The Last Sun

by K. D. Edwards

  Addam braced his hands against a wall. His willpower surged. After a few seconds, he sagged. “There are mass sigils in the foundation of the compound. But they’re gone, or empty. It’s . . . Geoffrey! Geoffrey, try with me!”

  Geoffrey, pale-faced and wide-eyed, stood in the doorway. At Addam’s shout, he closed his eyes and tried, uselessly, to establish a connection with the defenses.

  “Don’t waste your time,” Brand said. “Ashton has access to the same wards. Oh, I love it when family turns on each other. They know all the dirtiest tricks. Rune, what can we do?”

  Addam’s words echoed in my head. In the foundation.

  An idea clicked into place—or, if not an idea, then an understanding of a chain of events that Quinn had stacked in place like dominoes.

  “How many people are on the estate?” I demanded.

  “Thirty-two,” McAllister replied. “Plus your associates.”

  “Are they inside? Are they all inside the house?”

  “Unlikely,” the majordomo stammered. “We have groundskeepers. They—”

  The handheld radio in his belt began screaming. Not static or shouts: people on the other end were screaming. We were out of time.

  I pulled the clay disc out of my pocket and exchanged a glance with Brand. He swore, pressed his back to the wall, and braced his legs. I pressed my thumb into the center of my mass sigil. The released spell hit like the back of God’s hand.

  Ceramic shattered; framed portraits skidded away in a blast wave; everyone but me was knocked off their feet.

  My mass sigil had spent over a decade buried under the foundation of Half House. I’d been building up the same stored spell the entire time.

  The release of magic lasted forever, a private eternity stretched between one adrenalized heartbeat and the next.

  I’d barely ever used a mass sigil and didn’t know what to expect. The power . . . It was immense. The boundary between me and all the energy in the world became thin. For a moment—for an unending moment—there were no aches, no pains. My old shoulder injury did not hurt. The tired grit was gone from my eyes. I didn’t doubt anything: myself, my ability, my course of action.

  I released the spell. Its radius raced along ceilings and floors, along carpets and window frames. I felt the magic slide around mice and termites, over dead organic matter—old wood, woven cloth, fingernail clippings, dried flowers. There was a terrified child hiding in a dumbwaiter; there was a mummified body behind a wall on the first floor. The spell considered these and every obstacle as it stretched and bent. So many details, impossible to absorb, but the magic didn’t need my understanding; it needed only my instinct.

  It flowed until, finally, I reached the hard boundary of the outer walls. A building’s outer walls have meaning. They separate the primal concepts of Inside and Outside, a basic tenet of hearth magic.

  This was the moment of decision. If I kept going—if I tried to stretch the spell across the estate grounds—I’d diffuse the magic. I’d shorten the duration. It wouldn’t work as well, or protect us for as long.

  So I snapped the spell closed, and the walls of the compound became the edges of my defense. Anyone trapped on the other side was lost to us.

  Brand picked himself up off the ground. “An hour,” I told him hoarsely. “Maybe more. The barrier should hold at least an hour against anything outside the building walls.”

  McAllister scrambled to retrieve his radio. Before he reached it, the screaming ended with a wet gurgle. McAllister, stunned, held the radio toward me like an offering. He said, “I can contact anyone caught outside. They can gather in one spot, and we can lower the spell—”

  “We can’t,” I said.

  “But if they gather, all together—could you extend—”

  “I can’t,” I said. “It doesn’t work that way.”

  McAllister dropped his gaze. He went into a corner and began to speak on the radio. His footsteps crunched over a broken mirror.

  “Those are my people,” Addam said. He’d hit his head when he fell; blood pooled over an eyebrow. “We need to find a way to get to them.”

  “No, we don’t,” Brand said. “Not now. Now, you save who you can, because in an hour we’ll be right back where we started. Do you have any idea how little time that is? How isolated we are? We are in trouble.”

  Whatever ground Addam had gained with Brand, he lost when he turned to me for confirmation. I said, “Trust my Companion.”

  “Tell . . . tell me what to do,” Addam said.

  Brand said, “Rune, can you tell if the compound was breached before the spell went up?”

  “I’m not sure. There was so much area to cover. I had to stretch it past its design, use it like a barrier.” At Half House, in such a small space, I’d have been able to turn every square inch into a killing ground. I wasn’t sure how the magic would work as a barrier.

  Brand snapped his fingers at McAllister. The majordomo turned down the radio volume on snatches of panicked words. “I need a central location, midlevel, lots of space.”

  “I’ve asked everyone to gather in the ballroom on the third floor,” McAllister said. “Is that acceptable?”

  “That’s great,” I answered for Brand. “And—oh, I think there’s a little girl hiding in a dumbwaiter. I don’t know more than that.”

  “Let’s move,” Brand said. “You too, Geoffrey. You stay in my fucking sight. If I find out you had anything to do with this, I’ll kill you.”

  “I don’t know what’s happening! I’m not lying!”

  “Brand isn’t lying either,” I said.

  We began jogging. McAllister and Addam shifted into the lead. I half-expected Brand to pull them back, but he paced himself close to me instead.

  “Do we have any way of contacting New Atlantis?” Brand asked.

  “Very few,” McAllister huffed. “The Westlands interferes. There are indicators tied into our defense system that would alert the city residences—but I don’t know if they’ve been tampered with as well.”

  “How big is your armory?”

  “It is significant.”

  “We need vulcanized-coal weapons. Anything with obsidian or coral. Do you know how many people are inside the building?”

  McAllister said, “I’ve asked radios to be distributed to everyone. We’ll know soon.”

  By the last sentence, he’d run out of breath. We hurried on. The plush carpet underfoot became marble, and our footsteps ricocheted as we ran down a sweeping flight of stairs.

  Max was lying flat across the bottom step. Ciaran was sitting on top of him.

  “Lord Sun,” the principality said.

  “I don’t want to know,” I said. I ran by them, into the doorway of a ballroom. Inside, staff members moved in loud, frantic eddies, crying and begging for word on loved ones.

  I expected Brand to step inside with me, but he was still in the antechamber, frowning at the ground. I went back to him as he crouched low and laid his hand on the marble.

  “What?” I said.

  “Vibrations. Is it your defense spell?”

  “I feel it, too,” Geoffrey said. “Why would a defense spell make the building shake?”

  It wouldn’t, but the already-scared people we’d caught the attention of didn’t need to hear that.

  A woman came up to us and said, “My son? My son?” Her chapped fingers knotted in Addam’s sleeve. Addam bent over her and said something soothing, and took her off to the side.

  McAllister’s face fell. “Her son is a groundskeeper.”

  Brand caught the expression on my face. “Don’t you dare,” he said in an undertone. “Don’t you dare start blaming yourself. Stay with me, Rune.”

  He was right. I took a deep breath, then clapped my hands for attention. Conversation stopped and eyes turned our way. “Ladies and gentlemen,” I said loudly, “the estate wards have failed. We’ve erected a temporary barrier, but our situation is critical. We must prepare for the worst. My Companion, Lord Bran
don Saint John, has studied siegecraft. You will follow his instructions as you would those of Lords Saint Nicholas or Saint Talbot.”

  “My son is outside,” the old woman said in a trembling voice. Addam was still holding her arm.

  “At present, they are unreachable,” I said. “The best way we can help them is to be in a position to provide aid once the danger is past.”

  I was about to pass their attention to Brand when the mansion groaned around us.

  It was a low, rolling sound that raised the hair on the back of my neck. Slowly, my eyes tracked to the crystal dome overhead. Clouds had churned afternoon into an artificial, sudden twilight.

  “He wouldn’t,” Geoffrey whispered from behind me. “He wouldn’t dare. Weather magic is forbidden.”

  “You need to stop saying such dumb fucking things,” Brand said. “Rune, we need to get these people organized.”

  Weather spells were slow, deadly, and incredibly easy to foul up. The environment overlapped like tectonic plates; you couldn’t easily interfere with one section without shaking apart another. It was such an illegal act that, if I hadn’t been convinced of it already, I’d have now realized Ashton had no intention of letting anyone leave here alive.

  Brand raised his voice. “McAllister, get someone to the highest point of the building with a two-way radio. I want to know what they see. Then start splitting people up—those who can fight, those who can move fast, those who need to be put somewhere safe.”

  McAllister raised a hand to a thin young woman with blue hair and said, “Emma, the tower.” She took off like a shot, skinny legs barely hitting the ground.

  Overhead, lightning turned the world white, silhouetting the veins of rain that spread across the dome. Two beats later, thunder flexed like sheet metal.

  “This doesn’t make any sense,” Geoff said under his breath. “If he needs the imbued circle like you said, why waste time coming after us?”

  “Without Rurik, I’m not sure he’d be able to break through the Magician’s estate wards,” I said.

  “Which means he may have changed tactics,” Brand said. “Maybe he’s trying to get rid of witnesses. That would explain why he killed Michael and tried to kill Geoff and Ella.”

  “Ashton doesn’t know that Lord Tower is onto him,” Addam said.

  “Big damn deal,” Brand said. “It’s not like we can throw open a window and shout, ‘You’re already fucked anyway.’”

  “Maybe someone will notice our danger, if the alarms aren’t working,” Addam said. “Lady World lives in her Westlands compound. She’d sense the storm—she’s a nature mage.”

  “Maybes aren’t going to do us much good,” Brand said.

  McAllister had been following Brand’s instructions as we spoke. The room was more or less split by the elderly and very young, and anyone who could hold a weapon. Seeing that, Brand raised his voice again. “McAllister, lead a group to the armory. Coal, coral, and obsidian weapons go in the hands of the best fighters. Pair them with people who know the layout of the mansion best and can move fast. Patrols on all main points of entry: basement, each floor, the biggest unit on the top floor. Ranged weapons go in the hands of people upstairs. If patrols find a breach, do not engage, just alert. And I need a space like this, but smaller and with limited entry points. High up. Pick someone competent to lead the noncombatants there.”

  “There’s a conservatory on the fourth floor,” McAllister said. “Main wing.”

  “That’ll do. No one—”

  The marble shook under my feet, and my eardrums popped.

  I threw my hand toward the ceiling, sending my light cantrip racing toward the dome. It highlighted a web of cracks spreading from the metal rim.

  Brand started to shout commands, which barely drew lines around the spreading panic. If the dome had given way, it would have been a bloodbath. But it held. McAllister funneled the household servants in one direction, while Brand grabbed my sleeve and dragged me in another. He said something I couldn’t hear, and pointed to Addam and Ciaran. Spell-casters. We split wide, and began to herd Addam, Geoff, Ciaran, and Max into the corridor with us.

  Brand lingered at the rear of the group to make sure the staff had evacuated without injury. When the ballroom was clear, he came over. “We don’t know what Ashton has planned. The barrier won’t hold forever. One way or another, you scions are the firepower in a fight.”

  “Our sigils are empty,” Addam said. “We used them against Rurik.”

  “That’s why we need to go to the sanctum,” I said, picking up Brand’s thread of thought. “We’ll take thirty minutes to store what spells we can.”

  Addam took a breath. “The sanctum is one floor down, one wing over. Follow me.”

  We started out at a brisk pace. I touched Brand’s shoulder and pulled him close. “It would make more sense for you to help the noncombatants,” I said quietly. “There are elderly and children—they could use your direction. I’ll meet up with you after we’re done in the sanctum.”

  Brand said, “I appreciate your thoughts on the matter,” and twitched my hand away. He stepped up to take the lead from Addam.

  I sighed and pointed at the two-way radio Ciaran had managed to snag from somewhere. He handed it to me while weaving around a potted plant. I pressed the button on the side and said, “This is Lord Sun. Emma, are you there?”

  “I’m here!”

  “Do you see anything yet?”

  “Oh!” There was a bang and a crackle, as she either gasped or dropped the radio. “Oh, there are so many of them. And they look . . . sick. I can see them through a lens cantrip. They’re dressed in black, and they look pale and sick.”

  “How many,” Brand said over his shoulder.

  “How many of them are there, Emma?” I asked.

  “A hundred. More. They’re gathering in front of the north courtyard, outside the gate.”

  “Please continue to watch them,” I said. I lowered the radio to my side and took a second to get my breath. We turned a corner and swept down a large stairway.

  Black and sickly-looking. I said, “You were right, Brand. Back at Lord Tower’s, you said we’d forgotten about the recarnates. You were right.”

  Brand shot me his silent do-I-even-need-to-say-I-fucking-told-you-so look, the one he used when we had company. A burst of lightning flashed through a window and, a moment later, I felt the thunder in my ankles.

  We picked up our pace and entered a double-wide hall. Portraits lined the walls like a string of unsmiling dominoes, our bobbing light cantrips animating their displeasure. Addam said, “Through that green door ahead.”

  On the other side was a hallway—a loggia, actually—with closed floor-length windows. Lightning flashed as the storm bore down. The massive lawn strobed from a grim darkness to a surreal, acid green.

  At one end of the corridor, only a few yards away, was a double door gilded with both gold and silver. “Brand . . .” I said.

  “Don’t even,” he said.

  “I’ll be fine in the sanctum. Go organize the barricade, then come back with armed staff.”

  Brand’s jaw set mulishly.

  “Please,” I whispered.

  Geoff was looking back and forth between us. “You can’t be serious. He’s a Companion, he should stand guard while we meditate. Have the majordomo handle the servants.”

  “Geoff,” I growled. “Brand, you should take Max, he doesn’t have any sigils. It makes sense.”

  Max immediately opened his mouth to protest. Brand’s eyes snapped in his direction. Max closed his mouth and lowered his eyes.

  Ciaran said, “My sigils are topped off. I’ll go with them. Best to stay in groups, eh?”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Brand?”

  “You won’t leave the sanctum until I return,” Brand said.

  “We won’t,” I said.

  “I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

  “You’ll actually go?” Geoff demanded. “You would leave scions unpr
otected?”

  “Rune is never unprotected,” Brand said. “And shut the fuck up.”

  If there was an expression between pale and red-faced, Geoffrey was going for it. “I’m a scion.”

  “You so fucking are,” Brand agreed.

  I said, “Brand. You should go now.”

  “Twenty minutes,” he told me, and then he began retracing his steps with Ciaran and Max in tow. Max looked at me over his shoulder as he went, stumbling twice.

  I waited until they’d gone through the green door, and then I punched Geoffrey in the nose. He doubled over, spurting blood. I grabbed his arms and spun him into a wall. He went down. I pressed my sabre, shifted into hilt form, against his temple.

  “You have harmed me and mine. Under every rule of Atlantis, that gives me right to retaliate. Do you not understand that I may decide to kill you? You need to start showing a sense of self-preservation, and you need to start showing it soon.”

  I left him in a heap, and went into the sanctum.

  It was the height of arrogance.

  For a few moments I could only stare at the glass windowpanes with rising temper.

  They’d built a sanctum in a greenhouse. We were surrounded by glass and storm and dead protective wards. This space—a sanctum, the very heart of sigil magic—was now so indefensible that it could be taken down by nothing more complicated than a big rock.

  “There are usually spells protecting it, of course,” Addam said uncomfortably.

  “Of course,” I said. A tree limb the size of a Volvo sailed by outside. “Godsdamnit.”

  “You look as if you want to give your stupid scion speech, Hero.” He stepped up behind me. The greenhouse was cool, and his presence against my back was warm. He lowered his voice. “Are we unsafe here?”

  “My defense spell won’t keep the storm out—or anything that doesn’t actively mean us harm. We need to move quickly.”

  Geoffrey made an irritated sound from a nearby sitting area. He’d smeared blood all over his face in an effort to stop the nosebleed. “Where are the wretched towels?” he asked.

  “Ask a maid,” I said. “I bet they’ll climb over each other to serve you.”