A NAME SCRIBED IN BLOOD
As the last of the evening bells rang throughout Tashijan, Dart waited with the others in the castellan’s hermitage. The fire from the hearth had been stoked to a wild flame in a vain attempt to hold back the dark worries in all their hearts. Gathered here, they awaited word from the castellan and the regent.
Back in the adjudicator’s chambers, Tylar had appeared shortly after the messenger, storming inside with claims of daemonic knights. During the ensuing chaos, Dart and the others were sent under guard-both knights and the gray-cloaked Flaggers-up to Kathryn’s chambers.
By the door, Krevan spoke with an ash-faced woman in a gray robe-then closed the door. His Flaggers would guard their privacy from here. His eyes drifted to Dart’s, then away again, almost embarrassed. Perhaps for the falsehoods he had spread to spare her further inquiry. Though untrue, this claimed relationship was an intimacy that had made the pirate suddenly awkward near her.
Or was it something more?
Elsewhere, off by the window, Barrin lay on the floor, head resting on his crossed paws. Kytt stood over him, one hand absently scratching the bullhound’s ear, his face lost in worry. Lorr had been taken into Kathryn’s private room, where a pair of healers were working on his burns with Grace-rich salves. He had yet to fully awaken, only occasionally mumbling in delirium.
Dart had seen Lorr when he’d been hauled inside, half his side a burnt ruin. He had sacrificed himself to save them. She prayed the healers had Grace enough to save him in turn.
At the threshold to the room, Rogger and Gerrod were bowed in quiet conversation. Rogger wore a stern look, so unlike his usual bravado. That worried Dart more than anything.
Closer, Laurelle sat on the chair opposite her, hands folded in her lap as if she were waiting for a servant to bring a platter of sweetwine and finger cakes. Brant had gone to check on his wolfkits when they had climbed past his retinue’s floor. He had mumbled some promise to return, but his eyes had been shadowed and hard to read. Perhaps he was just glad for an excuse to be rid of them all.
Dart couldn’t blame him.
Brant’s vacancy was in turn taken up by Delia, the regent’s Hand of blood. The dark-haired woman stood behind Laurelle’s chair and stared into the flames, one finger resting on her chin as if she were about to say something, but she never did.
Finally a muffled commotion sounded out in the hall, and the door swung open. Tylar and Kathryn entered. Both appeared flushed, angry, moving stiff-legged.
“I should still be down there,” Tylar said.
“Argent has the entire first three floors ablaze with bonfires and torches. All stairs from there are doubled with guards bearing torches. He has ordered barrels of oil to be stationed at landings, ready to be set to flame and rolled down.” Kathryn scowled. “I don’t know which to fear more-dark knights and cursed storms or Argent burning the towers down around our ankles.”
Tylar looked little mollified. He seemed to finally see the others in the room. He brushed his dark hair back behind his ears.
Dart noted he had taken a moment to restore Rivenscryr. When Tylar had first arrived in the adjudicators’ chamber, he had held only a golden hilt. It appeared like a broken sword. Only Dart’s eyes could see the silvery ghost of the blade. It would remain such until the blade was whetted again-whetted in her own blood. Before reaching here, Tylar must have anointed his sword from his stores of her humour, preserved in glass repostilaries. She knew he carried a small vial on a silver chain around his neck.
Dart was glad he had already performed such an act. When she had first seen the ghostly state of the sword, she feared he would ask her to cut herself and freshly bless the blade. She did not know if she had the strength for that this night.
As the two newcomers entered, Krevan, Rogger, and Gerrod gathered closer. Delia hung back with Dart and Laurelle. The woman’s eyes flicked a bit sharply between Kathryn and Tylar as if searching for some extra meaning.
Tylar spoke into the expectant silence. “Kathryn is correct. Argent has acted with a surprising swiftness to lay a fiery swath between the two halves of Tashijan. It should allow us some ground to maneuver.”
“But not farther than our own walls,” Rogger countered. “The storm closes us off from the rest of Myrillia. We’re trapped in these towers.”
Gerrod creaked a step closer. “There may be some reason for hope. Such a siege as this cannot sustain itself. The storm must eventually blow itself out. Even a blizzard whipped by a cadre of gods will eventually succumb to the turn and flow of our world. It is a dam that must eventually burst. If we could wait it out…”
Tylar shook his head. “I refuse to place the fate of Tashijan in the hands of chance and the turn of the world. Gerrod, how long would it take your masters to get the damaged flippercraft flying again?”
“If we had full support and rally of the dockworkers, perhaps as soon as daybreak.”
“Get started on it.”
“But the storm will still drain the Grace from any craft that nears it and-”
Tylar cut him off with a raised hand. “Just get it done.” Then he turned to Kathryn. “See if the healers can revive Lorr enough that we can speak to him. We must know more about what he saw down there.”
She nodded. “And you’re sure it was Perryl you saw below?”
“It was Perryl’s body-I fear there is little left of the man.”
Kathryn’s face clouded with a mix of anger and pain. She headed toward her private rooms.
“I’ll see if I can help,” Delia said. “Lorr was more a father to me than my own.”
The two left the room, though both would not meet the other’s eye.
Once they were gone, Krevan shifted to Tylar. “I would speak a few words with you in private.” He pointed a finger at Rogger. “And you.”
Tylar glanced around the crowded hearthroom. Barrin huffed a bit where he lay, as if offended at being excluded.
Dart stepped forward. “If you seek privacy, my garret is through that door.” She pointed to the low and narrow arch. “There is not much space.”
“It will do,” Krevan said brusquely and strode off.
Rogger met Tylar’s eyes and shrugged.
Dart walked them to her door, pushed it open, and stepped back.
Krevan waved her inside. “Mayhap you should attend this, too.”
Dart took a startled half step back. “Why?”
The pirate’s hard eyes fixed on her. His next words turned her knees to porridge. Tylar caught her with a reassuring squeeze, but even he glanced to Krevan with narrowed eyes as he answered her question.
“Because it concerns your father. Your real father.”
Kathryn approached the sickbed. The stench of burnt flesh, hair, wool, and leather stained the room. To combat this, one of the healers already had a brazier glowing and dribbled oil of gentled mint across the sizzling red iron. A mound of soaked llamphur sprigs warmed atop its grate.
“To help him breathe,” Healer Fennis said quietly, noting her attention. “Will open the lungs.”
The other healer, a slim woman and wife to Fennis, knelt beside Lorr’s sprawled form. She had bathed away the charred clothes, exposing the rawness beneath.
“There will be scars,” she said. “But the alchemy in the balms was newly concocted, devised by a physic in the deserts of Dry Wash. Using a Grace of loam and air. Who would have thought such a combination could be steadied?”
“Then he will live?” Delia asked. Her voice rang with relief.
“If you let us work in peace,” the woman answered.
Kathryn waved Tylar’s Hand back from the bed. It was an irritated gesture, more brusque than she had
