turned, and the sharp lines of her face locked rigid. She advanced, her hook-headed staff tapping the stone, signalling to her lackeys as she came. ‘Sand-flower!’ she called, her eyes burning. ‘Impeding the work of God’s messengers is a vile crime …’
Chel tried to stand his ground again, but his legs were shaking uncontrollably. He was safe here, surely, within the walls of the palace. A sworn man, a guest of the duke—
‘… But the release of heretics is beyond contempt.’
‘What? You mean … But that wasn’t me!’
‘There will be a reckoning, boy!’
Something had happened out in the bay. One of the seneschals gasped, ‘Beneath a flag of truce no less!’ Others around him shushed and jeered. The duke’s barges had fired on the little Nort boat. Then the mutterings rose in pitch and urgency. ‘What in hells!’ a guardsman shrieked. Chel turned from the prelate and peered out over the jostling assemblage, toward the harbour.
‘Sand-flower! Do not turn your back to me.’ He heard Vashenda shout over the crowd. ‘Brother Hurkel,’ she called, ‘take the Andriz!’
The floating silken birds were spewing flame. Streams of liquid fire poured from the sky, dousing the duke’s barges. Screams filled the air as the flaming mass gushed over them, the men within scrabbling overboard as the flames roared up. Tin hats glinted on the waters of the bay, while gobbets of fire spat and hissed, burning on the surface.
‘Witchfire!’ came the cry along the battlements. Others joined it. People started to run, and at once the ramparts churned.
‘Come hither, Andriz.’ Chel turned to see Brother Hurkel come lumbering into view, his grin undiminished by the chaos around them. ‘You’re late for your lesson.’
‘He means to take you, Master Chel, Norts be damned.’ Heali was at Chel’s shoulder. ‘I’ll stall him. Make for the sea-fort!’
Chel ran, the duke’s roar to attack ringing over the thundering of his heart in his ears. He pelted off down the rampart, weaving in between hurrying guardsmen, servants and seneschals, all of whom had remembered urgent business elsewhere. Witchfire! he thought. Mercunin was right, we shall all of us burn. From behind him came Heali’s bright wheedling. ‘Ah, Brother Hurkel, if I might—’
‘Fuck off, Heali,’ was all Chel heard before the duke’s signal drums rang out from the walls, loud over the sounds of the fleeing crowd. Ahead of him, the massive skein-bows cranked and turned, while ghastly burning smells were drifting over the palace, borne by the same wind that kept the silk-birds aloft.
Chel rounded a turret as great thrums filled the air. A whistling volley of giant bolts, each as long as Chel was tall, soared out over the bay, blurs rippling through the air. He heard the distant eruptions of water and great tin booms like kettledrums where they found their mark. A ragged cheer rose from those guards still at the wall as the spray subsided.
Quickly, gasps and oaths replaced the cheer. Chel slowed, snatching a glance over the bay. The black ships remained, unsunk, bobbing on the gentle waves.
‘Are they made of iron?’ one of the guardsmen said, incredulous. ‘How the fuck do they float?’
Something flew out from the black ship, something like a fireball, trailing bright flame and black smoke. The fireball shot over the water, faster than a skein-bolt, screaming like a demon. It smashed into the headland below the sea-fort, exploding in white and crimson flame and sending chunks of rock soaring into the air, stone splashing out into the bay.
Chel tumbled and skittered, his heart galloping up his throat in what felt like a desperate bid to escape. ‘What in all the saints …?’
Another fireball launched from the black ship, then the turret ahead of him exploded. The blast showered flame and stone across the walls as the turret’s skein-bow, arms burning, pitched over the collapsing battlement and dropped into the bay. A wall of choking smoke blew over the rampart, forcing Chel to hunch and gasp, while stone shards and pebbles rained down around him. From somewhere through the fog came the sound of Brother Hurkel’s calls.
Chel wiped at his eyes and pushed himself to his feet as another explosion rocked the stone beneath him. ‘Fuck. This.’
As smothering clouds of smoke and ash billowed over the walls, Chel ran.
***
He dropped from the wall above the stables. The palace was emptying, he couldn’t see Sokol and his retinue, and their mounts were gone too. They must have cleared out at the first warning bells. How very Sokol. Chel took a long, ragged breath to try to calm his nerves. He had to get out before the Norts razed the entire port. There were still horses left, although not for much longer: already palace staff were tussling with liveried riders over the ownership and use of those that remained. Then, of course, there was Brother Hurkel and his companion confessors to consider. If witchfire hadn’t put them off his trail, they may yet be lying in wait.
A narrow, two-wheeled cart stood just beside the stable arch, abandoned midway through unloading supplies for the kitchens from the look of it. It stood, facing the wrong way, a burly, bored-looking mule hitched before it. A dusty cloak lay across the driver’s bench.
‘Perfect.’
He jumped up to the cart and threw the cloak over himself. Sweating from the morning’s heat, the strain of Hurkel’s chase, the Nort attack and now cart-theft to boot, Chel geed the reins and drove the cart and mule forward, wheeling around the stables and toward the main courtyard and the outside world.
***
Chel couldn’t keep his hands tight on the reins. They shook and slipped with his still-thumping heartbeats as well as with each rut on the road. He’d joined the main road out to the provinces, but all around him people surged, creating a long line back to the city. He could only hope that Vashenda and Hurkel had more to worry about than his escape.
A cloaked figure poked his head out from the crates in the back of the cart. ‘Why are we slowing?’
‘Argh! Who in hells are you?’ Chel shrieked.
‘We’ve been invaded! Invaded! They’re going to kill us all! Why aren’t we going faster?’
‘Because this road is full of people, you plank. I’d rather not tip this thing and kill us and them before we get anywhere.’
Something about the way his companion stiffened when he’d called him a plank bothered Chel. ‘Who are you? Why were you hiding in this cart?’
The figure pulled back his hood and looked up at him. Chel’s insides congealed. He looked back at the pallid face of the hang-dog prince, the runt of the litter: Tarfel Merimonsun, Junior Prince of Vistirlar.
‘Five bloody, blasted hells …’
‘Why aren’t we going faster?’ shrieked the prince.
‘Your highness! I’m so— I didn’t realize. I was just trying to get out of the city and find my liege—’
‘Immaterial!
