1633880583 (F) (57 page)

Below them the horde rode into Svanstad like a dark, diverted river.

“We can’t go back, Joy,” Flint said. “We would make no difference.”

Joy turned to face the balloon where she knew Innocence flew. “There is one place we might make a difference. He’s going to explain himself to me.”

She raised her hand, and the Runemark flared red.

Wind gusted and swept them toward the other balloon.

“Do you mean to crash us?” her mother said as their quarry loomed larger. “I’m not complaining. I’m just wondering.”

Joy raised her arm again, and the wind ebbed. “Just talk. At first. Just talk . . . Innocence!”

A stone’s toss away, the ger’s flap opened. It almost seemed a pleasant, ordinary visit in the skies, as people died far below.

“I’m here,” Innocence said. His appearance shocked her. He was leaner, fiercer. Green light glowed from one of his eyes. A mark of two interweaving dragons was visible on his forehead. “Hello, Joy. I see we’ve both . . . changed.”

“You more than I.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“Do you see what’s happening down there?”

He lowered his gaze. “What always happens when people defy the Karvaks. But this is the worst of it. After this . . . they bring culture, civilization, peace. No more arguing about kingly succession. Or religion. And women are better off, Joy—”

“Shut up! I can’t believe you’re going along with them.”

“The world’s a broken place, Joy. That’s not my fault. Maybe you don’t know the Kantenings the way I do. Maybe you haven’t seen them slaughter each other.”

“I know the Kantenings! They’re brave and loyal!”

“You’re naive.”

“Who is that with you . . . is that Princess Steelfox?”

“She’s under my protection.”

“I don’t know you anymore. But I know what I have to do, Innocence.” She lifted her hand. “I’m taking Steelfox hostage.”

The Karvak princess chuckled. “That may not go quite as you expect.”

“Shut up!” Joy raised her hand, and power flared.

Fire
, she thought.

Smoke rose from the envelope of the other balloon. It was ironsilk, however, as were the cables beneath. They resisted her power.

The ger below was a different matter. Flame sprouted from its structure.

“No!” Innocence brought his hands together. With a thunderclap the fire went out.

“Fine, be that way!” Joy grabbed a rope and leapt across the gap.

She kicked him on arrival. Startled, he tumbled backward. The others in the ger were at first too shocked to respond.

Joy tied the rope to a bamboo strut and grabbed a sword from the wall.

“You’ve neglected pugilism,” Joy told Innocence. “Shifu would be disappointed.”

He wiped blood from his nose. “Never wanted to fight you . . . you’ve become a maniac, like the Kantenings.” He leapt forward and delivered a spinning kick. Objects clattered in the narrow space. She dropped low, but his foot still clipped her head, and colors filled her vision.

She feigned incapacitating pain (it wasn’t hard) and shot a punch at his larynx. He gurgled and twisted backward.

Her Runemark flared, as did the mark upon Innocence’s forehead.

“Lord Gaunt!” Steelfox said. “Joy!”

“
Lord
Gaunt?” Joy sputtered.

“Both of you!” said the Karvak princess. “Cease! Other balloons come!”

“I think,” Snow Pine said, having crossed the span on the rope, “that’s a very good reason to take you hostage, Steelfox.”

As Snow Pine entered the ger, the black sword in Steelfox’s hand changed. Its blade shifted from onyx to a surface perfectly reflective, except for its violet tint. Steelfox raised it, but it seemed to resist her grip.

On instinct, Joy kicked at Steelfox’s hand.

The blade fell, and Snow Pine snatched it up.

White-robed, cowled figures in the ger lashed out, but Snow Pine swung once, twice, thrice, and as the warriors fell, their faces appeared, purple and ghostly, as additional images within the reflective blade.

“Stop!” said the surviving white-clad figure. “I have lost too many friends already.”

By now Flint had followed Snow Pine into the crowded ger, and he aimed a sword at Nine Smilodons. “Wise advice,” he said. “That is Schismglass, now fully awakened in the hand of its chosen wielder, she who claimed it from the depths.”

Inga arrived and raised her fist.

“Very well,” Steelfox said with a sad smile. “I am your hostage. It will do you little good.”

“We’ll see,” Joy said.

“You don’t understand,” Haytham said, “and maybe you will believe it from me. Those balloons are under Jewelwolf’s command, and the soldiers aboard will kill us all. She and Steelfox have had a falling out.”

Joy stared at Innocence, at Steelfox, then turned to her mother. “What do you think?”

“I think we cut our losses and get the hell out of here.”

Joy guarded their retreat and was about to leap across when Haytham said, “Take me with you.”

“What?” Joy said.

“What?” Steelfox said.

“You need me to handle Haboob. And there’s a price. We’re going to try to find Corinna. She’s a survivor. If anyone lived through that, it’s her.”

Steelfox said, “You are as changeable as the wind, my inventor.”

“I have always loved the wind. You did make me into a slave, Steelfox. Take care of Northwing. Tell her I’m leaving the journal with her. She’ll know what I mean.”

When they were across, Snow Pine slashed the rope with Schismglass.

Arrows from the approaching balloons began streaking the air. One hit Snow Pine’s hand. Crying out, she kept hold of the rope but lost the blade.

Schismglass fell to the battlefield below.

“Are you all right, Snow Pine?” Innocence called across the widening gap.

“None of your business!” Joy called back, as she helped haul her mother to safety.

“I don’t want to be enemies!”

“I don’t care about
want
or
fault
!” she shouted back. “Haytham, Haboob, give us altitude!”

“Yes. For now,” Haytham said.

The doom of Svanstad fell below them.

CHAPTER 33

FATES

Nan walked a slanted route through the streets of Svanstad, scraping the snow, and sometimes the stone beneath, with troll-shards. She meant by this to begin a vast
odal
rune that stood for “family land” or “inheritance,” so as to lend strength to the city’s defenders.

As she walked it seemed strange she saw so few people. It was as though it was a plague year and everyone was shut up in their houses. Or as if it were her former house, not so far from Svanstad, the year the last of her and Freidar’s sons died. In those days even a cairn would have seemed more companionable, for at least a cairn does not pretend to be a place of joy. She’d borne only a few months of it before asking Freidar if they might move somewhere far from Soderland.

When she was one-quarter done with the rune, she was near the north gate. And so she knew when the gate groaned open and riders began rushing through.

She knew there was no escape, not for most of the citizens, and not for her. There was no way she could complete this rune.

However, she was not wholly committed to a particular shape. A change of plan, and she could be halfway to completing the
kaun
rune, which could mean “torch.” She would have to be careful, but it could be done.

Her path led away from the gate district, into a poorer region. The Karvaks would not come here first. The military targets, and the best looting, lay elsewhere. The royal family had demanded a certain amount of stonework in every structure, but here the regulation was often ignored, and so wooden and thatch buildings sprouted everywhere, or else stone buildings of haphazard and sometimes stolen materials. Whenever she glimpsed a rider, she did not stop to verify its identity but hid behind walls or dug into the snow. Whenever she saw someone on foot, Nan warned them to run.

Once an old man said, “I told the man in black, and I’ll tell you, I’m not going anywhere!”

“Man in black?” she asked, pausing. “Dark hair? Yellow skin?” But the fellow was already ambling away. She heard screams in the richer districts. There were fewer cries than she might have expected. Perhaps the Karvaks were being more merciful than advertised. But her feet led her on. She had chosen a task, and she would complete it.

It seemed odd to her that in the end Freidar, on his foamreaving trip, had been in less danger than she. Or perhaps that was false, and his doom, too, had come. Then at least she might see him soon.

She saw a boy, with the look of an orphan or a runaway, spot her from a hovel window. “Flee!” she said. “Flee to the harbor and swim! This city is doomed!”

“I’m hiding from the man in black!” he said, apparently trusting her. “He touches people and they disappear! He’s gotten everyone!”

She stared at him. Then she could only laugh like a madwoman. Of course. Had she returned to the Fortress, perhaps she too would have been made to vanish by the man in black.

Such was luck, or fate.

“Run!” she said, and she put all her experience of disciplining boys into her voice. “Doom has come to Svanstad! Run, boy! Run!”

He ran.

She could go to her grave in good conscience.

Boys, I will see you soon
.

A dozen yards to go.

Jewelwolf rode Aughatai into the city behind the first wave of troops. She had no intention of disciplining them; her instructions were to kill everyone. Even her father had always spared people with useful skills, but Svanstad, and Kantenjord had already claimed too much from her.

Most of all, it had poisoned her sister against her.

She spotted an old man the riders had missed and fired an arrow through his head. A stray cat met the same fate, and a dog, and a bewildered toddler clutching a sword, separated in the chaos from his family. The exercise helped calm her. She reached the Fortress and joined the slaughter of the servants, but by then something was greatly nagging at her.

“There are not enough people, General Ironhorn,” she said.

He frowned, as much at the killing, she realized, as at her observation. She resolved to watch him more carefully. But Ironhorn said, “I agree, khatun. We haven’t found the princess, the Mad King, or the Retired King. But that aside, the Fortress and city seem nearly deserted. Most of the people must be hidden somewhere.”

“Could they have escaped?”

“Our spies reported no escape tunnels. Our allies beyond the fjord have reported no fleeing ships.”

Jewelwolf gazed toward the fjord, thinking of the galleon of Kpalamaa. But even it wasn’t large enough to house a whole city. “Bring me the traitor,” she said.

The Oxilander Huginn Sharpspear was brought before her, the spy Grundi in his wake.

“You have saved me a great deal of trouble,” Jewelwolf said, “and you will be rewarded.”

“Thank you, Great Khatun,” said the stout Kantening chieftain. “We wished only to end the conflict.”

“That is my wish as well,” Jewelwolf said. “One thing I do not understand. This is a great city. My troops have put scores to death. There should have been thousands.”

Grundi said, “I do not understand it, Great Khatun. There must be a hiding place.”

Sharpspear seemed genuinely troubled. “Perhaps under the Fortress? That they did not share it with me saddens me greatly—”

A burst of red light blazed forth from the poorest part of the city, and a wall of fire a hundred feet tall began slicing its way through the town. Much of Svanstad was stone, but the flame was so overpowering that fire spread through all parts of the city.

“Up!” Sharpspear said. “To the rooftops! This place is all of stone, but we will need air!”

It seemed good advice. With three arbans beside them, Jewelwolf’s company led the horses to the battlements. There they saw a fiery rune inscribed across the city, wreathed in smoke, like the burning shape of a bird. The screams of Karvaks and horses came to Jewelwolf’s ears.

“A trap,” Jewelwolf said. “Somehow they evacuated the city and set a trap. I have lost many men.”

“They didn’t tell me?” Sharpspear said. He seemed more troubled by this than by the death and destruction. “Why did they not trust me?”

“Khatun!” Ironhorn approached, ignoring Sharpspear. He offered Jewelwolf a black sword she’d feared she’d never see again. “This weapon was found outside the city gates. It fell from your treacherous sister’s balloon.”

“Earth and Sky smile upon me,” Jewelwolf said. She claimed Schismglass and drew Crypttongue. “This is a sign that my plans are correct. Grundi, attend.”

The spy came closer. “Yes, great one. I have wielded Crypttongue before, and if you wish I can do so again—”

His voice broke off in a scream, as she plunged both swords into his chest.

“Why?” he whimpered.

“You have been in the city for days, and somehow the whole population escapes without you knowing? You are either a fool or a traitor. If you are the first, I am rid of you. If you are the second, why, soon I will know all you know.”

As Grundi died, Jewelwolf conducted the experiment she’d failed to complete with Steelfox’s shaman. With great care she was able to precisely shred Grundi’s essence between the weapons. She pored over the contents of his calculating mind and was surprised to see that he’d neither been lax nor treacherous. The Karvaks had simply been outmaneuvered.