Authors: Miles Cameron
The dagger bore the arms of the Count d’Eu.
‘Why is the Queen still dancing?’ the King asked angrily.
The Duke got to his feet, aided by Toby, and extended a hand to Sauce, who was rubbing snow on her exposed knee to the delight of many men.
He looked around. The music hadn’t faltered, but the dancers were slowing. Some of the women had stopped and were gathering for protection.
At his shoulder a woman’s voice said, ‘We cannot let the circle dissolve so early,’ and he turned, but there was only the trace of a fragrance of peppermint in the air. But his grasp of the principle was sound enough, and he took Sauce’s hand. ‘Dance!’ he shouted. ‘Close the circle and dance.’
The habit of obedience is hard to break. Sauce ignored the pain in her knee and grabbed the hands of the surprised princess and turned her – Lady Maria joined them, and in a moment the women were reforming the inner circle.
Gavin skidded to a halt, and the Duke pushed him into the men’s circle. ‘Dance,’ he ordered. ‘Someone is trying to cast a huge working. Breaking the dance is one part of it. Dance, damn it!’
As soon as they stepped away, he dropped to one knee by Mortirmir, who was thrashing, his feet drumming the packed snow, his blood as black as pitch.
The Duke put his hands on Mortirmir’s shoulders.
Come on, Harmodius
, he said.
And the old magister was there. He reached out in the aethereal
and his hand reached for the Red Knight’s hand – the Red Knight stretched, and was led a step closer to the open door – a door that seemed to open on the blackest night, unshot with stars. A blast of cold, a sort of ultimate cold, hit him from the open door.
The Red Knight stood his ground and leaned forward, straining, into the black-shot
aethereal
and got his fingertips onto those of the slim young man in blue velvet—
There was a sound as of mortal combat
—
—and the rising strains of a Christmas carol
a woman’s scream
a ship tossed on a storm-wracked sea
an old man in a long beard lying under a quilt
Harmodius shot through the door as if propelled by some outside force, and the door slammed shut behind him. Harmodius lay on the tiled floor of the Red Knight’s palace for a moment. He shook his head.
‘What the fuck was that?’ he muttered.
Gabriel was already up and moving. He pointed at Mortirmir, at the edge of death in the real.
Can we save him?
Absolutely. Bastard thinks he can kill me that easily—
I think I was the target.
Think whatever you like, boy. Christ that was close. Give me . . . ?
Gabriel gave Harmodius his store of
ops
, yet again.
Take that, you bastard
, Harmodius said. He opened a link, and cast – the sigils of his palace flashed like the lights of a distant city as he cast
five
complete workings in a single breath.
The blood vanished out of the snow, leaving the snow white.
Mortirmir’s eyes opened.
The crossbow bolt protruding from his back flowed away like melted ice.
And something burst in the sky above them, like a firework – a thousand tiny stars lit for a moment and then were dark.
Uh oh,
muttered Harmodius.
I just kicked a god in the nuts.
The Sacred Isle – Thorn
Thorn watched the night play out like a drama. The solstices were always a dreadful time for serious work – neither the real nor the
aethereal
were
solid
in their spheres at such times, and the simplest workings could miscarry.
His own webs of sorcery hung limp. He feared that the storms of the solstices in the
aethereal
would do them damage without his attempting even the simplest work, and he stood in the snow, dark and silent, contemplating.
If he was silent, others were very loud. Nor did he require nets of spies to see them. The power of their efforts was so great, so vast the expenditure of
ops
, that he felt it from his well of power in the north, where fits and gouts of snow fell into his arms as if he had truly been an old oak tree.
At every pulse of power from the south, the egg at his side burned and chittered.
Something rude, struggling to be born.
A scrap of an old poem, or a prophecy.
To the west, a circle unbroken, and a mighty power proclaimed itself into the heavens like a ring of white fire. Other rings of similar power leaped into the air from many places – from the rude huts of Outwallers, and from the courts of kings and emirs and khans.
But two were flawed, and began to pull themselves apart in the
aethereal.
And something was pulling at them.
Thorn watched with interest, as one predator might watch another stalking its prey.
And then they steadied – both of them together, as if caught in a dance of their own. The white fire died away to a spark, and then leaped again, and the rings flared – there was a burst of power from the east.
Ah,
thought Thorn, and the being who rode him said,
Harmodius yet lives. And has grown stronger. He will make a perfect ally.
Thorn shuddered in surprise. ‘
Why?
’ he asked. ‘
And who exactly are you, sir?
’
‘
Any being who achieves sufficient power ceases to be one of them,
’ Ash said. ‘
And becomes one of us.
’ The voice rolled on inexorably. ‘
You have chosen. I have chosen. Now Harmodius has chosen.
’
Thorn shuddered. And wondered – not for the first or last time – what, exactly, he had chosen.
‘
I am Ash,
’ whispered the voice.
Thorn – who had once been Richard Plangere – knew the name all too well. ‘
You are Satan’s serpent,
’ he said.
But Ash said, ‘
I am in no relation to anything, mortal. I merely am.
’
Liviapolis – Assassin, Long Paw, Kronmir
The assassin emerged from the back of the crowd near the Academy, and he crossed their streets fearlessly, his alumni badge flashed at the portals. As it wasn’t actually his badge, there would be no consequence, and he doubted that any of his pursuers had such an item. He had gained himself an hour.
He plunged into the alleys behind the University and moved from alley to alley, pausing only to shed his red surcoat and archer’s breastplate. He left them under the eaves of a brothel and ran on into the darkness.
Long Paw came to the wards at the edge of the Academy and cursed. He couldn’t pass them, and it was clear from the tracks that his adversary had. He turned back, wasting precious minutes running first north, and then west, where he found Gelfred and Daniel Favour. The two were kneeling in the snow.
‘He’s cut through the Academy and I cannot follow him,’ Long Paw panted.
Favour whistled and a brace of hounds appeared, running over the snow.
‘We’re casting for a scent,’ Gelfred said. ‘Let’s move south and try again. There’s so many people—’ He shook his head.
The three men ran south along the avenue that flanked the University. It was well lit with torches on this night, and there were hundreds of people to turn and stare as three armed men ran past them. At the southern end of the University they stopped and cast west, but any hope of crossing fresh tracks was lost in the back streets of the student warrens behind the University.
But a third of the way along Saint Nicholas, the older dog began to keen and whine, and Gelfred let her slip.
‘Get him, Luadhas!’ he said, and let the animal go. He knelt in the snow and prayed, and then loosed the other animal. The younger male barked, turned in a full circle and ran off in a different direction. The older sprang away towards a low-roofed building with dirty white plaster across the street. He stopped while the three men were in sight, and Gelfred ran to his side and retrieved a soldier’s cloak, a surcoat, and a breastplate.
He knelt again, heedless of the weather, and prayed fervently, and then raised his wand and cast, and a silvery fire ran over the brach’s limbs and into its nose. It breathed deep the scent on the cloak, and gave a bark of joy, and ran off – into the knotwork of alleys.
The three men followed.
The assassin slowed to a walk well before he reached his haven. He knew the inn, and he didn’t intend to blow his new disguise by running in the packed streets, so he emerged into Saint Katherine at a brisk walk, a householder out for a breath of cold air and perhaps a cup of hot wine. He bounced up the steps of the inn like an eager suitor and pushed open the doors.
He scanned the room. There was no one he knew – and so much the better. He crossed the common room and fetched up against a wall – at Christmas there was no place to sit in the whole of the place.
He waited for a contact. For the first time, he let himself think, and he was deeply dissatisfied – what on earth had moved him to shoot the boy when his target was prone at his feet?
But what was done was done.
A middle-aged woman appeared and offered him a steaming cup, which he took with a nod of gratitude. She mimed signing a tab – he nodded. Men in the city were far more trusting then men in Etrusca, but he would honour his payment – it was, after all, Christmas. He closed his eyes and said a prayer for the young man he’d killed.
And opened them when he heard a dog bark.
Dogs.
He hadn’t considered dogs. Of course, in the snow—
He took a deep breath. A second dog barked.
He took a sip of his hot wine, and reached into his basket, where his short sword rested against the wicker. He took it out as carefully as he could. And began to edge towards the kitchen.
They weren’t amateurs. At most he had a few minutes while they gathered their forces.
He looked around for his contact – a wreath of gold laurel – and he saw no one with any wreath at all.
Damning his luck, he put his hand on the amulet, and imaged the sigil of summoning.
Kronmir was two streets west of the inn on Saint Katherine when he saw the men in scarlet surcoats – and the dogs.
He turned away immediately and headed north into the maze of the student quarter. If they had dogs, they’d followed his man to the rendezvous. He didn’t even
have
a backup messenger yet – the whole thing was hopelessly ahead of time, and the soldiers already had the inn surrounded.
He thought some dark thoughts.
Behind him, a dog barked.
Suddenly, the alley in front of him was lit by a rising sun of red fire – Kronmir stopped in his tracks, and the blast made him clap his hands to his ears and stumble.
All that saved their lives was Wilful Murder’s shrill insistence that they should retreat into the alleys until they had more troops.
‘Fucking dogs!’ he’d snapped. ‘Every bastard in the quarter knows we’re here.’
Gelfred knew he was right, and the four of them – five when Bent appeared, and a dozen when his men came at his heels – had retreated into the mouth of the alley known as The Rookery. Favour got his hand on the brach’s collar and he silenced her. The younger dog barked again—
And the top blew off the inn.
A wave of fire rippled out from the epicentre like a hermetical tide and burst against the buildings on the other side of the street, and nothing but sheer luck kept the archers in the shadow of the malevolent
potentia.
Gelfred had his ribs broken and was badly burned on his face and hands. Favour was covered by his officer and was merely singed, and Wilful Murder was knocked flat with a broken arm where he’d been pointing. The brach was killed outright.
A hundred and fifty revellers in the inn died instantly.
A dozen houses caught fire. Wilful Murder scrabbled to his feet and ran for the fire company.
Two alleys away, Kronmir leaned against a building and watched the red firelight in the sky.
His mind rattled on with the problem for less than three heartbeats before he drew the obvious conclusion. He tore the amulet from his neck . . . and paused.
And then ran for the Academy. If the thing went off in the alleys then a thousand people would die.
Kronmir ran all the way to the main entrance to the Academy, where the iron maw of Cerberus was a black hole in the night. He sprinted up to the three-headed dog and cast the thing, chain and all, into the open mouth of the nearest head.
The dog gave a cough, like a sick child.
Kronmir stood by it and panted, his elbows folded against his chest. Revellers passed him on either side – across the street, a man stopped and pointed at the red sky. Other people paused, and in the distance he could hear a hymn being sung.
People in the Great Square were still dancing.
He ran the whole strand of logic through in his head – once again. Just to be sure of his chain of causality.
His assassin had been surrounded.
The inn had exploded.
Aeskepiles had expressed surprise that the assassin and the survivors of his team were still alive.
Aeskepiles had made the amulets.
The young man – the young scholar from the Academy – had said that the amulets were surprisingly powerful.
QED.
Aeskepiles had given him devices to kill his agents.
Kronmir stood by the great iron statue of Cerberus for as long as it would take for a nun to say a pater noster.
And then he started across the square.
Gabriel Muriens lay on a cot in the pavilion that had been arranged for him on the jousting field. There were six braziers and a turf hearth struggling to keep the bitter cold at bay, and a closed bed had been moved in.
Ser Michael, in consultation with Ser Alcaeus and Lady Maria, had determined that the Megas Ducas was easier to defend in the middle of the hippodrome.