“Vincen!” she shouted as she ran. “Vincen! To me!”
To me, to me, and burn anyone who says otherwise. To me, damn it, before he gets away.
Basrahip reached the tower before her, pushing open one of the servants’ doors. Behind her, a welcome voice called her. “My lady!”
“Stop him, Vincen,” she shouted, and ran on. Her knees hurt, her feet hurt, a sharp pain stung her back, and she felt none of it. There was only the chase. The perfect focus on the bastard huffing his way along before her, and the desperate need to stop him.
The Kingspire was a maze to her. Halls and corridors, stairways and servants’ passages. If she lost sight of him, he would be lost. Everything would be lost. She spared nothing, and Vincen Coe, his sword drawn, ran at her side.
They found him before a wide, sweeping stair. She threw herself at his legs to slow him as Vincen looped around to block his way. The huntsman’s blade shone in the light. Basrahip lowered his wide head, shook it like a man recovering from a blow.
“You think,” Basrahip said, “to cut me?”
“This far,” Vincen said. “No farther.”
Basrahip laughed. “Would you draw my blood? You wish to feel the goddess’s kiss? I can do this for you.”
Clara cried out, crawling away from him. With the sprint done, her lungs felt in flame. Her heart might burst at any second. Vincen moved forward, putting himself between her and the priest.
“You end where you are,” Vincen said.
“I continue forever,” Basrahip said, and Clara knew it was truth. He wasn’t a priest, nor even a man. All unknowing, he was the voice of dragons. Of war and death and violence that bred violence that bred violence, in a fire that burned on bodies from the dawn of time to the death of everything. “You have already lost. Listen to my voice. You dare not hurt me. You and your filthy sword. Everything you love is already lost. Everything you hope for is already gone. You cannot win.”
The words burst against her like storm waves. Jorey would die on the field, cut down by Timzinae blades. Sabiha, Annalise, Lady Skestinin. All would die. Vicarian was gone. Dawson was gone. And if Vincen turned his blade, if he drew the enemy’s blood, the spiders in it would come for them as well.
“No,” she said. “You have to let him go.”
“You have already lost,” Basrahip said. “You cannot win. You will never win.”
Vincen’s blade shifted, its point drifting down as a terrible comprehension filled his eyes. Tears of horror streaked his face. Basrahip stepped forward and took the sword from Vincen’s hand.
“You cannot win,” Basrahip said, and pushed Vincen to the ground. She crawled to him, took his hands in hers as behind them the great priest mounted the stairs, his fist making Vincen’s blade seem a table knife. “Everything you have is already gone.”
It was the spiders, she thought. It was only their power; there was still hope. But her heart knew otherwise.
They’d lost.
Marcus
Marcus’s left foot hurt. A mild ache down in the joints at the ball of his large toe. He tried to stretch it as he walked the three-sided dueling yard, leaning back a little into each step. It didn’t seem to be helping. The sword strapped across his back chafed, and he was getting an annoying little twitch near his eye. Likely he wouldn’t have noticed any of it, except that he was tense as if he were leading a full army into the field, with nothing that he could do but pace and wait to light the signal torch.
He’d planned it out with Yardem. If Inys came too early, the priests wouldn’t be gathered in their sacrificial temple. Too long, and they’d have noticed they were trapped and devised an escape. As soon as Geder and Yardem reemerged, Geder could call in his guard, put them in place. Be ready when the dragon came. Any of them that jumped, he’d be at the bottom with the sword to kill whatever spiders splashed out of the corpses.
Only being anxious tempted him to move too fast, so while the thing he wanted most in life was to take the little torch from beside the wide iron brazier they’d set out on the gravel of the yard and push it into the lump of sage and pitch, he waited instead, cataloging the ways his body hurt and watching the shadows shift with the sun. He looked toward the Kingspire, waiting for Yardem and the Lord Regent. They weren’t there.
The buildings around the base of the Kingspire felt empty as a burned city. The pathways seemed to miss the servants and courtiers that normally walked them. The windows stood shuttered against the summer sun. Geder’s private guard manned the streets at the edges of the grounds, keeping any attacker, the story was, from interrupting the priestly conclave. He had to think their eyes were as much on the tower as the streets. The goddess was the center of the empire, after all. The enemy was nearly at the gates. He’d been in enough cities facing attack to know how deeply a people consumed by fear could long for the miraculous—a cunning man’s vision of victory, a child’s imagined portent, anything that promised a future that could be known. Geder and his priests had spent so much effort pruning away everyone in the city who didn’t have faith, the ones who remained had to be certain that this was the moment that would save them.
And maybe it was, but it would be an ugly surprise for them all the same. If their salvation came today, it would be dressed like defeat. He squinted up into the sky, tested the air with his upstretched palm, and wondered again how long the dragon would take to arrive. I will come had sounded near to immediate when Inys had said it, but even the thickest smoke needed the wind to carry it. Flying might be faster than the swiftest horse, but it still took time. Why wasn’t Yardem back yet? This was all taking too long. Or he was more impatient than he thought? Marcus stretched his foot again. It ached.
When Inys came, there would be a moment when he was just in front of the great opened doors of the temple, bathing the enemy in flame. The eyes of Camnipol would all be on him, including the harpoons and lines that would encumber him and bring him down so Geder and his guard could end both threats to humanity in a single day. Marcus made it an even bet that the little bastard would be hailed and remembered as a hero for it. The world wasn’t fair that way, but so long as the dragons’ war was well and truly ended, Marcus didn’t care. That everyone who deserved credit claimed it and blame stuck where it belonged was too much to ask for. Winning would have to be enough. If Yardem would just get back.
Aster came running down the path, head down, arms and legs pumping. Cithrin sprinted just behind. All of Marcus’s aches and complaints were forgotten. His mouth went dry. He took two steps toward them, looked toward the torch, the tower.
“Basrahip knows,” Aster gasped. “He heard me. He heard Lady Kalliam. He knows.”
“All right,” Marcus said, his voice calm despite the copper taste in his mouth. Cithrin came, her lungs working like a bellows. The distress in her eyes said more than words. If he left the torch, Cithrin could light it, provided Yardem came back down. Or Geder. Or him. Or anyone. He squinted up at the tower, and past it to the sky. No great wings marked the blue. There wasn’t time. In two long strides, he reached the torch and tossed the living flame into the brazier. The dry sage spat and the stink of burning pitch billowed up and out into the wide and empty air.
“Marcus,” Cithrin said. The word carried more questions than he had time to answer.