“Then you go, Lady Erren,” Neil urged. “Bring Fastia back here, where we can protect her. And Charles. All of the children must be in danger.”
Erren shook her head. “I cannot. I do not have the strength.”
“What do you mean?”
“I am injured, Sir Neil. I will not last the night. I may not last the hour.”
He stepped back, then, and saw how strangely she leaned against the wall. It was too dark to see exactly how she was hurt, but he smelled the blood.
“It cannot be so bad,” he said.
“I know death, Sir Neil. She is like a mother to me. Trust what I say, and waste no time on grief—for me, for Elseny— and no time on fear for Fastia. Stay clear headed, and answer my questions. I have killed three. How many are there in sum?”
“I don’t know,” Neil admitted. “When the illness overcame me, I was not sensible. But they told me I was to kill the queen.”
Erren’s brow furrowed. “They thought you changeling, like Vargus. Yet you were not. Somehow the sorcery was interrupted.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Darkest encrotacnia,” Erren whispered. “A man is killed, and his enscorcled soul sent to take the body of another. The soul already in the body is ripped from it. You should not be alive, Sir Neil, and yet you are. But that may work to your advantage. If you pretend to be what they think you are, it might give you more space to strike.”
“Yes, lady.”
“The guards and servants are dead, you think?” Erren asked.
“Yes, lady.”
“Then you must get the queen to the garrison,” Erren told him. “They could not have killed all of the soldiers there. There are far too many.”
A faint noise came from down the hall.
“Hsst.” Erren stepped to the side of the door. Neil made out two pale figures moving toward them, and tightened his grip on Crow.
“That is you, Ashern?”
Neil seemed to remember that name from the courtyard.
“Aye.”
“Have you done it? The queen is dead?”
They were closer, now, and Neil could see they were both Sefry. The speaker had an eye patch.
“Aye, it’s done.”
“Well, let’s see. We should not tarry.”
“You will not trust my word?” They were almost close enough, but the Sefry with the eye patch hesitated, just as Neil struck. Both men leapt back, but the one who had spoken was faster, so Crow took the other in the shoulder and opened him to the lungs. Something hard hit Neil’s armor, just over his heart. The one-eyed Sefry was running backwards, his hand cocking back …
Neil understood and threw himself aside as a second thrown knife whirred by his head and snapped against the stone. By the time he recovered, the Sefry was gone.
“That’s the end of your advantage,” Erren said. “Now you must go, and swift, before he returns with more.”
“It may be that he has no more.”
“The changeling Vargus still lives. That makes at least two, but we must assume more.”
She rapped on the queen’s door, three soft taps, a pause, then two harder ones. Neil heard a bolt draw, and then the door cracked inward. He saw the queen’s eyes beyond.
“Sir Neil is here,” Erren said. “He will stay with you.”
“Erren, you’re hurt,” the queen noticed. “Come inside.”
Erren smiled briefly. “We have more visitors for me to receive. Sir Neil will take you to the garrison. You’ll be safe there.”
“My daughters—”
“Your daughters are already safe,” Erren replied, and Neil felt her hand touch his back in warning. “Now you must go with Sir Neil.”
“I won’t leave you.”
“You will,” Erren replied simply. “I will join you at the garrison.”
A noise sounded near the end of the hall, and Erren spun in time to receive one of the three arrows that sped through the door. It hit her in the kidney. The other two thudded against the wall next to Neil.
“Erren!” the queen screamed.
“Sir Neil!” Erren reminded, in a tone of cold and absolute command.
Neil was through the door in an instant, shouldering the queen aside. He slammed the portal behind him, just as several more shafts thocked into the other side. He bolted it.
“Do not open it,” Neil told the queen.
“Erren—”
“Erren is dead,” Neil told her. “She died so you might live. Do not betray her.”
The queen’s face changed, then. The confusion and grief fled from it, replaced by regal determination.
“Very well,” she said. “But whoever did this will have cause to regret it. Promise me that.”
Neil thought of Elseny, dead in her bed, all her laughter and whimsy bled into her sheets. He thought of Fastia, and nursed a terrible hope that she still lived.
“They will,” he said. “But we must survive the night.”
He went to the window, sheathing Crow as he did so. He’d examined the room earlier, of course, and even without the moon he knew the tower wall dropped some five yards to the wall of the inner keep, where he had stood earlier that night watching for ghosts. A glance showed no one without. He returned to her bed and began knotting the sheets together, tying one end to the bedpost.
The door shuddered beneath repeated blows.
“Finish here,” he told the queen. “Tie them well. When you’ve fixed two more together, start down. Do not wait for me.”
The queen nodded and went to the task. Neil, meanwhile, pushed a heavy chest to add weight to the door.
He wasn’t in time. The bolt suddenly snapped open, as if pulled by invisible fingers. Neil leapt to it, drew Crow, yanked it open, and slashed.
The pale face of a Sefry looked at him in surprise as Crow split collarbone, heart, and breastbone. Neil didn’t let the malefactor drop, but with his other hand lifted him by the hair, using him as a shield against the inevitable darts that flew from the darkness. Then he shoved the body away and slammed the door again, drawing the bolt firmly into place.
A glance behind him showed that the queen had already begun her descent. He went to the window and watched until she reached the stone cobbles, and was turning to follow her when the door exploded inward.
Neil slashed the sheet at the bedpost and leapt to the windowsill, dropping to hang by his fingers as two arrows hummed by and a third glanced from his byrnie. Then he dropped.
A fall of three yards even in half armor was easily enough to snap bones. He hit the cobbles and collapsed his knees. The air blew out of him and glimmer-lights danced across his vision.
“Sir Neil.” The queen was there. On the horizon a purple sickle was rising. For a moment, Neil did not recognize it as the moon.
“Away from the window,” he gasped, reaching up to her.
She took his hand, and they ducked around the curve of the tower, away from any sharp-nosed arrows that might scent them from above.
“This way,” Neil said. They started along the battlements toward the stair to the courtyard, glancing behind them often. Neil made out at least one slight figure dropping from the tower in the moonlight. He hoped it wasn’t one of the archers.
They reached the steps without incident, however. Once down them, they needed only to cross the courtyard and open the gate that led through the old wall and across the canal to the garrison. Last Neil had seen, that yard was empty of the living, and he hoped it still was.
They had taken only a step down, however, when the queen suddenly jerked away from him and started back up.
“Your Majesty—” he began.
“Fastia!” the queen shouted.
Neil saw Fastia, turning the corner of the battlements perhaps twenty yards away, still wearing the same blue dress he had seen her in earlier. She looked up at the sound of her name.
“Mother? Sir Neil?”
“Fastia. Come to us. Quickly. There is danger.” She started toward her daughter.
Neil swore and started after her, noting the three figures closing rapidly from the way they had come.
A fourth appeared silently from the shadows behind Fastia.
“Fastia!” he shouted. “Behind you! Run toward us!”