by K.M. Weiland
Chapter Forty-Seven
Rumbling filled Chris’s bones. Caught for an instant between worlds, his mind thought he was dreaming. But then he remembered: he didn’t dream anymore.
His body was flung from the bed, and he ripped fully awake. He rolled across the rug, anchored one hand against the bed, and dragged himself to his feet. The bed’s canopy fell onto his head. The window shutters cracked and splintered. Stones rained from the ceiling, and paintings and sculptures crashed to the floor.
His brain scrambled to find some kind of sense in all this. Mactalde had brought his artillery into range overnight? He was shelling the castle itself?
He cast aside the bed curtain and lunged for the table where he had left his sword. The floor bucked beneath him and hurled him down.
Someone banged on the door.
“Chris!” Parry shouted. “Let me in! The door’s jammed! Bloody let me in! It’s an earthquake!”
A great big impossible earthquake. Now why hadn’t he thought of that?
He shoved to his feet, sword in hand, and half-rolled, half-scooted across the room. He squeezed his back to a divan and crunched his knees against his chest. “Get away from the door!” he shouted. “Get down beside one of those chairs out there and put your arms over your face!”
The ceiling collapsed. Wood planking and tables and chairs and candle globes flooded down from the room above. A rafter smashed onto the divan and cracked in two, slanting down to form a triangle of space around him. On the far side of the floor, a hole ripped open. The four-poster bed creaked and plummeted.
Was this what it looked like when the worlds were breaking?
Abruptly, as if someone had flipped a switch, the rumbling stopped. Dust and pebbles rained in the corner. In a room above, someone choked and coughed. A woman started wailing. He sucked in a breath—half-air, half-dust—and jumpstarted his heart.
He dragged his sword from beneath the rubble and inched back into the open. Where the outside wall had been, now only ragged stones remained. A pewter expanse of lake glinted through the haze.
“Chris?” Parry called from the other side of the door.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
He coughed on the dust and turned away. “What’s it like out there?”
Between him and the door, a highboy listed toward the chasm in the floor. The Orimere was in the bottom, right-hand drawer. His breath caught.
“Um,” Parry’s voice squeaked and cracked. “The ceiling fell down in a couple places!” He rattled the door. “And one side of the hallway completely collapsed!”
“Which side?” Chris lowered himself to his stomach and slid across the floor toward the highboy. “The stairs?”
“No, I can see the stairs.” The door rattled harder. Then, with a sudden pop, the whole thing gave way and flew open hard enough to smack Parry into the wall.
The highboy slid closer to the hole. Chris snagged the nearest leg and yanked out the bottom drawer. The floor beneath him creaked and sagged.
Parry squawked. “What are you doing?”
Chris flung the drawer behind him, praying the floorboards would hold, and rolled away. Beneath the highboy, the floor crumbled. He grabbed the drawer and Parry grabbed his leg, just as half the room gave a tortured shriek and plunged into nothing.
He snatched the Orimere’s leather purse from the drawer and hauled Parry to his feet. “C’mon.”
Rubble strewed the hall. The entire eastern half of the third floor had caved in. Nobility and servants clogged the passage, some of them dazed, some of them crying. Most of them staggered toward the stairs. At the end of the hallway, two men carried Eroll Leighton, dragging half his bedding behind them.
Chris shoved through the crowd, running sideways when they refused to make a path. “Put him down on the blanket. We’ll make a hammock of it.”
The floor wheezed as they set him down. Eroll’s eyes were clenched shut, his hands balled against his chest. Chris and Parry took the blanket’s left corners, and together the four of them heaved him into the air.
The crowd lurched down the double flight of stairs, the well supporting the wounded. Something behind them fell with a crash.
Eroll didn’t open his eyes. “Appears we’ve all lived to fight another day, eh?”
“Where’s Allara?” Chris demanded. Her rooms were on the northern side of the palace, same as his, but hers were farther east, where everything had been hit harder.
“She’s not here.” Eroll’s breaths came hard. “She left earlier.”
Thank God for that, at least. The earthquake had probably rocked the whole city, but just about anywhere would be a better place than here.
Behind them, running footsteps hammered into the already weakened structure. The stones grumbled, and fresh screams swelled. People packed the wide staircase, and a desperate few flung themselves over the railings into the foyer thirty feet below.
They rounded the corner to the second flight of stairs, and the foundation began to shake. It numbed the soles of his feet and vibrated through his body. Screams disappeared in the crash of broken glass and wrecked masonry. The tiles overhead cracked, and white dust fell like flour from a sieve.
Chris crooked one arm over his head to ward off the rain of stones. “Move!” The aftershock’s roar swallowed his voice.
They hit the smooth marble of the foyer running, and all around them the palace, once so safe atop its hill, gasped one long breath and fell to pieces.
They burst from the doors into the courtyard. He ran, head down, free arm pumping. Bricks pelted the courtyard. The fragments bounced and ricocheted into what was left of the yard’s walls. Gray dust engulfed everything.
He looked back. The palace was gone, the hill ripped in two. Only the western tower remained. It swayed, high above the wreckage, as the stones at its base crumbled. A gust of wind tipped it into the lake.
Not until the tower hit the water did he realize he could hear once again. He threw his head back to breathe. All around him, people were crying, coughing.
Allara and Quinnon galloped through the haze at the gates. She wore a flame-colored gown, probably in the mistaken assumption this day would hold no fighting. She drove Rihawn through the crowd.
Even before she reached him, her lips were moving. “. . . we have no defenses!”
“What?”
She skidded in front of him. “The walls are down. Half the artillery’s destroyed. Mactalde can attack us at will!”
Quinnon rode in behind her. “Guardsmen, form up! Two companies to Faramore Station!” He reined his horse around to face Chris. “The redoubts on the shore didn’t get hit anywhere near as hard as we did. If Mactalde takes advantage of this, and he will, he could be here inside four hours.” He gestured past what was left of the palace to where the lake was now visible. “He’ll sail up from the south. If we can get people out, via the taxi boats and whatever we’ve got left in the palace harbor, we can sail them to shore through Floating Taïs to the north.”
Chris was shaking his head before Quinnon finished the words. “Most of these people would be sitting ducks out in the open.”
“We’ll take horses and ride to Virere Ford.” Allara spun Rihawn in a tight circle to keep him from rearing. “From there, we can take the skycar up to Réon Couteau.”
The hubbub of astonishment, fear, and grief filled every corner of the courtyard. Those who weren’t busy tending wounds or trying to find loved ones clambered through the stones to stand around Quinnon and Allara—or so Chris thought.
When he glanced into the faces, he found the eyes of every person anchored on him. His mouth went dry. Why shouldn’t they look to him? He was the Gifted, wasn’t he? He was supposed to make everything right.
“Chris!” Pitch ran through the crowd. “You’re alive!”
Orias followed, leading a big red charger with Raz standing upright in its saddle. Dougal trotted behind, his stub tail fuzzed out to twice its normal size. The crowd skittered back
to give the group a wide berth.
Orias’s skin glowed faintly blue with waning adrenaline. He ignored Quinnon and Allara and walked up to Chris. “The Koraudian boats are already in the water, coming our way.”
“How can you tell?”
“I can hear them.”
A murmur spread through the crowd. They wanted the Gifted to take the lead, because that’s what the Gifted of yore did in all the victorious legends where everything always turned out happily ever after.
Chris swallowed and swiveled to look at as many of them as he could. “Captain Quinnon’s advice is sound. We’re leaving on the boats.”
If they wanted him to be their bastion of confidence, they were headed for disappointment. But if they wanted him to be brave, the least he could do was pretend.
Tight nods and tighter faces responded to him.
He looked at Quinnon. “Let’s get to it. It won’t take Mactalde long to figure this out and send troops after us.” He looked around for someone to whom he could hand off his corner of Eroll’s blanket.
“Give him to me.” Worick pushed through the crowd and hefted the corner away from him.
A wave of relief punched him in the stomach. “Mom? Sirra, Tielle?”
“They’re fine. Everyone got out.” The fine gray dust charted maps to nowhere in the wrinkles of Worick’s forehead. “I brought my fishing schooner around to this end of the island yesterday. We can cram maybe a hundred aboard.”
A Guardsman ran over with a horse. Chris looked at Allara. “There’s no way we’re going to get everyone out.”
“I know.” She looked at the rubble of the palace. “But we’ll take all we can.”
_________
They only managed to get a hundred or so out. Allara’s heart broke as they sailed away from what was left of Glen Arden. Refugees clogged the shores, but with Mactalde already in pursuit, what choice had she and Chris but to flee?
As soon as they reached Virere Ford, they launched the fireworks, starting the chain of signals that, God willing, would soon reach her father and his army on their way south from Ballion. Depending on how much distance the army had covered yesterday, it was possible they might be able to cross the short end of Lake Thyra and alter course to join up with the evacuees before the day was out.
Late in the afternoon the refugee train swooped into the Thyra Junction station. She rose from her seat. “Why are we stopping?” The engineers had been ordered to run straight through to Réon Couteau. “We haven’t the time to stop. Mactalde’s probably right behind us.”
Chris stepped outside just as the stationmaster ran up.
“I’m so sorry.” He wrung his hands and bobbed little bows. “My lord Gifted.” He peered into the car at her. “My lady.”
“Why have we stopped?” Chris demanded.
“I thought it best you know.” He bobbed another bow. “None of our trains have returned from Réon Couteau for nearly a day.”
“What do you mean?” Quinnon shouldered past Allara to stand in the doorway.
She focused on keeping air in her lungs. A skycar stoppage from Réon Couteau could mean any number of things. Chris looked at her, and she saw cold hard reality reflected back at her.
“You think it’s Mactalde?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” His face was grim. “He could have sent a strike force to Réon Couteau from his position in Ballion and maybe taken control of the skycar stations.”
Quinnon scratched his stubble. “Nateros has a large following in Réon Couteau. Could be Mactalde had help.”
Her mind raced. They couldn’t just stay here. Mactalde’s men had to be right behind them. Depending on the size of the force, the Guard might be able to fend them off. But the rest of these people—high-ranking statesmen and councilmen—weren’t fighters.
She looked at Chris. “What if we just kept going? There might be another reason for the trains not returning.”
“No. We can’t risk that. If we go and the Koraudians have control of the city, we’re finished. If we stay here, at least we have a chance.” He turned back to the stationmaster. “Pull the rest of the train down to level ground so we can unload it.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Without warning, the entire train lurched in a crash of screeching metal and exploding glass. Allara hit the floor on her hands and knees, she started up, only to be hurled forward again.
“Get out!” Chris seized her arm and hauled her out. “Get the horses out!” he shouted at Quinnon. “They’re ramming us!”
She staggered onto the pavement, clutching onto him for balance.
High above, the long stretch of their train crumpled and twisted on the wildly swinging cables. From behind, another train backed up a few spans, then surged forward to ram the rearmost car. The Koraudians had been even closer behind than she’d feared.
Everyone in the train would be stranded. The lead car was the only one on level ground.
“We’ll have to get the people to climb down through the cars to this one. If we pull forward, the Koraudians will be able to disembark!” Even as she said it, the doors in the Koraudians’ train burst open and grappling lines snaked to the ground.
She whirled to the stationmaster. “If we move our train forward, can you switch the tracks before they can follow us down? Can you keep them up there long enough for us to bring all the cars down and start unloading?”
He wobbled back a step and jerked a nod. “I’ll try, my lady.”
Quinnon unloaded their horses in a clatter of hooves just as the train reeled forward. She caught up Rihawn’s reins and, holding her skirts aside, clambered into the saddle. As fast as the cars leveled out, the people poured from them.
Orias and a squad of Guardsmen boiled out of the first few cars, weapons in hand.
Chris swung aboard his horse and raised his sword to them. “The Koraudians are lowering troops into the city. We have to engage them and buy the rest of these people the time to unload.” He passed her with only a glance. “Get these people out of here! Get to safety!”
Orias, his face a snarl of bared teeth, galloped after him with the Rievers clinging on behind.
She watched them go, and her heart choked on its blood. She wanted to go with them. What was her own safety, so long as the Gifted was lost under the ravages of Mactalde’s shock troops? She could be just as reckless as he when she had nothing to lose. And if she lost him, she would lose Lael, she would lose faith, she would lose everything.
Quinnon, mounted on his gray, reached over and slapped Rihawn’s hindquarters. “Move! If we can get these people clear of the city, we’ll take them up to the Cairns. We can hold out there until your father’s reinforcements get here.”
She nodded and spun Rihawn around.
_________
She lost track of the precious time it took them to get out of the city. Across the meadows that surrounded Thyra Junction’s outskirts, the moist black earth grew steep beneath its coverlet of green. The sky hung low and dark, the clouds racing.
Wind ripped at her hair and her gown, and freezing rain pelted her skin. At the base of the hill, she halted Rihawn amidst the struggling mass of Glen Arden evacuees. Her life was never less her own than in the midst of a crisis. That was the only reason she rode away from the fight and away from Chris. That was why she rode ahead of her people now, her skirts and her coat spread to the wind, and prayed that, in spite of everything, the sight of her might give them hope.
But when she looked back, it was not hope she saw. It was Koraudians.
The world shattered like glass. Chris had not been able to stop them all. Or, worse, they had stopped Chris on their way out.
“Quinnon!”
Behind her, Guardsmen scrambled down the hill to offer a slender perimeter of protection. Rihawn reared, and she leaned over his shoulders, her estoc in her hand. She was screaming something. A battle cry, a prayer. Something. Nothing. It didn’t matter. It shook her throat, but she couldn’t hear it
, couldn’t even slow her thoughts long enough to know what shape her lips formed.
The Koraudians swarmed like vultures to carrion. They crashed into the line of Guardsmen. Screams burbled up from mouths full of blood, and green and gold stags fell to the earth. Few red eagles joined them. Gunshots resounded from up the hill, where half a dozen carabineers leaned against the mossy stones. They fired, reloaded, fired.
“Move!” Quinnon bellowed. Behind her, he held in his horse and reached across his body to fire his pistol. “Keep moving! And don’t look back!”
But she had to look back. She was leaving too much behind.
The Koraudians were breaking through the line of Guardsmen. Soon, they would chew through the ragged defenses of the noblemen, and they would swallow the evacuee column whole. Her eyes lifted to the city and the sinuous movement of troops in the streets, hundreds of them, maybe even thousands. How had Mactalde been able to send so many? Her blood burned the underside of her skin.
A Koraudian horse charged her, crossing the sward in great pounding strides. Its rider tilted his sword at her chest. Over his shoulder, the first of the troops left the city. They entered the long sweep of the meadow, and she could see the color of their tabards.
Not the red of Koraud, but the hunter green of Lael.
Her heart skidded. Her father had gotten their signaled messages in time after all.
With a shriek, she raised her sword, and Rihawn charged. Her sword crashed into the Koraudian’s, and she twisted her wrist and freed her blade. Before he could regain the balance of his heavier weapon, she reversed her sword in her hand, dropped her reins, and plunged the blade into the man’s back, all the way to its filigreed guard. The barb near her hilt caught on a rib, and the sword tore from her grip as the horses separated.
Her heart battered her ribcage. She righted her balance and turned back to face the city.
All the way from Virere Ford to Thyra Junction, she had done the figures in her head, over and over again. If her father had moved the army from Ballion early yesterday, he might have made it halfway down Lake Thyra. If he had gotten their messages early today, he might have been able to take the troops across the short end of the lake. If he wasn’t stopped, if the winds were in their favor, if the troops moved as they never moved before, they might make it to Thyra in time. If, if, if, if, if.
She hadn’t dared to believe any of those ifs.
Now, two companies of Guardsmen charged up the bank with her father’s banner unfurled at their fore. They would angle to strike the Koraudians’ left flank and force them back from the hill.
She turned Rihawn around. The man she had killed slumped over his horse’s neck, blood seeping around her hilt like melted wax. She twisted the sword free and met Quinnon as he was extricating himself from a knot of the enemy.
He tossed aside an empty pistol and drew his last holdout from his pommel. “Get these people to the Cairns!”
Rihawn plunged up the hill, past the mounds of dead and dying and past the defensive thread of Guardsmen. The people didn’t need her encouragement to flee. They clawed their way up the hill, climbing faster whenever they looked back.
Three-quarters of the way up, the Cairns stretched for half a league across the face of the hill. The stone piles marked their only hope of reprieve. If Chris and her father could hold back the Koraudians just long enough for them to reach the Cairns, then perhaps they would survive this day.
