Every head in the hall swiveled to stare at the Lady of Thorns. She stood framed in the archway beside the herald, an aloof smile curving her lips. She wore a robe of emerald velvet, trimmed with traditionally jagged Vaskandran embroidery in black and gold; its long train flowed behind her as she descended the steps, like a fall of water. Her eyes fixed on the queen, mage mark shining with poisonous virulence.
Marcello and Lienne moved to position themselves between the Lady of Thorns and their Falcons, hands near weapons; the royal guard shifted to close around the dais where we stood. A current ran through the crowd, like the receding tide drawing the water away by any channel it could reach, as the Lady of Thorns swept toward us. Callamornish dignitaries drew back from her with pale faces and stony stares. The force of her presence ran before and around her like a great wave, the pressure of it almost unbearable. Her boots rang sharply in the silence.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Roland clasp Bree’s hand. Ancient, animal instincts screamed at me to flee from the malevolent intensity of the Witch Lord’s gaze as she stopped before us, but I held my ground.
“You are bold, Lady, to arrive here without notice or invitation when your armies are camped on my border.” My grandmother’s voice rang out, cold and forbidding.
The dais, her own height, and the crown sitting upon her pinned-up braids placed her above the Witch Lord of Sevaeth, and the radiance of the lamps and luminaries struck gleams from the metal accents set into her armorlike bodice. But the sheer malevolent energy pouring off the Lady of Thorns made her seem more real, somehow, more solid and sharp and dangerous, and I was suddenly afraid for my grandmother.
The Lady of Thorns spread her arms wide. “Consider this a day of great fortune, Galanthe Lochaver.” Her voice held a silken sweetness but carried a power and menace that smothered the room. “For I am moved with uncommon mercy. I come to you with an offer of peace.”
I found myself rather skeptical of both the supposed mercy and the offered peace. My grandmother must have felt the same, because her eyes narrowed. Murmurs ran through the crowd. Whatever they had expected, it wasn’t this.
“If you wish peace,” the queen said in a voice of iron, “all you need to do is refrain from invading us.”
The Lady of Thorns smiled. “Such restraint does not come without a price.” She held out an open hand, the motion rippling the fine dark velvet of her sleeve. “I will withdraw my forces from your border and leave your country alone. Even the occasional raiding parties and wandering chimeras to which you are accustomed will cease. But in return, you must cede to me the northern quarter of your domain, along the Sevaeth border.”
I glanced at Roland, shocked. What kind of arrogance brought her all the way to Callamorne with an offer like that? He shook his head, face stiff with anger.
“Will you.” The queen’s hand rested on the pommel of the entirely serviceable sword strapped to her side.
“I will make this offer once.” The Lady of Thorns’ smile broadened, her eyes gleaming, as if she knew a secret. “Reject it at your peril, Queen of Callamorne. If you do, know that I will take your country anyway—but I’ll destroy your family, first.”
The muttering in the crowd took on an edge of anger, but no one dared raise a voice or take a step toward the Lady of Thorns. She stood with an insolent unconcern, holding in contempt the very idea that she should offer deference to her enemy while standing alone within her seat of power.
I glanced from the Lady of Thorns’ serene smirk to my grandmother’s face, hard as granite. She had to say no. I couldn’t imagine her entertaining such an insulting offer. But the moment stretched on, dragging my nerves tighter with it.
At my side, Bree stared murder at the Lady of Thorns, her fists half-raised. Roland put on an impassive face, but the faint sound of his teeth grinding reached my ears.
“You dare,” the queen said, her voice soft as death. “You dare come before me and make threats against my family in my own castle.”
“Do you refuse my offer, then?” The Lady of Thorns sounded almost bored.
“I think so little of your offer I do not deign even to spit on it.” The queen took a step forward, to the edge of the dais. “Callamorne does not fear you. Callamorne has withstood Vaskandran assaults for hundreds of years, and by the strength of our arms and the will of the Graces, we will continue to do so!”
A ragged cheer rose up from the crowd. Bree muttered, “Damned right we will.”
“Are you certain that is your answer?” The Lady of Thorns’ voice held a cold edge, like a knife to the throat.
“I have nothing more to say to you,” my grandmother said.
“So be it.” Her offering hand swept down with the finality of a scythe blade.
All the guards in the great hall leveled muskets and pikes at her. But she simply swirled a circle of shimmering green velvet and began stalking away, her three blond braids swinging behind her.
Then she paused and held out one hand, almost as an afterthought, as if waiting to be helped into a carriage.
“It’s unfortunate we couldn’t resolve this peacefully,” she said sweetly. “But then, that’s not really why I came.”
A few tiny black specks dropped from her fingers to the floor.
“Damnation,” my grandmother whispered, the color draining from her face.
Seeds. Hell of Disaster. Those were seeds.
The Lady of Thorns resumed walking. Behind her, green-black tendrils shot up from the floor, a whipping nest of bramble vines unfurling with terrifying speed. Stone buckled as the thorn tree put down roots, and barbed branches reached hungrily toward the dais where we stood.
I scuttled backward with a yelp, clutching instinctively at my flare locket. Guards leaped forward, hacking at the rapidly growing thorns with their pikes. My grandmother drew her sword and stepped up to meet the writhing branches, cutting a couple off with capable ease.
“Zaira?” I asked sharply.
She shook her head in clear frustration. “With that thing flailing around, I’d light up the whole room and everyone in it.”
The desperate energy of fear and anger pounded through my blood, demanding action, but there was nothing I could do. My flare locket was useless against an enemy with no eyes, and I didn’t have the skill with weapons to help fight off the swelling tangle of vicious black briars.
Bree and Roland had joined the fray, and I could see across the hall that Lienne and Marcello had backed into a corner with Terika and Istrella, the better to keep them safe; Istrella was pointing at the runic wards circling the hall windows and yelling something, trying to get her brother’s attention, but he had his hands full deflecting branches with his rapier. The Lady of Thorns had vanished in the confusion. The bulk of the proliferating thorns reached for the royal dais, building above and around us like a breaking black wave of a thousand arboreal claws. It was huge, and horrifyingly wrong, and everything in my sensible Raverran soul rebelled against it in shocked disbelief.
One snaking tendril arced toward me over the guards’ heads, dagger-sized thorns whistling as they cut the air. I flinched from it, raising my arms in a futile effort to protect my face.
Kathe hopped up on the dais, lightly as a landing bird, and reached casually for the oncoming branch. He looked nearly bored; he might as well have been getting a jar of jam down off a shelf.
All it took was a brush of his fingertips. The branch withered to a crumpled nothing, coming to rest at my feet.
I stared at its curling brown emptiness, then up at Kathe, my heart still racing painfully in my chest. He shrugged, feathers rustling.
“I came to warn you that the Lady of Thorns had gotten into the castle, but I see you already know.”
His words fell into an unexpected silence, where a moment ago there had been yelling and crashing and the clang of weapons. Past his shoulder, the great thorn tree had gone suddenly still. Then, with a tremendous clattering like a spill of bones, it shuddered and collapsed all at once. Its sprawling tendrils covered half the hall.
The crowd stared, for a moment, harsh breaths scraping at the silence. Then a few guards stabbed at the branches with their halberds. It didn’t move.
“Did you kill it?” I asked Kathe. It came out half a gasp. I realized I was clutching Zaira’s sleeve, and let her go.
“The Lady of Thorns declined to keep it alive. She got what she came for,” he said ominously.
“What, to piss on the queen’s floor?” Zaira snorted her contempt.
“No.” Kathe’s gaze slid sideways, to where my grandmother wiped sap off her sword with the corner of a velvet drape.
Bree and Roland stood with her, faces grim; the guard captain reached toward a cut on the queen’s cheek, but she twitched out of the way as if avoiding an annoying fly.
“The cut … it’s not poisoned?” I turned desperately to Kathe, already running through alchemical antidotes in my mind.
But he shook his head. “She needed a taste of Lochaver blood. Like giving a scent to hounds. Now she can set every living thing in her domain against your grandmother and her heirs.”
The queen heard that and came striding over, drawing Bree and Roland with her. Meanwhile, the other Falcons and Falconers had hurried to the dais; Lienne still had her sword out, while Istrella shook her head in something like disgust.
“I’m grateful for your assistance, Crow Lord,” my grandmother said, her curt tone suggesting a certain grudging quality to her gratitude. “What can we expect?”
“Oh, some manner of mayhem, I presume.” He shrugged. “Suffice to say I wouldn’t get too close to the Sevaeth border if I were a Lochaver. Everything from wasps to wolves will try to murder you.”
“But I have to,” I protested. The artifice circle I’d been sent here to investigate was on the Kazerath border, but near its intersection with Sevaeth.
“The roads might still be safe. At least, they’re guaranteed safe for travelers by our own agreements, so no one can cut off the inner domains from trade.” Kathe seemed to consider the matter. “I’m not certain you’d want to bet your life on it, though. So if you come visit me in Let, I’d take the long way around.”
“How did she get in?” my grandmother demanded of her guard captain. “We attuned the wards against her. Did someone let her in through the front door?”
“Oh, about that.” Istrella waved a hand, as though trying to get the queen’s attention from far away, though she stood at the edge of the dais with Marcello. “I was just telling Lienne, before everything got so noisy, about your wards. Whoever designed them clearly missed the Master Artificer’s class on closing gaps in your designs with auxiliary patterns or filler runes.” Istrella’s expression could hardly have conveyed more distaste if the nameless artificer had left dirty socks hanging on bushes in the garden.
Everyone else stared at her with varying degrees of incomprehension. But my heart sank. “Someone tampered with the wards,” I translated. “Added runes to change the meaning, or altered the design.”
The queen turned to her guards. “Check the wards on every window and door in the castle. Find where they’ve been altered.”
“Istrella, can you help them?” Marcello asked.
“I’d better.” Her thin brows lowered in determination. “Otherwise they’ll never notice anything. Come on.”
She grasped her brother by the hand and pulled him off, a group of guards in tow. More had already divided to secure the entrances to the hall, and I could hear commotion echoing through the castle.
Bree and Roland drew protectively close around our grandmother. Bree kicked at the withered remains of a thorn branch.
“What do we do now?” Roland asked, eyeing the massive sprawl of tangled branches. “We can’t let this keep us from fighting back.”
“Roland.” My grandmother’s voice took on a hard edge of command. “Take the royal guard and ensure that the castle is secure.”
Roland nodded sharply. “Yes, Your Majesty!”
“Brisintain.” The queen turned to Bree. “Reassure the people. Quash any wild rumors and make sure the truth is known. Show them that we have nothing but scorn for this petty attack.”
“I can do better than scorn.” Bree grinned fiercely. “I’ll get them ready to fight.”
“Good.” My grandmother turned to me, and for a moment my heart jumped, ready for any task she might give me. But she only offered a stiff nod to Kathe, Zaira, and me. “If you’ll excuse me. I have much to attend to.”
A great bustle ensued, with each of the three of them heading off to take command of different groups of people. I watched with an odd loneliness unfolding in my chest.
“Well!” Kathe dusted his hands together. “It looks like you’ve got this under control. I should get back to Let before my Heartguard drains my beer cellars.”
“Wait.” I wasn’t going to let him slip away so easily. He’d helped us, and I was grateful, but he was holding back far too much knowledge behind that charming smirk. “You knew she was coming, didn’t you?”
“Of course. You met her on the road yesterday, yourself.” He backed half a step, as if he might turn and leave, but I angled to put myself between him and the edge of the dais.
“Did you come here to stop her?” I asked. “Is that why you invited yourself to this ball?”
He shrugged. “Who can say why I do anything?”
“You can!” I took a step toward him, propelled by my own frustration; we stood a hand’s length apart, and I glared up at him from close enough to feel his breath stirring my hair. “Why does the Lady of Thorns want my family dead?” I demanded. “And what does all this have to do with her daughter?”
“Excellent questions.” He held my gaze, and his voice dropped, going soft and serious. “Find the answer I asked you for earlier today, and you’ll find those as well. But I’ll tell you this much: the Lady of Thorns’ daughter is dying.”
“Dying?” I could almost see the truth in his yellow-ringed eyes. “Of what?”
“The same thing that kills everyone, eventually,” Kathe said with a grin.
“Are you capable of simply answering a question?” I demanded.
He laughed. “Where’s the fun in that? But you touch on deep mysteries and ancient secrets, old as stone and red with blood. I’m certain your Empire has its own hoarded truths that you wouldn’t pass out like spare handkerchiefs, even to friends who ask you nicely.” He swept into a bow. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I should go check to make sure the Lady of Thorns has truly left. I doubt she’d attack any of you in a hall full of guards, but a dark corridor is another matter.”
He lifted my hand and placed a feather-light kiss upon the back of it, his warm lips barely brushing my skin. Every nerve in my hand kindled like luminaries at dusk. I swallowed and managed a quick dip of a curtsy.
And he was gone. My heart still raced from the tingling whisper of his lips, and my thoughts tumbled together like windblown leaves.