Chapter Forty-Four

The great column of gray ash loomed behind us like the accusing finger of some massive demon as we made our way down out of the mountains and back toward Durantain. Poor Jerith might have to keep his wind going for days; I was glad Balos was there to take care of him.

Imperial scouts had confirmed what I already knew. The eruption had been a small one, compared to others in the violent history of the volcanoes of the Witchwall Mountains; the effects of the blast had been limited to the eastern flank of Mount Whitecrown itself. But a deadly flow of hot ash and lava chunks had swept a gray streak down the mountainside, exactly where I’d aimed it.

Prince Roland and his handful of soldiers had not survived.

I tried to tell myself it was a victory. We’d stopped Ruven from taking out our border defenses and claiming vast swaths of territory with his falling ash. The Lady of Eagles seizing the entire mountain for Atruin would ensure that he couldn’t try again. We’d saved thousands of lives, and lost no known civilians to the eruption.

But all I could think of, during the journey to Durantain, was what I would say to my grandmother and Bree. I was so nauseous with dread I could barely eat.

We arrived to find the city already in mourning. Black bunting draped shops, homes, and statues; nearly everyone I saw in the street wore black mourning ribbons at the very least, and every corner shrine had at least a dozen candles lit. The knots in my stomach twisted tighter. You see? They did love you, Roland. And they still do.

People had laid countless flowers at the foot of the statue of Queen Galanthe making her stand on the Ironblood Bridge; they rose up the base and to the statue’s knees, so my grandmother’s bronze image waded through a sea of lilies and roses. My eyes stung as we passed it. Marcello reached out and squeezed my hand.

My grandmother and Bree met us at the castle gates. The utter misery of loss in Bree’s eyes hit me like a blow to the face. She threw her arms around me, and all the words of the apology I’d practiced froze in my throat.

“I’m so glad you’re all right.” Bree’s voice sounded strained and raw in my ear.

I hugged her back, tentatively. “Bree, I …” I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. But I couldn’t say it.

She squeezed me until the breath huffed out of my lungs and my rib stabbed pain through my side. “Don’t say anything. I can’t bear to talk about him yet. I’m still angry at him for being at the border when I was stuck back here. It should have been me.” My hair grew damp where her cheek pressed against it. “He should have stayed home. He didn’t have to die.”

“No,” I whispered. “He didn’t.”

I met my grandmother’s eyes over Bree’s shoulder. The deep, wrenching sorrow in them was matched only by the weariness that dragged at her features. She knew this pain. She had lost a husband and a son already. This new wound I’d inflicted on her was a terrible one, but she had survived its like before, and she would again.

Those wise, grieving eyes read the anguish in my face. Her lips pressed together, and she gave me a slow nod.

“Come inside the castle,” she said. “You must be tired.”

Graces, yes. I was as tired as I’d ever been.

During the process of welcoming us into the castle, as servants in the courtyard took our horses and unloaded our baggage, my grandmother drew me aside. Her grip on my arm was gentle, but her fingers were hard as iron, and the lines of her face had gone grim as she studied me.

“What is it?” she asked. “What don’t you want to tell Bree?”

For an instant, I almost fell apart again, like I had with Marcello when the volcano erupted. But I stuffed the unsteady surge of emotion back down where it belonged, mostly, and kept my eyes dry, at least.

“I had to choose where to channel the eruption.” I forced the words out, soft and low, and made myself meet my grandmother’s intense, grieving gaze. “There were no good options. I thought … I thought Roland would want me to pick the way the fewest people had to die.”

The queen closed her eyes. Her hand tightened on my arm. But then she released a long breath.

“That he would,” she agreed quietly. “He would never have forgiven you if you had chosen otherwise.”

“I killed him, Grandmother.” My voice trembled.

“No.” Her eyes snapped open. “That vile murderer Ruven killed him. You did what a ruler has to do.” Her gaze pierced me like a well-honed rapier. “You did what I do, every time I send soldiers into battle. The Graces called for a sacrifice, and you made it.”

“I chose who would make it, you mean.”

“That is your sacrifice.” She dropped my arm, and gave me a grim nod. “And now you’ve accepted it. You are truly prepared to rule.”

“Sometimes,” I said bitterly, “I’m not certain that’s a good thing.”

We headed to our rooms early that evening, after a somber dinner. The absence of the usual lively bickering between Roland and Bree cut fresh wounds into my heart; to see the wrong cousin talking seriously with my grandmother about how to reassign troops to account for the changing situation in Vaskandar rubbed salt in them. Bree knew it, too, and kept drinking more and more despite the queen’s disapproving gaze, until finally my grandmother suggested pointedly that we’d all had a long day and perhaps we should go to bed.

Zaira’s rooms adjoined mine, and I stopped at her door to say good night. Zaira stood with the door in hand, paused in the act of closing it between us, and frowned.

“We’re back in the Serene Empire,” she said.

“So we are,” I agreed.

“You never sealed my power.”

I shrugged. “Do you want me to?”

Zaira fell silent, her dark eyes thoughtful. She ran her hand up and down the edge of the door, the jess shining on her wrist.

“Keep my power sealed by default when we’re around people,” she said at last. “I don’t want some brat to bump into me from behind in a crowded street and startle me into murdering half a dozen passersby. I’ll let you know when I want you to release me.”

I nodded. “All right. Now, then?”

“Why not,” she sighed. “Now.”

“Revincio.”

She shook herself, like a wet dog, and grimaced.

“Like putting a corset back on?” I hazarded.

“A bit.” She sighed. “But then, corsets have their uses.” She grinned and put her hands on her hips, pushing out her chest.

I cleared my throat. “I suppose they do. Well, good night, Zaira.”

“Good night, Amalia.”

I froze in the act of turning away. I swiveled to stare at her. “That’s the first time you’ve ever called me by my given name.”

Zaira frowned. “No, it isn’t.”

“I …” I swallowed. There was no point arguing with her.

She’d called me a hundred insulting nicknames, and even Cornaro once or twice; but there were precious few people I’d ever heard her call by their given name at all. As if somehow speaking a name might make the person real, a part of her life she couldn’t dismiss and forget in an instant.

My throat felt tight and hot. “Perhaps not,” I said. “But thank you, anyway. And good night.”

The warm feeling in my stomach barely lasted two minutes. I had my hand on my own door latch, eager to finally get some rest, when Lord Caulin rounded the corner.

“Lady Amalia,” he called down the hallway. “I’d hoped to catch you before you went to bed.”

Irritation replaced my goodwill. “You have only done so by the barest technicality.”

He offered me an apologetic bow and approached anyway. “The doge has asked me to congratulate and thank you for your exemplary service to the Serene Empire. Everyone is most impressed with the results you obtained at the Conclave.”

I waited, my hand still on the latch. I’d already spoken directly with the doge over the courier lamps from the border fortress, and he’d expressed his gratitude then. There was no way he would bother so senior an adviser as Lord Caulin to track me down to deliver such sentiments a second time in person.

Lord Caulin licked his lips. “So marvelous, that you managed to bring home the captured Falcons, as well. But we did notice in the reports we’ve received that one of the names on our list of missing Falcons is not among those who returned to us.”

“You mean Harrald,” I said shortly.

“Yes, I believe that was the name.” He smoothed imaginary dust from the front of his jacket. “I know we discussed this matter earlier, before the Conclave, and I was curious what had happened to him.”

I fixed Lord Caulin with my coldest stare. “And I am curious why we even had that discussion without the Council of Nine being consulted first.”

Lord Caulin’s smile faltered. “I imagine it was a matter of expediency, my lady.”

“Of course.” I held his gaze until he glanced away. “To answer your question, I don’t know precisely what happened to Harrald. He was with us when we sneaked the Falcons out of Lord Ruven’s castle. But it was dark and dangerous work getting them through the forests of Kazerath undetected, and he was no longer with the group by the time Captain Verdi took charge of them.” All true, as far as it went.

“I see.” Lord Caulin sighed. “A pity. I suppose there isn’t much chance he survived, alone in the forests of Vaskandar at night. You had no chance to make sure of him?”

“Lord Caulin. With all due respect, you do not command me.” I let my voice drop to the deep register my mother used for uttering her most serious warnings. “I answer to the doge and the Council of Nine alone. You gave me a verbal order without the approval of the Council. Do you have a writ to show me, with the imperial seal?”

Lord Caulin’s face went still. “No, my lady.”

“Because the doge didn’t want evidence that he went around the Council,” I said flatly.

Lord Caulin’s eyes narrowed. “I would not dare make guesses about such things, my lady.”

“Oh? I would. In fact, I would go so far as to guess that if I stood the doge and my mother in the same room and asked him to confirm the order you gave me, he would deny it ever existed. Even if it meant leaving you in a rather awkward position, Lord Caulin.”

He said not a word, mouth clamped shut. Thoughts moved in his dark eyes, but I couldn’t read them. Lord Caulin was no fool, to show me his hand now, when the wrong move could lose him the game.

“Despite this,” I said, softening my voice, “I did all I could to return every Falcon home. Because I am a loyal servant of the Serene Empire. And now, Lord Caulin, I must bid you good night.”

They held a memorial for Roland in the Temple of Mercy, since his body lay somewhere under ash and lava rubble on Mount Whitecrown. The crowd filled the temple and the square outside it, overflowing into the streets beyond. My mother had taken a fast coach up from Raverra to attend, changing horses at the imperial post stations, arriving just in time for the ceremony. She stood by my side, her face grim and pensive; I suspected she was remembering my father’s memorial in this same temple.

I stayed silent as one person after another spoke of what a good man he had been, and what a tragedy it was that his life had been cut so short. I tried to focus on Roland, on everything I loved about him, from the stern look he gave Bree and me when I followed her into trouble as children to how free he looked when you surprised him into a laugh.

But I couldn’t forget that I’d killed him.

Afterward there was a feast in his honor in the great hall—swept clear of all remnants of the thorn tree, with a slightly paler patch of stone where they’d replaced the floor—and nearly everyone got roaringly drunk, in the Callamornish tradition. I wished I could, but too much queasy guilt lay in my belly.

This was only the beginning. I would have to make life-and-death decisions all the time, on the Council of Nine. This was a growing pain, part of becoming what I needed to be.

No. I forced my attention to Bree’s face, smiling somehow through her tears as she told the table a story about Roland from when they were children. Tonight was about Roland, not about me. Time to remember him as he was, not to dwell on the death I’d given him.

So I listened to the stories, and told some of my own at last, and drank a little of the beer, though not enough to take the edge off my sorrow.

Late into the night, when nearly everyone had gone home and only the most devoted or inebriated remained in the great hall, Bree rose and grabbed my hand. She was drunk enough she almost fumbled it but got a firm grip on her second try.

“Come on,” she said. “Come out to the courtyard with me.”

“What for?” I asked, rising obediently.

“To rail at the stars.”

I followed her out into the great, empty yard, built for military drills rather than pleasure. No gardens adorned the clean-swept expanse, but the stars spread bright above us. We stared up at them together a moment. Bree let out a long, miserable sigh.

Then she slapped me across the face.

I staggered back, shocked and smarting. Bree glared at me, tears in her eyes.

“I heard what you did,” she said. “Grandmother told me.”

Oh, Hells. “Bree, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Any other way would have killed hundreds or thousands of people.”

She took a step toward me, her fists balled at her sides. “Then you find a different way! You’re supposed to be the smart one, Amalia. The one who can always think of something.”

I raised a hand to my stinging cheek. “I wish that were true. But I didn’t have time, or … or I just wasn’t smart enough. I’m no artificer, Bree. The eruption had to go somewhere, and so I picked the direction where the fewest people would die.” A pleading note had entered my voice. “I wish to all the Graces that Roland hadn’t been one of them.”

Bree shook her head. “Listen to you. This isn’t an equation for you to solve, Amalia. You can’t weigh lives against each other like fruit at the market.”

“What would you have done, then?” The words leaped past my lips on a spark of anger. “Let the volcano erupt how it would, and risk killing everyone?”

“I would have kept trying, and to the Nine Hells with the chances.” She set her jaw in a way I knew well from when we were children. “Because that’s what you do. You keep trying to save everyone. You don’t give up and say, ‘Oh well, I guess my cousin has to die.’ Otherwise, you’re just a coldblooded monster.”

I stiffened. “I suppose I am,” I said. “But that was what I needed to be, at the time.”

Silence fell. Bree stared at me, her eyes black pools of shadow under the swollen moon.

“Get out,” she growled at last.

I hesitated. “Bree …”

“You killed my brother. Go away, before I hit you again.”

I turned, a deep ache cutting into my chest, and walked away. I made it halfway across the courtyard before the muffled sound of sobbing began behind me.

I looked back. Bree was sitting on the ground, her face in her hands, the moonlight spilling over her like a blanket of consolation.

Coldblooded monster.

I straightened my shoulders and walked back into the castle.