“Seth!”
Seth woke with a jerk and a low cry. He looked up with bleary eyes.
“Ty?”
“It’s me.” Tyler grabbed the placard and pulled it over Seth’s head. Footsteps thundered above them; the Holy Father’s guards could not be more than two floors away now. Tyler threw the placard over the edge of the railing, where it fluttered downward for a moment before disappearing from sight.
“Come on, Seth.” He got an arm around Seth’s waist and pulled him off the stool. Seth hissed in pain, but did not draw away.
“Where are we going?”
“Away from here.” Tyler pulled him down the hallway. “I can’t carry you, Seth. My leg’s bad. You have to help.”
“I’ll try.” But Seth firmed up his own arm behind Tyler’s back, lending support as the two of them limped along. Tyler’s mouth stretched in a grim smile.
What a pair we make. Old, lame, and mutilated.
But even this bit of gallows humor pricked at his memory, and now Tyler recalled something from his childhood, an illustration from one of Father Alan’s tapestries: Jesus Christ, King of the Jews, on the road to Galilee, leading the blind, helping the lame, offering comfort to the leper. Tyler used to sit and stare for long minutes at that tapestry, the only art in Father Alan’s house that did not depict a God of wrath. The Jesus in the tapestry had been mild and benevolent of face, and though the miserable of the world were crowded around him, he did not turn away.
This is my God, Tyler had realized, and now, hobbling down the high stone hallway more than sixty years later, he felt exalted at the memory. His broken leg buckled beneath him and he thought he would pitch forward, bringing Seth down with him, both of them tumbling over the flagstones until they fetched up against the wall. But then Tyler felt them: invisible hands gripping his legs, bolstering his knee, helping him to run.
“Seth!” he gasped. “Seth! He’s with us!”
Seth gave a choked laugh, his hand clenched tightly on Tyler’s thin ribs. “What, even now?”
“Of course now!” Tyler began to laugh as well, his voice high and hysterical. “Great God, only a little farther!”
The shouts behind them grew louder, and now Tyler could feel the footsteps of their pursuers beneath his feet, vibrating against the stone floor as they poured from the staircase. In every doorway there seemed to be a brother just roused from sleep, staring at Tyler and Seth with wide eyes, but no one moved to stop them in their clumsy progress down the hallway. The invisible hands were gone now and the two of them were supporting each other, their shuffling, limping gaits somehow finding symmetry, a three-legged race that carried them along. When they reached Tyler’s door, they both limped inside, and Tyler shot the bolt.
It took the Holy Father’s guards nearly two minutes to find a piece of wood solid enough to break down the door. When the heavy oak rectangle finally tore free of its hinges, several guards crashed into Father Tyler’s quarters, falling over each other in their haste and ending up in a pile on top of the busted door. They were quick to recover, to straighten up and look around, swords drawn, ready to meet resistance.
But all they found was an empty room.
KELSEA DRAGGED HERSELF up the last flight of steps, trying not to pant. She was carrying less weight, but the miraculous change to her exterior had not gotten her into good condition. Mace was beside her; Pen had gone on leave for the weekend. Kelsea had had no opportunity to speak privately to him before he left, but she couldn’t help wondering whether he would go to see the other woman. It was none of her business, Kelsea told herself, and yet five minutes later she would find herself thinking about it again. She had wanted this thing to mean nothing to either of them, but was quickly discovering that it didn’t quite work that way.
She reached the top of the stairs and found herself gazing over the high wall that bordered New London’s eastern side. From here, she could look out across the Caddell and over the Almont, now mottled green and brown in the late summer.
Beneath the city’s walls, just on the far side of the Caddell, lay the refugee camp: more than a mile of tents and hastily built shelters spread across the banks of the river. From this distance the people in the camp were antlike, but there were more than half a million of them down there. The Caddell provided plenty of water, but sewage was becoming a problem, and despite the huge stores that Mace had brought in, the camp would soon run out of food. It was the height of harvest season, but no one was farming the Almont. Even if the Tearling somehow made it through the invasion, fruit and vegetable stores would be decimated for years. Some families in the north, near the Fairwitch, had elected to remain and take their chances, and so had a few isolated villages on the Cadarese border. But most of the Tearling was now crammed in and around New London, and Kelsea sensed the kingdom before her as a vast wasteland under a grey sky, nothing but deserted villages and empty fields, haunted.
Perhaps ten miles distant, sprawled near the horizon, was the Tear army, a cluster of tents that had faded from long use. The army was massed on the banks of the Caddell, at the point where the river suddenly bent to begin its twisting journey around New London. Her army appeared unimposing, even to Kelsea, and it was not helped by comparison with what lay on the horizon: a vast, dark cloud, the subtle haze reflected from many miles of black tents, black banners, and the innumerable hawks that now soared over the Mort camp at all times. Hall had caught the Mort napping beside Lake Karczmar, but that would never happen again, for now the Mort had come up with some sort of sentinel species to overfly their camp. Unlike most Mort hawks, which would not cry out, these birds emitted an ungodly shriek whenever any of Bermond’s soldiers tried to approach. Several scouts had been caught in this manner, and now Bermond was forced to keep an eye on the Mort from a distance, but not for long. They were coming, and they were coming fast. Hall’s missives came without judgment, but Bermond’s were a constant stream of reprimands, and Kelsea knew that he was right. She had made a great mistake, one that her entire kingdom would suffer for, and although she was not certain that all other options would not have been greater mistakes, this one seemed to demand punishment. Every day she came out here to watch the Mort approach, to see the black cloud on the horizon draw nearer. It seemed no more than what she deserved.
“They’re trying to cut the Caddell,” Mace remarked beside her.
“Why? There’s nothing on either side now.”
“If they come up the bank and try to cross the river in front of the city, they would lose considerable numbers to our archers. But if they hold both banks, they can come with defenses ready, be impervious to arrows. Then they can simply focus on scaling the walls and taking the bridge.”
Even Mace was a pessimist now. There was no hope anywhere, unless Kelsea could make it herself. The thought sickened her. When she looked in the mirror this morning, a beautiful brunette stared back at her, but not just any brunette. Lily’s hair, Lily’s face, Lily’s mouth … the two of them were not identical, not by any means, but individual pieces were beginning to match. Kelsea and Lily were sharing a life; now it seemed they would share a face as well. But Kelsea’s eyes had never changed; they were still Raleigh eyes … her mother’s eyes, twin spots of deep green carelessness that had brought down an entire kingdom.
“Glory to the Queen!”
The shout came from below, from the bottom of the inner wall, where several members of her Guard had blocked the stairwell. Kelsea peered over the edge and found a crowd of people gathered at the foot of the stairs. They waved furiously, a sea of upturned faces.
They think I can save them. Kelsea dug up a confident smile and waved back, then returned her attention to the Almont. She had never had any options, but that fact would earn her no leniency. When she was judged—as she surely would be, by history if nothing else—there would be no mitigating circumstances. She stared at the dark sprawl on the horizon, not allowing herself to look away. Almost without thinking, she opened up a new wound on her calf, feeling a grim satisfaction as blood trickled down toward her ankle.