The company passed through a string of plazas. As they passed through the largest, the Pleazzo, with its quartet of famous Sighing Fountains splashing in the empty silence, Josey’s thoughts went to the emperors who had ruled this city before her. History spoke of the hardships they had faced. Would the line end with her? It was a daunting thought.
They rode out of the Pleazzo and up the Opuline Way. Refuse filled the street. Broken windows watched their passage with jagged stares. A boutique specializing in ladies’ hats had been gutted; wreaths of smoke rose from its blackened remains. With a start, Josey recognized the store. She had bought a hat here just months ago, but it seemed like an eternity. That was the day she had met Hubert for the first time, the day her life had changed forever. Josey looked up at the skyline. The hill rose steeply for several blocks before leveling off in a rounded plateau, its summit occupied by gate-lined avenues and haughty manors. When High Town was first built, the richest families had settled here on the Opuline, which offered the best views of the countryside beyond the city’s walls.
As Captain Drathan led the company up the boulevard, a wild susurrus filled the air. Josey stood up in her stirrups to see over the shoulders of her guards. Clouds of black smoke blanketed the hilltop. Hubert and then Hirsch urged their steeds ahead, and Major Volek and Sergeant Merts came up on either side of her. She tried to make eye contact with the soldiers, but both men’s gazes were focused on the streets, the rooftops, the alleyways. Just like Caim.
She remembered watching Caim sleep in their room at Madam Sanya’s brothel, how he had tossed and twitched like a man possessed by horrible nightmares. She longed to feel his strong arms around her.
A wail snapped Josey’s attention toward the front of the company. Grand mansions clad in marble and granite rose along the avenue. Household guards congregated behind their stout gates, but so far these manors looked to have escaped the wrath of the rioters. The smoke lay farther up. The pall lay thickest ahead, where a massive statue marked the center of Torvelli Square. Fear wrapped its iron fingers around Josey’s throat as the vanguard of her soldiers accelerated into a canter.
Josey could see Anastasia’s home now. A mob of people surrounded its stone walls; the iron gates heaved back and forth under their press. As she watched, a burning torch sailed over the wall and struck somewhere inside. A moment later, another pillar of smoke added to the haze surrounding the house. At Captain Drathan’s command, the company halted a hundred paces from the mob. He turned in his saddle to look back at her. She barely caught his words over the din.
“What are your orders?”
Josey squeezed the reins in her hands until she thought her fingers might break. They had come this far, but now she didn’t know what to do. If she unleashed her soldiers, people would die. Her people. But if she held back, Anastasia’s family might be killed. Josey searched for a bloodless solution, but after several heartbeats of observing the fury of the mob as it attacked the manor gates she understood the truth: there was no peaceful resolution. She had to decide whether to act and be responsible for the deaths that occurred, or do nothing. Hubert met her gaze; there was anguish in his eyes, which shocked her a little. She’d had no idea he felt so strongly. Still, the choice was hers.
The power over life and death. That is rulership. I’ve never wanted anything to do with it, but here I am.
Josey pointed forward. “Advance, Captain! If any oppose you”-she took a deep breath and let it out in a silent gasp-“do what must be done.”
With a nod, the captain closed his visor and led the soldiers forward. At the first contact with the mob, Josey tried to steel herself, but the screams and shouts that filled the avenue sliced through her defenses. One hand placed over her belly, she flinched with every blow that landed. Her blood cooled with every body that fell to the ground until her insides felt frozen. But with the cold came detachment.
“Caution, lass,” Hirsch whispered at her ear.
Josey nodded, but in her heart she knew there was no such thing. Caim had taught her that. She pictured him beside her now, his mouth twisted into a cocky smirk. The image banished her fears. No caution and no fear.
Using her knees, she pressed her steed to follow the soldiers into the swirling melee.
It seemed like days had passed, or perhaps weeks, but in truth the sun’s glow through the clouds had hardly moved across the dreary sky by the time they won through to the gates.
Josey, surrounded by five blood-spattered men including Major Volek, sat astride her horse as her bodyguards cordoned off the area around the manor entrance. One of the iron gates had crashed inward; the other stood as a mute observer to the morning’s repugnant events. Seven of her soldiers lay dead upon the clay bricks. More than forty citizens were sprawled beside them, their limbs arranged in a mockery of sleep. Josey wiped a hand across her face to hide the wetness gathering in her eyes.
The fighting had been fierce from the onset. One moment her guardsmen were advancing at a steady trot; the next moment the mob turned as if united by a single brain and swarmed. Inside her cocoon of protectors, Josey was afforded the opportunity to watch her bodyguards in action. They remained cool and professional even when the orderly action devolved into sheer butchery. The citizens were armed with clubs and bottles, but soon after the first flush of battle, a group of better-armed men emerged from the crowd, and Josey glimpsed the gleam of mail armor under bulky robes as the mob moved to engulf her position. If not for the ferocity of her bodyguards as well as the relentless efforts of the two Tigers, they would have been pulled under the tide of bodies. In the end, it had not been Volek and Merts or even Captain Drathan who turned the tide, but Master Hirsch, and not in the brutal manner she would have imagined.
As the crowd pressed in around them, with missiles flying over their heads, the adept had inexplicably urged his steed past the ring of soldiers and into the press. Josey was so shocked she couldn’t even shout for him to stop. At any moment she expected to see the adept dragged from his saddle or spitted on a pike, but Hirsch tore through the crowd like a hound through a flock of geese. Wherever he rode, people fell back in terror. Josey didn’t understand until the adept turned so that she could get a glimpse of his face. It was horribly changed. Instead of his normal features, a demon’s visage-gleaming like ruddy brass, eyes glowing, smoke pouring from his gaping nostrils- lurked beneath the brim of his hood. His steed’s eyes, too, gleamed like burning coals. The combination of coordinated tactics and sorcery proved too much for the citizens, who broke away by ones and two, and then in greater numbers. Josey wished speed to their footsteps.
Finally, with the battle done and the most immediate wounds tended, Captain Drathan rode up to Josey. The commander sat straight in his saddle, but his eyes showed the toll this action had taken. She started to congratulate him but stayed her tongue. No, accolades would only twist the knife that has been struck in this man’s heart. He has done his duty-may the Gods bless and forgive him-and that must be enough. For both of us.
The captain saluted. “The gate is secure, Majesty, but I suggest we move inside the walls. There is still a danger of counterattack if the enemy is able to regroup.”
Enemy.
The word pierced Josey’s breast. She didn’t let it show.
“Very good. Move your men inside.” She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “And do whatever you call it to make sure the manor is safe.”
Captain Drathan’s helmet dipped. Turning his mount, he shouted, “Second and third teams, set up a defensive position inside the gate. Fourth team, sweep the grounds. First team, prepare to breach the house.”
Josey swallowed at the harshness of the words, but at least her nerves had settled. A little. Or perhaps she was in shock. Her hands felt like lumps of cold iron inside their gloves as they gripped the reins.
Major Volek approached, leading his horse. Both man and beast were covered with blood, and worse. The major had removed his helmet. His sandy hair was matted with sweat. He was younger than she expected, perhaps in his middle thirties.
“Shall we accompany you inside, Majesty?”
She pulled the reins to turn her horse; the beast obeyed without any trouble. Almost as if he feels my pain and understands.
“Where is Master Hirsch?” she asked.
The major pointed down the street. “I saw him just a moment ago. Shall I retrieve him for Your Majesty?”
Josey gazed across the expanse of bloodied bricks and the bodies scattered upon them. “No, Major. Thank you. Proceed.”
