The monster plummeted. So did most of the people in the front row – including Remy.
After a single calibrating glance, Feilan jumped from the jagged rim of the massive hole in the crumbling roof.
He landed on the monster’s back, gripping hard on the edge of the armour plate by its neck, seeking to plunge his sword into the seam there between shoulder plate and neck plate. Its length was awkward. He wished, distantly, for a seax like Vaer men habitually carried.
The creature wasn’t as stunned as he’d hoped; it shook itself like a wet hound and whipped tail and tongue at him. He ducked the muscular swipe of the tail but the sharp barbs of the tongue grazed his neck, leaving a trail of fire in their wake. He swore and stabbed downwards with all his might. The sword felt ridiculously inadequate, but the blade fit through the narrow gap between plates.
The monster shrieked, the sound drilling into Feilan’s skull. Between that and its wild bucking and thrashing, he couldn’t keep his hold and was flung wide. He hit the wall and, gasping with pain, fell hard by Remy.
Feilan grabbed his limp body with both hands, shoving him behind his own body, not thinking about whether there was any point.
But they were lucky, then. The monster, Feilan’s sword sticking obscenely from its neck, charged for the open door, a paler rectangle in the gloom with the tempting scent of fresh night air beyond. Too big, it smashed its way through, taking half the wooden wall with it. Renewed screams started up; the spectators had been running down the stairs to escape the collapsing roof and now regretted that decision as the monster crashed through them.
Feilan spun on his knees. Remy’s eyes were open and the relief took Feilan like a fist and left him shaking in its aftermath. ‘Good?’ He looked for blood, bright red on Remy’s body, blue in his eyes. ‘Svasa, are you unharmed? Answer!’
Remy clutched at him. ‘Are you? Slubs and neps, you jumped, you jolterhead.’
Feilan dragged him outside, the need to keep him undercover warring with the justified fear that the whole structure would soon fold in on itself. He was vaguely aware Bertrand was following them out, amid others who had survived the fall, Remy’s siblings among them.
It would have been too much to wish for, Feilan supposed, for the monster to have taken care of Uncle Bertrand and Hughard.
The wretched body of Noura’s former master, on the other hand, was lying on the ground, split almost in half, blood pooling garishly dark under the flickering torchlight, the wash of blue across Feilan’s eyes as brightly fantastical as ever.
It was probably a blow from a wild creature desperate to escape. It might have been a blow from a curved blade swung with years of impotent rage behind it.
Feilan kissed Remy roughly, a hard, defiant press of lips, near-savage with relief and fear. ‘Stay safe,’ he said. ‘I’m going to get Adeline.’
‘Adeline!’ Remy said, in the horrified tones of one who had forgotten the larger context of the danger.
Feilan was already loping off along the walkway, following a trail of dead and dying Seven Hills guards – they’d seen the monster galloping in the direction their queen had gone and done their duty, to no avail. He raced onwards, jumping dismembered body parts and splashes and puddles of blood, the blue never leaving his vision now, barely aware of his own dread, a weight not just in his chest but in every limb, as he ran alone to find the children somewhere on the very arcade the monster was fleeing along.
Suddenly Torben was thundering by his side, and Noura, blade bare and bloodied, and Micah.
‘The children,’ Feilan shouted, pointing ahead. He forgotten to scavenge a sword from one of the dead guards, but it was too late to turn back.
Micah put on a burst of speed, outpacing them with those long, strong legs.
From up ahead, screams, high and terrified. It might not, Feilan told himself, be a child.
They came to Torben’s pavilion, and the overturned chair, one iron wheel buckled.
Drag marks, and deep gouges atop those, the scouring of claws.
They plunged off the path after the vanishing form of Micah.
Partway down the slope, the monster loomed over Adeline, who, face a rictus of terror, eating knife in one shaking hand, stood over her sobbing friend and shrieked defiance into its wide, dripping maw.
Micah shouted and threw himself towards them. He would be too late.
Adeline sliced the leather thong about her neck, pulled free a stoppered vial, and threw it right at the monster’s gaping mouth. It smashed against its teeth, releasing pungent odour and a flash of mustard-seed-yellow. The monster squealed, high-pitched and ear-piercing, rearing up to paw at its mouth like a dog with a noseful of spice.
And now there came a strange sound, like the soft explosion of an egg bursting, and a rising hum. The monster recoiled again, and both children cried out and slapped at themselves.
And again. The hum became an urgent, furious buzz. Adeline threw her cloak over herself and Afzal, both of them curling into entwined balls under it as the monster thrashed and flailed, bucking across the slope away from them.
Gytha, who had been patiently waiting to join the hunt as per Feilan’s instructions, was among the skeps, heedless of stings. She picked up a third skep and hurled it at the monster to keep driving it back from the children. She’d saved their lives, but left them in the middle of swarms of angry bees.
The monster was shaking its head and plunging this way and that, its claw lashing the darkness. Many of the bees had followed it, but not enough.
Now, as Torben and Micah and Noura flung themselves helterskelter into the fight, Feilan ran to the huddled children. He was immediately stung, on his hands, his arms, his face. He picked up Afzal, and Gytha picked up Adeline, and they ran for Remy’s cave.
Remy had come down the path.
‘I said to—’
‘I know what you said! Ow!’ Remy slapped at his own face; the enraged bees were still chasing them.
Feilan pushed Afzal into Remy’s arm and felt him stagger under the weight before his wiry strength caught the strain. ‘I need— Either get them away, or get them into your cave and use something to repel the bees. Gytha, protect them.’
He ran for the fight, even as the uncle’s bloc, the hired four and the secret two, came charging along the flank of the hill to join in. A few of them checked as they ran into the irate bees thronging the monster. Most were already taken by that strange and wild exhilaration that drove Torben and the others.
Feilan was feeling it too, because otherwise he would have been feeling the ache of his hip and shoulder and ankle where he’d hit the wall and floor, and the throb of the copious bee stings, and, increasingly, a thin line of heat where the monster’s tongue had lacerated his neck. He certainly would have been somewhat slower to fling himself right into the midst of the chaos and rip his sword free from the monster’s neck.
He wasn’t quite taken by battle-rage, that had never been his fate, and the bear-god wouldn’t bless him like that anyway, but the next thumb’s measure of time was a blur, nothing but chaotic movement and frenetic shouts and shrieks, and striated flashes of blue pulsing in the corners of his eyes, washing across his vision every time fresh blood splashed or spouted.
The monster’s blood smelled just like a human’s as it went down under a surfeit of blades like a great boar worried by the hunting hounds.
Torben was fully in the grip of his god, roaring and battering away with his immense sword, his spear already embedded deep between two scales, his body taking itself out of the way of the slashing claws and ripping teeth with the unerring propulsion of divine instinct. Feilan, Noura and Micah were reduced to protecting his flanks, darting and stabbing, spinning and parrying, fighting both the cornered and weakening monster and their rival champions, who also fought both monster and humans, and all of them under incessant attack by the enraged bees.
Feilan’s head only cleared when he heard his name screamed. He shook his head, swatting away more bees. The monster was laid out on the ground before them, Torben crouched over it and hacking away at its neck, gouts of blood from every blow. Noura and Micah stood guard, but only two of the other champions were yet living, and they were backing away.
The monster was diminished in death, its long limbs contracting, the lustre of its scales only apparent now it was fading. He had a moment to feel pity – Adeline had been right, it had never been this creature’s fault that it had to fall afoul of civilisation – before he heard his name again, still in that frantic tone.
Upslope, more men. He recognised the light robes of Darya’s bodyguards more by the sound the soft fabric made as they descended than by making out their figures in the dim light this far from the last torches of the arcade.
Beyond the onrushing men, at the mouth of the cave, Gytha wrestled with another, keeping him from reaching Afzal, desperately calling for help as she almost tripped over the body of one she’d already killed. The cave mouth was too wide for one person to effectively guard – it was really more of a grotto – and Darya was trying to slip past, holding something low in her hand. It was too dark for it to glint, but Feilan knew what it was: a knife, intended for a prince.
She would have seen for herself Micah standing by and allowing Torben to claim the prize, bringing down on his head her promised punishment. Once she got past the beleaguered Gytha, only the terrified Remy and Adeline would be between her and her terrible vengeance upon her dead husband’s last friend.
‘Micah!’ Feilan shouted, and he bolted up the hill.
More chaos and flashes of blue as Feilan ran through the bodyguards, laying all about with his sword with the brutal Vaer efficiency he’d learned at his father’s knee. He saw Gytha falling, clutching her stomach. He fell upon the bodyguard she’d been grappling with, then bent over her.
She had both hands pressed to a wound which flashed the stink and hue of hot blood at him, but she gasped, ‘Go!’
Feilan straightened, and the lick of heat across his neck burst into flame at the motion. Dizzy, he stumbled onwards. Micah shot past him, but he was chased by someone else – the giant whose sole duty was to carry the prince, lumbering at the assassin’s heels.
The cave was ripe with some woody scent, drifting smoky-grey. That would be Remy’s defence against the bees. Afzal was all the way at the back of the cave, on the floor where the witch’s domain narrowed into the private alcove by the spring. Feilan supposed Remy had hidden the children back there, from bees and monsters both. Afzal’s legs were twisted behind him. The boy must have crawled his way out again, perhaps in a panic. He was crying in great wrenching sobs that sounded torn from his chest.
As his guardian bore down on him with bared blade, Feilan staggered after Micah and the giant, willing Remy to have enough courage to spring out of the alcove and whisk the boy back, giving Micah the extra few heartbeats he needed in this awful race for jugulars.
The giant lunged, his long reach advantaging him over all of them – but he didn’t lunge for Micah. He grabbed Darya around the waist as she made to slash the prince’s throat, and hauled her off her feet as readily as he picked up his prince.
She screamed at him to release her, thrashing and striking the knife into his meaty arms. With a great air of deliberation, he set her before Micah, who did not hesitate, not even to take a scant moment to revel. He knocked her knife aside, and his own blade was in and out of her throat as fast as his darting needle when he sewed up wounds, with decidedly opposite effect. He didn’t move as he was splattered with her life’s blood.
Feilan couldn’t see his expression, but it was the last thing Darya saw.
The giant let the body drop, and turned and scooped up the prince, holding him tight in bleeding arms. The boy sobbed against his shoulder. Micah quickly wiped his face so he could approach the boy without scaring him with a dripping crimson mask. Feilan wondered how long it had been since he’d been able to safely be so much as within sight of the prince.
Then Afzal reached for his father’s friend, choking out, ‘Adeline! He took her,’ and he had no room for wondering anything else.
He knew Afzal could not possibly be talking about Remy, who would never voluntarily take Adeline from the one place he felt safest, nor leave the other vulnerable child alone in such distress.
One quick check of the alcove confirmed it was empty. His head spun, and he shook it clear again, and ran from the cave, finding Gytha slowly wadding a torn strip of robe from one of the dead bodyguards against her wound.
‘Did you see Bertrand?’
‘No,’ she said, breath coming in pained hisses. ‘But they set on me so suddenly and I knew they’d kill that boy. Herd of walruses could have got past while I was trying to stop them.’
Micah was behind him. He started, but Micah said calmly, ‘I will come with you.’
Feilan glanced upwards, towards the arcade. ‘Help Gytha.’
‘No,’ she said through gritted teeth.
Feilan looked downslope now. Noura, strong as iron, was dripping blood but on her feet, years of arena fighting standing her in good stead. She stood by Torben, who was hugging the great severed head in both arms even as he slowly knelt, the blessing of his god ebbing away, leaving only exhaustion and no doubt a new intimacy with the gashes and bone-deep bruises and strain along his new seam that he’d just earned himself.
He turned back to Micah, and notwithstanding that the eunuch had to be just as exhausted as the rest of them, said, ‘Help everyone.’
Without waiting for argument – for there was none to be made, unless Micah was willing to leave his allies to bleed out – Feilan loped up the beaten path to the arcade.
It was deserted, eerily still and quiet. Some of the torches had guttered, and the rest flickered in the slightest of breezes, sending shadows skittering across his path.
He felt hazy and slow, as if under a seithr curse that fogged his thoughts and sapped his will. He reached for Freyja’s talisman, finding his wrist bare.
Where would Bertrand have taken his hostages? Was he still wearing his affable smile, or had he shown his teeth at last? Had he marched them to First Hill, even now forcing Adeline to sign away her fairly-won freedom while Feilan dithered?
He began up the arcade, trying to hurry even as he heard the doubling echo of his own uneven footsteps. The throb in his neck overwhelmed all his other aches and pangs now. He passed the bodies of guardsmen, the scent of blood still fresh enough to make hazy clouds of fading blue wherever he looked.
He was so inured to the iron tang that he’d gone past Fourth Hill East before his faltering brain managed to alert him that his eyes had experienced the bright coruscating flash of freshest blood as he’d passed the walkway that led to the foyer.
Bright enough to be a beacon.
He ran, stumbling.
Down the walkway, through the empty foyer, down the passageway to the guest accommodations, looking for more twinkles of giveaway bright blue. He saw instead the dull yellow of mustard seed, along with a gust of that acrid smell that had marked whatever Remy had concocted as a weapon against the monster.
Adeline had used hers to hold back the creature for the vital few moments that had saved her and Afzal’s life – Remy must have cracked his own vial now, the reek coming from one of the bedchambers up ahead.
He heard Bertrand, raising his voice for the first time. ‘Is this poison? All I’ve done for you, and you’ve thrown poison in my face?’
‘Let Adeline go, and I’ll take you to the antidote.’ Remy sounded tremulous but no less determined for all that.
Feilan staggered down the hall and slumped into the doorway, unable to make the dramatic entrance the situation called for. He could make out the figures inside by the faint glow coming through the usual high narrow window slits. Bertrand had Remy by the arm, digging his fingers in as he slowly wiped his splattered cheeks with a square of pale linen, a relatively bright patch in the dim room. The same hand that held the cloth also held a blade. His back was mostly to the doorway, Remy mostly facing it.
Remy’s wide and frightened gaze met Feilan’s for the briefest of moments, but his expression didn’t alter. He was, perhaps, not filled with confidence by Feilan’s sagging aspect. Fair: the room performed a lazy spin before he blinked his eyes clear again. His throat felt hot and it was hard to swallow.
‘Antidote? You missed my mouth, you little fool, I didn’t swallow any,’ Bertrand sneered.
‘Neither did the monster,’ Remy said. ‘It’s still dead. Absorbs through the skin, Uncle. Acid in the blood. Pure witchcraft.’
His uncle cursed and backhanded him with surprising force for a small man. Remy fell, or at least let himself fall: that put him beside Adeline, the true queen of Seven Hills, a terrified little girl huddled on the floor of a dusty bedroom at the back end of her kingdom.
Remy slung an arm around Adeline’s shoulders, the one Bertrand had been twisting. The sleeve of his other arm, Feilan noted, was soaked red. He whispered something to her, hugging her tight.
Bertrand loomed over them both. ‘Very well. You will fetch the antidote, Renart. And you will authorise my regency, Adeline. No. You’ll recognise the nonsense of a little girl on the throne and you’ll abdicate in my favour.’
‘Or?’ Remy said, black eyes flashing defiance, daring his uncle to threaten him. ‘You’ll do what you did to my mother?’
Bertrand’s hands clenched. ‘Curse the Vaer and his proof. Swarf it, if it comes out, the throne will shield me.’ He jerked his chin towards Remy’s injured arm. ‘Meanwhile, I won’t miss your throat again, and I shall take great pleasure having your husband executed for your murder.’
‘Feilan is the best man I know! No one will believe that,’ Remy said, hotly enough that Feilan felt warmed through even in his muzzy state, though that was doused when Remy corrected himself. ‘Rosa and Conrad will never believe that!’
‘The rest will,’ Bertrand said. ‘They’ll all sleep easier, with me on the throne where I have always belonged, and him gone, back to barbarian land or to the noose.’ His tone sweetened, but with all subtlety stripped away, laying bare the threat. ‘It’s your choice whether all of you live or not, Renart. Or persist in your ridiculous defiance and die knowing you’ve doomed your queen and your husband both.’
Remy nodded, once. ‘That’s clear enough,’ he said, very quietly.
Bertrand’s shoulders relaxed. Feilan closed his eyes, fighting the dizziness. He had to—
Remy said, ‘An openly treasonous plot, Your Majesty, and three witnesses to it.’
‘Yes, I agree, Chief Adviser,’ Adeline said, and she straightened from her huddle until she looked like she was sitting on a throne whose seat happened to be the floor.
‘Three?’ Bertrand turned his head to see Feilan leaning against the doorway.
‘Uncle Faro said every good ruler weighs the cost of their crown,’ she said, staring up at Bertrand with dark eyes and severe mien, nothing of the child in her. ‘And I’ve weighed mine, and it weighs less than the cost of letting someone like you have it, Great-Uncle. And I can have Feilan arrest you—’
Feilan, who had only just managed to straighten up from his dazed slump, strongly doubted he had the stamina left to drag a struggling man all the way to First Hill, but he was willing to try.
‘—and we can have a trial, and it will take months, and the outcome will be the same.’ She smiled, thinly. ‘If I must face it then, I can face it now. So I may as well pronounce the inevitable sentence here, with the other witnesses to hold me to account.’
Bertrand, with an armed barbarian a handspan from him, threw aside the knife and raised his hands. ‘Adeline, dear,’ he began in his old cloying tones. ‘Little girls shouldn’t—’
She slowly rose to her feet, Remy rising with her, though he was very pale now and blood was dripping from his fingers. ‘Death to the traitor. Death to the man who threatened Seven Hills.’ She squeezed Remy’s unbloodied hand. ‘Death to the man who murdered my grandmother. Death to the man who hurt my family over and over.’
‘I’m your family!’ he cried. ‘I was protecting all of you.’
‘You were using all of us,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘And if you couldn’t use us, you discarded us. Feilan, you may carry out the sentence.’
Thanks, he thought, barely cognisant enough for sarcasm, but all told, it was easier than arrest.
It was just pulling a gibbering man into the hallway, pushing him to his knees, raising a sword high over his vulnerable nape as he shamefully allowed his last words to be begging for his life, and nodding to Remy that it was time to swing the door shut and cover Adeline’s ears so she wouldn’t need to bear witness to the deserved end of the other monster of Seven Hills. It was a queen’s burden in a brutal world; it didn’t need to be a girl’s nightmare.
Feilan let the blade fall.
Then he fell, into a cloud of blue.