The crack of thunder frightened people and they shrank aside. And left a path for the assassin, who strode along the alley so created as if it had been ordained since the dawn of time.
But it was too easy, and he was ahead of his time – the Megas Ducas was still turning with a woman, fifteen paces away through the snow.
The assassin threw caution to the winds and burst through the cordon around the dancers and ran for the Duke.
The woman with whom he was dancing saw him and seemed to nod, turning her partner even as the assassin stripped the mitten off his right hand, reached back and caught the handle of his crossbow. He ran at the Duke.
She put her leg behind the Duke’s in time to the music.
He was three paces away and it was too late for everyone as he raised his bow and then-
She threw the Duke to the ground.
A great gout of fire struck the assassin’s ward, making him stumble.
He whirled and shot his attacker, and the bolt went clean through the young man’s hermetical defence and blew him from his feet.
The woman produced a short sword from her skirts and cut at him.
He caught the blow on the arm guard under his peasant tunic and grappled her, expecting an easy conquest and instead getting a knee in his groin and a turn of his own elbow, but he had armour under his clothes and she was hampered by skirts and after a flurry of blows he kicked her – hard enough to snap her knee, but the same petticoats that had saved him now deflected some of his blow.
She fell all the same.
He hit her in the head with his spent crossbow and ran.
He passed the princess, gaping open-mouthed, and then he was in among the statues in the centre of the square.
He stripped the peasant smock over his head, and under it he had the armour and scarlet surcoat of a mercenary archer, complete with sword and buckler. He ran, altered direction by ninety degrees and ran harder, due south, passing through a clump of peasant women and vanishing into the crowd.
Long Paw was fooled, but only for as long as it took him to look at the peasant smock. Then he made a clicking sound with his tongue and followed the tracks through the new snow. He didn’t need the peasant women to tell him where the man had gone, and he only paused for three strides to scan the crowd. Even in the flickering torchlight, he could follow the helmet – the one helmet headed away from the circle of dancers.
Thunder rumbled overhead like laughter.
Harndon – The Queen
Out in the darkness, a woman screamed.
The Queen had the King by the hand and she froze, her senses a-whirl – for a moment, she had danced with the Red Knight, and with a man like an Elvin prince – she had to ground herself.
Emota was missing.
The King left her side, with a dozen knights at his heels, headed towards the sound of a woman screaming, and the circle was broken while the screams cut through the music.
The power of the circle was shredding away like ice melting on a spring pond. The Queen reached out-
A woman in green and gold took her hand and spat, and she felt as if she’d been kicked in the stomach, and she fell to her knees.
The older woman looked over her shoulder and vanished to be replaced by the same young nun who had healed her on the battlefield at Lissen Carrak. The Queen’s head rose.
A woman clad in white leaned over them. ‘We cannot let the circle dissolve so early,’ she said. Or perhaps she cast her thoughts – it was all so fast that the Queen was suddenly standing with Lady Sylvia’s hand in her right and Lady Almspend’s in her left, and the three formed a tiny circle and began to turn – and the carollers steadied into their Gloria.
A bowshot away, the King found Lady Emota lying dead in a pool of blood that made the snow look black around her. Her throat had been slashed from side to side the way a deer was ended, or a sacrifice made in ancient times, and then the dagger had been plunged into her.
The dagger bore the arms of the Count d’Eu.
‘Why is the Queen still dancing?’ the King asked angrily.
The Duke got to his feet, aided by Toby, and extended a hand to Sauce, who was rubbing snow on her exposed knee to the delight of many men.
He looked around. The music hadn’t faltered, but the dancers were slowing. Some of the women had stopped and were gathering for protection.
At his shoulder a woman’s voice said, ‘We cannot let the circle dissolve so early,’ and he turned, but there was only the trace of a fragrance of peppermint in the air. But his grasp of the principle was sound enough, and he took Sauce’s hand. ‘Dance!’ he shouted. ‘Close the circle and dance.’
The habit of obedience is hard to break. Sauce ignored the pain in her knee and grabbed the hands of the surprised princess and turned her – Lady Maria joined them, and in a moment the women were reforming the inner circle.
Gavin skidded to a halt, and the Duke pushed him into the men’s circle. ‘Dance,’ he ordered. ‘Someone is trying to cast a huge working. Breaking the dance is one part of it. Dance, damn it!’
As soon as they stepped away, he dropped to one knee by Mortirmir, who was thrashing, his feet drumming the packed snow, his blood as black as pitch.
The Duke put his hands on Mortirmir’s shoulders.
Come on, Harmodius, he said.
And the old magister was there. He reached out in the aethereal and his hand reached for the Red Knight’s hand – the Red Knight stretched, and was led a step closer to the open door – a door that seemed to open on the blackest night, unshot with stars. A blast of cold, a sort of ultimate cold, hit him from the open door.
The Red Knight stood his ground and leaned forward, straining, into the black-shot aethereal and got his fingertips onto those of the slim young man in blue velvet-
There was a sound as of mortal combat-
– and the rising strains of a Christmas carol
a woman’s scream
a ship tossed on a storm-wracked sea
an old man in a long beard lying under a quilt
Harmodius shot through the door as if propelled by some outside force, and the door slammed shut behind him. Harmodius lay on the tiled floor of the Red Knight’s palace for a moment. He shook his head.
‘What the fuck was that?’ he muttered.
Gabriel was already up and moving. He pointed at Mortirmir, at the edge of death in the real.
Can we save him?
Absolutely. Bastard thinks he can kill me that easily-
I think I was the target.
Think whatever you like, boy. Christ that was close. Give me . . . ?
Gabriel gave Harmodius his store of ops, yet again.
Take that, you bastard, Harmodius said. He opened a link, and cast – the sigils of his palace flashed like the lights of a distant city as he cast five complete workings in a single breath.
The blood vanished out of the snow, leaving the snow white.
Mortirmir’s eyes opened.
The crossbow bolt protruding from his back flowed away like melted ice.
And something burst in the sky above them, like a firework – a thousand tiny stars lit for a moment and then were dark.
Uh oh, muttered Harmodius. I just kicked a god in the nuts.
The Sacred Isle – Thorn
Thorn watched the night play out like a drama. The solstices were always a dreadful time for serious work – neither the real nor the aethereal were solid in their spheres at such times, and the simplest workings could miscarry.