She threw her arms upwards and lightning and fire roared from her hands and blew a great chunk out of the façade of the royal palace. I couldn’t have said for sure, but I would have bet gold that those had been the windows of her mother’s own apartments.
Burn, you witch!
‘I am pain!’ the princess shrieked. ‘Burn!’
I stared as she too started to burn, immolating in a pyre of white flame. Her cunning had roared up out of wherever it came from and overwhelmed her, as Billy had warned that it might. It had unleashed itself on the unsuspecting and innocent populace below, and then it turned on her and consumed her utterly.
This was not a power to be trusted, that was clear enough.
Was this what the future held for my Billy, I had to ask myself ? For Billy and Mina both? No, I thought, not if I could help it.
The princess turned slowly on the balcony, the flames eating through her and lighting her from within until the blackened skeleton could be clearly seen. Still she turned, fire and lightning lashing out in all directions from her unholy form, until at last the flame of life burned away and she collapsed onto the balcony, a tiny mummified corpse of charred misery.
There was pandemonium outside.
Sister Galina burst into the room while we were still watching the panicked populace trample each other in the parade ground below.
‘Father Tomas, thank Our Lady I found you!’ she panted. ‘Did you see it? A miracle! Did you see our Holy Princess? She ascended, Father! She ascended to Our Lady’s Grace on a pillar of fire before our very eyes!’
There were tears streaming down her cheeks, and the fanatical gleam of religious ecstasy shone in her eyes as she sank to her knees before me and clutched my right hand in both of hers.
‘Oh, blessed day! She martyred herself to lead our nation to a holy war from heaven itself! Blessed be the Ascended Martyr!’
‘Praise be to Our Lady of Eternal Sorrows, and blessed be the Ascended Martyr,’ I said, and Sister Galina broke down in floods of tears once more.
I just had to sound like I meant it, after all, and I could do that. That’s why they made me a priest in the first place.
Iagin stared at me, and I met his eyes.
‘That,’ he said softly, ‘is fucking perfect.’
*
‘This is a crisis,’ Vogel told us that evening, back in the house of law. ‘The princess openly declared war, and then publicly immolated on her own royal balcony. We have no queen. Half the population are already holding her up as a martyr to the cause, an ascended saint, and the other half have simply given up. Those are the half we must turn. Bring them into the embrace of religion if that’s what it takes, but we can have no defeatism in the city.’
I looked at the Provost Marshal, and I felt my stomach slowly turn over. Who, exactly, I wondered, had killed Doctor Almanov? Men he owed gambling money to, I had thought, but now I wasn’t so sure. Vogel had actually told us to send for Almanov himself, and had seemed unsure of the man’s name. Had that been an act? Had he told us to bring him a man he well knew was dead, to cover his tracks? Had he done that knowing it didn’t matter, knowing we would be too late? The Princess Crown Royal was always going to have been a liability, and the thought of her on the throne had horrified me. I imagined it had horrified Lord Vogel just as much, but would he truly have risked starting a war just to remove her?
Aye, I thought, he probably would. He would, if it put him where he wanted to be.
‘The Grand Duke,’ I ventured.
‘Yes, he is the Crown Prince now and we must seat him on the Rose Throne immediately, but he is ten years old, Tomas,’ Vogel said. ‘I am the regent of the crown, and it seems I must endure that burden for three more years, at least.’
At least, I thought. And then what will happen? A poisoning, a riding accident, a second cousin toddler on the throne with you as their regent?
This was never going to end, was it? Vogel would see an infant on the throne before he gave up that regency.
Dieter Vogel had claimed the Rose Throne, and it looked like there was nothing anyone could do to stop him.
I would fucking see about that.
‘My lord Provost Marshal,’ I started, but he cut me dead with a look.
‘We must use what we have, Tomas,’ Vogel said. ‘Adapt and move on. If we are to have war, then let it be a holy war. Nobody fights like the fanatic, the zealot, after all.’
I heard his words, but I wasn’t really listening. I would do anything in my power to stop the coming war, but now Vogel seemed to welcome it. I felt cold all the way to my boots as the battle shock came down on me like thunderclouds and despair.
War.
Abingon.
Disease and bad water, rotting wounds and the bloody flux. Soldiers dead in their thousands, bloated corpses and fattened crows. The endless, murderous thunder of the cannon firing night and day until the noise drives you so mad you don’t know your own name any more.
Our Lady save me, not again.
Please, not again.
No, I vowed then. No. I would not allow it to happen.
There are a lot of ways to not be Dieter Vogel’s lapdog, Archmagus Reiter had told me.
The Ten of Swords means back-stabbing and treachery, Billy had told me, defeat and betrayal – but he had never said whose defeat, nor who would be doing the betraying. Now, there
