Chapter 2
Magdala flew toward the palace, teetering just above the trees on her father’s weary old dragon. Below her, the street choked on sweaty villagers. They surged, torches aloft, along the main road and reminded Magdala of a long glowworm stretching from Owlbright all the way to Largotia.
Beside her, on the sleek red dragon gifted to him by his fiancée, Julian was unusually quiet, his body rigid as a scarecrow.
They landed near the guardhouse, just inside the palace walls. Magdala had never seen the place so chaotic. Servants, guards, courtiers, and ladies-in-waiting scuttled across the gravel courtyard, pale-faced, brows shining with perspiration.
Inside, the guardhouse was a blur of black uniforms and bravado. Magdala wrinkled her nose at a pair of men checking their shotfire chambers while announcing loudly to each other, like performers on a stage, how much weight they lifted during their morning exercises.
Huxley had flown ahead, and Magdala glimpsed him pushing through the crowd toward her and Julian. He leveled his cold eyes on his brother. If Julian’s eyes were blue flames, Huxley’s were glaciers.
“We’re lining the street so the prince’s coach can pass safely through the city,” Huxley said. “I’m up for promotion next year, so I expect that line to hold, Julian. I want it to hold.”
“How violent do you think the people will become?” Magdala asked. Her blood was rising, her skin prickling with excitement. Beside her, Julian was pale as a ghost.
“Very violent. Did you hear me, Julian?” Huxley repeated. “No royalist antics tonight. Do your job. Keep your head screwed on straight. I won’t lose my chance at promotion because of you and your superstitions.”
With a sullen nod, Julian plunged into the press of bodies, heading for the weapon’s closet.
“Rubber pellets!” Huxley shouted after him. “I won’t have you murdering some baker because you’re too absent-minded to load your shotfire properly!”
As Magdala followed Julian, her conscience pricked her. She could not shed the conviction that she was betraying her father and her heritage by protecting the prince tonight.
I’m not protecting the prince, she told herself. I’m protecting the villagers and the other guards. I’m protecting Julian from the rioters and their trampling feet.
There had been a day when protecting Julian would have lit a fire in her heart, but now she just wished he’d been assigned to link arms with someone else.
Her father had poisoned him. Maybe, she thought, the curse was real, and it had already rebounded upon the city of Largotia.
Maybe the people and their hatred were the curse.
“I can’t do this,” Julian said.
“Do what?” Magdala asked, irritated.
“I know our duty is to hold back the mob, but you know how dangerous that will be.”
Magdala crossed her arms. “Angelonia has made you soft.”
Julian frowned. Magdala suspected that he was both proud and ashamed of his alliance with the pixie duchess.
On one hand, he was marrying wealth and prestige; on the other, he was leaving the sweaty, gritty, leather-rash and knuckle-bruise life of the guardsman.
And that was its own kind of lowering. Something no amount of crystal, diamond, or dragon ivory could lift.
“It’s not that,” he snapped. “There is a new heir now. Asherton is a threat to the kingdom, and if he survives to his coronation, he could involve us in the war with Ashkendor and dismantle our whole economy. He could bring the curse down on Allagesh.”
“Don’t think about that,” Magdala said to herself in equal measure. “If we don’t hold the line, people could get trampled. A guard could be injured ...”
“We just need to let them get at the coach for a few minutes. It’ll be over in seconds. Come, Devney, you of all people …”
Magdala held up her hand to silence him. “Don’t question my loyalty. Even without a curse, I despise Prince Asherton. I wish he was dead, but tonight we are guards and our personal prejudices don’t matter.”
“How can you stand there and think of your father in that miserable little mousehole he lives in and tell me you mean to protect the man who stole your home? Magdala.” He caught her elbow and pulled her closer, his nails sharp on her skin.
“You should be learning to dance, to run a household, courting a duke’s son … ”
Magdala’s lip wrinkled and she jerked away from him.
She knew how to dance. Her mother had taught her when she visited her in the Wildlands.
When she was a happy, barefooted girl. Free, untethered, uninhibited.
The queen of the heath, the whole rolling moorland her palace, the spotted hinds her subjects.
Julian could never imagine her that way.
And neither could her father. She was split, two warring women trapped in one body.
You never could give yourself to the cause, her father had said a hundred times. But she didn’t like the empty boasting and fruitless riots of her father’s little band. They lacked cunning. If she were to cut the prince’s throat, she would do it so slyly, no one would ever discover her.
“If Asherton dies, as the curse says he will, Elegy will be empty and I am to be a duke soon,” Julian murmured in her ear.
Magdala realized where Julian was headed. “Are you saying that, should Asherton die, you could use your position to restore my father’s fortunes?”
“If the prince is gone, then yes, I would do that for you.”
“Why?” Magdala asked, narrowing her eyes.
“Because I respect your father.”
Magdala chuffed. “What’s the real reason?”
“We don’t have time for this,” Julian hissed. “Will you let the crowd break through or not?”
The room was so hot and crowded, Magdala couldn’t think. Her head pounded. “I don’t … I don’t know. You should have introduced this to me earlier so I could think about it. It’s a lot to throw at me now.”
“It’s not a complicated decision,” Julian said. “All you have to do is let the crowd through. We’ll be lucky if we can hold them back anyway.”
Magdala looked dubious. “Have you heard of Fennimore the Flat?”
Julian’s eyebrows pinched. “Who?”
“He was a royal guard who let the people break free during a night like this, and he was trampled so severely, they said his body was as wide as half the village square, and paper-thin.”
Julian crinkled his nose. “You’re revolting.”
“No, Fennimore the Flat was revolting. Soon, he’ll be forgotten in favor of Julian the Jammed.”
“Oh, shut it, Magdala. You’re such a little coward,” Julian snapped.
Magdala’s nostrils flared, her eyes darkened, and Julian sensibly strode to the armory room. Magdala followed him, her stomach in knots.
After arming herself with a rusty shotfire loaded with rubber pellets, Magdala sorted through the cracked and dented forearm shields before she found one that was still moderately sturdy.
Julian took a long, hollow dragon bone and shoved a fizzing mushroom into the end.
Sparks flickered on the mushroom’s head.
Magdala’s anxiety rose. What if Julian did let the crowd break through the line of guards? All he had to do was unloop his arm from hers. What if his reckless hatred got her killed?
“Your armor,” the armorer said, handing Magdala a domed wooden helmet and a leather vest stuffed with cork. Magdala slipped on the vest first. The helmet concealed her face, with just a rectangle for her eyes, her peripheral vision obstructed. Her breath turned to water droplets on the musty wood.
Without waiting for Julian, Magdala pushed through the mass of damp, muscular bodies back toward the door.
Outside, the distant crowd hummed like cicadas on a summer night. Heat lightning strobed in the clouds, and the heavy air was acrid with smoke and human sweat. Magdala crossed the narrow bridge over the palace moat. The river sparkled as it slid slowly below her. She shuddered.
Shoving men, women, and even children out of her way, she made for the line of guards blocking off the main road. A few villagers resisted, but most of them took one look at her broad frame, made bulkier by the padded leather, and shied away.
A small gap formed in the line and she stepped into it, linking arms with the men to her right and left. Julian caught up to her and slipped in beside her, his arm looped through hers.
She couldn’t see his face, but his eyes glinted in the torchlight through the slit in his helmet.
“Hold, Julian,” Magdala said.
His body was board-stiff, his knees locked.
“Relax,” she hissed.
Wheels clattered on cobbles, and the crowd surged forward. Shouts and jeers swept over them like an advancing storm, a rumble that fell into a chant:
“Royal blood for Allagesh! Down with the bastard! Royal blood for Allagesh! Down with the bastard!”
A fizz and a yelp cut the commotion, and Magdala glimpsed one of her colleagues prodding a villager with his sparkstick, the mushroom at the end a confetti of blue in the flashing dark. The man spasmed and fell and crawled away, one arm hanging limp.
Julian’s elbow pinched Magdala’s bicep. She dug her fingers into his arm, holding him in place, hoping to keep him from faltering.
Heat rose from the mob in oily waves. The chanting crescendoed until it thrummed in Magdala’s chest. Villagers strained against her.
A man and a woman filled her vision—all angry eyes and flashing teeth.
She could smell sourdough on their breath and wondered if it was from the same bread she’d made hours before.
The man reached over her shoulder, pumped his fist, and shrieked, “Royal blood for Allagesh! Down with the bastard!”
The woman tried to lean between Magdala and Julian, her voice shrill in Magdala’s ear. Magdala held her ground. The bodies shifted, compressed, crashing into the line of guards and then falling back, crashing again and falling back again, like the relentless rhythm of ocean waves.