The dragon drew another vast breath, and the fire came again. A cracking sound, sharp as a board snapped across a knee, but a thousand times louder, came from the Kingspire.
She wanted to call out to Marcus, to Yardem. To anyone. But there was only her and the prince, and the actors who were the nearest thing to her family. The dying tower at the heart of a dying empire. The terrible grandeur was more than she’d expected. Marcus, Yardem, Geder… they’d been meant to escape the tower first. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen. Either the ground was shaking or she was. She couldn’t tell which.
The banner reached the trees, draping over the broad and leafy branches. New smoke rose up. New flames to echo the ones still glowing in the tower.
We have to get water, she thought. We have to put the fires out before they spread. It wasn’t enough to spur her into motion.
The horror and awe that consumed her shifted, and a new thought slid brightly into her mind. This was it. This was the moment she’d aimed herself toward. If they’d been in the temple, the spiders were gone now. The war that had spanned all human history was rising in the smoke above her. She wanted to see it as a victory, but she couldn’t see it as anything but an act of breathtaking destruction. That peace could come from this was an article of faith. A thing she believed because she had to.
Someone called her name, the voice almost drowned out by the sound of the flames. It took her a timeless moment to find him: Sandr waving his hands and pointing at the mechanism beside him. Cithrin shook her head, confused. The actor yelled something and pointed up, at Inys. The serpentine tail wrapped the tower.
Oh. He was asking whether they should loose the bolts and try to pull the dragon down. She turned to find Marcus, only he wasn’t there. She’d known that.
They should wait. They could deal with Inys another time, when Marcus was back. If he came back.
If you fall, I’m picking up your damned blade myself.
Humanity had driven the spiders to the edge of the world once. But it had also thrown off the yoke of the dragons. Defeating one without the other now would only be half the job. If it meant betraying Inys, it was also being true to Marcus. And the royal guard was coming near.
“Do it!” she shouted over the roar and cacophony. “Bring him down!”
Sandr nodded and turned back to his mechanism. From all around the garden, splinters of bright metal arched up toward the dragon’s glittering scales, trailing gossamer. When the first two hit, Inys shifted, swiveling his massive head in confusion. Clinging as he was to the side of the burning tower, he didn’t have the freedom of movement he might have. It was why Marcus had chosen this moment.
Inys ripped out one of the barbs as two more hit. The gossamer on the first looked like it was growing thicker as thread drew up string to draw up rope, to pull Inys down. Geder’s guards rushed past her as if she weren’t there, bows drawn. More shouts came from behind them. Camnipol rising in terror and rage, as Marcus had hoped and intended.
Inys ripped another barb free, shifted his head toward them, and opened his mouth, but the gout of fire that came from him wasn’t strong enough to reach the ground. For the space of a heartbeat, the lines burned and turned to ash. Embers in the shape of spider web, crumbling, and then gone. The dragon’s roar was louder than the fire had been. His face, even from so far away, was perfectly readable—confusion and pain, followed by a vast indignance.
More people rushed forward to the gardens. Not only guards now, but the servants Geder had ordered back. Some brandished swords and bows, but others rakes and horsewhips, stones plucked off the garden’s paths, or only raised voices and balled fists. For a moment, she loved them all. Aster pressed himself closer to her, but whether to protect her or be protected, she couldn’t say.
There was a strange nobility about it. All these people, faced with catastrophe, and running toward it. Any one of them would have been wiser to turn and flee, but instead they came together. By instinct, they would do together what none of them might have managed alone.
Inys rose, leaping up into the wide sky, his wings beating the air. The wind blew the fires brighter, and the dragon rose high above the reach of their weapons, spiraling up toward the clouds and then diving back down. Screams filled the air, and bows were drawn, ready to meet the attack. But Inys pulled out, swooping around to hit the highest point in the tower with all his weight. The burning Kingspire shook.
“It’s coming down!” Cithrin shouted. “Get out of the way! He’s pushing it down!”
Fire and stone fell together, coming faster than the banner had. It was only the highest part of the great tower that tipped over and tumbled down toward them, but it was still larger than her countinghouse in Porte Oliva had been. It hit the ground, spewing fire and dust. The screaming hadn’t stopped, but it had changed its character. No longer defiance and horror, but pain.
The dragon, hovering in the high air above the city, screamed. Cithrin thought there were words in it, but she couldn’t tell what they were. Inys spread his ragged wings and flew away to the south, far beyond their reach. They hadn’t brought him down. He’d gotten away.
“Well,” she said, her voice sounding as if it belonged to someone else, “that could have gone better.”
The royal quarter looked like a city after a sack. Stone and ancient wood burned hotter than a forge, scattered across the gardens in heaps taller than buildings. The people of Camnipol, guards and servants, divided themselves among fighting back the flame, tending to the wounded, and staring in open horror at the destruction. Cithrin found herself weeping with them, and didn’t know how many of her tears were sorrow, how many fear, how many relief.
Clara Kalliam stumbled forward out of the haze of dust and smoke, her huntsman close behind her. She came to Cithrin, and for a moment, each tried to find something to say. They fell into each other’s arms, embracing like mourners at a pyre. Cithrin felt other arms around her. Aster was with them, sobs wracking his body. And then Cary as well. And Kit. And Sandr, his hair singed and a thick burn over his right eye. And Charlit Soon whom Cithrin barely knew, holding her now like a sister in the wreckage. In the heart of the terror, they made a knot with each other, and the simple animal comfort of being held by others who shared her distress was the nearest thing Cithrin had ever felt to love.
“Is it done?” Clara asked. “Are they gone?”
“I think so,” Cithrin replied. “Probably?”
Cithrin felt the movement in the group, a shifting that filled her with dread before she understood it. Master Kit, his expression gentle, stood back. His hair was whiter now than it had been when she’d met him on the road from Vanai. The age in his face more pronounced. But the kindness and amusement and sorrow with which he embraced the world still glowed in his eyes.
“No,” he said. “There is one more.”
“Kit?” Cithrin said, struggling free of the others. Behind him, a vast structure within the rubble shifted, throwing out black smoke and embers like a thousand fireflies. Tears streaked Kit’s ash-powdered face.
“Don’t cry,” he said. “I have been thinking of this moment for some time.”
“No,” Cary said. “No no no.”
“Yes,” Kit said, lowering his head.
“You can’t,” Cary said. “We’ve just won. We did everything right. It isn’t fair.”
She took a step toward Kit. Her mouth was a slash of grief. Cithrin came to her side.