CARRIERI SNATCHED THE MAP from the aide’s hand, his anger simmering just below the surface.
“Thank you, Ryven.”
He unrolled the map, spreading it out on the nearest table, sending writing utensils and a few stacked books flying. They had commandeered the top floor of the Merchant’s Tower, ten floors up. It wasn’t the safest place for a war office in a bombardment, but it commanded a good view of the city. Carrieri and his aides now gathered around the table on which he’d placed the map. Wide windows ran along each wall. Sunlight streamed in; it was a beautiful morning, or would be under any other circumstances.
Carrieri placed his finger on the map, at the intersection of the Radial Road and the Twenty-Fifth Circle.
“The first missile struck here, between the old nobles’ district and the current financial district.”
“Canta’s bones,” one of his men whispered, “That’s just three circles away.”
That was true enough, but Carrieri didn’t have time to acknowledge the obvious. They likely only had moments before the next—
The door to the room burst open, and a messenger entered, panting.
“Second missile. Direct hit on the Glass Pyramid.”
Carrieri swore. The Glass Pyramid was another civilian target; it held no tactical or military meaning. What were the tiellans bloody trying to do?
Looking down at the map, his finger moved to where he knew the Glass Pyramid was—was—and he reached for the quill, marking the spot in dark ink. Twenty-Fifth Circle on the Radial Road. Fifteenth Circle on the Coastal Road. It was impossible to discern a pattern with only two points, but he tried, anyway. The exact center in between the two points was close to the Sinefin River, where it met the Twentieth Circle. Nothing of note there. Drawing a line using the two points, moving southeast, just led out of town. Drawing a line northwest, however, from the Radial Road to the Coastal Road…
…led directly to God’s Eye.
“Canta’s bloody bones,” Carrieri muttered, shifting the map on the table so he had a better view of the Cliffs of Litori north of the city. “They’re trying to hit God’s Eye.” The map was to scale, more or less, and made by the famous Gendri Dargania, so it was relatively accurate, too. He scratched another broad X on the map roughly where the massive trebuchet was stationed, and his suspicions were confirmed. The two shots fired so far looked to be calibrations, testing how far it could fire, and how accurately.
“Give me a report on the battle,” Carrieri said.
Behind him, a psimancer in communication with the Hood Regiment stepped forward. “They have engaged the tiellan forces, sir, but the tiellans are strictly on the defensive. With the higher ground, they are holding their position.”
“And the Rodenese Fleet?”
“A few ships have been spotted in the distance, Grand Marshal, but no significant movement yet.”
Carrieri clenched his jaw.
“Illaran,” he snapped. “What of the project we discussed?”
“They have engaged the enemy, Grand Marshal.”
Carrieri exhaled, but he could not afford a sigh of relief. Not yet. Illaran’s forces were their last hope at this point. If they could not stop the trebuchet…
Goddess, he could not consider that option.
“Tell General Gerundi to press the attack,” Carrieri said, turning back to the psimancer that connected him with the general. “Send everything he has against the tiellans; make them react.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And…” Carrieri hesitated. Damn Kosarin for not giving him more psimancers; he needed to communicate more quickly. With everyone. “Get to the Eye as quick as you can,” Carrieri told the lad. “Take… Oblivion, is there another psimancer here?”
“Here, sir.” A young woman stepped forward.
“Accompany him. Keep in touch. Make sure God’s Eye is completely evacuated except for essential personnel. And tell the ones who stay they must be prepared to exit the building as quickly as they can.”
“Sir…”
“You heard me,” Carrieri said. The Eye would remain operational, even with a skeleton crew.
The messenger and psimancer both saluted, and then ran down the stairs.
Carrieri turned back to the window facing the cliffs. He could already see the trebuchet reloading.
Goddess, he pleaded, don’t let me be right. He had hoped, leaving Winter to fight those Outsiders herself, that he would destroy her. Instead, it seemed, he had created a monster, with an eye trained on his beloved city.
* * *
The second missile sailed toward Triah, and a suspicion shivered through Urstadt. Winter was fixated on the boulder, muscles tense and brow slick with sweat.
Urstadt had seen her like that before—mostly when she had used her psimancy during the battles against the Legion. Urstadt was willing to bet just about anything that Winter was using psimancy to… to what? Steady the projectiles? Propel them farther, or faster? Aim them?
“The Legion has redoubled their attack. They are pressing our forces back, Urstadt.”
Rorie, half of her body slick with blood, the other half covered in sweat and dirt, approached.
“Goddess, I hope that gore isn’t yours,” Urstadt said, looking the woman up and down.
“Not most of it.”
Urstadt glanced east, where the battle between the Rangers and the Legion’s forces was underway. She could barely make out generalities in the chaos, but it did indeed seem the Rangers were losing ground. There was still quite a ways to go before the Legion reached the trebuchet.
“You’re losing ground, but—”
“But we haven’t broken. Not yet. If the Legion keeps up this way, though… ain’t gonna be long.”
Urstadt exhaled slowly. She could help, but there was little one woman could do—even a woman like Urstadt—to turn the tide of an entire battle.
Well, she corrected herself, a woman like Winter might, but the queen was otherwise occupied.
“We’re moving too slowly,” Winter shouted, and the team of engineers pulled harder, resetting the War Goddess’s beam and counterweight.
“Better send in the reinforcements,” Urstadt said. They’d kept a few hundred of their Rangers in reserve, on the chance that another attack might come from somewhere else. Urstadt was still betting Carrieri had something else up his sleeve, but they could not let the Legion Regiment through the front line. It would end everything.
Rorie nodded. “Will do.”
“And stay safe, Rorie,” Urstadt said.
Rorie offered a casual salute as she mounted her horse and rode off. “Under the sun and moon,” she said with a grin. Then she spurred her horse onward, toward the reinforcements.
Urstadt turned back to Winter. The trebuchet’s mechanism had nearly been reset, and the engineers were preparing to run in and ready the sling.
Urstadt was about to inform Winter of the battle’s progress, when she noticed something out of the corner of her eye. A group of people, approaching from the cliff face.
Not tiellans.
Urstadt’s instincts were all that saved her as she dropped. A crossbow bolt flew through the air where her head had been a fraction of a second before. She rolled, calling to Winter over her shoulder.
“We have company!”
Urstadt dove for cover behind one of the smaller trebuchets, and tried to get a better look at their new attackers. There were ten or eleven of them, both women and men. All were dressed in dark clothing, with boiled leather armor but no chain or plate that she could see. Swords, axes, and crossbows. And—
The trebuchet behind which Urstadt hid slid to the side, about one rod.
Urstadt moved with the trebuchet, cursing as she did so.
Urstadt gripped her glaive, adjusting her armor. Winter, too, had her sword in hand, but had yet to take cover.
“You cannot stop me,” Winter shouted. One of the smaller trebuchets nearby lifted into the air, and lurched toward the oncoming group, picking up speed as it went.
They aren’t here to stop you, Urstadt realized. She glanced at the War Goddess, prepped for launch but without ammunition. Engineers fled from the siege engine as a pair of circular blades cut down two of the fleeing tiellans.
They’re here to stop that.
Three of the advancing men had almost converged on Urstadt’s position. She edged around the small trebuchet, which hadn’t moved since that first initial attempt. Either the telenic with this group realized she wasn’t powerful enough to move it fully, or she’d become distracted by other things.
Two of the men circled around the trebuchet one way, while the other took the opposite direction. They knew Urstadt was here, and these men meant to deal with her.
Urstadt did not give them the chance. She swept around toward the lone warrior, bellowing as she swung her glaive at his face. Her attempt to catch him off guard failed as he ducked and lunged toward her, and Urstadt immediately knew the types of warriors she faced. These were not simple soldiers; some of them, of course, were Nazaniin, while others were likely some of the Legion’s top soldiers, reserved for covert operations of utmost importance. Like taking out a weapon of mass destruction targeting their city.
Urstadt twisted out of the way, yanking her glaive back to avoid embedding it in the wood of the trebuchet, and she and the other man faced one another just as his two comrades circled around behind her.
Urstadt sidestepped and turned, getting the three in front of her as best she could, but the men moved with her, widening their positions, keeping her within their triangle. Two swords and an axe. Crossbows were slung on the backs of the swordsmen, but she doubted they would utilize those weapons at such close quarters. The man with the axe was huge, a head taller than Urstadt and thickly muscled, while the two swordsmen were thinner, more sinewy.
She had no more time to consider. The taller swordsman lunged at her from behind and slightly to her left. Urstadt stepped to the side and parried with her glaive, dancing around a strike from the axe. At the same time, the other man charged.
It had been some time since Urstadt had fought more than one foe at once outside of a mass battlefield. She used to practice against three, four, even five expert swordsmen at the same time in Roden, emerging the victor perhaps half of the time. The bouts had gained something of a reputation in Roden before she left. Both victories and defeats were almost always by a hair’s breadth, but a loss was a loss no matter how close the call, and a loss in an actual fight meant death. She could not afford a loss now.
Urstadt twirled her glaive, blocking, parrying, and dancing around the attacks of her three opponents. Instinct and muscle memory took over, and Urstadt moved with the wind, her glaive an extension of herself, obeying her every command. She was a blur as she whirled around and around, dodging attacks at lightning speed. Urstadt stayed on the defensive, parrying and weaving, while she looked for an opening.
She found it. The shorter swordsman and the axeman crossed paths just as Urstadt twisted around an attack from the third man, turning to face the other two, glaive prepped for a thrust. She stabbed with her glaive, impaling the axeman through the gut and the other through one shoulder.
She left her glaive where it was, pinning the two together, and drew her short sword as she slid away on the grass.
The uninjured swordsman did not miss a beat. He leapt at her, swinging down. Urstadt brought her sword up just in time to block, one hand on the flat of her blade.
With a grunt—her limbs and lungs burned with exertion and pain—Urstadt forced her body forward, sliding her legs beneath the tall swordsman’s. While he did not fall, he stumbled, and that was enough for Urstadt to be on him, driving her sword through his neck. He gurgled as Urstadt withdrew her sword, but she could not afford to watch him die. She turned in time to see the axeman, her glaive still rammed through his belly, running toward her with a bellow of rage and pain.
But he was wounded, not thinking clearly, Urstadt could tell from the shuffle in his step as he charged. She ducked out of the way, her legs screaming with exhaustion, and stabbed her sword into one calf as she moved past him. She turned quickly, planting a kick in the man’s back, and he fell, her glaive tearing a gaping hole in his back.
Urstadt took a step back, getting her bearings. The tall swordsman struggled on the ground on his hands and knees, gurgling and spluttering, but the blood pouring from his neck told her he had almost no time left. The short swordsman, however, was nowhere to be seen. Urstadt twisted around, her eyes darting back and forth, but she saw—
—a flash of movement above her. Urstadt brought her sword up too late, and felt the blade cut through her side, just below the ribs. Her own sword found a truer mark beneath the other’s chin, ramming up through his skull. The two of them fell to the ground in a heap. Urstadt rolled the man’s twitching body off of her.
She cradled her side, inspecting the wound. Her micromail had absorbed most of the blow, but the sword had left a long, shallow gash surrounded by deep bruising. It would scab over, and while it hurt like all Oblivion, the wound was far from mortal.
Urstadt stood, shaking herself to regain her senses, looking for Winter.
The queen was still by the War Goddess. One of the massive barrels, a 300-pound boulder, cotton, saltpeter, and buckets of pitch inside, rose up into the air, and moved slowly toward the open trebuchet sling.
Winter was moving it with her psimancy.
The tiellan queen was facing down five attackers; she must have dispatched two or three of them already. But she seemed to be concentrating almost entirely on the War Goddess and the missile she now carried with her tendra.
There were no living engineers in sight; a dozen lay dead on the ground, and the others must have fled.
The remaining attackers advanced on the War Goddess, three of them firing bolts, some at Winter, others at the war machine itself. Whoever the psimancer was apparently still lived, as weapons and debris flew toward the trebuchet, but Winter easily blocked and deflected all projectiles aimed at herself or the trebuchet.
For Canta’s sake, why doesn’t she just kill them? Urstadt wondered. What was so important about firing the trebuchet that made Winter all but ignore everything else?
Urstadt tugged her glaive from the axeman’s gored body, wiping it on the grass. She secured her short sword in its sheath over her shoulder, and then advanced on the remaining attackers. She was approaching them from behind, and slightly to their right. Hopefully, they were too occupied with their offensive against Winter, and wouldn’t notice her creeping up on them.
The thought came too soon. Another man was moving toward her stealthily.
He wore dark greens and browns, and was shorter than Urstadt. Brown hair, brown eyes. More or less nondescript. He carried a long black staff, likely made of blackbark.
Then she caught a glimpse of the sword at his waist. Long, slightly curved, with a bone-white handle and silvery blade.
A Nazaniin sword.
A psimancer.
The man realized Urstadt had seen him, and changed course to attack her more directly. Urstadt swung her glaive, the man readied his staff, and they both picked up speed as they clashed.
Urstadt’s glaive clanged against the man’s staff, and they both disengaged, twirling their weapons. The man wielded his staff expertly, his footwork and hand placement precise and easy. She mirrored him, matching him step for step, flourish for flourish.
But Urstadt did not have time for flourishes. Winter had placed the missile on the War Goddess’s sling, but the five remaining attackers were practically on top of her.
Urstadt lunged at the psimancer, and quickly lost herself in the flurry of attacks, defenses, dodges, and feints that followed. Their movements were precise and purposeful as a dancer’s. Urstadt had never met a person who moved the way this man did; she imagined, after a few moments of fighting, that she probably moved very much the same way. Their styles were different; where Urstadt went for the blunt blow when she could, he turned a twisting dodge into an almost impossible attack, contorting his body in a way she had never seen. He also used his surroundings, perhaps not better, but more creatively than she did. He launched himself against one of the smaller trebuchets, flipping over her while slipping a dagger from, Goddess, Urstadt didn’t know, from somewhere, to throw it immediately at her when he landed. She deflected the blade with her glaive and charged, hoping to catch him off-guard, but he met her blow for blow.
The two of them moved as they fought, and Urstadt did all she could to direct the fight toward the War Goddess, where she could help Winter as quickly as possible, if she could ever free herself from this Nazaniin.
Nazaniin, and yet he seemed to not occupy himself at all with psimancy. Either he was incredibly good at hiding it, he was leaving it all to one of the other psimancers, or he had somehow run out of faltira or whatever other energy he needed to access the Void.
Blood trickled down Urstadt’s side from her open wound. Her lungs would not last much longer, let alone her muscles. The Nazaniin stranger, too, seemed to favor one shoulder over the other. Every move she made screamed with agony, but this was what she had trained for. To outfight when she could, to outlast when she couldn’t, and to outrun as a last resort. Every breath came as a struggle, a gasping wheeze from the pits of her lungs, but she fought through it all, darkness threatening the edges of her vision.
She and the Nazaniin warrior danced, twirled, and savagely attacked one another. Urstadt had learned a great deal about him during their short fight. His favored side, for one. His preference of finesse over strength, for another.
Strength was one of Urstadt’s specialties.
In a final burst of power, Urstadt lunged at him, both hands on her glaive, ignoring the blade. She chose to do so at the exact moment his left side faced her, and in a surprising moment of weakness, the man crumbled beneath her. She was about to finish him off when he spun away. Urstadt stopped herself just in time to watch the Nazaniin impale one of Winter’s attackers, who had turned from the War Goddess to rush at them instead.
Urstadt blinked, her breath leaking from her in ragged gasps.
“You…” she said, but could say nothing more. And, as she said it, another of the attackers turned on them, just as the man turned to look at Urstadt.
Hefting her glaive like a spear, Urstadt threw her weapon. It launched just over his shoulder, fingers away from his ear, and embedded itself in the chest of the other attacker.
The man looked back, then at Urstadt.
“You’re… protecting her,” he rasped.
Urstadt nodded, unable to form the energy to say anything else.
Without another word, they turned and took out two more soldiers advancing on the War Goddess.
Urstadt looked around for Winter, felt a moment of panic when she did not see the queen anywhere, but then she spotted the surviving attacker—who must be the psimancer, considering the weapons and debris still pitifully attempting to attack the trebuchet. She was climbing up the frame of the engine, toward the pivot.
Goddess, what was Winter doing up there?
But then Urstadt realized. The sling had been reattached to the trigger-hook. Winter had climbed up to buy herself time.
And to lure the last attacker onto the machine.
A slow, laborious cranking sound filled the air, and the counterweight began to fall. The remaining psimancer woman realized this too late; she stood directly between the missile, slowly moving away from her now, and the counterweight, moving faster and faster down and through.
Several sounds at once assaulted Urstadt’s ears. The deep whumff of the counterweight as it swung down and through the War Goddess’s frame, followed immediately by a sickening crunch as it collided with the psimancer. The War Goddess’s sling snapped as the missile launched high and far, toward Triah.
Then there was silence, and for a moment Urstadt wondered if she had gone deaf. The entire world seemed to stop as the missile sailed across the sky, almost disappearing.
Looking up at Winter, perched halfway up the frame of the War Goddess, Urstadt witnessed the exertion on the woman’s face, the concentration, could almost see the sweat falling in great drops.
When Urstadt looked back to the city, she had lost track of the missile, until the bright, booming explosion erupted about two-thirds of the way up the tower of God’s Eye.
* * *
Horror gripped Carrieri’s heart as the trebuchet fired again.
“Should I give the order for the essential personnel to evacuate the Eye?” someone asked. He was not sure who.
“Yes,” Carrieri whispered, knowing the order would come too late. Knowing that the people he’d already ordered to evacuate would likely not make it out in time, either.
It’s too late, he thought.
It’s too late.
* * *
Cinzia, Jane, and the other disciples rushed through the streets of Triah as quickly as they could. Few people had been injured by the impact at the manse, and other than consoling their hosts on the lost bell tower, there was not much to be done. At Jane’s insistence, they headed toward the city center. On their way, the crump of another impact sent them diving for cover.
“Where did that strike?” Jane demanded, as they got to their feet again.
“Northwest of us, I think,” Cinzia said. Goddess, why were they in the city when it was being bombarded, especially by something the size of that monstrous thing on the cliffs.
“You know the city,” Jane said, her voice calm. “Think, Cinzia.”
“I…” She met Jane’s eyes. “Why do you want to know, sister? Surely we should get out of the city, back to the camp. Isn’t our task to keep our people safe?”
“We should keep all people safe,” Jane said. “We might be able to help, whatever is happening. Now, tell me. Where do you think it struck?”
Cinzia’s cheeks burned. She knew her sister had not meant to shame her, surely.
“I think it fell close to the Coastal Road,” she said. “I could not possibly say where exactly, but… maybe near the Fifteenth Circle?”
“Good enough,” Jane said. “Take us there.”
And that’s where they’d been headed, when the third missile flashed above them, and slammed directly into God’s Eye, not three circles away from where they stood.
Dark smoke poured from the side of God’s Eye where the missile had struck, flames glowing brightly in contrast.
“It’s still standing,” Elessa whispered in awe.
“Thank the Goddess,” someone else said.
“That’s where we must go,” Jane said. “Cinzia, quick! Lead us to that tower.”
* * *
Terris knew where the projectile was headed the moment the massive trebuchet fired. The missile arced through the air at incredible speed, wavering slightly.
Anywhere from one to two thousand people occupied the tower of God’s Eye at any given point in time; some worked or lived there, in the space leased by the city itself, while others— the Eye operators and military personal—worked there in a very different capacity. Civilians and senators often toured the structure, witnessing its grandeur and the apparatus at the top. And the fact that Carrieri thought it necessary to begin evacuating all but necessary personnel from God’s Eye told Terris enough. An order that had just arrived only moments ago; too late, Terris realized, squinting, trying to discern the location of the projectile. It was impossible to truly tell where the trebuchet was pointed—it seemed to have hardly moved during the three launches, but each missile clearly struck a different location in the city—but as Terris looked up at the beastly machine before the third launch, he could have sworn to the Goddess it had been aimed directly at him. Not just the tower, but him.
A small sigh of surprise escaped his lips as he realized his legs were wet and warm.
He would have thought time would stretch at this moment, that he might see his life flash before his eyes, or think of the people he cared about most, and how if he’d lived differently he might not be a lonely old man, obsessed with his work, or wish that Hindra were not here so that she could live to be with her husband and children, but those thoughts were only the thinnest of shades in his mind as the missile streaked silently toward them.
An incredible crash and roar broke the world of silence. The stones beneath Terris’s feet shook with such violence he felt it in his chest, in his testicles, in his throat.
As Terris came to, he realized he was lying prostrate on the floor. Scrabbling about, he grasped a brass ring of the Eye’s apparatus, and hauled himself up. As he did so, a ringing in his ears he hadn’t realized was there began to fade, and in its place he heard nothing but screams. Hindra, wide-eyed, crawled toward him. General Marshton lay with his back against another brass section of the apparatus, half seated, half lying down, bellowing at the top of his lungs, his eyes unblinking as they stared out at nothing. Other officers and aides screamed, and above it all, Terris’s nose caught the whiff of something burning.
No.
Terris took a tentative step, afraid the entire floor, the entire tower, might buckle beneath him. But his left foot found purchase and stayed, and as he stepped with his right, he felt more solid. The impact had caused the tower to shudder violently, and while that initial quaking had stopped, Terris could not help but think the building still wavered, still trembled, almost imperceptibly. It took him far longer than he liked to finally make it to the ramparts.
“Terris!” Hindra called. “What are you doing?”
“I have to see the damage,” Terris said, but the words came out in a whisper, and he knew they would not reach Hindra, not above the people still moaning and screaming, not above the dull roar of fire below them.
“You’ll fall!” Hindra shouted.
Goddess, were his hands trembling that much, or was it the building itself?
His legs and hips hugged stone. He sucked air through his teeth as he leaned forward until his eyes barely peeked over the edge of the ramparts and down, down, down the tower to the city directly below.
This used to be a rite of passage. Young operators would come out here the first night they were assigned to the Eye, to look out over the city they had sworn to protect. I did this, once. Hindra, too. He remembered her laughing when he told her how he had done it, too. How funny she found that.
It was difficult to see exactly what was happening. Smoke poured up toward him from the tower below. His lungs hacked, rejecting the haze. Beyond the smoke, bright flames licked the side of the tower—perhaps around the thirty-seventh, maybe the fortieth floor—and chunks of stone were falling, falling, falling the many stories down to the city below. The shot must have been filled with explosives, Terris realized. A simple boulder would never cause fire like this.
“Terris, get down from there, please!”
Terris listened to Hindra this time, and edged backwards.
“Are you two coming?”
Terris and Hindra looked up to see General Marshton had recovered himself. Every hint of his former terror was gone.
“Where—?”
“We’re descending the tower, getting out of here before the whole thing topples.”
We won’t be able to, Terris thought, not if that fire reached the tower’s core. But he and Hindra followed Marshton and his entourage anyway. They stumbled into the stairwell, running into the back of the general as he skidded to a halt.
The other officers and aides had stopped at the platform at the top of the stairs, all of them looking down, faces pale but the horror on them accented by a faint, flickering orange glow.
When Terris moved to the railing, he saw the fire. It was about ten flights down, and slowly licking its way up. Glowing orange-yellow embers burned where the flames were hottest, and blazing timbers and red-hot chunks of masonry toppled down the open spiral staircase at irregular intervals.
Smoke stung his eyes, and the smell of it was strangely chemical, somehow more toxic and irritating to his nose, eyes, and throat than typical woodsmoke.
“We’re trapped!” one of the aides shouted. Someone else cried heavy shaking sobs.
“Oh Goddess, oh Goddess, oh Goddess…”
General Marshton’s commanding presence once again deflated as he stared blankly at the impassable staircase below them. Terris saw Hindra blinking back tears, and took her hand. She looked at him, surprised but grateful, and squeezed his hand in return.
The entire tower shuddered, and Terris’s stomach leapt into his throat. He felt as if he’d dropped a full two or three rods. He felt as if—
He had no time to think about what he felt like next, as the floor gave way beneath him, and he found himself falling, gripping Hindra’s hand and falling, amidst stone and metal and debris and fire and smoke and awful, awful terror.
* * *
The trebuchet had already fired twice by the time Knot reached it. Knot had only confirmed Winter’s presence with the tiellans two days ago, but based on what he’d heard of the Chaos Queen, what he’d seen of Winter in his vision, she had to be behind the war machine.
The first two missiles had both landed in the city, on seemingly inconsequential targets. Why use such a weapon if she couldn’t control it? Why risk innocent lives?
Hadn’t Winter learned her lesson from Navone?
But now he watched the third projectile sail toward the city. A weary hollowness grew within him when it slammed into God’s Eye, three-quarters of the way up the tower, in a burst of fire and debris.
Knot was surprised that the tower still stood. Whether or not it would remain that way for long he could not say, but there was a chance it might not fall. Goddess, how he hoped the tower wouldn’t fall.
Winter was perched halfway up the frame of the big trebuchet. She remained there, gripping the wooden frame, the wind blowing stray strands of hair across her face.
She looks different, Knot thought. She is different.
Winter looked down. Their eyes met, but Winter showed no surprise, no anger, no joy. None of the emotions Knot had suspected. Instead, only sadness.
Knot heard a gasp behind him, followed by a distant rumbling, and turned.
* * *
Cinzia had not led the others very far when she heard a loud crack, followed by a low rumble. She stopped in her tracks, looking up at God’s Eye, towering above her now, high above the other buildings around them.
The sounds were this: another crack, and then a series of them, moving progressively faster, closer together, louder and louder and more jumbled and becoming more and more a single, steady, ominous roar.
The sight was this: God’s Eye, standing tall, a burning, gaping, smoking wound on its side in one moment, and then what appeared to be a cloud of dust and smoke circling upward, all around the very top floors of the tower. That cloud of dust descended, slowly at first, but picking up speed, and as it descended Cinzia realized the entire tower was falling with it. She watched God’s Eye crumble to the ground, and she stood only a few hundred rods away.
Her reaction was this: Cinzia turned and ran. She grabbed Jane’s hand and tugged her sister along with all her might, grabbed Ocrestia’s hand, too. She screamed for everyone to run at the top of her lungs, and thank the Goddess they obeyed her for once, or they obeyed their instincts, because it was all Cinzia could do to keep control of her feet as they sprinted wildly away from the destruction. As they ran and as the tower collapsed behind them, a dark, billowing cloud of dust and debris pursued them, and soon Cinzia and all of the disciples and Prelates were encompassed by the dark. Grit dug into her eyes, Cinzia coughed in the thick haze, but she still ran, pressing on and on until she was free of the cloud, and out in the daylight once more.
A terrible, hacking cough folded her in half. Her dress, once a soft teal, was completely gray, caked in a thick layer of dust and ash. When she could finally stand, she saw the others looked the same, completely gray from head to toe.
“Is everyone all right?” Jane shouted, and the disciples began to respond. Eward helped Elessa up from the ground. He was nothing but a gray man with a small patch of pink on one cheek.
The dust cloud loomed, still thick and musty but slowly, slowly clearing. Above, Cinzia saw blue sky, and nothing, nothing at all, where God’s Eye had once stood.
* * *
On the bow of the Reckoner, Cova stood watching the Triahn skyline. At first she’d found herself quite bored; a large trebuchet hurled missiles at the city, but it seemed to be firing quite slowly, and not hitting any targets worth noting. The third missile, however, had been different.
Cova gasped in shock as a great cloud of fire and smoke erupted from the side of God’s Eye. She’d felt a sick sense of terror, at first, but beneath that a low thrill.
This was what Winter had promised her. This was what she and her fleet had waited for.
She wondered why it felt so much like a defeat.
Cova’s shock turned to horror when the upper levels dissolved in a cloud of smoke, collapsing downward into the levels below them. One floor collapsed into another, and those two into the next, and this continued in an increasingly rapid chain reaction until the entire tower rushed down on itself, like a spring recoiling, but recoiling infinitely, losing all of its energy until it recoiled into nothing at all. A cloud of dust and debris belched forth through the streets of Triah, originating at the tower’s base. The black, billowing monster, waves of dust and smoke and ash and rock and terror building and building upon itself, growing and spurting outward, hunting through the streets, seeking and annihilating everything in its path. Jetting from the collapsing tower like fire from the mouth of a dragon from the Age of Marvels.
She could not help but wonder how many people had been in that tower when it fell, and how many people the collapse crushed on the ground. She could not imagine the casualties.
And, most of them, she had to imagine, were civilian.
“What have we done?” Cova asked out loud, her voice seeming far too small against the lap of the ocean on the hull, the call of seagulls in the distance, and the low rumbling sound that sent a chill down her spine as it reached them, moments after the tower had actually fallen.
“We did not do this, Your Grace,” Andia said. “The blood shed here—”
“It is as much on our hands as it is anyone’s,” Cova snapped.
But is this not what you wanted? You came here to conquer Khale. Conquering inevitably means casualties, sacrifices made.
“Not like this,” Cova said aloud.
As the smoky haze cleared, Cova saw Triah’s skyline, starkly different for the absence of what had once been the tallest tower the Sfaera had ever seen.
“What are your orders, Your Grace?” Admiral Rakkar asked beside her.
Cova wiped her cheeks, noticing for the first time the tears streaming down them. She cleared her throat, and took a few deep breaths to dispel the heavy pit in her stomach. She wanted to double over and vomit, and not because she was seasick.
They had come all this way. She could bring her forces back to Roden now, without doing what they came here to do. She could not tell her Ruling Council that she had looked victory in the face, and given it up.
The deep breaths did not help.
Ruling Council be damned. She was an Empress, and she would not act unless she was sure it was the best course.
“For now,” Cova said, her breath catching, “we wait.”
* * *
Carrieri’s right palm pressed against the glass of the western window of the Merchant’s Tower. His fingers flexed and strained, as if trying to break their way out.
Dust, smoke, and ash spilled upward into the air, a sickening contrast to the beautiful, bright blue autumn day. Not a cloud in the sky, but plenty on the ground.
“Illaran?” Carrieri asked, his voice hoarse.
When the man did not respond, Carrieri turned to face the Nazaniin.
Illaran stood behind Carrieri and to the right, staring out the window, his face so pale it could have passed for bone.
“Illaran.”
The Nazaniin started, his eyes slowly shifting toward Carrieri.
“What of the black offensive?”
“I have no contact with them.”
“What was your last report?”
“That they had found the Chaos Queen, and were converging on her position. That was before the trebuchet fired the last round.”
And no contact since. They were dead, almost certainly. Captured in a best-case scenario, but Carrieri had not seen a best-case scenario in far too long.
“The Hood Regiment?” Carrieri asked.
“They are still engaged with the tiellan force,” the man said slowly, “but they say the battle stopped for a full minute, between when the Eye was struck and when it collapsed.”
“Is the trebuchet reloading?” Carrieri asked. Without the black offensive’s eyes, the Hood Regiment offered his best intel on the weapon.
Silence. Carrieri looked back at the psimancer, annoyed, but the man’s eyes were wide.
What now?
“The war machine has been disabled. Or perhaps destroyed, they cannot be certain, but it does not appear the weapon will fire again.”
Carrieri blinked in disbelief. His men murmured excitedly.
“Say that again.”
“The war machine has been disabled,” the psimancer said, more confidently this time.
“By whom?”
“They think it might have been the tiellans themselves,” the psimancer said slowly. “They say the sling and reloading mechanism have been removed, and the arm is about to be detached from the frame. They can see it happening.”
Carrieri turned on his heel and walked quickly to the northern windows. Sure enough, as he looked up at the cliffs, the arm wobbled on the trebuchet’s frame.
He allowed himself one short, wretched sigh of relief.
“And the battle with the tiellans?”
“The regiment has sustained minimal casualties, but has not gained any ground.”
“Order the retreat,” Carrieri said immediately, his mind made up. Enough blood had been shed today. With the Eye down, a larger foe was on the horizon.
“Are you sure, Grand Marshal?”
Carrieri could feel the tensity thick in the air around him. The viscous confusion. His men wanted revenge for what had just happened, Carrieri understood that. But they would not get it now. Not with such a small skirmish, that had accomplished so little. Not when the Chaos Queen herself could turn her attention to the battle, now, and slaughter every last Legionary on that cliff.
“Order the retreat,” Carrieri repeated, calm leaking from him far too rapidly for his liking. “Man our ships, get them battle-ready. Man the…” The thought made him sick. “Man the war machines along the sea wall. Keep an eye on the tiellans on the cliffs, be prepared for any advance on their part, but now that the Eye is gone, the main threat is Roden.”
Carrieri’s throat caught, as the full weight of what he had just witnessed crashed down on him. The people who had been killed. What the entire city must have witnessed. The fear that surely roiled in the heart of every Triahn citizen.
“We fight the battles that need to be fought today,” Carrieri’s voice was firm. “We have a city to defend. After that…”
Carrieri turned to face everyone in the room: his advisors, his aides, his lieutenants, the psimancers. “After that,” he said, “we must… we must…” They must what? Respond? Retaliate? What in Oblivion sort of response did this situation call for?
“Rebuild,” Carrieri finally said.
Because he’d be damned, he’d be damned to Oblivion a thousand times, if he let the tiellans defeat them like this.
* * *
Winter leapt down the last few rods, landing easily on the long grass. As she stood, three tendra snaked out behind her, each carrying a blade. One snaked to the War Goddess’s sling, severing the thick rope from the beam. The other two sought the ropes holding the counterweight, slicing each load-bearing cord. The counterweight fell to the ground with an earth-shattering crash of splintering wood and cracking stone.
But Winter did not care about any of that, because she was already rushing to meet him, as fast as her feet would carry her.
She had seen him the moment she loosed the third shot from the War Goddess. She had sensed him before she saw him, on the lower edges of her vision, standing on the grass looking up at her. There was no explanation, no logic behind her thoughts, only feeling. How was he alive? How was he here? And, in all Oblivion, why now?
But here he was, nevertheless, and Winter could not stop the flood of emotions that bubbled up from her. For the first time since Eranda’s death, she found herself sobbing as she launched herself into his arms.
Knot wrapped his arms around her as she barreled into him, but Winter immediately sensed his caution. And why wouldn’t he be cautious? He had just seen her kill hundreds, perhaps thousands of people. Winter could not pretend the blame lay with anyone else; she did not want to pretend the blame lay with anyone else. She had done what she had done. Reasons and costs aside, Chaos and prophecies and Nine Daemons aside, she had done it.
She also knew Knot couldn’t possibly see things that way, at least not now. And even if she explained everything to him, he might never forgive her.
But that was a conversation for another time, Winter had to remind herself. That time was not now.
Slowly they separated, standing awkwardly at arm’s length.
This time, she was glad he did not kiss her. She remembered wishing he would, when they were together in Navone and Roden, but things were different, now. Goddess, she was different, now.
“I thought you were dead,” Winter said.
Knot cocked his head to the side, and Winter caught a hint of quizzicality. “Thought the same thing about you. Up until… a while ago.”
A while? Winter wondered what that meant, but dared not ask.
Winter shook her head, still in disbelief that this was real. Still in shock that Knot was standing before her. And, eclipsing those two sentiments, the ever-growing horror.
I thought I was alone, this whole time. I thought he was gone, I…
If she’d known he was alive, she might not have survived. She might have waited for him to rescue her from that cell in Roden, waiting for a man who didn’t even know she was there…
“So… what do we do now?” Winter asked.
Knot closed his eyes, and for a moment Winter wondered whether he would respond at all.
“Don’t know, darlin’,” he said quietly. “But we’ve got a lot to talk about.”