40. Astra
Astra
Pryce crossed the landing before my knife reached shoulder height.
Jonah caught his first strike against the wall and turned it aside.
The guards behind Pryce backed through the dark-silver doors in formation, forcing us to fight for the threshold before we could enter the witness floor.
Caspian drove through on Jonah’s right. I followed with Delphine’s short knife and put it through the throat of the first guard who tried to close the door between us.
The room beyond was the one where five hundred witnesses had once watched me refuse the First Chair.
Now the witness tiers held silver-corded guards three deep at every stair.
Blades struck hard enough to ring off the marble rails.
Boots slipped in blood where the first ranks had met.
The tiers rose above us, most of their seats abandoned, while the fight spread toward the dais.
Delphine caught the right-hand door before it could swing back and wedged a broken spear shaft beneath it.
The freed column pushed through behind her in pairs, then spread along the lowest tier instead of crowding our backs.
A guard lunged down from the first gallery.
Kieran met him on the stair, knocked his blade against the rail, and sent it spinning into the empty witness seats.
The guard followed it a heartbeat later.
Pell, the Tower key-holder who had walked with us from the mill, took a spear low in the side near the second gallery stair.
He folded around the shaft without a sound.
Aldric left his line and caught him before his head struck the marble.
He broke the shaft short, dragged Pell behind an overturned bench, and pressed a wadded sleeve against the wound.
Pell’s hand closed around Aldric’s wrist and stayed there.
A guard crossed the aisle toward them before Aldric could stand.
I intercepted the strike with my knife, felt the blade skid along my knuckles, and drove my shoulder into the guard’s chest. He went over the bench backward.
Aldric regained his feet and left two freed prisoners holding pressure where his hand had been.
Pell was still breathing when we moved on.
Caspian fought bare-wristed at my shoulder.
His blade moved only when it had a target.
Twice he found gaps the rite-guard corrected too late.
The second time, he caught the falling guard by the collar and lowered him enough that our front rank could step over rather than trip.
Kieran ran the gallery stair and knocked one guard over its rail before the next turned.
The cut on his forearm had soaked through his sleeve, but his grip still held.
Jonah looked once across the floor, shouted for the left rank to shift around a fallen bench, and opened a path before the guards could use the obstruction themselves.
When a woman in our line froze at the body beneath her feet, Jonah took her elbow, put her behind him, and filled the place she had left without breaking stride.
Delphine held the service-stair entrance until Kieran doubled back and cleared the two men pressing her there.
At the chamber’s far side, an inner arch opened into the antechamber above the last descent to the founding basin.
I could hear the water beyond it, louder whenever the guards’ movement left the passage briefly clear.
Every surviving guard was moving toward that sound.
They yielded the galleries rank by rank, keeping their faces toward us, then crowded the arch four deep across a passage made for two.
The front pair fought while the men behind braced their shoulders and replaced anyone who fell.
They were not trying to retake the witness floor.
They only needed to keep us from the stair until the Rite finished.
We reached the base of the dais with the arch thirty feet away.
Aldric’s line had thinned until gaps opened between people who could no longer cover one another.
Guards filled those gaps and forced us back against the first tier.
A bench went over beneath the pressure of the freed column behind us, trapping one man’s leg until three strangers hauled the wood off him.
The water at my wrist pulled toward the arch.
I could have answered it, but the room was packed shoulder to shoulder; any current strong enough to clear the guards would strike our people first. The arch was closing, with guards between us and no safe way to clear them.
Magnus Ashford stood at the base of his family’s dais. He drew a narrow sword from the leather scabbard beneath his coat: old steel and a plain house hilt worn smooth. He turned the seat’s ring once, stopped, and closed both hands around the grip.
“Get him through,” he told me, looking at Caspian. “I’ve already argued with him once.”
Caspian went still. “Father—”
“I held this floor for twelve days.” Magnus raised the blade into the same stance Caspian used. “I can hold it a little longer. Go.”
He stepped through the remains of Aldric’s line and into the narrow approach to the arch.
He turned slowly into position, his back resisting the movement.
One knee stayed bent until he shifted his weight and tried again.
Then the blade settled at the correct angle, point high enough to threaten the first guard’s face and hilt close to his ribs.
The first guard checked at the point. Magnus used the hesitation to take two more steps and put himself between them and the rest of us. “Move,” he said without looking back.
The first guard attacked high. Magnus caught the strike on a parry that drove both blades toward his shoulder.
The impact bowed his arms and opened the cut he had taken on the bridge.
Blood reached his cuff. He rolled his wrists before the guard could press the advantage and cut across the man’s forearm.
The sword fell from numb fingers. Magnus kicked it behind him without looking away from the next guard.
The second man came from his left. Magnus turned into the shoulder check rather than giving the guard room to swing.
They struck the side of the arch together.
Magnus’s head snapped back against the stone.
He lost half a step, recovered it, and drove the house hilt beneath the guard’s jaw.
The man dropped, blocking the approach for the one behind him.
Magnus held the opening long enough for Kieran and Jonah to drive Delphine and the front of Aldric’s line through.
Beside me, Caspian’s breath broke rhythm. He took the next step anyway.
A third guard stepped over the fallen man and came in low while Magnus was still recovering from the turn.
The house blade was too long for the angle.
Magnus tried to bring the hilt down, but the guard was already inside his reach.
Caspian saw it at the same moment I did.
His hand closed on my sleeve and then let go.
The blade entered below Magnus’s ribs. His mouth opened, but I heard nothing over the blades and shouting.
The guard pulled the weapon free and drew back for another thrust. Caspian broke from the line before it landed.
He struck once across the guard’s throat and caught Magnus with his free arm as his knees folded.
The weight took them both to the floor. Magnus landed on his side with one hand still closed around the house hilt.
Blood spread beneath his coat and ran into the grout between the marble slabs.
Caspian rolled Magnus onto his back, opened the torn coat, and pressed both hands over the wound.
Blood pushed between his fingers at once.
I arrived half a step later with my knife raised.
Two guards still held the near edge of the arch.
I put myself between them and Caspian while Jonah and Kieran forced them backward.
A blade scraped the wall beside my head.
Delphine caught the attacker’s wrist from the side and pulled him off balance for me.
Behind us, Caspian said his father’s name twice, low and close to his face.
Magnus opened his eyes. He found Caspian above him and worked one word past a breath that would not fill his lungs.
“Good.”
His fingers opened around the hilt. One breath moved shallowly through him, then failed to become another. His head shifted against the stone, and he was still.
Caspian made no sound. His hands stayed over the wound, red to the wrists, though the blood had already begun to slow. He looked at Magnus’s face and did not look away.
Aldric cleared the arch before the remaining guards could close it against us.
He struck the nearest man with his shoulder and drove him backward with Jonah beside him.
Delphine pulled two wounded fighters through while I guarded the narrowing gap.
Kieran seized the inner door as soon as the last of ours cleared it.
The bottom edge caught on a fallen scabbard.
He kicked the obstruction free, dragged the door shut, and dropped the bolt into place with both hands.
The guards hit the other side hard enough to shake dust from the lintel.
A second impact bowed the wood but did not move the bolt.
For several breaths, the only sounds in the antechamber were people trying to breathe and the water running below us.
I put one hand beneath Caspian’s arm. He did not move.
Magnus’s ring sat loose on his right hand.
Caspian saw it too, but he kept both palms pressed to his father’s side.
Around us, the wounded were being moved away from the door.
People stepped around father and son without asking Caspian to make room.
“Caspian.” I kept my voice low. “They’re not done. We have to go.”
He looked up at me. For a moment he seemed not to know which room held us. Then his eyes returned to Magnus. “You go.”
Delphine took his other arm, but Caspian planted one knee against the floor and pulled free of us both.
“I’m staying with him.” He opened Magnus’s torn coat farther and folded one clean edge against the wound.
Two defected stewards moved to either side of the bolted door.
Aldric remained with them, one hand pressed to his injured thigh and the other still holding his stave.
Jonah called my name from the descending stair. Kieran had already taken the first lamp and was checking the turn below. Delphine joined them. I set my bloody hand on Caspian’s shoulder. He did not look up. I turned toward the stair.
The stair toward the founding basin opened ahead, dark and loud. The water’s vibration entered my knees on the first step. Kieran raised the lamp, Jonah moved ahead of its light, and Delphine followed at my shoulder. We went down. Behind us, Caspian stayed with Magnus.