Troops knelt, jerked bow stocks to their shoulders and instantly took aim. Crossbow bolts whipped through the dust, stabbing into naked flesh and spraying blood across the alley walls.
Svarezi stooped down, wiped the blood from his blade upon a courtier's cap, and silently sheathed his sword. Behind him and beside him, dead and dying bravos clawed bloody trails though the dust-shot down to a man. Cheated of her kills, Shaatra raised a defiant scream, hurtling a corpse, shot through with crossbow bolts, aside. The black monster stared in anger at the crossbowmen, then spread her wings and rippled forward like a stream of liquid doom.
'Shaatra!'
Svarezi's command brought the creature slinking to a halt. Cowed, it ripped claws through a courtier's corpse while the black-clad general walked confidently toward the crossbowmen.
The soldiers spread out among the fallen courtiers, finishing the wounded and stripping rings from bloodstained fingers that curled like dying spiders. Their sergeant slung his weapon, faced Ugo Svarezi, and bowed.
'Forgive our hastiness, my lord. We might have hit your mount.'
Svarezi waved an armored hand in answer.
'Small matter. Another one can be found.'
Collapsed against a wall with blood spilling through his hands, young Blade Captain Veltro still managed a precarious hold on life. Shot through and through by his own men, the boy still tried to somehow crawl away.
Svarezi motioned the soldiery aside and walked deliberately toward the fallen man.
Veltro stared at his soldiers as if still unable to comprehend their treachery.
'They were my men… mine!'
'It takes a soldier to command soldiers, boy.' Svarezi once again drew his savage blade.
Veltro raised his voice and screamed, cramming himself into the dust in fear.
'You're finished, Svarezi! Colletro's court is finished with you! No Mannicci bride-no council seats! No Blade Council will suffer you again!'
The blade reversed to hover like an ice pick in Svarezi's hand.
'If the council is finished with me… then let us finish with the council!'
Svarezi stabbed the cowering young Blade Captain through the roof of his mouth, twisting the blade down into the sand like a slaughterer. The body beneath him arched, then jerked into deathly stillness. Svarezi freed his sword and flicked the filth from the blade onto the alley walls.
Behind him, the crossbow sergeant scarcely spared a glance at his master's corpse.
'Did he speak the truth, sire? Will there be no Sumbrian bride?'
'What matter? Where a maid's door shuts, a master's opens.' Svarezi wrenched at the feathered mane of his hippogriff, dragging her beak up from a feast of carrion. One armored fist drew a torn letter from the creature's saddlebags and crushed it like a fragile treasure in his grasp.
'Enough of petty court intrigue. It is time to raise our sights to a higher prize!'
Svarezi swung himself into his saddle and slowly rode away. Beneath him, hippogriff claws left bloody footprints in an alleyway already thick with flies.
5
The annual Festival of Blades brought a gay, carefree mood to Sumbria. For the nobility, the holiday celebrated the origins of families and kingdoms; a fine, defiant time where each city-state proudly shouted out its heritage. It would be a week for ambassadors and midnight balls, for tournaments and pageantry. Each noble house would strive to outdo the others in sheer magnificence and generosity.
In the drowsy warmth of a Sumbrian noon, Miliana walked through the wind-kissed colonnades. With her eyes half closed and her hair stirring out beneath her pointy hat to drift and feather in the breeze, Miliana could shut away Lady Ulia's voice and let the whole world pass her by.
Ulia never noticed; for her, life seemed to be a never-ending round of irritation and interference, and affairs never took a correct turn unless she was directly involved. Festooned in bells and ribbons, she trundled along at Miliana's side and shook the skies with her litany of woes.
'I told them! I told them all that I shall not suffer it! The parade has always left from the gates at midday. Why should they now desire to delay it by an hour?'
Letting one bored portion of her brain handle the appropriate prods to the conversation, Miliana stifled a yawn and turned her face into the breeze.
'If it's important, why not let them delay it for an hour?'
'Delay is change! Change!' Lady Ulia spoke the word like a witch's curse. 'It is the thin end of the wedge. Once disorder is allowed, anarchy must surely follow.'
'Anarchy?' Miliana watched a bumblebee meander past, and wondered where the creature's hive might lie. 'Why anarchy?'
'When people fly off upon their own affairs, despite the seasoned wisdom of their betters, that is anarchy. Only social order brings peace, and peace is the tool for happiness.' Ulia stabbed a scornful glance at her stepdaughter, irritated by the play of sun across the girl's freckled nose. 'Really, Miliana, I sometimes wonder if you have absorbed any of your schooling at all. I think it is high time you turned your mind to higher things.' Ulia stepped over a burnt, fur-edged crater in the cobblestones. 'I am quite occupied enough without attending to your affairs every hour of every day. I have the tournament seating to arrange, the caterers for the banquet have presented the most awful menu, and now we have this painting affair as well…'
'Oh?' Miliana's bumblebee had landed upon a sprig of foxglove; the huge weight of the insect set the weed stalk swaying wildly up and down. 'What painting might that be?'
'The painting, girl! The Lomatran painting! It is the betrothal gift from their embassy to our city.' Ulia waved an arm and almost knocked Miliana's pointy hat clean off her head. 'All very well for your father to arrange it; but where is it to be displayed? In what light, in what way, and who shall have the privilege of first viewing? Men are so impractical about such things…'
Guards were moving about the central courtyard of the palace. An engineer and a battle mage inspected windows, doors, and cobblestones, sketching notes for sinister protective spells. Miliana watched the sorcerer with mixed curiosity and utter jealousy, instantly planning an afternoon of work on her own magic.
The security arrangements seemed overly complex simply for a painting and a party, until Miliana remembered her last session of eavesdropping on her father's affairs.
'The jewel is coming here?'
'Indeed yes, child. The Sun Gem-the very heart and soul of the Blade Kingdoms!' Ulia fanned herself, wilting flowers with the strength of her perfume. 'Colletro's agents must hand it over to us at the festival-their ransom for losing the campaign. But with this jewel thief running unchecked right through the town, we shall break the budget just on security for the wretched bauble!' Ulia placed fingertips across her eyes as if summoning a vision of the inevitable disaster. 'It shall be the ruin of us all.'
Miliana shrugged freckled shoulders in an utter lack of care.
'Why not just display a paste gem, and keep the real thing safely hidden away?'
With straightened back and a sideways sweep of her dark eyes, Ulia communicated absolute disdain.
'Really, my dear, you have no grasp of social niceties. It is a fault we shall labor to correct. Now do please leave me be. I have so much to attend to. So much to attend.'
Success! Miliana closed her eyes in quiet pleasure as she withdrew. Lady Ulia bustled off like a shambling mound, leaving Miliana to spend a day in utter peace. Picking up her skirts, the girl swished off down the corridors to plan a perfect afternoon.
Reading, magic, and a bath.
Baths were Miliana's sacred times; a moment when she could lock her doors, hurtle her hat aside, and lose herself inside a universe of steam. With her chin over the edge of the tub, she would read and dream in blissful splendor until her fingertips turned white and wrinkly, and the water grew cold.
The advantages of her spellbook's rather odd construction had swiftly been demonstrated; the smelly
