saw what had to be John Deskata, for his eyes blazed like twin emeralds though apart from them his bearded face was plain, and presently marred by an angry sneer. He was balding. Another legionnaire was struggling to rise but the green-eyed man snatched away the injured one’s sword so that he held one in either hand. The fire consuming the inn glinted in the massive green ring on his finger. He yelled and ran at Dugan.
Tilda shouted the name of the head of her House, but he did not slow. She scrambled up and ran after him. Before he had closed the distance Dugan let the legionnaire with the tower shield back him against the tree, then launched his shoulder so hard into the shield that it banged back into the man’s face and sent him down. The crowd cheered.
Dugan saw the man with two swords charging, watched him come, and at the last moment put a toe under the tower shield at his feet and flipped it upright. Dugan slipped to the side as the charging man plowed into the chest-high shield, and crashed into the tree trunk with a double bang. Dugan raised a sword as Tilda’s quarry slid to the ground. Tilda tackled him.
Hitting the stout renegade in his heavy leather armor, which she had given him as a gift come to think of it, felt little different than tackling the tree would have. Dugan woofed and stumbled but Tilda’s shoulder rebounded off his flank and she went sliding on her back over rough tree roots.
Tilda kick-jumped to her feet and freed her buksu club from her hip, turned toward Dugan and threw out a hand. She shouted for him to stop but he yelled “Duck!” and Tilda did so automatically, as the word was in Miilarkian. She had no time to wonder where Dugan had picked it up for John Deskata had just tried to cut her head off from behind, burying a short sword in the tree trunk. Dugan rushed him and the two twirled away exchanging snarls and avoiding stabs. Tilda yelled at them both, in Codian and Miilarkian, shouting the names Dugan and Deskata, but they ignored her. She raised her club and tried to get into position behind Dugan, hoping that if she knocked him cold John Deskata might realize she was on his side, which she supposed she had to be. The two men were turning too fast, Tilda got too close, and Deskata lashed out at her. She had to parry his sword off the side of her club before she took it in the throat, and Dugan took advantage to swipe at his enemy’s weapon hand. The man howled and his sword flipped away in the air, along with two fingers. One still wore the great emerald ring of the House of Deskata.
“Tilda!” Dugan shouted in her face, and she clubbed him across the temple. His brown eyes fluttered and he fell to a knee. Tilda cracked him over the back of the head.
Dugan went face down and lay still. The other man was on his back, cursing the gods and clutching his ruined hand to his chest while blood spattered his legionnaire breast plate. Tilda took a step toward him, turning pale herself, and swooned.
Not the blood, she thought, I am not so delicate as that. But her club fell from her hand and she stumbled to the side, blinking slowly as her eyelids felt heavier than her head.
She was on one knee, looking across the clearing where in front of the crowd lay the Duchess of Chengdea, flat on the ground like a dead thing. A tall man stood over her, premature streaks of gray in his brown moustache and chin beard. His eyes were locked on Tilda’s and a bit of powder or dust was falling from the fingers of his outstretched hand. The world went soft and dark, and Tilda toppled to the ground as if it were the feather bed she had shared with her sisters growing up, in the attic room of her father's house on Chrysanthemum Quay.
The Dead Possum inn gave up the ghost. The roof crashed in and flames climbed high into the night sky. A blast of fire and heat shook the willow tree and forced the crowd further back, but it did not interrupt their cheers.
Chapter Twenty-Six
At the moment of dawn in the valley of Blackstone the rays of the rising sun crept over the eastern edge of the valley wall and touched the top of the moving mist enveloping the city. The whiter fog at the top seemed to tremble, and its color ran down into the darker clouds until the whole was a paler shade of pearly grey. The whorls and eddies in the whole mass slowed and stopped, and though they were still obscured by shadow the streets and buildings of ancient Vod’Adia, the Sable City of the vanished Ettaceans, stood out in the cool morning air as though they were present in a way they had not been a minute before.
A great wall of house-sized blocks of black basalt was now visible around the city, and from a gatehouse big as a castle came a loud ratcheting and the grinding of gears. The iron door rumbled down to bridge a chasm still unseen in the mist, on a straight line with the road running across the green field from Camp Town. It struck the ground with a gong that shook the whole valley, echoing off the stone walls and cliffs for what seemed like minutes.
Even before the echoes died out, the Shugak had opened their own palisade gate, and the first party of ten adventurers was moving down the road. For the first time in ninety-nine years, Vod’Adia was Open.
*
Tilda dreamed of Miilark, specifically of a white sand beach a few miles up the coast from the capital. The surf played gently at the edge of the land for offshore breakers and standing rocks broke the fury of the Interminable Ocean. Sharp green hills rose behind the strip of sand, mantled by tall palms and date trees full of colorful birds. The birds called to each other with whistles and trills as complex as language, making them sound like they were talking about pleasant things, of no great importance.
Tilda stood alone in the edge of the water, calves lapped by caressing waves and sand squishing delectably between her toes. She shaded her eyes from the gentle sun and watched the long line of Deskata House ships move out from the harbor mouth to the south under full sails, with long, emerald-green pennons snapping smartly from atop the masts.
The Wind changed, and the sky turned. The water began to rise and grow cold. Thunder rumbled to the north, from whence in this season the storms came. Tilda tried to move but the sand was now up to her knees. The sea frothed with chop and far from shore the Deskata ships were thrown against each other. Snapping masts and spars sounded like cannon fire. Tilda tried to shout but the water was rising faster than the sand. Saltwater poured into her open mouth as she was shaken by the angry sea. She turned her face up to the sky and with just her eyes above the water, she saw the last green pennons sinking below the waves.
Someone said her name and Tilda woke with a start. There was a hand on her shoulder and she grabbed the arm as though to save herself from drowning. She gasped in a deep breath and opened her eyes to see Dugan right in front of her, his face more grim than concerned.
“Easy,” he said. “It was a dream.”
Tilda had a moment of hope that he meant everything that had happened last night had been a dream. She was lying sideways on a hard wooden bench and for an instant thought maybe she had dozed under the pavilion in the Jobian compound. But no. She was indoors, in the ramshackle common room of an inn judging by the tables and stools scattered about. The sharp sunlight of early morning was shining in the open door and windows. It had all been real, the legionnaires and the severed fingers, one with a green ring still on it, flipping through the air. The wizard, and the Duchess of Chengdea sprawled on the ground.
“Where is Claudja?” Tilda asked, letting go of Dugan’s arm and turning sideways on the hard bench. She pushed herself up to a seat and her back was flat against the wall. She could not remember what had happened to her bow or her pack.
“She is fine,” Dugan said. “The Jobians took her back to their temple.”
Tilda had shaken off her pack before she and Dugan ran out of the compound, she remembered that now. She looked around and saw her bow, a full quiver of arrows, and her buksu lying on the nearest table.
“She was hurt,” Tilda said, for she had seen blood on the Duchess’s pale face.
“They can patch her up. That’s what clerics do. Tilda, you and I need to talk.”
Tilda pushed herself to her feet and Dugan moved back a step to give her room, hesitating to offer a hand. He had a purple bruise over his left eye where Tilda had clubbed him. The large room was empty with most of the stools upside-down on the tables and the plank bar, though the filthy floor had not been swept. Voices were speaking outside, some human and others with the guttural growls of hobgoblins. None of them sounded happy.
“Where…how did we get here?” Tilda asked as she stepped forward to gather up her things, despite a
