CHAPTER 20

Red Hearts Can’t Be Broken

On the journey through the Cloud Pillars and across the Oxscinian mainland, Ed, Lac, and Hobs encountered tides of other refugees fleeing from the coast. Over cups of tea brewed from scavenged bark, Ed heard stories of the Alliance punching through the Royal Navy defenses at the Bay of Batteram. In voices hoarse with smoke, the evacuees described fierce battles between flaming ships, circling one another on the whitecaps while Oxscini’s onshore batteries emptied their cannons at the monstrous Alliance warships.

Delienean warships, Ed thought with a twinge of guilt. But then he’d remember the fleet he’d seen at Broken Crown and he’d tell himself, for the fifth, the twenty-first, the thirtieth time, that if Arcadimon hadn’t joined the Alliance, the Delieneans would have been evacuating like these Oxscinians, sooner or later—uprooted, afraid, beaten.

Ed did what he could as they slogged through the Vesper swamps toward Kelebrandt, the Forest Kingdom’s capital, and Queen Heccata’s protection. He organized foraging parties. He helped reconnect lost family members. He did his best to keep them fed and sheltered while, every few days, convincing Lac that they could not abandon the caravan to join the fight in Batteram. The trek through the bog wasn’t a glorious battle, but it was where they were needed.

To keep Lac busy, Ed assigned him to the laundry, while Hobs scurried back and forth between sections of their caravan with messages, stories, and odd jokes. And whenever Ed felt his sadness creeping up on him like a cold tide, he took time out of his days to care for the horses. How he’d missed horses! And dogs! He loved spending time with the refugees’ dogs, the cats, the goats and hogs and water buffalo.

But no matter how much he accomplished, no matter how exhausted he was by the trekking or the hauling water, at the end of the day, Ed never slipped easily into sleep. He’d stare up at the ceiling of the tent he shared with Lac and Hobs, his mind sifting through new ideas for helping the evacuees, until his eyes closed at last and he descended into fitful dreams.

Every time they found more refugees on the road, they asked for updates on the Red War.

Serakeen and the Amalthea had taken another Batteram fort, a woman said. The Alliance was pressing on toward the entrances to Tsumasai Bay like a tide crawling up a beach, and they could not be stopped.

“Tides always go out,” Hobs said helpfully.

The woman shook her head. “Not this one.”

Someone else reported that the Royal Navy was putting up a good showing. No invaders had gotten past them before, and not even General Terezina and the Barbaro would get past them now.

This roused Lac from his despondency at not being able to rejoin the redcoats, and he led the two women from the village near Broken Crown in an upbeat rendition of an Oxscinian folk song, which the other evacuees picked up, their voices winding and flowing through the trees until the whole caravan was singing.

Oh my lady, lovely lady

Who is weeping in the rain,

Dry your tears, my lovely lady.

Brighter days will come again.

When they reached the outskirts of Kelebrandt, the refugees began dispersing, searching for housing, medical care, or missing relatives in the encampments Queen Heccata had established for them, until only Ed, Lac, and Hobs remained of their caravan.

“Well.” Ed sighed as they walked into the city. “We made it.”

“At last!” Lac declared. His brown curls were long now, pulled into a high knot and tied neatly with a piece of yarn. “I’m dying for a bath.”

Ed sniffed. In fact, after a month in the jungle, they could all do with a wash. He wondered what Arc would have said, if he could have seen him now.

The thought sobered him. Arcadimon was in the north, sending Delienean soldiers into the war. Arcadimon was almost certainly a Guardian. They’d probably never see each other again. And even if they did, they’d be enemies.

As if they could sense Ed’s sadness creeping up on him, Lac and Hobs twined their arms in his, and they marched deeper into Kelebrandt together.

Soldiers were everywhere in their red-and-gold uniforms. Stevedores hauled kegs of powder and cases of bullets. Messengers in black armbands scurried in and out of the crowds, while war orphans gathered in groups and went scampering over the streets like herds of wild creatures. Everyone seemed to be abuzz with news.

And fear.

“What?” Ed asked someone as they ran past, pushing a handcart piled with sandbags. “What’s going on?”

Lac went out at the knees when he heard. It was only Ed’s quick reflexes that kept him from collapsing in the middle of the gravel street, his arm around his friend’s waist.

Yesterday, the Alliance, led by the Barbaro and the Amalthea, had decimated the Oxscinian defenses at the Bay of Batteram. Joined by the Rokuine reinforcements sent by Sovereign Ianai, the Royal Navy had retreated to Tsumasai Bay and was preparing for siege.

“Siege?” Lac echoed as they wound their way through the city toward the Red Navy headquarters. “We should have made our way to Batteram when we had the chance.”

“We wouldn’t have made a difference,” said Hobs helpfully. “We’re two lowly soldiers and a boy with no last name.”

“The Alliance won’t make it into Tsumasai Bay.” Ed tried to sound confident. “Kelebrandt is the best-protected capital in Kelanna.”

Hobs glanced sideways at him. “How do you know?”

In truth, Ed had been to the other capitals—the dilapidated palaces in Umlari, the Liccarine capital; the districts of Braska arrayed on the shores of Roku’s largest volcanic island; and, of course, Corabel, the city on a hill, overlooking the White Plains and the steep Delienean cliffs—but none of them were as well defended as Kelebrandt.

“I mean . . .” He swept out his hand, gesturing to the city laid out before them. “Just look at it.”

Part city, part fortress, Kelebrandt had as many walls and turrets, parapets and battlements, as shops, promenades, gardens, and fountains. Great wooden bridges, spiked with thick stakes tipped with iron, straddled the massive river that wound down to the harbor in magnificent curves. There, right on the water, the castle at Kelebrandt stood: a gleaming hulk of Rokuine stone and black-lacquered Oxscinian hardwood, reinforced with steel. It was not as elegant, Ed thought, as the castle at Corabel, but it was resolute and formidable—a castle built for war.

Beyond it lay the span of Tsumasai Bay, where stone garrisons and fortified gun turrets were arranged along the waterline as far as the eye could see. On the waves, the crimson ships of the Oxscinian Navy were still streaming in from the east, forming into orderly rows as they entered the bay.

This was what stood between the Alliance and the heart of the Forest Kingdom. Truthfully, the Oxscinian defenses were so impressive that Ed could hardly imagine them falling to even a force as large as the one he’d seen at Broken Crown.

But if they did fall, if the Alliance entered Tsumasai Bay and took Kelebrandt, it would not be long before the rest of Oxscini fell too, and the Alliance would have four of the Five Islands under its thumb.

As they made their way toward the Royal Navy headquarters, Ed, Lac, and Hobs were soon caught up in a rush of people streaming through the city. Pressed together, Ed could feel their nervous energy pulsating from one person to the next, moving away from the shoreline and up Kelebrandt’s hills in a single sinuous mass.

Soon, the streets became barricaded, with makeshift wooden fences to keep pedestrians on the sidewalks and redcoats stationed along the barriers to keep people from jumping them. In the road, soldiers on stamping horses marched back and forth along the gravel. Soon, the press of people was so great, Ed, Lac, and Hobs could not move in any direction.

“We must have taken a wrong turn somewhere,” Lac moaned.

Standing on his tiptoes, Ed could see that they were stranded on a hillside. On the downslope across the street, houses on stilts were built into the mountain, with the city and the bay stretched out below. Behind them, a forested hillside rose steeply on the other side of the guards and barricades.

“Maybe we’re in line for a parade,” Hobs suggested.

A young person beside them laughed, their merry blue eyes twinkling with excitement. “The queen’s making a public address! In the amphitheater.” They nodded toward a wooded mountain overlooking the city, where the pale crescent of an amphitheater had been cut into the earth. “We’re all waiting to get in.”

Lac patted his stained, threadbare clothing uselessly. “We get to see the queen? The queen can’t see me like this.”

Ed tried to smile. He’d only met Heccata once before, when he was a child, and he remembered her like a flagship— imposing, powerful, glittering with danger. She’d reached for his chin, and he’d backed away at the touch of her cold fingers.

Raking him with a single glance, she’d said, “Don’t cringe, boy. A monarch looks fear in the eye and does not flinch.”

“Maybe we’ll see her in her carriage as she passes by,” said the person with a sigh, “but with this crowd, I don’t think we’re getting into the amphitheater today.”

Lac looked crestfallen.

“Want to wait for the carriage anyway?” Ed asked, to cheer him up. “I don’t think we’ll make much headway if we try to leave now.”

“For a chance to see the queen? Anything!”

The sun rose higher. Impatient, a few members of the crowd sneaked—some more successfully than others—past the soldiers and up the wooded hillside, where Ed saw them climbing the trees, only to appear moments later in the branches, their faces eager. One of them, a man in black, hopped the barricade and ducked behind a tree trunk, blending into the shadows as neatly as if he were nothing more than a shadow himself.

Ed inhaled deeply as the wind picked up. Over the scent of his own body odor, he could have sworn he smelled a strange metallic odor—copper, maybe.

After what seemed like an hour of waiting, excitement began to ripple through the crowd. “The queen! The queen!”

First came the foot soldiers, their crisp red uniforms eliciting an envious sigh from Lac, followed by the ones on horseback, bearing Oxscinian flags that snapped and waved in the breeze.

Lac craned his neck, straining to catch a glimpse of Queen Heccata through the crowd. Hobs peeked over the shoulders of the people nearest him.

Then the carriage came into view. Drawn by six white horses and flanked by a team of mounted soldiers, it was a splendor in black and gold, with the Oxscinian crest of a tree and crown emblazoned on the door and sheer white curtains drawn across the windows.

“The queen!” Lac whispered.

The redcoats on horseback rode in tight formation, their bodies and banners blocking much of the carriage from view.

But between the undulating flags, the horses tossing their heads, the soldiers’ flashing gun grips, Ed saw a crowned silhouette inside the carriage lift its hand.

The crowd cheered.

“She’s waving to us!” Lac cried.

Later, Ed would try to remember if he’d seen a puff of smoke from the treetops, if he’d heard the gunshot. If he could have done something to protect the queen. But no, it had been so fast, there had only been the royal wave, and then—

Blood, spattering the curtains like dozens of tiny red flowers. In the carriage, Queen Heccata collapsed.

Before anyone had time to react, there was an explosion on the opposite side of the street. Huge chunks of lumber and rock blew outward from the hillside. Smoke and powder clouded the air as the tottering houses collapsed and the edge of the mountain began to crumble.

Then came the screams.

The redcoats rushed to the queen’s carriage. Others raced to the site of the explosion as the crowds trampled one another in their haste to escape.

“The queen is dead!” Lac cried, horrified. “Someone killed her, right in front of us!”

But Ed wasn’t listening. He was watching the man in black climb down from his tree and turn nonchalantly up the hillside, but not before Ed caught a glimpse of a rifle beneath his long coat. In the chaos, no one else noticed as he slipped away.

“The queen!” Lac kept saying. “How could we let this happen?”

“Get ahold of yourself, sir.” Hobs smacked him across the face. “We didn’t let it happen.”

“But we can stop who did it.” Ed began to shove through the crowd. “Come on, before the assassin gets away.”

“Assassin? Are you sure?” To his surprise, their new friend with the blue eyes was already behind him, all the merriment drained from their face. They drew a knife. “Which way?”

Lac and Hobs joined them as Ed leapt over the barrier, leading them into the forest.

“Assassin!” Lac shouted. Ed winced, knowing the man in black might have heard. “He went this way! Guards!”

They chased the assassin up the hill, between trees and over logs. At one point, the young person broke away from them, disappearing into the undergrowth.

They reappeared moments later, emerging from a crop of spiked leaves as they slashed at the man with their knife.

The man leapt back, drawing a curved, copper-colored sword in one smooth motion. Ed dashed forward—he’d gotten faster, stronger, in his three months at sea, on the road—his long legs pumping, closing the distance as he left Lac and Hobs behind.

The scent of iron wafted out from the blade as it nicked their new friend’s throat. The blood on the weapon was quickly absorbed into the steel, but the rest of their blood spilled from them as they fell, clutching their neck.

“No!” Ed skidded to a stop by their side.

Their blue eyes were open, but they didn’t see him. They were already dead.

There was a faint breeze as the man in black moved to strike again. But he paused, mid-swing, and Ed got his first good look at the assassin’s face.

He was old—much older than Ed would have expected, given his agility, with lined eyes and sunken, sun-spotted cheeks.

For a moment, he stared at Ed. “So.” The assassin’s voice was like smoke, his words seeming to disappear almost as soon as they were spoken. “He lied to us.”

He? Ed’s mind whirled. Us.

Arcadimon . . . and the Guard.

The assassin knew who Ed was, knew he was alive—and that meant Arc was in danger. Ed grabbed the young person’s knife from the ground beside their body.

But the man in black was so fast. The sword flashed.

Ed did not flinch.

But before the blade could reach him, a gunshot rent the air. The assassin hissed as a bullet struck him in the collarbone. The killing blow missed.

Ed glanced behind him. Lac was holding a smoking gun. Around him, a small army of redcoats was racing toward the man in black.

Ed lunged—probably a stupid move, he realized belatedly, something Lac would do—and the assassin’s sword kissed his wrist, his thigh.

But the redcoats were too close. The man in black sheathed his blade and darted away, clutching his injury.

The soldiers streamed by them as Lac and Hobs knelt beside Ed. “You’re bleeding!” Lac said, obviously.

Hobs began wrapping the injuries. “What did he mean, ‘He lied to us’?” the boy asked, squinting at Ed. “Who’s ‘he’?”

Shaking his head, Ed didn’t answer. Arc was in danger, and Ed was too far away to save him.