Rylan peered warily through the trees for Kreòs, the auburns, or any dragons. He saw none, but that didn’t mean they weren’t on their way. He couldn’t leave Vedron outside, he decided. She’d be too vulnerable. She was also cut on her shoulder, likely from Raef’s sword, and Rylan could feel she wanted revenge.
“We’re not out to kill,” Rylan said, “unless we can’t help it. Understand?”
Vedron gurgled noncommittally, lowered her head, and nudged his knife hand.
“Good idea, girl. Thank you.” Rylan slipped the blade under the dark scale at the center of her forehead and pried it gently. He felt a sting of pain through their bond, and plucked off the lucerta.
He put the scale on his tongue. It tasted of copper and burnt sap, but it wasn’t wholly unpleasant. His mouth filled with spit, forcing him to swallow repeatedly. As the flow of saliva eased, he pressed the scale against the roof of his mouth and drew on its power. A low tone, like a distant bell, rang in his ears. He felt powerful—not strong, but more like . . . indestructible. He had to be careful, had to remember he wasn’t really invulnerable, had to try not to get killed.
He mounted Vedron, but realized the servant’s entrance wasn’t wide enough to accommodate Vedron’s girth. He bid her climb onto the roof instead, then guided her slowly and quietly toward Marstan’s audience chamber.
Rylan had Vedron breathe a green spray on the cedar shingles. The acid hissed and ate through the wood, the planking, and the framing below it, burning a hole as big as a wagon wheel. Then he tugged on his dragonskin gloves.
Rylan lowered himself through the hole, dropped down, and landed on a horsehair carpet with hardly a sound. He stepped aside as Vedron lumbered down almost as quietly. They were in his father’s sitting room. He opened both doors and the body of a dead guardsman toppled into the room. Rylan recognized him. Henrik. He’d always been gruff toward Rylan but he’d been loyal to the Imperator.
Rylan stepped carefully over the body and onto the long red carpet down the center of the hall. He and Vedron crept to the end of the hall and through an archway to the main hallway of the wing. The doors to Marstan’s audience chamber and its anteroom were open. Rylan heard voices coming from it and padded toward it. Vedron followed, but Rylan bid her wait for his call. Vedron hissed softly—she’d sensed a dragon ahead; Rylan guessed it was likely Llorn’s cobalt, Fraoch.
Rylan stepped into the anteroom. The spicy-sweet smell of cobalt breath lingered in the air. The double doors to the audience chamber itself were open wide. Marstan was sitting in the chair on the left side of the dais, clutching its carved wooden arms. He was staring at something in the near-left corner of the room, eyes wide as coins, shaking like he was having a fit.
Llorn stood at the base of the dais, a pair of Red Knives in dragonskin armor to his left, three more to his right. All had longswords at the ready.
Standing to the right of the dais was Quintarch Lucran, his left arm held tenderly against his chest, and the other quintarchs—Zabrienne, Yarina, Marle, and Drynon. All of them seemed a bit dazed, especially Marle, who kept blinking his one good eye, and Zabrienne, who swayed like she was ready to pass out. To the left of the quintarchs, Andros lay near the foot of the table, either unconscious or dead. Willow crouched near him, a cut above her left eye.
A dragon gurgled and a blue tail swung into view. Fraoch was hunkered just beyond the doors.
Lucran, sweating profusely, stepped closer to Willow. “Tell us what you want.”
Llorn paced before the dais. “What I want is for the empire to leave the Holt forever, and for you to recognize it as sovereign territory.”
Rylan slid his cutlass slowly from its sheathe and crept closer to the audience chamber doors.
When no one else said anything, Llorn said, “I thought as much. Failing that, perhaps you can give Morraine her life back, a life you stole.”
“She committed crimes against the empire,” Lucran said.
“Crimes?” Llorn spat. “She was caught in a crusade that you began. You lost a son, yes? Your precious Ransom died. We lost thousands when you attacked us because your little boy overdosed.”
Willow looked at quavering Marstan, and she blurted, “Stop it! My father tried to help Morraine.”
Llorn laughed. “Is that what you call standing by and as she was hung from a tree?”
“My father wasn’t to blame for that.”
“He did nothing to stop it.”
“He was in no position to!”
Llorn stopped his pacing and fixed his gaze on Willow. “You’re proving my point. Had the leader of the Holt had real power, the empire wouldn’t have been allowed to kill her. It would have been up to us to see justice was done.” Llorn stepped onto the dais and stood directly across from Marstan’s chair and raised his sword. “I intend to change that.”
Rylan sprinted into the room. “Stop!”
Llorn drove his sword through Marstan’s chest with a sickening crunch. His quavering suddenly stopped as a torrent of blood flowed around the blade. Marstan groaned and his face turned red. He turned and looked at Rylan. Then he slumped forward and coughed blood into his lap.
Two Knives stalked toward Rylan, swords raised.
Behind them, Llorn wrenched his sword from Marstan’s chest. “Stand back!”
His Knives exchanged glances, but they backed up toward the dais as Llorn stormed forward. Lucran and the other quintarchs were still frozen and staring at Fraoch.
Rylan knew trying to talk to Llorn would be useless. He met him halfway across the room and swung his cutlass at Llorn’s neck. Llorn blocked it, quickly twisted his sword around, and swung it backhand at Rylan’s stomach. Rylan jumped back, and the tip of Llorn’s blade clipped his tunic.
“You’re slow, Rylan,” Llorn growled. “The empire has made you weak.” He lunged forward and swung his sword two-handed down at Rylan’s head. Rylan raised his blade just time, but the clash of metal sent a painful shiver up his arm.
Vedron begged to come to his rescue, but Rylan forbade it.
Llorn advanced again and leveled a mighty swing at Rylan’s neck, Rylan ducked and staggered back, hit something with his heel, and he toppled backwards on his rear end. Fraoch’s damned tail. The dragon gurgled wickedly.
Llorn stood over Rylan and stared down at him. “You should have stuck to thieving.”
Rylan crept back a few inches, hand still holding his cutlass, and shrugged. “Maybe so.” Now, Vedron! Now!
Vedron burst through the doorway. Fraoch snapped her teeth at Vedron’s neck, but Vedron ducked, spun, and whipped her tail at Fraoch’s head. Her sharp frills gashed Fraoch’s neck, cutting scales and ripping flesh. Seeing Llorn distracted, Rylan rolled over one shoulder and gained his feet near the room’s corner.
Fraoch, meanwhile, roared and scrabbled away, battering benches across the floor. Then she drew in a breath and opened her mouth wide. As a blue haze roiled at the back of her mouth, Vedron shot her head out like a cobra and streamed green acid into Fraoch’s open maw. White smoke billowed up from Fraoch’s mouth. She screeched and writhed into a corner, thrashing her tail against the benches, the wood paneling, the ceiling beams.
Llorn backed away from Vedron, fixing his gaze on Fraoch and whispering to her. The two Red Knives closest to him stared at him. Lucran swung a right hook into the jaw of the Red Knife next to him. The stout man fell like a tree. Yarina snatched a stiletto from her boot and drove it into the neck of the Knife standing beside her. A third Knife slashed at Drynon, but Drynon deftly dodged the blow and wrestled the man to the floor.
Willow snatched Andros’s saber from the base of the dais and pointed it at the two remaining Red Knives. Quintarch Marle took up a fallen Knife’s longsword and leapt beside her. Vedron hissed loudly and skirted along one wall toward the two Knives, and they climbed over the toppled benches toward Llorn.
Somewhere outside, a warning horn blew.
Fraoch slunk through the double doors into the anteroom. Llorn followed and motioned for his men to join him. “Consider this a short reprieve,” he said to the quintarchs, then all of them were gone.
Willow stared at her father, slumped in his chair, blood pooled in his lap, then knelt by Andros’s side. She checked Andros’s pulse and blew a sigh of relief. Then she turned to Rylan. “How did you know they were coming?”
“A former Knife told me.” Before she could say more, Rylan held up a hand to her and looked at Lucran and the other quintarchs. “Not now. We need to rally everyone to the vyrd.”
“The vyrd? Why?” Lucran asked.
“Because if we don’t, Ancris is doomed.”