“All right.” He hesitated. “I’ll be down at the Ridge.”
“You mean the palace tri-grain fields?”
“Yes.” Shifting his weight, he added, “I told Jak Tager I would talk to him.”
Kamoj remembered the name. Dazza had spoken of Tager during their ride in the giant metal bird. “Is he a doctor?”
“Psychiatrist. A healer of emotions.” Vyrl’s shoulders tensed under his work shirt. “It can’t hurt just to show him a few crop variations I’m working on. I don’t have to talk to him again if I don’t want to.”
“I’m glad, Vyrl.” She felt a curious sense of release, as if his words had lifted a weight from her. She let her eyes close.
“Kamoj?”
She opened her eyes half-way. “Yes?”
“This morning I went riding with my bodyguards. We saw some people practicing folk dances in the village.”
She yawned. “Probably rehearsing for the harvest festival.”
“Some were men.”
Her eyes closed again. “Men do the Reel of the Greenglass Stags. They stamp their boots a lot in that one. In the Sun Lizard’s March they spin torches in the air. And they do partner dances with the women…”
She was almost asleep when Vyrl said, “Then it is accepted for men to dance here?”
With a sigh, she tried to wake up. “Of course. Why?”
“I just wondered.” Leaning over, he kissed her. “Sleep well, water sprite.”
As Vyrl’s footsteps receded across the room, she drifted into the downy embrace of sleep.
A smell of burning scales woke Kamoj. The early morning sunlight had a dirty cast to it. When she widened her nostrils, she almost gagged on the stench of ashes. She slid out of bed and ran to the south-facing window.
To her left, the East Sky Mountains towered in forest-carpeted peaks. Before her, the Lower Sky Mountains spread out in fields and then fell away in wooded hills to the distant flat lands, where villages dotted the aqua-blue plains and rivers criss-crossed the land in silver threads. To the west, the Argali Mountains descended in great wrinkles until, out of sight, they reached the village of Argali.
The mountains roared in flames.
Forest fires blazed in the Argali and Lower Sky Mountains. Billows of smoke rose from peak after rolling peak, and tongues of dragon’s breath threatened the flat lands. If the outlying hamlets of Argali weren’t already burning, they would be soon—and then Argali itself.
The floor under her feet vibrated. A giant bird of gold and black metal roared over the tower, shaking the building with its passage. It arrowed south, where other birds soared over the fires, their metal plumage aglitter in the sunlight. One released a purple cloud that billowed across the flames. The burning orange tongues cowered, beaten back, then flared anew, relentless in their advance.
“Sweet Saints,” Kamoj muttered. Why had no one woken her up? She had to get out there to help. She had no doubt Vyrl’s first reaction had also been to join the firelines. Was he out there now, or had the Ascendant ordered his return to its fortress above the sky, forcing him to safety against his will?
Kamoj ran into her chamber, to the rose cabinet where she stored her clothes. As she paused to open it, she saw herself in the mirror, a young woman with a wild mane of black curls that poured down to her hips. She wore only a translucent underdress, her nipples outlined against the pink silk. Rubies and gold glittered at her neck, wrists, and ankles. Collar and cuffs? Was that the origin of these family heirlooms? She gritted her teeth, knowing she would never see her wedding jewels the same way again.
Metal clinked on stone in the master bedroom.
“Vyrl?” Kamoj went back to the bedroom, to see if he had news. The suite, however, was still empty. She checked the landing outside, leaving the foyer doors open, but found no one there—either.
Inside the suite, she heard metal scrape stone again.
Puzzled, Kamoj went back into the bedroom. Still she saw no one. She walked to the window—
And froze.
An iron tri-hook gripped the sill like a huge dragon’s claw, piercing the shimmer curtain. Even as Kamoj watched, a hand came over the sill and slapped onto the wood. Then a woman pulled herself up into view, a husky archer dressed in Ironbridge colors. She hauled herself up onto the sill in one smooth motion.
Kamoj wasted no time on questions: she spun around and ran. As she raced out onto the landing, she heard boots thud on the floor in the suite. She ran down the tower stairs, her bare feet slapping the steps. Why hadn’t Morlin warned her of the intruder? Was he still “down,” whatever that meant?
At the bottom of the stairs, the door to the Long Hall was jammed open by the body of an elderly butler who had probably been coming to warn her about the fires. When she saw the gash in his head, she dropped to his side. Mercifully, he still breathed, unconscious but alive.
The sounds of pursuit grew louder above her, boots pounding on stone in the stairwell. Kamoj scrambled over the butler and ran down the Long Hall. She couldn’t outfight or outrun the archer, who had both height and body mass over her, but she knew these mountains far better than Jax’s people. As soon as she made it outside, she would easily lose her pursuer in the forest.
Bodies lay in the hall up ahead, two maize-girls, bound and gagged. For a instant Kamoj feared they were dead. Then she realized no point existed in binding or gagging dead people.
Far up the corridor, near the maize-girls, an Ironbridge stagman stepped out from a doorway.
“Hai!” Kamoj skidded to a stop. Whirling around, she saw the archer striding toward her from the other direction, the woman’s long legs covering ground fast. Kamoj ran straight at her, trying to reach the nearest doorway before the archer reached her. She made it and ran into a sitting room filled with gold and white furniture. Bronzed sunlight poured through its floor-to-ceiling windows, the promise of escape. She raced toward them—
Someone grabbed her around the waist. As Kamoj yelled, the archer swung her around, lifting her feet off the floor. Half-carrying, half-dragging Kamoj, the woman strode back into the Long Hall, where the stagman met them. When Kamoj tried to shout for help, the stagman shoved a sponge in her mouth and tied a gag around her head, while the archer held her arms pinned. Then her captors each grabbed one of her upper arms and took off, forcing her to run between them or be dragged.
In seconds they were outside, racing across the courtyard. A cart waited for them, hitched to four blueglass bi-hoxen, bulky six-legged mammoths with sparks of sunlight flashing off their scales. The stagman climbed onto the driver’s seat, a plank of wood set across the front of the cart. Kamoj caught only a glimpse of his actions, being otherwise occupied in her struggles with the archer. The woman hefted Kamoj up and threw her into the back of the cart, between two rolls of carpet, by a coil of rope. As she vaulted in after Kamoj, the cart jolted into motion. Kamoj tried to scramble out of it, but the archer shoved her back down on her back.
The stagman looked around, the reins of the bi-hoxen gripped in his hands. “Tera, keep her still.”
Tera, apparently the archer, just grunted as she and Kamoj wrestled. Kamoj raked her fingernails across Tera’s arm, drawing blood. Then the archer flipped her onto her stomach and yanked her arms behind her back. Kneeling on Kamoj’s legs, she bound her prisoner’s wrists together with the rope.
The bi-hoxen plodded on, oblivious to the struggle, pulling the cart up into the North Sky Mountains.
Ancient trees towered over the path, clogged with moss and Argali vines. Black-scaled thornbats hissed among the foliage, searching for puffs to skewer with their needled beaks. Their high-pitched cries echoed in the hoary forest. Except for the rare Argali rose or puff lizard, the trees hunkered in dark hues, their scaled iridescence subdued by the weather. A misty drizzle was falling, mixed with fog that glinted from the scale dust suspended in it.