Kathryn noted the Fiery Cross on Argent’s shoulder. It was torn in half by a raked claw.
“I’ll see you at the bell,” she said with a nod toward the warden.
Their eyes held a fraction longer, just long enough to admit the fools they’d both been. And to forgive each other’s blind corners. At least for this one day. She prayed it would be enough.
A shout drew Argent back to his duty.
Released, Kathryn strode down to her own rooms. There were a few items she intended to secure, one in particular, the true reason she had forded up here against the flowing stream of their retreat.
She rushed to her door, found it ajar, and pushed inside. The hearth was cold. The heavy drapery had been torn down and the windows boarded and shuttered tight. There was still glass on the floor from where Ulf’s emissary had broken through from the outer balcony.
As she crossed the threshold, she heard a frantic scuffle from the next room. Her sword appeared in her hand. She held her other arm out toward Gerrod, warding him back.
Wraiths had been worrying themselves through cracks, finding every means to gnash their way inside. A bell ago, a pair had clawed their way down one of the kitchen’s chimneys, defying a roaring fire and smoke, and attacked a baker’s boy, ripping his head from his body. Four others had died. It had taken the head cook with a butcher’s cleaver and a lone scullery maid with a spitting fork to finally dispatch the beast. To such an extent had the defense of Tashijan fallen.
Stepping farther into the room, Kathryn noted a small and familiar squeak from the next room.
“Penni?” Kathryn called out.
Silence-then a flutter of footsteps and a bonneted head peeked around the corner leading to her private room. “Mistress!” The maid offered a trembling curtsy that was strangely reassuring in its familiarity.
Kathryn waved the girl over. “What are you still doing up here?”
Penni took a scatter of steps toward her, then stopped. “I heard…below…that all was lost up here. So I came in a rush.” She pointed to the servants’ door in back.
Kathryn realized she should have thought to do the same-it would have been quicker than fighting the tumult of the main stairs. She admonished herself for the narrowness of her vision, constricted by her own sense of place and caste.
“I knew you’d not want to lose this,” her maid said.
Penni held up a strap of black linen. Attached to it was a thumb-sized diamond. It was the diadem of the castellan, the symbol of her station. It was not the fake one, the artifice of paste, but the true diadem, the one stolen by Mirra and rescued by Lorr. The masters had already tested and cleared it of any Dark Grace. And despite its former bearer, it was an ancient jewel of Tashijan, the heart of the Citadel.
It was why Kathryn had come up here.
She stared gratefully at her maid, realizing how well the girl had come to know her mistress’s heart. Yet, in turn, Kathryn had barely noted her comings and goings. She did note her now: the firm heart in a trembling young girl’s body. Here was what they fought for in Tashijan. Here was what had ultimately made Kathryn turn her back on Ulf’s offer.
A loud crack shattered through the room.
One of the shutters at the back window tore away, followed by a tinkle of glass. Shards flew high. Penni turned and ducked, shielding herself with an arm. Kathryn was struck by the smell of burnt wood.
Gerrod grabbed her elbow.
Through the shattered gap, a blaze of azure scintillation swept into the room, a fiery globe as wide as her outstretched arms. It struck Penni, picking her off her feet. Her bonnet blew from her head in a wash of fire. Lightning crackled over her skin, burning her livery, arching her back, stretching her mouth in a silent wail.
Gerrod shoved Kathryn aside and pointed his other arm at the ball of stormfire. From the back of his wrist, a stream of muddy bile jetted and struck the globe. With the touch of the alchemy, the fires were blown out like a spent candle.
Penni collapsed to the rug. She shivered all over as if cold, despite her smoking skin and fiery-flailed clothes. Then she lay still. Eyes open, but no longer seeing.
The diadem she had come to rescue lay between them, flung as she was struck and consumed.
“I’ll get it,” Gerrod said.
Kathryn brusquely shoved past him. She crossed, stepped over the diadem, and knelt down beside Penni. She scooped the girl up in her arms. She was so very light, as if all substance had escaped with her life. Kathryn felt the heat of the char through her cloak. The maid’s small head hung slack over her arm, neck stretched as if baring her throat.
And so she had…to come here, to risk all.
Kathryn shifted her arms and rocked her small body closer, so Penni’s head came to rest against her shoulder. Kathryn cradled her.
“I have you,” she whispered.
Turning, she headed for the door.
Gerrod bent and collected the diadem from the floor and followed. But in her arms, Kathryn already carried the true jewel, the true heart of Tashijan.
Far below, Laurelle sat in a moldy chair, its ticking puffing out. It smelled of mouse bile and mustiness. But she had sunk gratefully into it a bell ago, as if it were the finest velvet and down.
To one side, Kytt rested cross-legged on the stone floor, leaning his back against a plank bed strewn with old hay. Delia sat atop the bed, supported by the wall. Her eyes were open, but her gaze looked far away. Her head had been bandaged deftly by Kytt, who was experienced with such minor care, since all wyld trackers were trained to attend injuries on the trail.
They had found the refuge, a room with a stout door, deep within the level where they’d been trapped. Their attempt to push into well-lit and-populated regions had turned into a mad flight from things hidden in the dark and shadow. Between the senses of Orquell’s crimson eye and Kytt’s sharp ears and nose, they found all their ways blocked.
They were forced to delve deeper into the abandoned sections of the aged tower. Until they were all but lost. Recognizing the futility, Orquell had finally pulled them into this room. He sat in the room’s center. He had raised a small fire in each corner, kindled from the beetle-riddled legs of a broken table and alchemical powder.
Warding pyres, he claimed.
He now seemed lost in his flames, eyes closed. He had remained like that for the past bell. Occasionally one of the pyres would spit with flame, hissing. And behind the sparks, Laurelle swore she heard thin whispers.
But more often she heard screams.
From above.
What was happening?
If she had been in her own rooms, she probably would’ve been locked up, shoulder to shoulder with other Hands of the realms, equally blind to the true state of the war. Still, she wished she was up there. Here she was truly in the dark, in more ways than mere shadowy halls. Her imagination filled in the gaps of the story above with a whirl of horrors. Even if the truth were more terrifying than any of her imagined scenarios, she’d still prefer to know. At least then she could focus on one tangible fear, rather than the multitude of phantom perils that swam through her head.
“She waits,” Orquell finally muttered, his eyes still closed.
“Who?” Delia asked, focusing back on the room along with the rest of them.
Laurelle felt a thrill of fear, knowing that their short respite was about to end. She sat straighter.
“The witch,” he said. “The flames chitter with her dark delight. She waits for the war above to tear and weaken. Then she will rise and sweep through what remains, consuming all in her path.”
“Then we must get word above,” Delia said, scooting to the edge of the bed. “Light more fires.”