CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

I HADN’T PLANNED ON BATTLE,” BLAINE MUTTERED as he fastened his cuirass and buckled on his sword. In the time that had passed since the unfortunate ambassador and his party had been hauled off for questioning, Quillarth Castle had armed itself for war. Guards shucked off the costume of servants and dressed for the fight. Pikes, crossbows, battle-axes, and swords appeared, and the lower levels of the castle were barricaded against attack.

“It seemed too easy to just have dinner with a couple of ambassadors,” Kestel replied. She had changed from her gown into tunic and trews with a cuirass of her own, along with vambraces and a sword, as well as a wicked knife and a collection of small dirks in a bandolier she wore like a sash across her chest.

“Actually, after what Vishal pulled, I’m in the mood to knock some heads together,” Piran said, suiting up in similar attire and strapping on an impressive collection of weapons. “Pity Rikard won’t be joining us.”

“With luck, he should find any other traps they laid and dispose of any cursed items. And thanks to the talishte, we got some useful information out of the prisoners, so we’re as prepared as we can be,” Blaine replied.

In the distance, Blaine could hear the muted thud of catapults as the ships in the harbor lobbed ballast rocks at the wharf and dockside, and the men in the shoreline fortifications answered with missiles of their own.

“Part of Front Street is burning,” Kestel reported from where she watched from the window. “But so is one of the ships.” Her voice was sad, filled with the same weariness of war Blaine felt in his marrow.

“Before we go rushing down to Castle Reach, I’d like to get a bird’s-eye view,” Piran said. “Folville’s at street level, and so is Voss. We might spot a weakness from up here that they can’t.”

“The tallest towers were destroyed in the Great Fire,” Kestel said. “But if we can get up into what’s left of the third floor, we’re high enough up to see a long way.”

“Get Dillon,” Blaine said to the soldier by the door. “We need him. Fast.”

A few moments later, Dillon appeared in the doorway. “M’lord?”

“You know the safest routes through the damaged parts of the castle,” Blaine said. “We need to get to the highest vantage point so we can see what’s going on in the harbor.”

“All right,” Dillon said. “Follow me.” He took a lantern and led them down a hallway, then through corridors that smelled of dust and disuse. Since so much of Quillarth Castle had been destroyed in the Cataclysm, Blaine sometimes forgot just how large the building had been in its prime. Since then, Dillon and others had labored to restore what remained of the castle to usability, and Niklas’s troops had worked to rebuild the castle’s defenses. Yet now, heading down a dark, abandoned corridor still bearing the scorch marks of the Great Fire, Blaine was reminded pointedly of how much had been lost.

Dillon stopped at a locked door. “It gets dangerous beyond this point,” he said, going through a ring of keys on his belt. “That’s why we keep the doors to this section locked. At least here, there’s a solid floor remaining. Other places, the doors just open into thin air.”

He jangled the keys, found the one he wanted, and turned it in the iron lock. “Watch your step,” he cautioned. “There’s still a lot of rubble, the walls have been damaged, and there are some pretty big holes in the outer walls where you could fall through to the courtyard.”

Dillon shouldered the door open and lifted his lantern. Up ahead in the darkness, Blaine heard rats squeaking. As he and the others stepped through the doorway, Blaine understood Dillon’s warning. Chunks of stone and plaster littered the corridor. Great sooty streaks marked the stonework, and some of the walls leaned dangerously. Portions of the ceiling were missing. In some places, the holes overhead exposed rooms in the floor above, but in other areas, the gaps opened up to the night sky.

“This way,” Dillon said, gesturing for them to follow. He picked his way over the fallen stone with the surefootedness of a mountain goat as Blaine and the others did their best to keep up.

After a few more turns, they came to what had once been a corner room. Most of the walls remained, except for the corner itself, which had been smashed away. Dillon ventured through the rubble until he got to about three feet from where the walls and floor dropped off to nothing.

“I wouldn’t go closer to the edge than this, m’lord,” he advised. “This old building’s been through a lot, and the damage in this wing was pretty bad, as you see. I don’t trust the edge not to give way or to drop something on your head from up above.”

“I don’t think we’ll have to go any closer,” Blaine said. “This does the job.”

Spread out below them was the city of Castle Reach and the harbor. Torches illuminated the towers on either side and dotted the water’s edge to the wharfs, where the torches became a solid line.

The sound of battle reached them, even at this distance. Shouts and screams, the shrieks of women, the thunder of rocks hurled against stone walls. Five foreign ships sat at the entrance to the harbor, giving the royal city a thorough pounding. Two of the ships faced the wharf, their catapults trained on the quayside, bringing down the front walls of the nearest buildings and making it dangerous for Folville’s troops to mass along the waterfront.

Three more of the ships faced the embankments on either side of the harbor, answering catapult volleys with deadly fire. One of those ships was partly afire. Both sides would be using archers, Blaine knew, though they were too far away to see them or to hear the zing of arrows. Small boats maneuvered around the warships, attempts by the invaders to land their own soldiers, and by the city’s defenders to attack the ships at the waterline.

“If those ships get to the seawall, we don’t have the men on the ground to defeat them,” Blaine said. “Not if they have as many troops as Heldin said they did.”

“He could be lying,” Piran said. “He’s lied about everything else.”

“I’m sure they brought some level of troops, and he couldn’t lie to the talishte—but he could have been misinformed,” Kestel said. “Even if Heldin has the total wrong, it won’t take a huge force to overrun the city, and Voss can’t get reinforcements into place that quickly. Folville’s fighters are a relatively small group, and Captain Larson’s garrison is less than fifty men. It would be a slaughter.”

“Donderath’s navy is at the bottom of the sea,” Blaine said, looking at the harbor in frustration. “I wouldn’t put it past Folville or Voss to have small boats going out in the dark to strike at the waterline, but it’s a suicide mission.”

“You can bet both sides have mages as well,” Piran muttered. “The catapults and archers have a limited reach. If the ships’ catapults manage to cripple ours, there’s no way to keep them from sailing right into the harbor.”

“Actually, there is.”

Everyone turned to look at Dillon. “It’s something King Merrill built not long before the Great Fire,” Dillon said. “We were fortunate enough not to need it, and most people have likely forgotten about it, since it was never used.”

“What kind of defense?” Blaine asked.

Dillon swallowed hard, as if his throat had gone dry. Poor guy was an Exchequer’s assistant, Blaine thought. Now he’s the castle seneschal with a dungeon full of spies and a bay full of pirates. No wonder he looks like he would like to be anywhere but here. Yet despite everything, Dillon’s expression showed his resolve.

“It’s a giant chain, m’lord, a boom,” Dillon said. “And a net of metal cords. Goes from one side of the harbor to the other, and when it’s not needed, it lies at the bottom, below the depth of the keels. King Merrill’s engineers designed the chain and net to be raised by a capstan set into the castle side of the harbor.”

“Where’s the capstan?” Piran asked, peering out at the battle in the harbor below.

“Along the harbor cliffs, there’s a plain-looking stone building,” Dillon explained. “I probably shouldn’t even know it’s there, but I handled the payment to the builders and the blacksmiths who forged the chains. Went down to inspect it myself, since it’s bad business to pay without verifying that the work’s done right.”

“So you’ve seen it?” Kestel pressed. “You know it actually exists?”

Dillon nodded. “But I only visited the once, to make certain construction was complete.”

“Do you know if it works?” Blaine asked. “You said it was never used, but did they at least test it?”

Again, Dillon bobbed his head. “I made them raise it, so I could see for myself,” he replied. “It took four men—the capstan is quite large, and the chain and net are understandably heavy. It’s not a fast process, but the mechanism worked well.” He paused. “I haven’t been down there since the Great Fire. The stone building is above the high-water mark on the cliffs, but sheltered enough that it might have escaped the Cataclysm. As for the chain and the net, there’s no telling whether they’ve rusted solid after all this time. But if you could get it to work—”

“We could trap the ships where the catapults and archers can do their worst, and force them to use small boats if they try to land their soldiers,” Blaine finished, feeling a surge of hope.

“Don’t you think Folville would have used this mechanical marvel, if it still existed?” Piran asked.

Dillon shook his head. “The project was kept very quiet,” he replied. “Most of the harbor work was done at night, with ships blocking the view from the wharf. I was told to say nothing about it, other than to Seneschal Lynge and the men directly involved,” he added. “King Merrill felt the defense would be most effective if it was not anticipated, and he didn’t want the spies at court to send word to their home kingdoms.”

“Can you get us there?” Blaine asked. “If we could take a couple of guards with us and we could raise the chain and net, then Folville and Voss can pound the stuffing out of the enemy ships, and burn them to the waterline.”

Dillon looked scared to death, but he raised his chin and met Blaine’s gaze. “I can lead you down there, and I’ve got the key to get you in.” Dillon had no desire to go looking for adventure, but Blaine knew from experience that the man would finish a task once he was resolved to do it.

“The sooner we can get down there, the sooner we might be able to turn this fight,” Blaine said. “Let’s go.”

Soldiers opened the huge gates of Quillarth Castle’s walls for the small group to ride through, and closed the gates behind them with a resounding thud. Smoke hung in the air from the burning ship and buildings, from the torches and the flaming missiles hurled by harborside and ship-based catapult crews. Four soldiers accompanied them, as well as Dillon, who rode in the front, leading the way.

Their hoofbeats clattered in the night as they rode as fast as they dared down the empty streets. Between the late hour and the danger of invasion, anyone still awake was wisely indoors. Dillon led them to the outskirts of the city, then stopped near the edge of the cliffs.

“We can’t take the horses down the path,” Dillon said, dismounting. “We need to tether them here and go the rest of the way on foot.”

They were several hundred feet closer to the wharves than the catapult towers, but even so, the sound of large war machines’ constant bombardment was like rolling thunder, echoing from the cliffs. One of the enemy ships was fully ablaze, and between its fire and the moonlight, there was enough light to pick their way down the steep path without needing lanterns, sparing them worry about attracting attention.

The ground underfoot was rocky, and shifting pebbles made footing treacherous. They made their way down cautiously, holding on to the rocks on the cliffside, acutely aware of the sheer drop on the other side. This close to the battle, the smoke was thick, drifting through the air like low clouds.

“There,” Dillon hissed, pointing toward a nondescript, squat stone building that sat carved into the rocky cliff. It was high tide, and the waves lapped not far below them.

“Get us in,” Blaine murmured. Dillon found a concealed path that led to the building, a rocky goat trail nearly hidden by scrub bushes that looked as if no one had passed that way in a very long time. They had to move carefully, flattened against the cliff one person at a time, but soon they were all gathered on the outcropping that held the mechanical building.

“We’re going to need light,” Dillon said, withdrawing a small glass lantern with shutters, which he lit, as the others stood between him and the edge of the outcropping, blocking anyone’s view of the building. Dillon withdrew a heavy iron key and turned it, but the door stuck closed.

“Let me throw some weight behind that,” Piran offered, ramming the door with his shoulder. It grudgingly gave way, and a dark opening yawned before them, its stale air heavy with mildew.

“Let’s see if this marvel still works,” Blaine murmured as Dillon led them into the building. The windowless square room was barren except for a huge capstan in the middle. Dillon hung the lantern on a hook as one of the soldiers pushed the door closed behind them.

“Well, there it is,” Dillon said. “At least we know it survived the Cataclysm.”

“What do we need to know to operate this?” Piran asked, walking in a circle around the capstan. “Any traps? Release levers? Magic wards?”

Dillon shook his head. “No—at least, none that were on the plans I saw during the project.”

“I doubt that anyone bothered to set magic wards around something like this,” Kestel said. “And if they did, after the Cataclysm, any wards that might have been set would have been broken when the magic failed.”

Piran had completed his examination. “I don’t see anything that looks like a trap or a lock. It looks like the rest of the siege machines I’ve seen—big, brawny, blunt tools without a lot of finesse.” He grinned. “Kind of like me, come to think of it.”

“Let’s start trying to move that capstan,” Blaine said. “If it hasn’t been used since before the Great Fire, it might not move even for oxen.”

“Was that directed at me?” Piran asked with a straight face.

“Kestel—better watch the path, just in case. It’s probably going to take all of us to even budge this thing.”

The men put their shoulders to the wheel, even Dillon, as Kestel took up watch at the door. Dillon had said the mechanism required four men. All seven of them managed to find a place along the capstan’s spokes, pushing with all their might.

“Nothing,” Piran said disgustedly.

“This time, let’s pull,” Dillon suggested. They adjusted their stance, and lent their weight to the effort, pulling for all they were worth. The mechanism creaked, gave a few inches, and stuck fast.

“If we had flat ground and a little more room to maneuver, I’d hook up a horse to it, just to get it going,” Blaine mused.

“We’re not going to get a horse down that trail, and mules are in short supply,” Piran replied.

“It moved that time,” Dillon said. “Maybe we can jostle it loose.”

They got into place once more, working the capstan forward and back until the mechanism gave another rattling groan and began to move, making them work for every inch.

“Danger!” Kestel shouted, and the next thing Blaine knew, there was a flurry of motion at the door to the mechanical room.

“Keep it going!” Blaine ordered. “Piran, and you,” he said, pointing at one of the guards, “with me!”

Blaine, Piran, and the guard ran toward the fight. Kestel already had one man down, but more were on their way. Unwilling to be trapped inside the mechanical room, and wanting to give Dillon and the others cover so they could raise the boom, Blaine and Piran ran through the door with a bloodcurdling war bellow, with the guard following hard on their heels.

Three more enemy soldiers were heading their way, and Blaine glimpsed more climbing the rocky path. It was clear from the soldiers’ surprise that they had not expected to come under attack, but they launched themselves into the fray without hesitation. Eight soldiers struggled up the trail from the foot of the cliff, and Blaine bet that one rowboat had made it to shore from the invading ships.

Eight against eight should have been an even fight, except that Dillon was no swordsman, and four of Blaine’s men were inside the mechanical building forcing the balky capstan to raise its burden. Then again, with one attacker already down, that made it seven to four. Shoulder to shoulder with Kestel and Piran, Blaine did not give the odds another thought.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” Blaine grunted as he swung his sword at a rangy soldier with enough force to sever a limb. “Go back and leave us alone.”

“Too late for that,” the soldier replied, blocking Blaine’s swing and answering with a forceful press of his own that made Blaine step back to remain clear of the man’s blade.

Blaine felt his battle magic awaken, giving him a few seconds’ prescience to warn him of his attacker’s next move before motion signaled the blow, increasing his reflexes just a bit more than a well-trained mortal. He moved slightly ahead of the next swing, brought his sword up to block, and tore back and down with the knife in his left hand, opening a deep, bloody tear across his opponent’s ribs and belly. Warm blood splattered his face and arms as the soldier gasped and dropped to his knees. Blaine’s sword swung again, and the headless corpse thudded to the rocky ground.

“I warned you,” he muttered to the dead man.

Piran was holding off two attackers, and by the look of it, he was getting the chance to work off his frustrations with the ambassador’s delegation. Piran’s sword training came from the Donderath army, but his fighting techniques were learned in the alleys of Castle Reach. His opponents were competent with their blades, but it was clear they had little experience with combat that did not follow formal rules. Piran was not much of a believer in rules of any kind.

Piran dove, skewering one attacker in the nuts. He swung at the second opponent while the soldier was distracted as his comrade fell to his knees, howling in pain and shock, hands gripping his groin. Too late, the second soldier saw the sword coming for him. He blocked badly, and Piran’s blade knocked his sword away, slipping between the man’s ribs.

Piran walked toward his first opponent, who was rolling back and forth in a bloody pool, sobbing with pain. He raised his sword to dispatch the man as Blaine looked up.

“Leave one of them alive!” Blaine yelled. “I’ve got questions for them.”

Blaine’s new opponent took his eyes off Blaine for a fatal few seconds to glance at his downed companion. Blaine swung hard, getting under the soldier’s guard, opening his belly with one savage slice.

“You’re not the one,” Blaine said as the man grabbed at his spilling entrails with a gasp of pain and shock. Blaine’s second swing took the man’s head from his shoulders.

From the mechanical building, Blaine heard the steady clanking of gears and the grunts of the men pushing the balky capstan. It was impossible to see whether their efforts were paying off, since the water beneath them was black in the darkness. Blaine hoped that Dillon was correct about the boom and its functionality. He had no desire to retake Castle Reach street by street from a foreign invasion force.

The area outside the mechanical house was narrow and covered with gravel, but the four defenders managed to block the doorway. The guardsman and his attacker circled one another, looking for an opening. The Cross-Sea soldier swung, and Blaine’s guard evaded the strike, taking advantage of the soldier’s overreach to sink his blade into the man’s thigh. Hobbled, the soldier swung badly, and the guard’s sword thunked into his shoulder, severing the man’s sword arm. Soaked with blood, screaming in mortal fear, the soldier collapsed to the ground, waiting for the deathblow as the guard stepped forward and thrust his sword into the soldier’s heart.

Two of the soldiers approached Kestel, and one had the bad luck to snicker when he realized she was not a man. “I’ve got better ways to spend time with you, pretty lady,” he said.

“I don’t.” Kestel came at him in a flurry of motion that forced him back into his companion. Before her hapless opponent realized he was in trouble, she had scored a deep gash on his right shoulder and a wicked cut across his ribs.

“Hellcat,” the second soldier snarled, moving to box Kestel in. She hardly took her eyes off her first opponent, flicking her wrist with the accuracy of deadly practice. The soldier had taken two more steps from sheer momentum before he realized he was a dead man, with a knife hilt-deep in his chest. He drew a hideous, gurgling breath and toppled like a felled tree.

“Do you have a live one?” Kestel yelled to Blaine, eyeing her prey with malicious amusement. The soldier had lost all his former arrogance, and by the smell of it, had soiled himself in the bargain.

Piran walked over to the man he had skewered in the balls. The wounded soldier howled as Piran towed him with his boot. “Yeah, if he doesn’t bleed out before we get him back to the castle. Damn, and I thought scalp wounds were bad!”

“Want a spare?”

Blaine eyed the man Piran had wounded. Piran was busy tying the man’s wrists together and giving the captive one of his fallen comrade’s wadded up shirts to press against the wound. “Don’t think so.”

“Please!” the last soldier begged. “I outrank that man. I know things—I can tell you more plans than he can. And if you don’t stab me, I won’t bleed to death before you can ask me all your questions. I can be very helpful!”

“Oh, all right,” Kestel said. “Drop your sword.” The terrified man complied. Kestel kicked the sword out of reach. “Hey, Piran, how about tying this one up, too.” She kept her sword point against the terrified soldier’s jugular until Piran had securely tied the man’s wrists and hobbled his ankles.

“You didn’t tie your prisoner’s ankles,” Kestel pointed out.

Piran raised an eyebrow. “I damn well made sure he isn’t going to run away from us. We’ll be lucky if we don’t have to carry him.”

Blaine walked up to where the defeated prisoner knelt. “How many were on your ship?” he asked.

“Three hundred,” the man replied tonelessly. “Same for the other ships. Mostly conscripts. Things are bad at home. Not enough food, not enough work. The king rounds up men and carts them off, then gives them uniforms and sends them to war with all the neighboring kingdoms. I guess he figures most of us won’t come back.”

“What was the battle plan?” Piran asked.

The prisoner gave a bitter laugh. “Plan? Survive the voyage, hope to Raka you had more food than we did, and steal anything we could send home.”

“Were you sent to occupy Donderath?” Blaine asked, and Kestel nudged the man with her sword’s point when he hesitated.

“Yes, if it was worth it,” the man admitted. “Meaning—if you had food and weren’t living in burned-out ruins. Looks like you did better than we did, so yes—if those ships land, they’re going to do their damnedest to take what you’ve got.”

“How does your king hope to control a conquered nation an ocean away?” Kestel asked. “Fifteen hundred soldiers could overrun the city, but our armies are much larger. You couldn’t hold on to it for long.”

The prisoner sighed. “We hadn’t counted on you having armies,” he said. “I doubt it occurred to the king that you weren’t at least as bad off as we are. He probably thought we’d sail in here without any trouble, march around and intimidate the locals, and start shipping anything useful back home.”

“Surprise,” Piran drawled. “We’ve already chewed up and swallowed much scarier enemies. I’d almost feel bad for you, except that you were planning to loot the city we just got cleaned up.”

“Tell me about your mages,” Blaine said. “How many? How strong? What kind of magic?”

He had not thought it possible, but the man looked even more scared at the mention of magic than he had before. “I stay away from the hocuses,” he said, almost stammering. “Nothing but trouble.”

“Answer the question,” Kestel prodded.

The captive swallowed hard. He was trembling with fear, and Blaine felt a stab of pity, since he was obviously not cut out for soldiering. “There’s a hocus on each ship, I heard the sailors say. They don’t like that one little bit.” He took a deep breath. “Never saw the one on our ship do much of anything, tell you the truth. But I’ve heard all kind of tales.”

His words tumbled out, and perhaps he thought that the better his answers, the more likely he was to remain alive. “They say our hocus can call down lightning, and throw fire from his fingers,” he said in a rush. “One of my mates said he heard the hocus can kill a man just by looking at him, and set a fire with a thought.”

Assuming he’s right, that’s hedge-witch-level magic, nothing like Quintrel’s people, or battle mages like Rikard, Blaine thought. Maybe their powerful mages were killed in the Great Fire.

“Lord McFadden!” Dillon emerged from the mechanical house sweat-soaked but grinning in triumph. “The boom worked! We’re all sure to be sore and bruised, but from what we can tell, the mechanism worked!”

“Hey, Mick!” Piran called. He had walked toward the edge of the path, looking down over the harbor. “I think he’s right. Take a look.”

Kestel and the guard remained with the bound soldier and his injured companion as Blaine walked over to join Piran. In the time that had passed since they had looked out on the bay the last time, the tide of battle appeared to have turned in Folville’s favor.

“Ships are stopped,” Piran noted. “You can bet they’d have driven right up the middle if they could.”

The ship that had been on fire was burned to the waterline, just a smoldering wreck. A second ship was burning, its sails alight, forecastle aflame. Blaine could see soldiers jumping from the doomed ship, flailing in the dark water. The catapults from the embankment still thudded as they sent rocks and debris raining down on the ships that were now stranded in the harbor they had intended to attack. Caught between the boom in front and the wreckage of the two burning ships behind, the other three ships lacked the wind and the maneuvering room to get clear.

Dark shapes moved across the clouds, diving at the remaining ships. Men screamed and ran for cover as talishte attackers snatched sailors from the decks and dropped them into the deep water of the bay. Two talishte swooped down on one of the ships, pushing the portable catapult through the railing and into the sea. The other catapult was smashed to bits on the wrecked deck of the burning ship.

Without their war machines, the ships were sitting targets as the catapults up above lobbed volley after volley. Some of the large stones hit the water, sending up violent splashes that rocked the ships, scattering or crushing the men who were swimming desperately for shore. Other stones crashed onto the decks of the ships, shattering masts, shredding sails, and smashing through the hulls.

A flotilla of small fishing boats sat in a solid line on the harbor side of the chain barricade. Archers took shots at the landing boats filled with soldiers.

As Blaine watched, something burst up from beneath one of the landing boats, lifting it out of the water and capsizing it, sending its occupants into the water. More talishte, Blaine bet, though from the terrified screams that rose from the bay, he was certain the enemy soldiers imagined even more frightening foes.

All along the waterfront, angry citizens stood shoulder to shoulder. Blaine spotted Traher Voss’s battle flag, meaning reinforcements had arrived. “Voss is there,” he said, pointing to the flags. “Folville will be all right. Voss’s men will make short work of the survivors.”

As he spoke, a volley of flaming arrows sailed toward the stranded ships, lodging in their sails and rigging. Wave after wave of burning arrows rained down on the luckless invaders, until the bay blazed with firelight.

“Poor dumb bastards,” Piran said, shaking his head. “Then again, all the better for us. Voss and Folville are making short work of them.”

“Which means they aren’t going to need us to hurry down there,” Blaine said, knowing Piran could hear the note of relief in his voice. “Frankly, I’d rather see what the talishte read from our ambassadors, and what they can find out from these two,” he said with a backward glance.

“Biters?” The prisoner’s eyes widened with fear. “Oh, gods. Don’t feed me to the biters! I’ve helped you. Told you everything. Sweet Torven and Esthrane! Don’t let them feed on me!”

“Can’t help you with that,” Piran said as Dillon and the other guards emerged from the mechanical building. “See, we need to know everything, and there’s one way to find it out. But since you’ve been helpful, as you say, we can put in a word for them to make it quick.”

The soldier collapsed, sobbing into his hands. “Get him on his feet,” Blaine said to the guards. “Someone’s going to have to carry the other one. Let’s get them back to the castle, see what they can tell us. We’re done here.” He turned to Dillon and the guards. “What you did in there changed the course of the battle. Thank you.”

Kestel gave her prisoner over to the guards and came to join him. They were all splattered with blood, though fortunately little of it was their own. Kestel peered down into the firelit harbor and watched for a moment in silence. “In an awful way, it’s actually rather pretty from up here, with the fire reflecting on the water,” she mused. “I don’t imagine it’s pretty at all down there.”

“No,” Blaine agreed. “And it’s going to leave a mess in the harbor, after we’d only gotten part of it dredged.” He sighed. “But it’s better to stop them there than burn the city to drive them out.”

Kestel nodded. “Think they’ll try again?”

Blaine shrugged. “If the Cross-Sea king is as crazy as Heldin said, maybe. Then again, it should send a stern message when none of his ships return and his troops are never heard from again. It could take months for them to notice. He might even have more ships headed this way, for all we know.”

“They won’t be landing at Castle Reach,” Kestel said.

“No,” Blaine agreed. “But you know as well as I do that the coast is full of inlets. After the ‘pirates’ attacked, Folville and Voss set up patrols along the coastline, but it’s an impossible task.”

“Still, the farther away they have to land their men, the harder it is to mount a surprise attack,” Piran ventured. “That weighs in our favor.”

“Two men, stay with the capstan,” Blaine ordered as they readied for the trip back up the cliff. “I’ll have fresh soldiers sent to relieve you as soon as we reach the castle. In the meantime, stay sharp. If one boat of enemy fighters could make it to shore, there could be another. Until those boats are sunk and the men aboard them drowned, they’re still a threat.”

“Aye, m’lord,” the ranking guard replied. “We’ll watch carefully. No one will get by.”

“The boom and net will stay up until we lower them,” Dillon said. “Indefinitely, if we want. I’m still quite pleased that they worked after all this time!”

“I’m glad I didn’t realize that you thought there was a good chance they wouldn’t, when we were making our way down that goat path,” Piran replied with a glare.

Dillon shrugged. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained, as they say. I figured it was worth the risk, if it worked.”

“If there were still such things as medals, I’d give you one,” Blaine said. “Look down there,” he added, pointing to the harbor. “Your boom and net saved a lot of lives. We’d have never known about it without you.”

Dillon looked utterly embarrassed. “Just doing my duty, m’lord. The gods smiled on us tonight.”

The soldiers went up the narrow path first, followed by Dillon, Blaine, Kestel, and Piran. To Blaine’s relief, their horses were where they had left them, fidgeting with the smoke and noise that rose from the bay. The two prisoners were slung over the rumps of the soldiers’ horses like sacks of grain for the ride back to the castle.

Clouds of smoke gusted across the road, dimming the stars. After surviving two attacks in one day, Blaine was hoping he could look forward to a hot bath and a glass of whiskey, but experience cautioned him not to count on such rare luxuries until they were achieved.

The soldiers at the castle gate stopped them only briefly, opening the way for them to ride on to the castle. Dillon swung down from his horse, barking orders to the castle staff as soon as his feet touched the ground. Six more guards were sent down to the mechanical building, and they were heading toward the gate before Blaine had even handed off his horse to a groomsman.

“Take the prisoners to Rikard,” Blaine ordered the soldiers who came to meet them. “Have him question them like the others.”

“Very well, sir,” the ranking soldier replied. “And afterward?”

Blaine sighed. “Hang them with the two ambassadors,” he said wearily. “Make sure the talishte read them before that. We need every bit of knowledge we can pry out of them.”

“Yes, m’lord.” With that, the castle guard took the two prisoners and headed toward Quillarth Castle.

Blaine turned to one of the other nearby soldiers. “Go find Captain Larson or Captain Hemmington,” he ordered. “Get me a status update on what’s going on in Castle Reach with Folville and Voss. If they need more soldiers to hold the waterfront, we need to know.”

“Yes sir,” the soldier said, taking off for the stables to get a horse for the ride into town.

Blaine, Kestel, and Piran made their way up to the parlor. In the time they had been gone, all signs of the fight with the false ambassadors had been removed, and a reasonable attempt had been made to remove the bloodstain from the carpet. Piran poured a glass of whiskey for each of them, and collapsed into a chair by the fireplace with a dramatic groan.

“What a day!” He tossed back his whiskey.

Blaine sipped his whiskey, but he could not manage to match Piran’s exuberance. He drifted to the window, looking out through the cracked glass toward the glowing wreckage in the Castle Reach harbor. After a few moments, Kestel joined him.

Kestel touched Blaine’s arm. “You don’t have a choice about it, hanging the Cross-Sea spies or those soldiers,” she said quietly, guessing that his mood went deeper than mere exhaustion. “We don’t have the extra food to keep them prisoner, and they can’t go free.” She paused. “Heldin might be useful. I don’t think his heart was really ever fully in the attack. I think he can be brought along.” Kestel shrugged. “And if not, you can always kill him later.”

Blaine nodded. “I know. But knowing doesn’t make it easier. I tell myself that as long as this sort of thing keeps me up at night, I must not be a monster. If it ever stops bothering me… I’ll have one more thing to worry about.”

A knock came at the door before Kestel could answer. “M’lord,” Dillon’s assistant, Coban, said from the doorway. “I apologize for the interruption. I know it’s been a long day. But there’s a messenger from General Theilsson, and he says his message is most urgent.”

Blaine and Kestel shared a ‘what now?’ glance. Blaine nodded. “Very well. Send him in.”

Disheveled and dirty, looking as if he had come straight from the battlefield, Geir walked into the room. “Niklas and Penhallow send their greetings,” he said with a tired smile.

“I will be back with a flagon of deer blood,” Coban promised without being asked, and headed for the kitchen.

Geir looked utterly spent. Kestel embraced him in greeting. “Sit down. Rest,” Blaine said. “You look like you’ve had a rougher day than we have, and ours is one for the legends.”

Geir nodded and sank into one of the seats. “I came in from the north, but I could see a battle in the harbor. What’s going on?”

Blaine and Kestel took turns filling Geir in, first about the false ambassadors and their treachery and then about the invasion force and the fight at the mechanical house. “You’re right,” Geir said. “You’ve had quite a day.”

Coban entered with the deer blood and a goblet. Geir poured himself a glass, drank it slowly, and leaned back. “That’s better,” he said tiredly. “Thank you.”

“Things must be pretty bad for Niklas to send you in such a rush,” Blaine said. “What’s happening? Is he still fighting the marauders in the north?”

Geir nodded. “And it’s not getting any better. The marauders aren’t robber gangs like we originally thought. Those were the strike teams, sent to spy and loot. What’s coming across the border now qualifies as an army. It’s organized and I’d bet that a lot of the fighters are former Meroven soldiers.”

“Damn,” Blaine said. “I bet Niklas feels right at home, fighting them all over again.”

Geir raised an eyebrow. “Actually, he described it in much more colorful language, but that was the gist of what he said.”

“What does he need? Rinka Solveig and her army are on their way to join up with him, and we’ll be going back there, too, once this is resolved,” Blaine said. “When I get a report back from the harbor, I’ll know whether Folville and Voss have the situation down there in hand. So I can shift some of the men we assigned to the west and bring them to help Niklas, but it will take time to move them.”

Geir nodded. “The reinforcements would be appreciated,” he replied. “Niklas and his army are holding their own, but they won’t be able to hold off Nagok forever without additional help—and Voss’s men are busy.”

“This means we’re going to be riding north, doesn’t it?” Piran said from where he slouched in his chair. “I knew it was too much to expect that we could have a day or two without killing someone or nearly being assassinated.”

“Technically, only Blaine can be assassinated,” Kestel corrected with a wicked gleam in her eye. “The likes of you just gets regular-old murdered.”

Geir glanced at Blaine, who despite everything, had a shadow of a smile at the banter. “Are they always like this?”

Blaine shrugged. “Usually, they’re worse.” He sighed. “Yes, it means we’re going to have to go north. We can’t afford to be overrun from any direction.” He looked back to Geir. “What of Penhallow and Connor? We haven’t had word in quite a while. Do you know if the voyage to Edgeland was successful?” His bond through the kruvgaldur was still new enough that Blaine had little practice interpreting the impressions he received.

“They’ve reached Edgeland,” Geir reported. “From what Penhallow has been able to read from the kruvgaldur, Connor and the others obtained the artifact—with some danger involved—and are on their way back.”

“We’re never going to hear the end of this from Verran.” Piran sighed. “Might as well expect a whole new set of songs about snow.” He looked over to Blaine. “Maybe he’ll bring back some fresh herring for you.”

“Forget the herring. I want news!” Kestel said, excitement glinting in her eyes. “He’d better come back with gossip about everyone we knew. Engraham and Ifrem and all the others—I want to know what they’ve been doing, how they are, what happened when the magic came back. Dammit! It’s been too long.”

“Dear Kestel, much as I miss our friends, it could never be too long to be gone from that accursed place,” Piran replied. Kestel made a face at him when Piran was not looking.

“They were actually worse, cooped up together all winter during the Long Dark in Edgeland,” Blaine said to Geir. “It’s how they handle stress.”

Piran raised his nearly empty glass of whiskey. “This is how I handle stress,” he said, rising to pour himself a refill. “Annoying Kestel is what I do for fun.”

“I consider annoying Piran to be an art,” Kestel said with a straight face. “And that makes me a virtuoso.”

Blaine chuckled, knowing that their friendly sniping was their way of dealing with the idea of heading into yet another series of battles. “Do you see any end in sight to all of this?” he asked Geir, taking a swallow of his own whiskey. He recounted what they had learned from Heldin about the Cross-Sea Kingdoms’ involvement in the Meroven War and their talishte uprising.

Geir drained his goblet and poured more from the flagon. “Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll see an end soon. Thrane is a danger to be reckoned with, especially with the rogue Elders on his side, and we’re certain he’s had a hand in Nagok’s rise to power. And perhaps, given what you’ve shared, meddled beyond our shores. That’s a very disturbing thought.”

“But Penhallow has some of the Elders siding with him as well,” Kestel said, growing serious once more. “Doesn’t that balance things?”

Geir gave an eloquent shrug. “Balance, yes. But neither side can settle for balance. The only thing either side can accept is the utter destruction of the enemy. And right now, anything could tip the scales one way or the other.”