Chapter 11
Eleven
Avalon
No. No!
I refused to believe my eyes. Zier’s legs dangled as he hung suspended above the courtyard steps, a noose of air around his throat. The executioner was huge, his hand raised in a fist, more for the spectacle than for the necessity of the movement to direct the magic.
“No!” I screamed out loud, dodging Hayle’s hands as I sprinted across the cobblestoned landing at the top of the stairs to the Hall of Ebrus.
Zier was still alive, his legs peddling lightly, his fingers around the air on his throat like he could grip it. He couldn’t. I couldn’t. But I had to try.
I could hear the pounding of the guys’ feet behind me, but I was running faster than I’d ever moved before. It was irrational, my movements led more by instinct than any higher reasoning.
Leaping up on the stool they must have made him stand on, I hacked at the air with my dagger. “Come on, come on! Don’t you dare die.”
“Leave…” he gasped.
There was no resistance to my knife; it was air, for fuck’s sake. “No! You’re important too,” I grunted. Clawing at his throat, I screamed in frustration.
Suddenly, there was an audible pop around us.
Zier fell to the ground, and I went down with him.
He desperately sucked in oxygen, but we didn’t have time to let him recover.
I looked up to see Hayle beating the executioner—maybe that was why the magic had released—but we weren’t out of the woods yet.
Vox was surrounded by six guards who’d poured from their positions, and he was fending them off, but they were taking all his attention.
There were hundreds of people gathered here to witness Zier’s execution, all staring up at us, dumbfounded.
What did we do now? How did we get out of this mess?
There were six of us and hundreds of them.
Already, there were members of Baron Vylan’s personal guard pushing toward us through the crowd.
I pulled at Zier’s arm, and he climbed to his feet, the sound of his breathing a hard crackle that was worrying. But his death would be a lot more permanent if we didn’t hurry.
“Go, go, go,” I breathed, shoving at him. I could see the soldiers lining up their weapons, and so did Zier. Grabbing me, he pushed me in front of himself, exposing his back to potential gunfire.
Lierick met us halfway across cobblestones. He shook his head at me, like he thought I was insane, which was probably the truth. Then he stood at the top of the stairs, and his voice was in my head.
My name is Lierick Hanovan. I am the Heir to the Second Line. As we speak, my people are marching to reclaim North’s Edge, our ancestral home. We will once more be part of Ebrus society. We will stand as part of the checks and balances to the First Line.
We do not want to fight, but we will have our place back on the Conclave. We will ensure that one Line no longer rules Ebrus with an iron fist. This will be a country for us all, not just for those Feodore Vylan deems worthy.
To the Dawn Army, I implore you to protect the interests of Ebrus, not of just those of the Baron of the First Line.
Think of your family, your friends, your Line.
Remember your oaths to the Goddess. Do not fight your brothers and sisters for a man who does not care if they starve to death in the West of Ebrus, for a man who would sacrifice your sons and daughters to his sociopathic son.
He purposefully left Vox out, which I appreciated. But Lierick wasn’t done. He projected what could only be a memory plucked from Yaron Vylan’s mind.
It showed Yaron sitting in the Baron’s office, both of them holding expensive liquor in shining crystal glasses. You want to sink the boats? That’ll piss off fucking Taeme. Yaron cackled, and even in this memory, it sounded unhinged.
Feodore Vylan pinched his nose. Pissing off Taeme isn’t the point, son.
The point is that the Goddess will do the job of purifying the Lines for us.
If the drought goes on, and I can keep Rovan pushing back anything that looks like drought-breaking weather, they will just be bones in the dirt come next year, and the Eleventh and Twelfth Lines will be functionally extinct.
He took a sip of his drink. I’ll use it as a reason to subsume control of the rest of the lower Lines.
Obviously, they’re all being poorly run.
By the time I have to pass this mantle to you, there will be no Lines.
There’ll be the Vylan monarchy and our kneeling subjects.
Yaron laughed, the sound making my skin crawl. Long live the king.
I shook myself from the memory, gripping Zier’s hand and moving toward the rest of our group.
Iker hustled me toward Vox and Hayle, and we raced toward the crowd.
We needed to get lost in the masses while everyone stood too stunned to move.
At least, I assumed they were stunned and not being held by Iker and Lierick.
All of them except some of the Baron’s guards, who were probably wearing tals to protect against the Second Line, and would have missed that entire speech.
A girl appeared from a side alley, waving us over. She had a plain brown skirt, with her hair in two braids down the side of her head. “Heir Hanovan, this way,” she hissed.
Lierick looked relieved. Whoever this girl was, she was obviously known to the Second Line.
She led us between the buildings, until we were past the fine townhouses and business, to where the homes became more average.
We were dodging clotheslines and children playing in the street.
I couldn’t see the guards anymore, but I wouldn’t assume we were safe until we were out of Fortaare completely.
The girl led us all the way to where the houses turned from homes to hovels.
Here, logs bound together and covered in canvas sheets constituted shelter.
The people down here looked ragged and dirty, or impoverished and ill, a broad spectrum of the desperate combined with the downtrodden.
This was the part of Fortaare I doubted any of the other Lines saw.
The dirty secret of Fortaare.
The girl opened the tent flap, and inside were several men. I held myself stiff, and Vox gripped my hand, placing me tightly between him and Hayle.
“Heir Hanovan, we felt your magic and thought perhaps you might be in need of some aid,” an older man said. His hair was ratty, and he was dirty, but there was something in his eyes that told me he wasn’t the usual down-on-his-luck camp-dweller.
That was confirmed when both Iker and Lierick went over and hugged the man. “It’s good to see you, Stellen.”
“Your father isn’t going to be happy you announced it like that,” the man murmured, and Lierick shrugged.
“Desperate times.”
Stellen nodded. “Indeed.” He wrinkled his nose. “No offense, Heir Hanovan, but you smell fucking awful.”
Lierick laughed, and it made me relax infinitesimally. “I have no doubt. If you have a change of clothes, I’d appreciate it.”
I moved toward Zier, who was resting on the ground.
His neck was mottled black and red, making me worry that they might’ve done some serious damage.
Squatting down in front of him, I looked closely at the skin.
I wished I was a healer, or even that Acacia or Viana were here with their Twelfth Line remedies. They’d know what to do.
“Don’t look so panicked, Avalon. I’m okay,” he croaked out, and it sounded so painful that I wanted to cry.
I licked my dry lips, holding back the emotion that threatened to consume me. The adrenaline was still pumping in my veins, pushing me closer and closer to a breakdown. “I’m sorry we were almost too late.” I was sorry for so much more than that, but if I got started, I wasn’t sure I’d ever stop.
He lifted a hand, stroking my hair back from my sweaty face. “You came, and that’s all that matters.”
“Your Barony… Eaglehoth—” I stuttered out.
He gave a solemn shake of his head. “They know what to do. I prepared Ivo and Kyler for a time where they’d have to step up as interim Barons. This isn’t your fault, or even his,” Zier said, gesturing to Lierick. “Things were always going to get worse before they could get better.”
I nodded slowly. It didn’t mean that it was okay, or that I had to like it.
The girl with the braids appeared beside me, holding out a skirt that was so like the ones I used to wear back in Rewill, it was almost nostalgic. It had been so long since I’d worn a skirt.
Epsy slid from the bag as I placed it on the ground, running up my pants and rubbing his soft fur on my face. “I’m okay. Are you okay? I know that was a lot of running.”
Epsy chittered, but didn’t say anything more as he ran around the small tent. He was taking his role as sole animal companion very seriously.
As I shucked off my gross pants, Zier averted his eyes up to the ceiling. Modesty was probably useless at this point. I’d almost seen an innocent man be murdered; I was fairly sure that my naked legs wouldn’t be the most scandalous thing that happened today.
Still, Hayle let out a low, threatening noise until everyone else was staring at the ceiling. Rolling my eyes, I dragged the skirt on quickly.
Lierick chuckled softly. No one had needed to look at the roof when they’d changed their pants. Double standards. “Tell me what news there is from home,” he said quietly to Stellen.
Stellen looked almost excited. “They’ve made it around Eaglehoth and have dropped off a large contingent of soldiers at North’s Edge. They’ve gone home. The rest sit in the Alutian sea, in front of Freeman’s Cove. They’re awaiting their orders.”
“My father?”
“Aboard the warships. There is word that he is in talks with the Baron of the Seventh Line to allow them to dock off Bine.”
“And the plan?”
Stellen shook his head. “Obsolete now after your little… announcement.”
If Lierick was chastened about that, he didn’t show it. He straightened, shaking the spy’s hand. “Thank you, Stellen.”
“It’s my honor, Heir. We are ready to return home now. The end is in sight.”
I didn’t think it was. I felt like it was all just beginning.
The girl with the braids led us from the tent, and we walked just a little behind her until we ended up near the western gates. She picked up a basket of apples from a vendor in the market stalls that crowded the entrance to the city, and walked over to the guards.
The girl was beautiful, but not in a memorable way.
It was hard to explain; it was like she was plain until she turned her sparkling eyes toward you, and you got transfixed by her pouty lips and her cute freckles.
But those weren’t attributes that would make sense if you were describing her to a guard.
She made a great spy, that was for sure.
The girl said something to one of the guards, and as he pulled something from his pocket, she reached for it, but the basket of apples in her arm wobbled, then fell.
She let out a sad cry, and the guard immediately dipped down to help her collect them.
The other guard was transfixed by the girl’s cleavage as she leaned over to pick up the apples, her skirt pulled tight over a round bottom.
We walked past, completely unseen. I probably could’ve walked up and stabbed the gate guard, and he wouldn’t have taken his eyes off the girl’s ass.
Finally outside the walls, we moved quickly off the road and toward a rocky outcropping.
The western gate held the road between Fortaare and Hamor, but we didn’t want to return by any means quite so public.
We veered off the path, taking a livestock trail that would lead south across the mountainside, large boulders perched like a child’s marbles on the side.
We were safe for now, but the battle lines had been drawn. The war had come. Now everything was in the hands of fate.