02 - The Barbed Rose (47 page)

The sudden shocking clangor of palace alarm bells startled them all. Bella dropped her plate and it broke. Rozite started to cry. Lorynda jumped, lost her balance and fell onto her mother’s lap. Carefully, Kallista set her plate on the low serving table, lest she drop hers, too, secured her daughter and opened her mind to call the farspeaker she knew.
Fenetta, what’s happening?

Attack
. The other woman sounded near panic.
Betrayal. They’re in the palace!

“What?”
She spoke aloud and in her mind, then cut the connection with Fenetta. The woman didn’t know any more, and panic was catching. Kallista snatched magic and sent it searching, as she should have done to begin with.

“What is it?” Joh was rebuckling the sword belt he’d just removed. Torchay already stood at the open doorway, conferring with the guards beyond, their own and the prinsipelli’s.

“Rebels in the palace.” Kallista pitched her voice loud enough for everyone to hear.

“How?” Stone caught the shield Fox tossed him. “We’ve been watching. How could they slip past?”

“Demons hiding them the way our magic can hide us, maybe.” The idea terrified her.

Kallista’s magic zeroed in on the open gate—gates. Two—no, three of them now as the third opened and rebel fighters swarmed through onto the palace grounds and into the buildings. The warren of doors and corridors gave them a thousand points of entry, a thousand ways through. She tried to stop them, touch their minds to frighten them, inhibit their advance, but they were too many and too far away.

“Kallista.”
Torchay’s voice penetrated her distant focus. “Major, what are your orders?”

Her gaze swept the room, all eyes looking to her, even her screaming daughters who reached for her comfort. Kallista shut down her rising terror, turned her fear for her family to determination. “We stop them,” she said.

“Well, yes, of course.” Stone stood by the door, hands on his hips. “But, exactly
how?
”

“The children can’t stay here. The rebels will know this place is ours. Send them all with the guards to Viyelle’s parents. The rebels are on the Summerglen side. They’ll be safer in Winterhold with Torvylls.”

The two oldest of Viyelle’s sedili, Mowbray and Dessa, took the twins from those who held them. The servants appeared, one with Aisse’s squalling Niona, the other with necessary baby gear.

“Merinda, you go with them.” Kallista gave the healer a hug and pushed her toward the door. “You’ll be safe. Gweric, you, too.”

“I can fight,” the boy protested. “I can see.”

Kallista grabbed him by the tunic and hauled him close. “You can obey orders,” she growled. “If you were in the army like Mowbray soon will be, you would obey orders. Obey now. I need you to help protect the babies. You have to see the way. Keep them from walking into trouble. Hear me? I
need
you for this.” She let him go.

Gweric drew himself to his full height, tugging his tunic back into place. “Yes, Major. I will guide them.”

“Lieutenant,” Kallista called to Joh, summoning him. “Make sure the guard knows to follow Gweric. He can see the safe paths with his magic. You don’t have to tell them it’s of the West.”

Joh saluted and left to do her bidding. The guard sergeants would listen to him as one of her godmarked iliasti, if not as an army officer. The children were ready, the burdens divided among all the noncombatants so no one was unduly laden.

“Go.” Kallista motioned them on. “Be safe.”

No time to kiss her babies. If she did, her control would shatter. But as she gathered magic, she let it embrace them, surround them, guards and all, with protection. Then, closing her eyes, she turned the magic toward demons.

There and there and over there. Kallista’s magic flew straight and true. The demons were inside the city, but not yet inside the palace, spread far distant from each other so she couldn’t take them all out at once. Evil they might be, but she didn’t remember any claiming demons were stupid. They evidently could learn from their failures.

So could she. These were lesser demons than the foulness she had destroyed before, and her ilian had been only six strong then. They were together now, the eight of them bearing marks. If they were meant to be nine, the One would provide.

“South,” she said. Ashbel was the strongest of the demons. They should attack it first while they were fresh. “The demons haven’t reached the palace. We’ll stop them before they do.”

The palace corridors alternated between empty and echoing and crowded with bodies, depending on the corridor and the moment. At first, the bodies were fleeing courtiers and servants, but as Kallista and the others worked their way south, courtiers gave way to soldiers rushing to meet rebels or bearing their wounded comrades back for healing.

The soldiers parted to let them past. Many recognized them not just as a naitan going to fight, but as the godmarked, and the soldiers murmured blessings.

Kallista used magic to find her way around the fighting. They didn’t need the delay. The rebels hadn’t yet penetrated all the passages. She kept light contact with the presence of the other two demons to make sure one didn’t suddenly surge ahead, get nearer the palace, but Ashbel was her target. The massed rebel soldiers pouring in through the city’s broad south gate carried the demon along with their rapid advance.

The godmarked caught up with General Uskenda in the Southside Temple plaza, ordering her troops for a stand.

“How far?” Kallista startled the general when she spoke.

“Why didn’t you see this coming?” Uskenda accepted a note from a runner.

“I’m a farseer, not a foreseer. They hid their actions from any sight I have. Besides, you knew it was coming. Didn’t need a foreseer for that.” Kallista watched the infantry fall into line, cavalry ranged behind them. “Begging your indulgence, but might you not stop them surer if your troops had protection?”

“First volley to shock them. Then behind barricades.” Uskenda nodded at the carts to either side of the square loaded with stones and sandbags, ready to be pushed into position.

“How far?” Kallista asked again.

“You going after them single-handed?” Uskenda raised an eyebrow.

“After the demon that drives them, yes.”

Uskenda shuddered, traced a compass over her mouth with her thumb and kissed it. “Don’t tell me about demons. I don’t want to know.”

Another runner dashed up and signaled his news to the general as he doubled over gasping for breath.

“Two streets,” Uskenda said. “First rebels are only two streets away on a front ten streets wide centered on the temple.”

“Then we’ll go eleven streets wide.” Kallista saluted.

“Why didn’t you just look for yourself?” the general asked.

“I’m saving the magic for when I really need it,” Kallista called over her shoulder as she followed Torchay west. She chuckled at the general’s elaborate shudder.

They had to circle twelve streets wide to get around the spreading rebel front. The rebels’ disciplined advance worried Kallista. She’d expected them to stop and loot, behave like a mob. Instead, they moved like an army.

The demon Ashbel was in the center of the approaching troops. Kallista peered around the edge of the recessed doorway where they’d hidden. The rebels didn’t march ramrod straight, eyes front. They were wary, alert, one group watching while another advanced. Much like Kallista and her ilian had been moving.

Trying to get close to the demon through that kind of army without notice was more than she wanted to try. They were eight now, and Ashbel was less than Tchyrizel had been. Maybe she didn’t need to be so close.

“Up.” She pointed to the door and the house behind it.

Obed nodded and, with Fox, quietly forced the door. It was a merchant’s house. The children huddled terrified in a second floor room while their parents stood on the stairway, swords in their trembling hands. Torchay touched finger to lips, asking for quiet as he glided up the stairs, Kallista just behind him.

“Loyal Adarans,” she murmured. “I am Major Naitan Varyl. We have need of your roof.”

“Take it,” one of the three men responded. The two women nodded agreement.

Kallista pointed to Fox and Joh. “With me. Need your eyes. The rest of you stay here and guard.”

“My eyes don’t work,” Fox said as he followed to the attic stair.

“Whatever it is that does work, that’s what I need.” Kallista let Torchay lead the way to the narrow dormer and open it. She hadn’t ordered him along. He was always at her side. She couldn’t order him away.

“Clear.” He crawled through onto the steep slate roof and moved aside to let the others out.

Kallista set Joh to scan toward the north and deepened her link with him so she could slide into his vision at need. Then she rode her hunter magic east toward the demon. A smear of darkness over the center of the rebel advance, it seemed to coalesce into something thicker, darker, crouched above the shoulders of a woman in brilliant cloth-of-gold.

“D’you see it?” Torchay’s attention roved deliberately from place to place, watching for danger.

“Yes.” She took a deep breath, drawing magic as if inhaling it with the air. “Let’s see if I can kill it from here.”

Kallista shaped the magic, named it, and
pushed
, directing it toward Ashbel. No naitan before had been able to send the dark veil in a single direction, in the years before this magic had been lost. It had always spread in all directions like waves from a pebble dropped in still water. Until Kallista.

Pushing the veil like this gave it power and distance. But not enough. She could see it fade into a dark glitter before it ever reached the smear of demon presence.

She swore under her breath, mostly. “Too far. We have to be closer. At least four streets closer.”

She plunged back through the window, almost falling on her face when her foot caught on the sill in her haste. Fox caught her by the back of her trousers and set her upright.

The crackling boom of a musket volley made her jump as it signaled the rebels’ arrival at the temple square.

“Let’s go. With luck, the battle on the plaza will distract them enough we can get as close as we need without too much trouble.”

“How much is too much?” Torchay clattered down the stairs behind her.

“Stopping to fight.” She handed a blue-and-silver ribbon token to the householders for repair authorization with her thanks as they left, warding the broken door with an aversion spell.

They dashed through the streets behind the rebels, following Kallista’s hunter magic. She considered veiling them from sight, but decided against it. At this range, it was well-nigh useless, and as she’d told the general, she thought it better to conserve the magic.

Aisse was tiring. Fox fell back to help her and Kallista slowed the pace.

“No,” Aisse gasped. “Run fast. I keep up.”

“We have two more demons after this one. Don’t spend all your strength now.” Kallista rounded a corner and was hauled back by Torchay. They’d caught up with the fighting.

Kallista shut her eyes and tapped Fox’s
knowing
, using it to see where her own vision couldn’t. The square was pure chaos, hand-to-hand fighting where the rebels had torn apart the barricades, mixed with ragged volleys of musket and crossbow fire.

The Ashbel demon had spread itself thinner yet, filling its fighters with a violent frenzy that had them throwing themselves bare-handed at the barricade remnants. The thing was scarcely a double score of paces away, but those paces were filled with armed and vicious guards. Was this close enough to destroy it?

She drew magic and shaped it. As she hadn’t yet learned how to make it curve around corners, Kallista stepped out into the street, her bodyguards at her side, and
pushed
. The magic rushed toward Ashbel, dropping a scattering of its guards, and struck. The demon screamed, its essence dissolving. Some, but not all.

Ashbel had spread itself so thin, the dark magic couldn’t reach all of it. The demon shrieked again, pulling its far-flung bits in to coalesce deeper in the massed guards. The small woman in the golden dress collapsed bonelessly, silently on the cobbles.

“Oskina Reinine?” one of them said, before his head lifted and he turned to look directly at Kallista, his will coopted by the demon.

“They’re coming,” Torchay said. The rest of their eight stood with them as the berserker rebels charged.

Again, Kallista drew magic, strengthening her iliasti. The demon would be easier to kill, now it was condensed, if she could only get into range.

“Closer,” she said. “I need to be closer.”

“Ah,” Obed said. Then with a deep-throated shout, he whirled his sword over his head and charged the oncoming rebels.

Her own terrified laughter in her ears, Kallista followed on his heels, shaping the magic as they ran. They plowed into the rebel line with a clash of steel on steel, cutting through them like a ship through storm waves, battered and wallowing, but still making headway.

Five paces, ten they advanced. The demon’s new mount, a bearded man in a brown cloak, screamed at the troops until spittle flew from his mouth. A rebel loomed before her, then vanished as Torchay’s twin swords crossed paths at his neck.

“Magic?” he gasped. “Demon? You are taking care of it, right?” He spun to ward off another threat, but Viyelle was already pulling back her bloodied sword.

Another few paces. Kallista packed the magic tighter. She’d been told gunpowder exploded more violently when tightly packed. Maybe magic would work the same way. One more step—She edged past Obed’s elbow and
pushed
.

The magic sped, faster even than her enhanced senses could follow, slammed into the demon and burst into invisible fireworks. Ashbel didn’t have time to scream. It simply vanished into nothingness, swept away by the magic’s fire.

Obed grabbed her arm and yanked her back into the ilian’s center as Fox parried the thrust that would have skewered her. A swish of Obed’s sword and the rebel died. The man the demon had been riding lay broken on the paving. Their leaders were down. The rebels would realize it soon and lay down their arms.