down in the palace with Lady Nerissa and her staff while Tycho ventured out with a handful of guards and Wren. Salvator sat in his chair breathing hard, and at one point he announced that he would remain at the Duchess’s side to ensure her safety. The Duchess replied with a thin smile.
The journey back through the cells and cisterns was dark and dank, and seemed to go on forever, but eventually Wren and Tycho reached the stairs, and those seems to go on forever as well. Finally they emerged from the small mausoleum and stepped out onto the brown lawn of the empty estate and looked up.
Smoke filled the eastern sky. Some of it rose from within the walls of the Palace of Constantine, but even more seemed to be rising from the far shores of Stamballa. The bright glare of the afternoon sky hurt her eyes and she slipped her blue glasses onto her nose, and looked again. And there, in the distance, she saw the tiny flickers of yellow and red where the homes of the Turks were burning.
“The palace.” Tycho’s voice fell with exhaustion and misery.
Wren looked again at the base of the smoke and saw the shattered edges of the walls and the buildings just barely visible in the distance. Higher and to her left, she saw the lone airship hovering above another neighborhood farther north. But the tiny gray and white houses and shops along the shore appeared to be intact, as did the tiny white fishing boats bobbing along the waterfront.
“I suppose there’s no point in going back to look right now,” Tycho said. “It’ll be just as broken and ruined tomorrow as it is today. The bastards. The Palace of Constantine is fifteen centuries old… or it was. At least we got everyone out in time. At least no one was hurt.”
Wren nodded. “Do you know where everyone else went?”
“No, there wasn’t time to plan anything. We just sent out the word to move as far from the water as possible. Why?” Tycho smiled a little. “Were you hoping to round up the kitchen staff to have a little hot lunch?”
“No, I was just wondering where they took Yaga. I wanted to check on her, if I could.” She watched the playful glint in his eye fade. “What?”
“Nothing, it’s just… She was still in the tower, wasn’t she?”
Wren nodded. “Sleeping. But the maids would have gotten her, wouldn’t they?”
Tycho set his jaw for a moment, and then said, “I really can’t say. In all that confusion, in all that rush and chaos, I really don’t know if anyone would have remembered to go get her. I didn’t give any instructions about her, and I doubt that any of the servants would have gone looking for Yaga on their own. I don’t know that for certain, but I doubt it.”
Wren felt her face tightening up as she pressed her lips together and looked away. She wasn’t even sure what she was feeling. Regret? Anger? Fear? She crossed her arms over her belly, and with each hand felt the many silver bracelets on her wrists. “I left her there, defenseless, asleep. And I didn’t think…”
“Well, even if she was caught in the bombing, she is immortal after all,” Tycho said quietly. “She can survive anything, can’t she?”
Wren nodded slowly. “She’s alive. But she’s still an old woman. If something fell on her, if she’s buried in the rubble, if she’s in pain, then that’s exactly where she’ll stay until someone finds her.” Wren started walking across the lawn.
“Wait!” Tycho ran after her, and his four guards ran after him.
“You don’t have to come with me,” Wren said. “You have duties here, I know that. But this is something I have to do.”
Why? Why is it something I have to do? I don’t owe Yaga anything. She put me through hell. She nearly killed me.
But she’s also just like me.
And now she’s all alone.
Tycho fell into step beside her, and she slowed a little to let him keep pace with her, and the other Hellans followed closed behind them. They hurried up the wide empty avenue behind the Cathedral of Saint Sophia, with its marvelous golden domes which appeared to have survived the bombing unscathed, and they soon came to the palace gates and entered the First Courtyard.
The bombing had begun to their right, punching huge black holes in the green park to the southeast of the palace, but then the bombs had fallen on the buildings as they worked north and west. The Church of Saint Irene had lost most of its north wall, and half of its roof. The stables along the eastern side of the Second Courtyard had been reduced to gravel and splinters, except for the last three stalls, which remained miraculously intact. The doors and columns of the portico of the Chamber of Petitions lay in shattered pieces all across the courtyard, and much of the building itself was burning, and every few minutes something inside it would moan and growl and crash. And on the far side of the courtyard, the Tower of Justice lay on its side, smashed into dozens of large chunks of masonry and stone like a broken finger pointing to the south.
Wren ran across the courtyard and climbed up on the rubble of the tower, scrambling over the cracked stones and charred beams, until she reached what had once been the central stair that had spiraled up to the balcony and down into the cellar. Now, all she could see were ragged slabs of rock covered in gray dust. She knelt down and placed her hands on the stones, and with a few gentle swirls of her soul, she dragged a few fragile threads of aether back and forth through the earth beneath her, searching for a tug, for a sensation of resistance. Searching for a soul.
Wren opened her eyes. “She’s down there.”
Tycho nodded. “Can you use your power to lift the stones?”
She shook her head as she reached down and picked up a small rock, and tossed it away. “Aether can only touch the spirit, not the flesh, and definitely not a stone.”
She threw aside another rock, and another. Tycho and the four guards climbed up beside her, and they all began tossing the bits of debris away from the tower stairs.
After a quarter hour, they had managed to throw, carry, or push aside most of the rubble covering the entrance to the cellar and found the way down blocked by one last block of masonry, a large section of wall that had not broken and now stood at a slight angle in the stairwell itself, leaving gaps that only a mouse could get through.
The six diggers sat down to rest.
“You know,” said Tycho. “The floor under us still solid, so the ceiling over Yaga’s head is probably still intact as well. She’s trapped for the moment, but she may not be hurt at all.”
Wren nodded. The thought had occurred to her as well, but there was no way to know for certain and she didn’t want to guess or assume. She wanted to know. She knelt by one of the gaps around the fallen wall and called down, “Yaga! Hello? Can you hear me? It’s Wren!”
There was no answer.
“Look for tools,” Tycho said to his men. “Hammers, shovels, anything. Maybe we can break up this wall, or pull it out of the way somehow.”
The guards nodded and wandered off in separate directions.
Wren sat down by the top of the stair to wait, and Tycho sat beside her. After a moment he said, “What you did before in the cistern, to save the Duchess, to save all of us, that was… the most amazing thing I have ever seen in my life.”
She wanted to smile. She wanted to enjoy that moment, but she was too tired and worried and distracted.
What happened to Yaga? Where is everyone else? What am I supposed to do next?
Wren reached over and took his hand. “Thanks.”
Boots thumped and crunched across the gravel courtyard behind them, approaching at a quick step, and Wren turned, hoping to see one of the guards returning with some remarkable device for clearing huge walls but instead she something more familiar. “Omar?”
The Aegyptian’s face was paler than usual and his eyes were a bit narrower, and his lips a bit thinner. But he strode along quite quickly and came to stand at the bottom of the rubble, and looked up at her. “I thought I might find you here. But I didn’t think the damage would be this bad. At least, I’d hoped the palace would be spared, somehow.” He looked ill.
Wren stood up. “Are you all right?”
Omar shrugged and glanced away, squinting at the quietly burning ruins all around them.
