The Bandit King

been blocked in the intervening years.

Vianne.

I pushed up the trapdoor, wincing as it groaned. The gallery was empty, and my legs threatened to shake as I emerged into dusk. Time moves strangely to the imprisoned, and I was faintly shocked to find the sunlight dimming.

The roar of battle was much more pronounced. I hauled myself out and lay on the gallery’s dust-choked floor, breathing heavily and staring at the lavender sky through tall narrow windows shielded by rotting wooden eaves.

When my lungs finally bore more resemblance to flesh than leather bellows, I dragged myself upright and crossed the gallery, shuffling through a thick carpet of dust. None of the windows were broken—this face of the tower was relatively sheltered—but a few were cracked, and all were dirty. It took much careful peering and polishing before I fully grasped what I saw.

Below, the other towers of the Keep jutted like white spears. The city of Arcenne huddled, a thicket of burning inside its confining walls. The Quartier Gieron blazed. The eastron half was all a- smolder, and the strip of di Roncail’s Orchard—so it was called, though there had not been a Roncail alive for a good fifty years—along the wall was aflame with fire instead of blossom. The East Tower, its angle providing enfilade fire with the battlements and its back to a high-shouldered cliff, flew a tattered red flag proudly, the mountain-pard of Arcenne clawing defiantly as the pennant flapped. The West Tower, more vulnerable because of the fields at its foot and the wall connecting it to a similar rock-face rising to cradle the city, flew our colors as well. The siege engines were not so numerous there, because there was merely a postern instead of a great gate piercing the stone wall. Still, rick, cot, and tree between the westron wall and the edge of the Alpeis in the distance were ablaze. Their owners might be inside the walls, but the damage would be immense, and the winter a lean one.

A pall of smoke hung over the market district; I knew the wells were deep and the summer had not been dry, but a long, fiery siege would not help. Food would be the most acute concern, then disease.

All the more reason to find Vianne and take her from this place, no matter what she thought of my trustworthiness.

The attackers had not breached the city yet, but the siege engines—mangonels and the like—lobbed Graecan fire in high crimson-orange arcs. Sorcery sparked, rising from the walls in thin veils—Court sorcery and some leaf- green traceries of hedgewitchery, though most of the hedgewitches would be tending wounded and damping the fires inside the city.

There. On the walls over the main gate, a shifting globe of silvery witchlight, clearly visible even at this distance.

Of course she would be there. In absolutely the most vulnerable place in the entire gods-be-damned city. It was my father’s place to be at the walls, but of course my d’mselle would not listen to reason.

I almost, almost sent my filthy fist through a pane of ancient, rippling, dusty glass. Control reasserted itself, and I took a deep breath.

Weapons. And a means of moving undetected. Though likely none will pay attention to you, not with an army at the gates and fire everywhere. Why not simply steal a horse and force your way to her side?

I considered this, my fevered forehead pressed against the pane. Grit and the coolness of glass, and my pulse a frantic tattoo in my throat and wrists.

Why not indeed.

* * *

Night in a besieged city is rather like the Damarsene underworld, especially when the attackers possess sorcery. Flames rose, screams echoed, horses added their own cries, dogs howled. The men had been called to the walls; women, children, and old men either hid or were called to fire duty. Smoke and the reek of fear in every corner, but twas not as bad as I’d feared, seeing it from above.

The walls were holding. There was no chance to gather news; I was occupied enough in avoiding the fires and working my way toward the Gates. No street in Arcenne is straight; they are a jumbled patchwork, an additional defense for the Keep. Where Vianne should have been, watching the battle from afar. It should have been my father on the walls, braving death and rallying the defense.

The silvery shield-globe of witchfire was a thing spoken of in old scrolls and dusty books locked in secret archives—the Aryx, the great Seal of Arquitaine, protecting its chosen holder on a battlefield.

So she had discovered how to unlock that portion of the Seal’s powers. Good.

Yet it was not a guarantee of safety. Chance could still kill her. Not only that, but each time she used the Seal, she surfaced terrified and disoriented. Who else knew what she faced as the Aryx worked through her? Who else had she turned to for comfort afterward?

I urged the gray gelding on. I had little compunction stealing a horse, and this sorry nag had been left a- stable. He had precious little life in him, and I spurred the beast unmercifully. Soot fell out of the sky, and the foulness of Graecan fire lay in a thick coat over Arcenne. It does not cease burning, that terrible flame, until a hedgewitch can deprive it of air and disrupt its grasping fingers. Still, the stink remains, burrowing under skin and clothes—and of all the things Graecan fire will attack, it loves to cling to hedgewitches most.

Looping trails of smeared orange in the sky—di Cinfiliet had reported at least five of the monstrous fire- flingers, one or two wallbreakers. And Damarsene troops flying their own colors, under the Duc’s, on Arquitaine soil.

Oh, I will revenge this. I do not care how, I will revenge this.

Hooves clattering, iron shoes striking sparks from the cobbles, the weight of the foaming horse cutting a path through the crush at the edge of the Smallmarket, where healers’ tents stood in neat rows instead of the smallholders’ stalls. I wondered if my childhood friend Bryony was about, organizing the tending of the wounded, or at the Keep. As the chief hedgewitch physicker of the Baron’s household, his place would be with Vianne, but—

BOOM.

The horse foundered, queer weightlessness as I was flung from his back. A scorch-wash of liquid flame jetted past, and the gelding screamed as he became a torch. A horse made of fire, a cracking jolt all through me, and I picked myself up as avid little tongues of sorcery-fueled destruction spidered in all directions. The horse screamed afresh, a sound mercifully cut short as the flames crunched inward, squeezing.

I staggered. More cries, running feet, a clanging handheld alarum-bell.

Vianne.

Her name forced me into action, ducking into an alley as a fire brigade headed by a stolid peasant woman pelted by. The dame’s skirts were hiked above her knees and her round, apple-cheeked face streaked with soot, the green scent of hedgewitchery hanging on her like a cloak. “Invernus!” she yelled, flinging out one work-roughened hand as the brigade behind her swelled forward, two junior hedgewitches adding their force to the charm and a Court sorcerer—the witchlight hanging above him spitting livid yellow sparks—making a complicated gesture, drawing air away from the borders of the fire. He was a young nobleman, the feather in his hat sadly draggled and soot-stained; the peasants and artisans behind him carried buckets of water and wet sheets, struggling with the weight.

The Graecan fire died with one last vicious burst. The horse was merely a charred lump. Bile filled my mouth. I spat and turned away, deeper into darkness, and fled.

Chapter Ten

I do not like to think on the remainder of that journey. Suffice to say there were death, and fire, and scenes of terror aplenty. Closer to the Gate, none paid me any heed—I was simply another soldier, their gazes passing over