retreat to safety!” The crowd hurried past, and her words turned shrill. “Every man of you should be standing beside them, helping them fight!”
“Enough of your tripe!” someone shouted. “What right’ve you got to be telling us these things?”
The crowd turned toward her. Fear twisted their faces. Panic darkened into blame and anger. Once, they would have rallied to the Searcher. Now they wouldn’t believe her, much less fight for her.
The wind blew her wet hair into her mouth. “The longer we hold the bridge, the more time we buy for the city! My father is bringing troops from the north!”
Pitch stuck one foot into the laces at the back of her coat and hoisted himself above her shoulder. “You have to listen to her! If you can defend the bridge, you can keep the Koraudians out of your city!”
“Do you want the Koraudians to overrun Glen Arden?” she cried.
“That’s what you want, no doubt!”
“What we want is no more Searchers!”
“No more traitors!”
The words became a roar. Someone flung a hailstone at her. It struck her horse’s haunch, and his hindquarters skidded into the pool. More stones flew.
“You reekin’ traitor!” someone shouted at her. “You led Mactalde right to us! It’s her fault! We wouldn’t even have this war, if it wasn’t for her!”
Stones clacked against the fountain’s basin and splashed into the water. She urged the horse forward. He scrambled over the side of the fountain and jumped back to the street. Hailstones rained from all around—from the earth as well as the sky now.
“Kill her! Kill the Searcher! She deserves to die!”
“Stay those stones!” Quinnon galloped around the fountain to stand between her and the crowd. “No man who raises a hand against the Searcher will find shelter in the palace!”
“Bah!” A lanky youth stood up, a hailstone in one hand. “She betrays us to the wolves, then locks us outside to face their fangs! What’s happened to honor? The Searchers used to put the people before themselves!”
“The people used to give their Searchers the respect they’re due!”
“What respect’s she due?”
“That’s right!” someone else shouted. “Even she don’t believe in the holy things no more!”
The lingering pain from her concussion rose and fell inside her skull like the thrum of the tide. She opened her mouth to say—what?—a denial?—a refutation of the doubts that had been her constant companions since she was old enough to speak? She ducked a hailstone someone threw. It glanced against her cheekbone.
“Och.” Quinnon hurled himself into the crowd, after the perpetrator.
She laid her rein to the horse’s neck and he broke into a run.
“What about the Gifted?” Pitch shouted at the crowd. “You believe in him, don’t you?”
Raz grunted. “People only believe in heroes when they win.”
The palace gates swept open, and the palace Guard formed a line to beat back the crowds. Guardsmen were already squared up in the center of the yard, their shields over their heads in a protective testudo.
She reached the ranking officer and swung out of her saddle. The Rievers jumped down behind her.
“These are all the men you have?” she asked. “The bridge is going to fall any moment!”
The officer tilted his shield to cover her. “My lady, we can’t even get past the courtyard right now.”
“We have to buy time! The longer we can hold off the Koraudians, the more men we can save.” And the greater chance Chris had of reaching safety. But she didn’t say that. He was the only reason to hope right now, and she couldn’t afford to rob anyone, including herself, of that hope for even a moment.
Quinnon galloped up. “Get your men out of here, Lieutenant! If these madmen won’t clear the path in front of you, clear it yourselves. Anyone who resists—drag him along with you and force him into the fight.” He looked back at the gatemen. “Nobody comes in through those gates until the Guard has a clear exit! Nobody, you hear me?”
A groom darted into the hail to snatch Allara’s reins, and she and the Rievers ran to the castle. She shoved through the double doors so hard they crashed back against the walls and clipped a heavy floor vase. It tipped and smashed against the marble parquetry.
Right now, she had no way to help Chris, no way to make certain he crossed the bridge before the Guard was forced to detonate it. The only thing she could do was watch, and the only place from which she could catch a glimpse of the bridge was the southern parapets.
She lunged up the stairs, two at a time, pushing past servants and councilmen and high-ranking nobles. She passed her own quarters on the third floor and hardly paused to see the chaos beyond the open doors.
“My lady!” Esta cried. “The hail! The windows, all the windows are breaking!” The pop of broken glass punctuated her screeches.
Allara kept going. She reached the southern wing and entered the shadows of Eroll’s room.
“Alla—” Halfway to his feet, he dragged at the bed hangings and pulled himself upright. His chest heaved against the bandages. “What is it? I saw the signals through the window. What’s going on?”
She crossed the room to reach him before he could lose his balance. “What do you think you’re doing? Get back in bed.”
Sweat sprang up at his hairline and glistened his pasty skin. “Not until somebody tells me what’s going on. Sounds like the whole city is being shelled!”
“Not too far off, if you’re asking me,” Raz muttered.
She grasped Eroll’s arms and eased him back to the bed, facedown. “It’s hailing. It’s just hail. Now lie still.”
He flopped against the pillows with a groan, but managed to grab her wrist. “Mactalde. It’s Mactalde, isn’
t it? He’s killed the Gifted?”
“No.” She snatched her hand free. “Mactalde is not going to kill him. Never say that to me again. Never.”
These doubts, these wretched, gnawing, pervasive doubts—would they never cease? Her doubts, Eroll’s doubts, Quinnon’s doubts, even Chris’s doubts. When had something so simple as belief become so wrenchingly unachievable? Her chest felt like it was afire.
“Lie down. And don’t move.” She threw the blankets over him and pushed through the balcony’s glass doors.
The northern wind had kept the hail from smashing the windows and doors on this side of the palace, but stones the size of small melons piled against the balustrade. She climbed onto the railing. Twelve leagues away, across the choppy water of Taïs Bay, the bridge was lost in a blur of rain.
“What do you see?” Raz clambered up beside her. “I can’t see anything.”
Pitch climbed up on her other side and snapped open a diminutive spyglass. “Allow me, my lady.”
“There it goes!” Raz cried.
The grate of stones giving way reached her only as a dull rumble. She snatched Pitch’s spyglass and watched through the tiny circle as the bridge buckled beneath a mass of screaming men.
Please, please, please, let him be all right. Let Chris make it to safety in time. Just let this one man survive.
If he survived, she would believe. She would stuff her doubts and her fears away where even she could not cling to their comfort. She would put to shame Nateros, with its taunts about her failures. She would choose faith over fear, no matter how much she had to sacrifice. She would believe the God of all was true to His promises.
“Prove to me,” she whispered. “Prove to me You’re real. Give me a reason to believe.”
The bridge twisted and snapped. Suspension lines recoiled. The turrets at either end toppled into the water and men and horses spilled over the railings. They penetrated the dark water. Foam swarmed up in their wakes, and the debris crashed in on top of them.
Pitch grabbed at Allara’s coat. “What do you see? Tell me what you see!”
“The bridge is down.” She lowered the glass. From here, it was impossible to distinguish faces in the dark knot of humanity wrangling at the gates. The Guard ran through the streets in pursuit of Koraudians who had slipped into the city
“The redoubts,” Eroll’s voice rasped from the doorway behind. “They’re taking the redoubts.”
She turned to find him hunched against the doorframe, his blanket clutched to his bandaged chest. He listed forward and barely caught his balance by shoving one foot in front of him.
“What are you doing?” She leapt down and tilted her shoulder under his arm before he could take another step.
“Look,” he said.
She cast a glance at Faramore Flats and the redoubts on either side of what had once been the bridge. Those who had been stranded on the shore fled through the hail. Mactalde had been wise enough to secure the redoubts even as the fight at the bridge raged, and now only Koraudians could find sanctuary there.
The Laelers trapped outside the city fell by the hundreds. Those who did not die beneath the hail were ripped to pieces as soon as they were within rifle shot of the redoubts. Carried away by the northbound wind, the screams and the firing reached Glen Arden as a ghost of a sound.
She turned her face against the hollow of Eroll’s shoulder.
He could not raise his arms to hold her, but he laid his cheek against her head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said what I did. I’m sure he’s alive. He is the Gifted after all.”
She wrapped her arms around his waist, loosely, to keep from hurting him, and closed her eyes. She painted white the vision of death that stained the backside of her eyelids and cleared her mind. For just a second, she caught hold of a moment of peace in the midst of chaos, and in that moment she felt the tiny, faraway twinge in the back of her mind—the tingle that meant Chris was alive.
_________
Chris galloped through the crush outside the palace gates. Somewhere along the way, a soldier had shoved a shield into his hands, and he held it above his head as he rode. The hail thumping against it wrenched at his grip, and his arm cramped for the dozenth time. All around him, the piazza writhed with sodden, screaming humanity. He had to rein up to keep from trampling an old man.
Anger weighted his stomach. “If these people had come out to protect their city, we could have held off the Koraudians long enough to bring in all our men!”
Orias rode behind him. “Nateros has been poisoning this city from the inside out. They don’t know who they want to follow anymore, much less who they want to fight.”
“It’s the Gifted!” someone shouted.
Bloodied faces turned in his direction. People thronged his horse, crowding him to a standstill. They flailed their hands and scrabbled their fingernails against his legs, his saddle, his horse.
“Help us! The God of all have pity, help us! We’ll die out here!”
A hailstone smashed into the tip of his shield and nearly tore it from his grip. “Go back to your homes!” he shouted. “There’s no shelter for you here!”
“The palace! Let us into the palace! We deserve to shelter there just as much as the devil-taken Searcher!”
Inside the courtyard, Quinnon stood in the palace entrance. If he were here, then Allara and Worick must have made it safely into the city as well. Chris breathed.
“Clear a path for the Gifted!” a Guardsman roared.
The people jostled closer, packed so tightly that those struck by the hail remained upright, crushed in place by their neighbors. “Help us!”
Orias growled a word in his own language and dismounted. With the handle of his axe and his own bare hand, he shoved through the crowd on foot to reach the head of Chris’s horse.
“Move!” His ears showed blue beneath the tangle of his hair.
People either scrambled out of his way or were thrown aside. Chris’s horse lurched into a trot and filled the gap behind Orias. The battered line of soldiers holding the crowd back from the palace gates parted just enough to let them pass.
Chris dismounted, crossed the courtyard, and climbed the steps.
Quinnon looked up and down his length, in what could have either been disappointment or relief. “Mactalde?” he asked.
Chris shook his head. “He got away.” Again.
Quinnon’s lip twitched. “And now you’re trapped in the middle of an island. Be interesting to see how you’re going to go about killing him from here.”
“If I can’t touch him, then at least he can’t touch us either. We can stay here in safety until Tireus gets here with more troops.”
“Aye. Safety.” Quinnon cast a glance at the storm.
Orias propped a foot one step up and leaned against his knee. “Mactalde will bring windboats and float his artillery out within range of the city.”
“Why should he?” Quinnon said. “We’re trapped here. He can ravage the surrounding country at his leisure, then come back and raze Glen Arden. If the city doesn’t tear itself apart by then.”
The day-old flesh wound in Chris’s side pulsed. “Glen Arden can hold together until Tireus gets here.”
“Aye. Keep telling yourself that, laddie.”
Outside the gates, the people hammered against the barrier of shields, and the line of soldiers staggered.
Someone shouted, “You let a blue in to safety, but you keep lawful Glen Ardeners out!”
Quinnon slung his rifle into the crook of his arm. “Enough of your poundings!”
“You’re not in command! The Gifted will let us in!”
Chris turned away from the crowd to the palace’s open doors.
Inside, Allara and several noblemen stood in discussion halfway up the staircase. She caught sight of him and reached to steady herself against a six-foot statue of a bird with upraised wings. She offered a tiny smile and mouthed, You’re safe.
A thread of dried blood darkened her
cheekbone, and she looked beleaguered. No doubt the officials were in as much turmoil as the rest of the city, and, in addition to her own high rank, she was the last person to have been in contact with the king. Of course, they all wanted her to tell them what was going on.
Guardsmen ran up and down the outside steps. They saluted Quinnon hastily and shoved into his hands missives from their officers. With his permission, some slipped on past and hastened into the castle to deliver their messages to even bigger brass. The cavernous foyer echoed with voices. Everyone had something to say, and no one seemed to know what to do.
Outside, the people beat farther forward, and the line of Guardsmen staggered a bit.
Chris turned to Quinnon. “Why keep all these people out? Can’t they shelter in some of the outer buildings until the storm passes?”
“What makes you think any of them deserve sanctuary in these walls? They’re rabble-rousers and cowards, every one. I’ve never been in the habit of paying out protection to that like.”
“Some are innocent.”
Quinnon’s nostrils flared. “Right now, all that’s separating that mob from Allara is my line of soldiers. If you want to just open up the path and let half of them tear through her home until they find her, you’re going to have a rotted lot to answer for.”
Chris scanned the courtyard. “What if we let in the women and the children? And the old men. If the men of fighting age can’t defend their own city, then they can stand out there and get battered to death for all I care.”
In between scribbling messages on couriers’ tablets, Quinnon cast him two quick searching looks. Then he nodded. “All right, I’ll let that many of them pass. You can take command here.”
Chris raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know about that. Tireus has made it pretty clear he’s not too happy about me taking command of anything.”
“Tireus ain’t here.” Quinnon stabbed a final blot of ink with his fingertip stylus. “And I’ve got to go find the garrison commander. So make yourself useful.” He pushed past Orias and started down the steps. “We’re running out of time, lad. You have to start putting things right, and you can start here.”
From anyone else, that might have sounded like a taunt or a reproach. But from Quinnon it almost—almost—sounded like he was giving Chris a chance to make good.
Chris took a breath and faced the Guardsmen in the courtyard. “Pass all women and children and any man not of fighting age.”
The hailstorm was slackening, and the men left in the courtyard wouldn’t have much longer to withstand the bombardment. Whatever their injuries, they would still be far better off than if they had shouldered their duties and run to fight at the bridge.
A Guardsman with a black courier’s shoulder sash brushed past. “Pardon me. I need to find the Princess Allara.”
Chris stopped him. “What for?”
The courier glanced up, recognized him with a start, and saluted. “Pardon me, sir. Captain Arness from the South Shore Precinct sent me. Everyone’s wanting to know what’s happening.”
“And Captain Arness answers directly to the princess, does he?”
The courier squirmed. “No, sir. But we were there when she entered the city at Faramore Bridge, so we know she knows what’s going on.”
“Never mind the princess. She’s busy. We’re all busy. Give me your tablet.” He scribbled a response to Arness. “You can take that back to your captain, and next time tell him to go through chain of command. He’s not the only one in this city who’s wondering what’s going on. We’ll have every guard station in the city briefed before dawn. All right?”
The courier snapped a salute. “Yes, sir.”
Chris turned back into the foyer.
Allara descended from her meeting on the stairs and met him halfway. “We have to pull ourselves into some kind of order. No one knows what they’re doing.” She looked past his shoulder at the first trickle of Glen Ardeners entering the courtyard. Beneath her clothing, her muscles contracted into hard lines. “What are they doing?”
“We’re letting some of them in.”
“Why?” The word was harsh, clipped.
“I can’t leave all of them out in the hail.” He took her elbow and guided her toward the stairs. They needed to start talking to the rest of the bigwigs around here and try to get people briefed and things sorted out as quickly as possible.
Her hand strayed to her sleeve, where she kept her little spring-loaded pistol. “We should go somewhere else.”
“I agree.” Orias’s bulk hovered at Chris’s shoulder.
She glanced at him, then back to Chris. “Mactalde?”
“No.” He couldn’t keep the disappointment from his voice. “Not this time.”
“Not this time.” She didn’t have to tell him what she was thinking.
They were running out of time, and they both knew it.
