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Contents 8 страница

Her arrow took him in the throat, and he died without giving cry. Then a second guard stepped out from behind a column, saw his comrade fall, and let out a full-throated shout.

Felassan flung out a hand, and a boulder the size of a wagon wheel tore itself from the earth and hurtled into the guard, smashing him against the stone column. He landed with his neck twisted unnaturally and didn’t move.

“Damn it.” Briala stepped out from the hedge. “They’ll be all over us in a minute.”

“Well, don’t blame me. I got mine.”

“We need to go, now!” She took off toward the house at a sprint.

She darted across the lawn, past a beautiful marble fountain where bronze nymphs cavorted, and up the staircase where the two dead guards lay. As she reached the top of the stairs, four guards rushed around the corner with swords and shields ready.

“For the elves!” came Thren’s cry from behind Briala, and a moment later a stone whipped past her and caught the lead guard on his breastplate, knocking him back onto his heels.

They were armed and armored, and they outnumbered Briala’s group four to three. Added to that, Briala knew that the longer they fought, the more attention they would draw.

It would have to be quick.

She ran forward, firing on the run as she did. Her arrows, one after the other, split the air and glanced off iron breastplates. Fired from a half-draw on the run, they lacked the penetrating power necessary to punch through armor, but the guards stumbled and flinched, and Briala’s true arrow was already drawing back as the guards fumbled with their shields. It took the lead guard in the leg, punching through armor, and he cried out and dropped to one knee.

The next guard saw an archer with no arrow in her bow and lunged in for the easy kill. She sidestepped and slid a dagger out of its sheath and up into his face in one smooth motion. He collapsed, shrieking, but Briala was already moving.

“Oh, you poor fools,” Felassan said from behind her, and Briala flinched as lightning played off the body of the guard coming at Briala from the other side. He cried out and shuddered, paralyzed in the coils of magic, and then fell, his breastplate smoking. “Always going after the one closest to you and forgetting about the one in the back who can light you on fire.”

Briala dropped her bow, drew a second dagger, and turned to the guard she’d hobbled first. He grimaced and swung at her, and she stepped back, then lunged in and finished him quickly, her silverite daggers slashing across his throat. She turned toward the last guard, only to see that it had been handled. Thren was cutting the man’s throat with what looked like a rusty butcher’s knife, favoring a small cut on his side. He saw her look and nodded once, face grim.

Felassan came up the stairs, his staff crackling with curls of green energy. “Go,” he said. “As your people drew the city guards elsewhere, I will draw Mainserai’s men out here.” Without pausing, he leveled his staff at the guard Briala had blinded and finished him with a spear of emerald light.

Briala retrieved her bow and slung it over her shoulder. She doubted there would be much time for shooting in the close confines of the manor. She nodded to Felassan, then quietly pulled open the great bronze door and crept inside with her blades raised.

The lamps had been dimmed for the evening, and Briala squinted in the shadows. Her armor, soft drakeskin fitted specially for her slender frame, let her move as softly as if she’d been wearing a robe, and Thren moved with the quiet caution born in the slums.

She had been in enough noble houses to know the general layout, and moved confidently to the stairs. Thren trailed behind her. At the top of the stairs, shadowed hallways glittered as art on the walls caught the moonlight.

Ahead of Briala, a door opened with a tiny squeak of old metal, and a robed servant stepped out into the hall. She turned and saw them, and her mouth made a tiny soundless “Oh.”

For a long moment, nobody moved. Briala looked at the woman—an elf, at least sixty years old, in a tattered robe that would leave her too cold in the winter. The knuckles on her fingers were swollen into knots, and her graying hair had come free from the bun she’d stuck it into, hanging around the papery skin of her face.

Wordlessly, the woman pointed to a room a few doors down. Then she gave Briala a tiny nod and backed into the room she’d come out of. The door closed softly, and Briala heard a lock click into place.

“And she serves him,” Thren whispered, and shook his head. Briala moved toward the door, the soft leather soles of her boots making no noise on the carpeted floor.

Quietly, Thren pulled the door open.

The room inside must have seemed impressive to Thren, Briala guessed, by his shocked stare. To Briala, it spoke of someone with enough money to afford luxury, but no taste in how to spend it. Fereldan furs hung next to Tevinter statues and sculptures from the Anderfels. A jeweled dagger was half-sheathed carelessly on a nightstand, and a painting that looked in the dim moonlight like an original Caliastri was hung on a wall that would see its colors leached by sunlight within a few years.

Lord Mainserai lay alone in a voluminous canopied bed, snoring softly. The lord evidently preferred to sleep in the nude.

Thren stared at the man who had killed his friend. “For crimes against Lemet and the elven people,” he began, and then broke off as Briala, who had never stopped walking in the first place, leaned over and slit Mainserai’s throat. “What did you … I wanted him to know!”

Briala wiped her blade on the sheets and glanced at the body. “I believe he just figured it out. Let’s go.”

Thren glared at her. “This was not your fight.”

“That’s why you needed me here,” Briala said, and sighed at his puzzled look. “I know what you’re feeling. I killed the noblewoman who killed my parents.”

That got Thren’s attention. “I thought you were just some noble’s spy.”

“No.” Briala peeked out of the bedroom, checking the halls. She heard no sign of inside guards, but it was best to be sure. “I am the empress’s spy.” And because it was not quite a lie, and because Thren needed to hear it, she added, “Empress Celene could not arrest Lord Mainserai without incurring the anger of the other nobles, but she wished to see justice done.”

She crept out into the hallway, Thren behind her. Both still had their daggers out.

“So she sends you to kill those who anger her?” Thren asked. He had the good sense to keep his voice down now that they were out of the bedroom.

“Yes.” Briala spent more time watching and listening than she did killing, but in the twenty years Celene had ruled Orlais, Briala had gotten her hands bloody often enough.

“Like the noblewoman who killed your parents?”

“No.” She paused at a thump from around a corner, then relaxed when she saw that it was just a cat making its nightly rounds. “That was for me. And that is why you needed me here. When I went after the noblewoman, my need for vengeance very nearly got me killed.”

They moved quietly back down the stairs to the front parlor. “Then I suppose I am glad you were here,” Thren said behind her.

“As am I.” Briala smiled.

She had done it.

Briala hadn’t allowed herself to think it before, when she’d ridden into town with Felassan and seen the poor elves who fancied themselves rebels. They’d built a barricade that any chevalier would vault over and wore badly tanned leather armor that an axe or halberd would cut through like it was satin. In their naiveté, they had been talking about Halamshiral belonging to the elves again. It was heartbreaking to see them so proud over so little, unaware of how much trouble they had caused, or how close they had all come to death at the hands of the imperial army.

That army would have crushed them in hours.

If Celene had seen them in that moment, she would have withdrawn her permission in an instant, and Briala would have been hard-pressed to argue.

Briala wondered what Gaspard was trying to make of the elven situation. He was too opportunistic to pass it up, and too crude to come up with something truly clever. With luck, he’d be speaking of it as a dire situation that needed a firm hand, so that when the situation inexplicably vanished, he’d look even more the fool.

Through the still-open bronze doors ahead, the yard was quiet. Briala wondered if Felassan had dealt with all of Mainserai’s guards, but it seemed bright outside. Perhaps he’d lit something on fire?

Briala came outside, and blinking past the glare of torches, she saw a dozen armored men on horseback ringed around her.

“In the name of Empress Celene,” Ser Michel’s voice rang out, “you are under arrest for the murder of Lord Mainserai.”

For a moment, she thought she had misheard, but when her eyes adjusted to the brightness, she saw the tabards of the men around her, the golden lion on a field of purple.

She saw Ser Michel’s face, grim and resolute, and at her stare, he only nodded.

She had failed, after all.

Felassan was nowhere to be seen, though great hunks of stone had been torn from the formerly pristine lawn, and some of the marble columns were scorched, near crumpled bodies that marked more of Mainserai’s guards.

“I surrender.” Swallowing the bile that rose up in her throat, Briala dropped her daggers and held her hands up, showing her empty palms. The silverite blades struck the ground with a sound like glass breaking, though of course the blades themselves were fine. Several of the chevaliers glanced down at the sound, surprised that an elf would have such fine weapons. They would of course recognize the distinct sound, since all of them were nobles. Well, except for Michel, some dark and laughing part of her mind noted.

Celene had given them to her on the night she had come back to her in Val Royeaux. It had been the first night they made love.

“Traitor!” Thren yelled, and she couldn’t deny the insult.

He raised his knife with a wordless yell, and a dozen crossbow bolts tore through him. He was dead before he hit the ground.

Ser Michel dismounted and came forward with shackles ready.

“Ser Michel,” she said. “We do keep running into each other in odd places.”

He said nothing. His face was grim and set, and after a moment, she realized what he feared.

“No,” she said quietly. “I would not spend it so fruitlessly.” Even if he did hold to his word, the two of them versus eleven chevaliers would be a short and one-sided battle.

He still said nothing, but he nodded once, and the muscles of his neck relaxed slightly. It surprised her. It was unlikely that any of his fellow chevaliers would believe whatever claims she made there in front of the home where she had just murdered a noble, so if he was worried, it was because he would actually have held himself to his promise. He was a more honorable noble than most actual nobles.

Michel turned her around, firmly but not roughly, and shackled her arms behind her. She let him escort her through the late Lord Mainserai’s yard. The other chevaliers formed up around her, wordless. Briala was not sure whether they had been given orders to treat her gently or if the obviously fine armor told them that she was working for a noble and should not be casually beaten. She very much doubted the code of honor about treatment of prisoners would apply to elven assassins.

Her mind spun new fancies with every step. They had come here and demanded surrender. This hadn’t been about stopping the elves, then—if it were, the chevaliers would simply have killed them. It was about Briala. That explained the light treatment.

Could they be with Gaspard, countering Celene’s plan? Unlikely. Ser Michel would never have turned traitor, and while Melcendre had lured him out with blackmail once, he was still too ashamed to allow such a ruse to work twice. They had come from Celene. Had Gaspard done something to force the empress’s hand? Had the Divine made a new demand? What had changed Celene’s mind?

Then, as she came past the torches, Briala saw the night sky, glowing a sooty red.

She smelled the smoke of Halamshiral’s slums burning.

After that, Briala stopped thinking.

* * *

By the time morning came, most of the work was done.

Empress Celene rode with her forces on her shining white mare, resplendent in royal plate that glittered even in the weak, smoky light of dawn. She ought to be tired, she knew. But even though she was up late this day instead of early, the dawn worked its magic upon her mind, keeping her moving.

The elves had heard the crash of armor as the army approached and had tried to form a spear wall, using sticks with knives and wooden shields made from tavern tables. The Orlesian army, marching four abreast in the narrow and winding streets of Halamshiral’s slums, had cut them down without even pausing. When they reached an open square, the horsemen had swept out and around in clean flanking waves, butchering the elves as they tried to flee and terrorizing any who thought to gather themselves for a counterattack.

After that, Celene’s greatest concern was troops losing discipline and turning the night’s work into a celebration. The elves lived in these slums, Celene knew, and with nowhere to turn, they would be vicious if given the chance. She rode along, protected but present, and snapped orders to the men when they seemed inclined to rush into a building for easy looting.

They marched through the elven slums with military precision, and when they rode back out, the section claimed by the rebels was burning behind them.

The lords and ladies of Halamshiral were assembled in the upper market square outside the gates that separated the nobles from the peasants, waiting in silence as Celene and her forces returned. The nobles stood in front, with their bodyguards. The merchants and tradesmen and servants stood off to the side, holding buckets. It was a wise precaution. The heat behind Celene was a blistering curtain that tried to steal the air from her lungs, and sparks and embers drifted freely over the stone walls that kept the nobles safe.

Those stone walls, Celene thought, likely dated back to when the elves first built Halamshiral. She wondered if they ever imagined that one day, those walls would protect human nobility from the elves who burned on the other side.

Ser Michel was there with the assembled nobles. Though he hadn’t fought this evening, he looked tired, and as he looked past her at the burning slums, his face gave away some of the sorrow he had tried so hard to deny back in the coach.

Celene rode to the front of her forces and took off her helmet. She was barefaced beneath it—a necessary concession given the armor—and her pale face met the crowd without flinching.

“All hail Empress Celene!” Ser Michel shouted into the silent square.

In the gray dawn light, a thousand voices called her name, and a thousand people dropped to their knees.

She sat and allowed it. This was the other reason she had ridden with the forces, wearing armor that she had never needed. They would call her cruel, to be certain. They might ask whether she had taken leave of her senses. But she had a thousand living witnesses who knew with undeniable certainty how Empress Celene dealt with rebellion.

The moment wanted a speech, but the words she had prepared didn’t fit, now that the stink of smoke from burning homes was caught in her hair. She turned to Comte Pierre of Halamshiral, ruler of the city, whom she had allowed to command the forces that razed part of his home.

“Comte Pierre,” she said in a voice that carried to the farthest reaches of the square, “my soldiers have traveled long without rest, and while this act of order was necessary, there was no joy in destroying even so humble a part of this fair city.”

There could be only one acceptable response, and Pierre knew it. “We thank you, Your Majesty, for making our home safe again, and we must again express our sorrow that such base villainy could grow in proud Halamshiral.”

“There will be work today,” Celene said, “and soldiers will not make it go faster. We will take our leave and retire to my Winter Palace, outside your fair city.”

It was a short march to the palace her family had traditionally retired to during the cold winter months, and even after a long night, it would be worth it. Her men would receive better treatment than Halamshiral could offer … and Halamshiral could begin burying its dead.

Pierre bowed from the saddle. “Your men are heroes all, Your Majesty, and we shall see that they dine as such. With your leave, I shall go now to see to it that provisions are sent to your palace.”

Celene nodded, and Comte Pierre rode slowly away, the crowd parting before him. Ser Michel mounted and pulled his horse up beside her, and together, they began the ride out of the city.

“Your duties, Ser Michel?” she asked, not looking over.

“Successful, Empress. A commoner who was with her resisted and was killed. She was taken without a struggle, as you requested.”

“Thank you.” The sky had lightened. The banners of the city were shifting slowly from gray to red. “How fares the prisoner?”

“She … did not react well to the fire, Empress.”

“I see.” Celene nodded, showing nothing even without her half-mask and makeup. There would be people watching from windows, waiting for a sign of weakness.

The sun had risen by the time Celene’s forces passed through the city gates. Massive and thick, the gates were mounted on ancient stone that was said to come from when the elves had ruled this city. The walls of the city were so strong, according to history, that after the gates had been breached in the last great push of the Exalted March, the conquerors had left the fortifications otherwise untouched. It gave the city an unexpected exotic air, the guard towers rising with an ancient grace that was not altogether natural.

“And it is done,” Celene said as the sound of her mare’s hooves changed from the clop-clop of cobblestones to the dull thump of dirt road. “Gaspard’s cursed gambit fails.” And all it had cost her was a few thousand elven lives, and Briala.

Ahead of them, the first merchant caravans of the day already approached the city.

“It makes little sense,” Ser Michel said beside her. “I have been so intent upon finding Briala that I have thought little of Gaspard … but he had to know how easily you could counter his false rumors about your sympathy for the knife-ears.”

“Did he?” Celene shrugged, her fine armor squeaking slightly as she did. “He sees that I have never led an army in battle and thinks I lack the steel to do what must be done.” Or he had more whispers and innuendo waiting for her back in Val Royeaux, and she would have to cross blades with him again to quiet whatever little scandal he had prepared this time.

“No…” Michel frowned. “With respect, Empress, for all his buffoonery, Grand Duke Gaspard is a chevalier. He has trained in military strategy. He should have expected this.”

“You are right.” Celene yanked on the reins, pulling her horse up short. “He did.”

In the merchant caravan up ahead, caravan guards threw off brown cloaks to reveal the shining armor of chevaliers. In the grass, hundreds of bowmen rose from where they had lain.

As Celene turned to cry a warning to her forces, the dawn-gray sky filled with black arrows.

Back in the trees, well out of sight, Gaspard grinned as his archers opened fire.

Beside him, Duke Remache stood calmly by his horse, resplendent in full plate armor of gleaming silverite that had been enameled with his house’s colors. “I’m surprised that the code of the chevaliers allows you to use such tactics.”

“We’re trained to fight with honor, Remache, not idiocy.” The rain of arrows withered Celene’s messy line. Soldiers exhausted from a long march and an ugly slaughter raised their shields a few heartbeats too late, and moments later, the cries of the dying sounded across the field. “The code is meant to guide us to a path of glory, not restrict our tactics. You understand the difference?”

“Not entirely, Grand Duke.” Remache pulled himself into the saddle, ignoring a servant with his stool. “But then, I did not train with the chevaliers.”

Gaspard mounted as well. His armor gleamed like Remache’s, but his enamel had been stripped bare, and the silverite shone pure. “I will not assassinate Celene,” he said, settling into the saddle. “I will not poison her or have some peasant with a crossbow fire at her from afar.”

“But you will mount an armed rebellion against her.”

The second wave of arrows clouded the sky. Celene’s poor soldiers were still trying to pull themselves into a defensible formation.

Gaspard paused and looked over. “That’s putting a bit of a point on it, considering that you stand at my side, Remache.”

“Again, Grand Duke,” Remache said, “I am merely curious about the code.”

“You don’t like the chevaliers much, do you?” Gaspard asked. When Remache made no reply, Gaspard sighed. “When given direct challenge by a chevalier, I will answer without hesitation. I will not retreat without order from my commanding officer, and I will not kill a lord or lady outside the heat of battle unless it is a legal execution in the name of the empire. And I will not wear my family’s heraldry while I fight Celene.”

“I had wondered.” Remache gestured at Gaspard’s bare armor.

“To rise against the empress while wearing my family colors would shame House Chalons,” Gaspard said. “If I fail here, I will not let the empire think my house responsible for my actions. Only as Grand Duke, a member of the imperial blood, have I the right to challenge. Whatever other title I wear, I will win it on the field this day.”

“If you fail here, I doubt Celene will take the state of your armor into account when deciding what to do to your relatives,” Remache said with a smile.

Gaspard chuckled. “True. Fortunately, I had not planned to fail.”

He looked through the trees, where the rest of his mounted forces were waiting—some chevaliers, some merely nobles like Remache, and some lightly armored men-at-arms, not nobles proper. “Speaking of which … are they advancing?”

“Yes, my lord!” came a cry from a scout high up in the trees.

“Excellent. Coming out to protect their empress.” Gaspard held out a hand and took the lance that was offered.

“They should have fallen back into the city.” Remache shook his head and lowered his visor.

“Celene was riding near the front.” Gaspard grinned. “No chevalier would let his empress fall while he retreated to safety. Which leaves them out there for the taking.” He stood in the stirrups. “Sound the charge!”

The call went down the line. Gaspard lowered his visor, set himself in the saddle, and spurred his horse.

It was the noise that always surprised him. His focus, the entirety of the world, shrank to the enemy line ahead and the grassy field between them, with only the dimmest awareness of hundreds of his men spurring their mounts beside him. But the noise, the pounding hooves and clattering armor, thundered through the ground and up into his bones, even as his own panting breath echoed inside his helmet. He heard that crash of battle as he settled into his horse’s rhythm, felt the stride, saw the distance to the enemy line, gauged the timing, and then launched himself perfectly into the moment of impact.

The shock of the blow blasted past his enemy’s clumsily placed shield and punched through his breastplate. A killing strike, Gaspard noted with satisfaction. If the man wasn’t crushed in the press of battle, he’d languish in a tent until blood frothed on his lips and a good surgeon put him down.

The thought was by in a heartbeat, and then Gaspard was crashing through the enemy line, his lance gone and his blade out, lashing out with hard, short strikes that made the most of his mount’s speed and minimized the risk of having his blade torn from his hand. He took a blow on the shield and rode past it, caught another glancing strike off the pauldron, and then he was through.

He pulled his mount up short and forced the beast into a turn once he was clear. Celene’s forces hadn’t been sure whether to retreat in full or try for a spear wall, and as a result, they’d made a weak effort at both. The men nearest Gaspard had punched through Celene’s lines, and the men on the sides had pulled up short rather than driving through, per his orders.

The middle was a mess, and the empress was flanked on both sides.

Gaspard looked over to see Remache cut down a footman with crisp efficiency. The man had good form. He might have made a chevalier, but for his romantic misunderstanding of tactics.

Laughing aloud, Gaspard spurred his mount and rode back into the crash of slaughter.

* * *

The massive warrior swung his great maul, and the blow smashed past Celene’s desperate defense and slammed into her armor with crushing force.

Celene saw the world spin as she fell from her horse, and then a second terrific impact drove away what little breath was left in her lungs. The world was all sharp colors, painful and glittering as the men around her fought and died. The morning sky was sickly with smoke.

Ser Michel had been cut off from her, and over the din of battle he had gestured for her to retreat to the trees. She had almost made it, a few of her men around her while the main force tried desperately to recover, when Gaspard’s warriors had found them.

After that, everything was a chaotic blur of clanging metal and shrieks of pain.

Gaspard’s warrior stood over her, a huge man in huge armor. If he spoke, it was lost under the roar of battle. He did not salute with the great maul, did not extend a hand in the accepted tradition to demand her surrender. He turned and crushed the skull of one of her men—the only one who had still been standing—and then turned to her, hefting the maul without hesitation.

It was at that moment that Celene realized she might actually die.

She tried to scramble away from the warrior, but her breath wouldn’t come and her side was a mass of crushing pressure. She had no idea where her ceremonial blade had fallen. She grasped blindly at the dirt as Gaspard’s man raised his weapon for a final blow.

Then, from the clattering roar of battle, Ser Michel rode into view. His charger smashed into Gaspard’s man, and the huge warrior slammed to the turf. Michel was on the ground a moment later, his pristine silverite longsword drawn and his shield up and ready.

Gaspard’s man rolled to his feet, graceful as a dancer even in his massive armor, and even as he came up, his maul was swinging up at Michel, but Michel stepped in close, checking the haft of the maul with his shield, and staggered Gaspard’s man with a helmet to the face.

Celene rolled to her stomach with an effort. The pressure on her chest made every shallow breath a battle, and as she looked down, blinking darkness from the edge of her vision, she saw why. As strong as her armor was, the great maul had caved in the breastplate, bending it out of shape and stifling her like an iron corset.

While Michel fought for her life, Celene fumbled for the dagger tucked into a hidden channel at the base of her gauntlet. She worked it free, gasping, and sliced at the buckles that held her breastplate in place.

She heard the screech of shearing metal and the clang of a maul striking home, but she forced herself not to turn and look as she kept slicing. Whether Ser Michel had already dispatched the villain or was bleeding on the ground, the armor still needed to come off, and so she focused desperately on the task at hand, sawing at drake-leather. Her breath grew tighter, her head pounded, and wisps of light danced before her eyes, and then the buckle parted and the breastplate fell open at an unnatural angle. She drew in a shuddering sweet breath and worked frantically at the other buckles. In a moment, the great mass of now-useless metal fell to the turf beside her.

Celene would have given the Dales for a minute to sit and catch her breath.

But she was Empress of Orlais, for the moment, anyway. The title had not stopped Gaspard from attacking. It had not held the warrior back from caving in her armor with his great maul. But it served well enough to get her to her feet. As she rose, the ring on her right hand worked its magic, and the dagger flared with tongues of fire.

Michel and Gaspard’s man had reached an impasse, Michel’s shield locked against the warrior’s hammer, each man heaving and moving with steps as quick and purposeful as the other’s. The shorter man, Michel had better balance, but Gaspard’s great warrior was simply so huge that Michel was losing ground anyway.

She walked as lightly as she could in her heavy greaves to where they stood, and without pause she slid her flaming dagger up under the warrior’s armpit from behind.

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