Chapter Twenty-Six

The fortress of Highpass watched over a dirt track that made its way through mountain meadows and a tough scrabble of low pine forest across a broad shoulder of mountainside. It was a difficult and minor pass, too rough for horses, but it was still good enough for fit soldiers to manage on foot; and so the stone fort brooded over the road with a full complement of cannons, its walls marked with artifice wards, enjoying a clear vantage over the long path up the mountain from Vaskandar.

When it came into view at last, rearing blocky and gray over a sweep of snow-blanketed meadow as the sun peeked over the shoulder of the mountain beyond it, my eyes stung with more than the mountain wind. Finally, we were back safe in the Empire. Nothing was trying to kill us; warm beds and warm food waited for us inside. It seemed impossible, like walking into a memory of a place that no longer existed.

But we were coming back without Lienne and Braegan and the other soldiers whose names I’d never learned. They should have been marching home by our sides, triumphant and weary, not left behind in Vaskandar to fall to the teeth of chimeras. The empty space around us felt thick with their ghosts.

Zaira let out a long breath of relief. “The Empire and I have our disagreements, but damn me to the Nine Hells if I’m not glad to be back.”

I squeezed Kathe’s hand, impulsively. “Thank you for escorting us. I’m not sure we’d have made it without you.” Twice, passing through Sevaeth, he’d stared down a pack of whiphounds, and once a mountain lion. I had little doubt he’d used vivomancy to keep them from attacking us. Zaira could have dealt with them, but that would have likely left her unconscious, and I could never have carried her up the mountain to reach the pass.

“If your gratitude extends to offering hospitality, I will admit to some weariness.” His shoulders strained against the soft fabric of his tunic as if he yearned to unfold wings, and the golden light of dawn caught on the sharp planes of his face. I could read the tiredness in the lines of it as he gazed toward the castle, and he seemed thinner, somehow. I felt an unexpected, almost tender pang of concern.

It occurred to me to wonder why he’d been in southern Atruin, and how fast he’d had to travel to get there. This might not have been his first night without sleep. I lifted his cloak from my shoulders and handed it back to him; his vivomancy might fortify him against the cold, but I suspected he was not entirely immune to it. My fingertips slid across his as I passed the cloak to him, and a tingle like rushing seafoam ran up my arm.

“Of course,” I said. “Highpass is a fortress, not a palace, but what comforts it has to offer are yours.”

We were still some distance from the rune-scribed arch of the open gates when a scarlet-uniformed figure ran out between the startled guards, setting their bayonets to swaying like reeds in the wind. Even from this far away, I knew him: Marcello. The warm glow that flooded me went beyond reason; the familiar line of his shoulders and the windblown waves of his dark hair renewed me like a drink of fresh water.

He caught up to us in the dawn-stained snow and swept me into a quick, tight hug, without so much as glancing at the others. Then he released me, staring at my face as if memorizing every line of it.

“You’re all right. Thank the Graces. You’re all right.”

Every exhausted inch of my body wanted to melt into his arms. To put down the past few days like a burden and let him hold me. That brief moment of warmth had felt so good, so safe, so right. But Kathe watched me over Marcello’s shoulder, his yellow-marked eyes unreadable, weariness or sorrow pulling at his face.

“Yes,” I said, trying to keep my voice light and courteous. “We’re fine. We made it home.”

“Istrella and I arrived early yesterday morning, as the commander of Highpass and Princess Brisintain were starting to prepare forces to go after you.” Marcello pushed a shaking hand through his hair. “I hadn’t even known you were gone. Then just as we were about to cross the border, we got your second message, that you were safe and on your way home. But I couldn’t …” He broke off, shaking his head. “No one else who went with you came back alive.”

Grief pulled at me like a receding wave, eroding my strength to stand. “They gave their lives for us, Marcello. I wouldn’t be here without them.”

Marcello nodded gravely. “We’ll make sure they’re remembered as heroes.”

Kathe was still waiting silently, his yellow-ringed eyes on us. I gestured to him, clearing my throat. “Lord Kathe was the one who saw us safely home.”

Marcello regarded Kathe warily. “Then I am in your debt, Lord Kathe.” He bowed, his back stiff.

Kathe smiled, but there was an edge to it. “Not at all, Captain. If I didn’t enjoy the Lady Amalia’s company, I wouldn’t be courting her.”

“Yes, yes. Can you glare at each other later?” Zaira pushed between them, heading for the fortress. “I’m so starving I can hardly stand.”

The commander of Highpass welcomed us with stern relief into a fortress mobilized for our rescue, ordering a disturbing number of ready soldiers to stand down at last. I headed straight for the courier lamps to inform my mother that I was safe and report all of my disturbing news: Ruven’s ascension to a Witch Lord, his capture and control of the missing Falcons, the activation of the volcano enchantment, and my own invitation to the Conclave as the one morsel of hope in the buffet of despair. She received this information with terse grace; for every pause in the rapid flashes of the courier lamp, I could picture her turning to Ciardha or the lamp operator to issue orders and relay messages to the doge. I had no doubt she would walk out of the lamp room with all the gathering power of a storm surge, pulling events into motion around her.

La Contessa’s only personal message to me was brief: I’m glad you’re safe. We’ll talk later. A sense of foreboding settled over me at those last words; it took no great exercise of the imagination to guess that I had not handled matters as she would have done over the past two days.

I tried to shake off thoughts of looming disaster, be it volcanic or maternal, while I bolted down warm food, then washed off the remnants of Vaskandar and chased out its chill with a hot bath. Finally, exhaustion aching in my bones, I limped to the guest room the commander had assigned me, planning to collapse into bed. Matters of war and empire, volcanoes and Witch Lords, could all wait until I’d had some sleep.

But Bree waited for me at the door to my room, her ankle splinted, leaning on a crutch. She flung her free arm around me, squeezing so tight I thought my ribs would break.

“Grace of Mercy, I thought you were dead, too.” Her voice caught. She held me out at arm’s length. Lines of worry creased her brow that I’d never seen there before; her hair looked as if she hadn’t brushed it since we’d found her in the forest, with bits of leaf still stuck in it. “I went after Terika because I couldn’t stand losing her when I was supposed to be protecting her. But look what happened.”

“Terika’s alive,” I told her. “We only know her location because we went into Vaskandar. And I learned important information. It wasn’t for nothing.”

Bree let out a long breath. “That’s good to hear. But I still feel terrible. This is the first time I’ve made a decision that cost lives.” She shook her head; shadows of strain and exhaustion lay on her face. “Now their blood is on my hands, and we didn’t even rescue her. But it would have felt even worse to just leave Terika to die.”

“I don’t think there was a right answer,” I said, grief roughening my voice.

“It’s awful, Amalia.” Bree rubbed her face. “I’m glad I’ll never be queen.”

I nodded, a lump in my throat. My mother had to make life-and-death decisions all the time as a member of the Council of Nine. I knew I wouldn’t be able to avoid them forever, myself. “How are the villagers, and Terika’s grandmother?”

Bree brightened. “The alchemist was able to mix the antidote. They’re recovering.”

“Good.” Relief swept over me. At least something had turned out well. “We have a lot to talk about, Bree. But for now, I’m going to bed.”

The finest bed at the fortress was lumpy and hard compared to my silk-sheeted feather bed at home. But after nights with little or no sleep, it felt like sinking into clouds.

The next morning, a brisk knock at my door interrupted my breakfast. I answered it to find the commander of Highpass, his bushy eyebrows creasing his forehead into a frown beneath his balding dome.

“Lady Amalia,” he greeted me. “I’m sorry to interrupt you, but perhaps you can help me with your, ah, guest.”

It took me a moment to realize he must mean Kathe. I rose. “Is everything all right?”

“Well enough. But I’m afraid he’s spooked the guards on the north tower. No one wants to go near him.” He shook his head. “They’re mostly Callamornish, and downright superstitious about Witch Lords. If you could just talk to him—show them he’s not going to murder everyone …” Captain Edhras trailed off and gave me an expectant look, as if hoping for confirmation that Kathe was, indeed, not going to murder everyone.

I sighed. “I’ll be right there.”

Kathe perched on the parapet, seemingly oblivious to the long drop below him, the wind catching his feathered cloak and ruffling his hair. He made a strange and striking figure, which might have been enough to rattle Callamornes who’d grown up with Witch Lords as the villains in every story, but what I suspected truly pushed them over the edge were the crows.

He held out his hands as if greeting the mountains. Crows perched on his palms, his arms, his shoulders, and the parapet around him; they fluttered in the air, looking for places to land, or took off again and flew toward Vaskandar. He muttered to them quietly in some strange, rough language, a distracted smile on his face, and slipped them tidbits from a pouch at his waist. There must have been dozens of them, strutting and flapping their dark wings and watching everything with their bright round eyes.

I wasn’t sure how to approach him, myself. I waited several paces off, feeling rather as if I might be interrupting a conversation. A crow on his shoulder cawed at me, then pecked his ear.

Kathe turned, crows rising from him all at once with a thunder of wings. He grinned and hopped down from the parapet.

“Lady Amalia. I’m glad you’re awake. This place is deadly dull.”

“Well, it is a military fortress preparing for war,” I pointed out. “Everyone is probably too busy to entertain guests.”

“Luckily, I’m an expert at entertaining myself.” He offered me his arm. “Will you walk with me?”

I was getting used to the strange, electric tingle when I touched him, but the sheer absurd audacity of walking arm in arm with a Witch Lord still hadn’t worn off. The wind tangled my hair as we strolled side by side along the parapet, with the mountains rearing in snow-mantled grandeur all around us.

“I gather you have some attachment to that officer who greeted you yesterday,” Kathe said, his voice neutral. “I seem to recall him from the party, as well.”

I jumped. I couldn’t help it. “Captain Verdi is a good friend,” I said.

Kathe clicked his tongue. “Come now, Lady Amalia. You can do better than that.”

“It’s the truth.” But not the whole truth. A warm flush crept up my neck to my ears. “We never courted. His family is patrician, but his rank is insufficient.” It was none of Kathe’s business that we’d kissed, or that hardly a day passed when I didn’t spend at least a little time wishing I could kiss him again.

“Ah, I understand.” Kathe sighed. “You can imagine the difficulties of trying to court as a Witch Lord. I can’t show interest in anyone from my own domain; even if they seem eager, it feels like an abuse of my rank. Courting someone from another domain requires permission of their Witch Lord. And if you’re hoping for an heir, well, you have to consider bloodlines and magical potential on top of everything else.”

“It sounds rather complicated,” I said.

“This boy of yours.” He gave me a gleaming sideways glance, and I suspected him of enjoying my discomfort at the phrase. “Does he understand that for one of your station, courtship is not a matter of the heart?”

I resolved not to let him rattle me. “Courtship is a political game for those of our rank, Lord Kathe. But I would argue that the heart must become involved in order to take home the prize.”

“Oho?” He cocked an eyebrow. “Surely you don’t mean to imply that all marriages among the nobility are love matches.”

“No.” I knew too many aristocratic couples in Raverra locked in arranged marriages with spouses they did no more than tolerate. “But perhaps they should be.”

He spun away from me, a hand going dramatically to his chest, as if I’d struck him with an arrow. “Do you mean to tell me that if I wish this courtship to be successful, I must actually earn your love, of all things?”

I laughed. “Isn’t that what courtship is technically for?”

His eyes narrowed in calculation. “That will make this rather harder.”

A chill came on me, half excitement and half foreboding, borne by the mountain wind. “Why, Lord Kathe, I would nearly think you were serious.”

“I am rarely serious, my lady. But that doesn’t mean I’m not in earnest.”

Mirth lit his face, but an intensity lay behind it, keen as an arrowhead. He meant it.

I couldn’t shrug this off as a joke, but I couldn’t give him assurances either. Kathe played his games to win, and my future was a stake on the table.

I clasped my hands behind my back to keep them from worrying at my hair or sleeves. “Are you so intent on gaining access to the Lady of Eagles’ bloodline, then?”

“It’s intriguing, I admit. But I’m looking at the larger picture.” He stepped to the parapet and gazed up at the crows now circling overhead. “They’re clever creatures, you know. They’re curious, they’re good at solving problems, and they work together. They notice and remember, but they’re so common no one sees them. My crows have already spread throughout Vaskandar and half the Empire. If you see a crow anywhere in Eruvia, there’s at least a chance it was born in Let. You are La Contessa’s daughter; you must be able to see the advantage they give me.”

“Spies,” I whispered. “They’re perfect spies.”

He nodded, grinning. “Most Witch Lords turn their eyes inward, to their own domains. I look beyond. I have ambitions, Lady Amalia. I don’t want to take over more land, or rule Eruvia—I want to know things. And to be able to make things happen, when I wish it.”

I leaned back against the parapet, dazed by the scope of possibilities. “No wonder my mother wanted to cultivate you.”

“You see? I have a lot to offer. But I don’t have the experience at this sort of game a Raverran does.” He gave me a deferential nod. “I don’t have the web of human connections and agents you do. And I know little of the Serene Empire. But together—well, I can see in your eyes you understand what we could do together.”

It shouldn’t have been tempting. I was a scholar; I achieved my fulfillment from hiding in my room with a good book or fiddling around with artifice designs. My ambitions tended toward writing papers on magical theory that might someday be cited by great scholars. But for a moment I saw the world through my mother’s eyes—the imperial intelligence services, Cornaro wealth and influence, and Kathe’s virtually invisible crows casting a net across the entire map, north and south of the Witchwall mountains. Add to that whatever magical leverage my blood connection to the Lady of Eagles’ network of waters through Vaskandar might give us, and it would be almost trivial to become the secret powers behind every throne in Eruvia.

It wasn’t something I’d ever wanted. But it was a great and terrible prize, one worth winning, too powerful to simply shrug off and ignore.

“I do understand,” I said slowly. “I may understand even better than you do.”

“Precisely.” His eyes gleamed with appreciation. “So yes, Lady Amalia. Consider yourself warned. This courtship is no sham; I am your honest—or at least your genuine—suitor.”

Graces preserve me, but I couldn’t help feeling a stirring at his impish smile, and the casual grace and energy of his every small movement. And if a woman existed who wasn’t at least a bit curious about what it would be like to kiss a Witch Lord, I was not that woman—at least, not when the Witch Lord was Kathe.

My mother hadn’t started out in love with my father; I knew that. They’d liked each other, and found each other attractive, and had seen what an alliance between their countries could do. And they’d grown to love each other deeply and truly, over time. Was that a love any less to be coveted than the summer storm passions that led to half the so-called love matches I’d seen, here and gone within a year?

The spark in Kathe’s eyes anticipated an answer. There was a thirst in me to take up his challenge, and I saw no reason to deny it.

“Very well.” I put my hand in his, returning a wry smile. “Then I will be certain to entertain your suit with all the seriousness it deserves.”

He raised my hand to his lips, the vivid yellow rings of his mage mark piercing above it, and brushed a whisper of a kiss across my knuckles. “I can ask no more, my lady.”

I watched from the parapet as Kathe strode off through the pass toward Let. He’d said he needed to return to see to matters in his own domain before the Conclave but would make arrangements for me to arrive there safely. He moved at a pace a normal human couldn’t possibly keep up for long, but with an easy roll to his step suggesting that perhaps in this regard, a Witch Lord wasn’t an ordinary human. A strange, possessive pride uncurled in my chest as I looked down on him: this creature of grace and power, of wings and lightning, was offering himself to me, through some wild twist of fate and scheming whimsy. If I wished it, he could be mine.

And I his. There lay the difficulty.

Marcello found me still standing there a while later, alone, watching the crows circling and cawing against the blue sky.

The scent of leather and gunpowder reached me first, borne on the mountain wind. I turned to face Marcello, and the concern in his warm green gaze cut a path through my heart like a deep wake in the Raverran lagoon.

Grace of Love. I needed him like water, like sunlight, like home. I could imagine a future with Kathe, grand and exciting—but I couldn’t imagine a future without Marcello.

If I wanted to become my mother’s true heir and serve the Serene Empire, I would need to stretch my imagination. And that knowledge tore a great aching rip in my heart.

“How are you?” he asked, and in his voice I could hear days of worry to match my nightmarish nights in Vaskandar.

“Glad to be back in the Empire. Anxious about the volcano and the Conclave.” I hugged my arms against the chill on the wind.

“Would you like my coat?” he offered, his hand going to his buttons.

“Thank you, but I don’t think that would be wise.” His warmth and scent enveloping me would hurt too much, right now.

Marcello nodded and leaned against the parapet at my side, leaving exactly the right amount of space between us for a close friend. No more, and no less.

He was too good. He would make a wonderful father, damn him. In a flash that took my breath away, I could see it: Marcello, with lines of silver in his hair, shepherding our children upstairs to play a game while I received the doge and the Council in the drawing room. Marcello helping our tiny daughter, raven-haired like her father, climb into a boat by herself for the first time. Leaning back into Marcello’s arms to rest, cuddled up with him before a merry fire with a good book and a cup of mulled wine. Laughing with him after only a glance, crinkles of age and mirth around his green eyes, because we’d known each other for so many years we didn’t need to say the joke aloud.

It was a future so real I could reach out and touch it, living and breathing before me in Marcello’s strong shoulders and sincere green eyes. This was what I stood to lose. This was what I would sacrifice, if I played my games too long.

I swallowed a hot, messy knot in my throat. What kind of idiot was I, to think of something like that? I might as well sit around stabbing myself in the face with a table fork.

“Your button kept me company in Vaskandar,” I told him, slipping a hand into my pocket to feel its familiar curves. It had felt wrong to leave my room without it, after all we’d been through together. “I’m not sure it talked me out of any bad ideas, but it made me feel like you were with me.”

“Then take it with you to the Conclave,” he said. “I don’t like the idea of you going back there alone.”

“With Zaira,” I corrected him. “Zaira is like at least ten people, in a variety of ways.”

He laughed. We stood in silence, side by side, then, watching the wind blow withered leaves across the melting remnants of snow in the meadow below. Mount Whitecrown reared up above the shadowy lesser mountains in the distance, its glaciers forming stark streaks of white against the clear blue sky. Only one small puff of cloud clung to its southern face, near the summit, drifting up and away on the wind.

Out of a fold in the mountainside, another wisp of white cloud peeked, slowly rising into the air.

I grabbed Marcello’s elbow. “Look,” I whispered hoarsely.

That wasn’t cloud. It was steam.

With all the slow grandeur of a sleeping dragon rising from its bed of centuries, the volcano was beginning to awaken.

A tense mood settled over the castle as Mount Whitecrown continued to emit innocent-looking, fluffy puffs of steam. It might well not mean anything; Mount Whitecrown was an active volcano, after all, and didn’t sit with the proper immutable stillness one might reasonably expect from a mountain. But I kept glancing out windows at its snowy peak, ghostly with distance, all too aware of the magical forces even now building up a terrifying pressure within its fiery heart.

It was hard to focus on my books that evening. I’d left Zaira and Bree drinking together in Bree’s room, throwing knives at a crude drawing of Ruven’s face. I needed to take advantage of this moment of rare quiet and solitude; I only had a week to prepare for the Conclave. I’d had a long follow-up conversation over the courier lamps with my mother, half explaining my rash actions in Vaskandar and half trying to convince her that I needed to go back. She’d seemed to see the opportunity but had warned that the doge and the Council of Nine would need to agree if I were to attend with any authority to negotiate for Raverra.

I was staring at Lavier’s Chronicle of Vaskandran Expansion without comprehension when Istrella knocked on my door, then bustled in without waiting for a reply, carrying a tray piled high with a tangle of beaded artifice wire and two steaming mugs.

“Hello,” she said cheerfully, kicking the door shut behind her. “Mind if I show you what I’m working on?”

“Of course not.” I pushed my book away with some relief. “Is that chocolate?”

“Coffee!” Istrella plunked the tray down on the table between us. “I remembered how much you like it.”

I stared dubiously at the sloshing cup of evil black liquid. “It smells nice,” I said politely, and nudged the cup away. “What have you got?”

The tangle of wires and beads on her tray appeared to be two separate devices: one a crystal that probably stored energy, from the look of the runes carved into it, and the other a complex little wirework basket wrapped around an irregular lump of copper.

“Oh, are you not going to drink the coffee?” Istrella sounded relieved. “That’s just as well, really. I don’t think I made it right.”

“I’m not that fond of it anyway,” I admitted.

“I know,” she said. Then she added, in a strange tone, “Last chance!”

I glanced up from her device to her face, startled. Her eyes bugged earnestly at me, as if she were expecting something. “I’m sorry,” I said, “last chance for what?”

Istrella sighed with evident exasperation. “Never mind. Here, hold this, and I’ll show you.”

She plunked the device with the copper lump into my hand, trailing loose wires. I scarcely paid attention; I was staring at the shadows under her eyes. “Istrella, is something wrong?”

“Oh, nothing really.” Quick as a wink, she twisted the dangling wires together with more loose wires that hung off the power crystal, connecting the two halves of the device. In my hand, the copper lump hummed with energy; the vibration traveled up my bones and all through my body.

I couldn’t move.

Every nerve buzzed with a heavy numbness. Every muscle locked precisely in place: not with tension, but exactly as it had been when she’d connected the wires. My body felt far too normal, far too relaxed, for the white-hot alarm building in my chest.

Istrella peered anxiously into my face. “Still breathing? Heart still beating?”

I couldn’t move my lips to reply. All I could do was stare at her in horror.

“Oh, good! I wasn’t sure this would work.” Istrella sank back into her chair with apparent relief. “I had to throw it together overnight when I got the command. I was hoping you’d figure out the coffee hint, but you missed it, like all the others. You and Marcello can be really oblivious when you’re distracted, you know.”

Hells. She was under Ruven’s control. She’d been under his control since Lady Aurica’s dinner party. That assassin hadn’t been trying to kill her at all; she’d knocked her out and given her the potion.

Istrella was the traitor.