Even beneath the mask, Fletcher saw Bertie blanch. After all, Seraph’s affiliation with the dwarves was no secret.
“I … that is…” The man’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “I know you have a certain … sympathy for the dwarves. I didn’t mean to cause offense.”
“None taken,” Seraph said, tightening his grip on Fletcher’s knee, as if to warn him not to take it further. He needn’t have bothered—Fletcher was already regretting his outburst.
Further awkwardness was avoided by the gentle dingle of bells, announcing that food was ready. Soon servants were sweeping between the tables, balancing enormous platters, complete with gleaming covers to keep the food warm. Within minutes the center of the table was filled with the steaming dishes, and the waiting stewards removed the covers with a simultaneous flourish.
Fletcher’s stomach clenched with hunger at the sight of it. The delicious scent that wafted beneath his nose filled his mouth with saliva.
Largest was the quarter of a stag: its rump slow-roasted overnight to leave the flesh succulent and soft. A swan stuffed with mushrooms and oysters sat beside it, the crispy skin basted in a pulped sauce of figs and saffron, glistening beneath the flickering flames of the chandeliers above. Farther down the table was a whole roast boar, a crisp red apple held in its mouth.
Even with these enormous dishes, yet more meat lined the tables: civets of hare with tangerine jelly, fritters of river pike, poached sturgeon with a garnish of its own caviar and even a gooducken, the extravagant portmanteau of a chicken stuffed within a duck, stuffed within a goose.
Surrounding the meats were more delicacies, garlicky wintergreens, plums stewed in rosewater, candied chestnuts and bowls of red berries in clotted cream. It was too much to take in, and Fletcher could only see the food on his table. He tried to resist reaching out a hand to taste the nearest dish. Instead, he worked at unclipping the lower segment of his mask, so as to allow himself to eat.
“Cress says to stick with water,” Seraph whispered as a pink-clad dwarf swept away from him.
Then the announcer’s voice cut through the gasps of wonder and clinking cutlery.
“Lords, ladies and honorable gentlemen. Let the banquet commence!”
CHAPTER
27
FLETCHER DIDN’T EVEN HAVE TIME to reach for the food before Sylva’s long leg slid under Seraph’s seat to kick his ankle. He stifled a groan of disappointment and saw her stand and curtsy.
“I am feeling a little weak from the smell of all this rich food,” Sylva said, lifting a hand dramatically to her brow. “Mr. Rotherham, would you be so kind as to escort me to get some fresh air?”
Fletcher took a moment to realize she was speaking to him, then reluctantly got to his feet and took her arm. The two needn’t have bothered with the theatrics; the nobles surrounding them barely gave the pair a second glance, already devouring the food with as much decorum as they could muster.
To Fletcher, the only silver lining was that he would not need to work out which cutlery to use, for the tablecloth had been festooned with a variety of knives, spoons, forks and other implements he could not recognize. Still, it was the best time to leave, while the rest of the room was distracted.
“Come on,” Sylva hissed, tugging him away from his seat and down the long table. They knew where they had to go—a pair of heavy double doors in the side of the room. Fletcher felt a shudder run down his spine as eyes turned to them, for they were the only guests standing. He distracted himself by examining the other foods on the table. To his surprise and even a hint of horror, the roasted carcass of an entire porpoise was being carved by a mincing footman, at the head of the table.
Then he saw the people surrounding the poor animal, and a new sense of revulsion took hold. Almost all of his enemies were seated there: Old King Alfric, Lord and Lady Faversham, the Forsyth twins, even Didric himself. King Harold sat among them, laughing at a joke his father had told.
Fletcher almost found himself faltering in his pace, but Sylva drew him inexorably onward, her grip firm on his arm. He couldn’t help but look over his shoulder as they passed. It was fascinating to see them socializing. Somehow he always pictured them plotting in dark rooms, not enjoying meals together.
Moments later and they were through the double doors, opened by confused servants who weren’t sure where the two guests were going but were too anxious to stop what could be important nobles.
They were in a long, dark corridor with red velvet carpet. Only a few flickering candles revealed a staircase halfway down the passage. They tugged off their masks, and Fletcher breathed in deep relief.
“Walk, don’t run,” Sylva said, taking command of the situation and tugging him behind her. “We don’t want to look suspicious, and guests aren’t supposed to go exploring.”
Fletcher panted with shallow breaths, and his palms sweated beneath his white gloves.
“It must be hard for Harold to keep up his act, day in and day out,” Fletcher said, talking to steady his nerves.
But he never heard Sylva’s response, because the double doors slammed open behind them. Fletcher caught a glimpse of a guardsman, a candelabra clutched in one hand, a sword in the other. Then he felt himself pulled against Sylva, her hands around his neck, lips seeking his. She kissed him with a fierce abandon, and Fletcher returned it with the same passion. He sank into it, feeling the softness of her body against his. For a moment, nothing else mattered.
“Just two lovebirds,” the guard grunted. “Nothing to worry about.”
The doors shut with a gentle thud.
Instantly, Sylva pulled away, sweeping back toward the stairs as quickly as possible.
“Come on,” Sylva said, looking at him over her shoulder. “They’ll expect us to go back soon. Othello and Cress will have to catch up.”
Fletcher followed, a pang of sadness running through him. It had been a ploy—nothing more.
They mounted the stairs two at a time, Sylva going barefoot with her heels in her hands, Fletcher avoiding the train of her dress. It was ridiculous how much material she had to drag behind her.
The corridor they emerged into was darker still, lit only by the glow from the stairs behind them and a single candle in an alcove nearby. They had reached their destination—a set of enormous doors directly opposite the stairway. The throne room’s entrance loomed, dark and ominous.
“Let’s hope Othello and Cress have begun their distraction,” Fletcher whispered.
“Let me,” Sylva said. Her finger glowed blue, and she etched the shape of a keyhole in the air. Slowly, she lowered it over the deep lock on the door and streamed a jet of silvery light into it. There was a loud snap, and then the door swung open with a groan of creaking hinges.
Beyond, an enormous chamber came into view, lit by a beam of moonlight from a skylight. The room was bisected by a line of thick, red carpet, with marble flooring on either side. Pillars of stone lined the walls, cast in deep shadow. But one thing dominated above all else. A throne, made of gold, silver and precious gems, inlaid with mother-of-pearl and skirted with polished wood, set in a short stairway at the end of the long, red mantel at the back of the room. Every element was designed in a mosaic of interwoven demons, the gems forming their eyes, the metals delineating the lines of their bodies. It was magnificent, sparkling even in the dim light. Fletcher could hardly take his eyes from it—he had never seen so much wealth in one place.
Then they saw it, embedded in the floor directly in front of the throne. A black staff, covered by a laced cloth. Their target.
“Hurry,” Sylva hissed, oblivious to the splendor of the royal seat. Fletcher followed, the dull thud of their footsteps echoing.
But they were barely halfway across the room when the screech of hinges cut through the air behind them, followed by the slam of the doors.
Fletcher turned, his hand reaching for a sword that was not there.
“Well, well,” Rook said, stepping out of the shadows. “Lo
ok what we have here, Zacharias. A she-elf and a traitor, out for a stroll.”
CHAPTER
28
THE HULKING FIGURE OF LORD FORSYTH emerged from behind the Inquisitor, shaking his leonine mane of hair to reveal the missing ear. Neither wore their masks, but both were dressed in their pompous dress uniforms: Rook’s a silver-laced cassock of dark cloth and Zacharias’s a tasseled black uniform, sewn with epaulets and golden buttons.
“It was foolish of you to come here,” Zacharias Forsyth said, his voice booming and deep. “When my children told me there was an elf at the ball … well. We kept an eye on you. It didn’t take us long to work out who you were, or see what you were up to.”
He took a step closer, into the light, and the scarred remnants of his ear gave his head a lopsided appearance.
“You’ve got courage, I’ll give you that,” he said, smiling at them. “Here for the staff, I assume.”
He nodded toward the staff behind them.
“Stealing it won’t do you any good. The seed is sown, and you shall reap the consequences. Preventing a few more speeches won’t make a damned bit of difference. Not that you’ll be around to see it.”
Fletcher let his hands drift behind his back and slowly eased the gloves from his hands. The two men before him were master battlemages, and Zacharias was a tried-and-tested veteran of a brutal war. The odds were stacked against him.
There was a ripping sound, and Fletcher saw Sylva out of the corner of his eye, tearing the excess fabric away from her dress, then slitting the side with a stiletto blade to free up her movement—and revealing the journal strapped to her thigh.
“What’s that?” Rook demanded as Sylva took it and backed away, the thin booklet swiftly stowed behind her.
Fletcher whipped his hand up, billowing out a wall of shield energy. It was broad enough to protect both himself and Sylva, but the two men simply smirked and watched them through the opaque barrier.
They didn’t understand that he and Sylva weren’t trying to steal the staff, but get a message out to the people of Hominum. They both thought they had all the time in the world.
“The question is, do we kill them here or do we have them arrested and wait for the trial and summary execution?” Rook mused. “A trial might be more public, sow more dissent.”
His voice was low—they were close to the staff now, and his words might be heard across all of Hominum if they were any louder.
“We kill them,” Zacharias replied, crouching slightly and sweeping his hands apart, ready for a potential attack. “If we arrest the she-elf, that fool Harold will step in and protect her, to prevent a war with the elves. As you know, trials are … unpredictable.”
Fletcher heard a flutter of cloth as Sylva removed the staff’s cover. There was a glow of blue as she etched in the air, then a beam of pale light from a ball of white wyrdlight, a spell rarely used because it drained so much mana. The bright rays cast a long shadow in front of Fletcher, his black outline stretched between him and his two enemies.
“Yes, that’s right.” Zacharias laughed. “Turn the staff this way; let the world get a clear view. When the elves see us kill their precious princess, we’ll have another war, a real one this time. The dwarves tomorrow and the elves next.”
“And you’ll line your pockets with blood money,” Fletcher snarled.
“If it’s elven or dwarven blood, it will make it all the sweeter,” Rook said, a cruel smile playing across his sallow face.
Sylva began to speak. Her voice was low, for she was muttering right above the frozen Mite’s head. Fletcher allowed himself a glance behind and saw her brandishing Zacharias’s letter in front of the immobilized demon’s eyes, her finger pointing to the Forsyth seal at the bottom.
“Stop that,” Rook snapped, taking a step forward. “What are you saying?”
Then Zacharias’s eyes lit up in recognition, seeing the scrap of paper through the opaque shield.
“Stop her!” he bellowed, and suddenly his fingers were scoring the air and a blast of lightning crackled across the room. It slammed into the shield, cleaving and rending the wall of white, the surface snapping and fracturing like broken ice on a lake.
Rook added a vortex of fire a moment later, the billowing flame flattening against the shield and dissolving the surface, layer by layer.
“Hurry, Sylva,” Fletcher yelled as the shield disintegrated before his eyes. “Show them the journal!”
He needed to summon Ignatius, but all he could do was pulse more and more mana into the shield, reinforcing it in ribbons of white light where it was weakest. His right hand etched the fire symbol desperately in the air, but even as he fixed the spell to his finger, Rook and Zacharias formed their own oval shields using their free hands.
Now Sylva was shouting, the words lost before they reached Fletcher’s ears against the roar of the spells battering against his shield.
Fletcher hurled a ball of fire into the air, arcing it over to burst on Zacharias’s shield, cascading around the edges in a waterfall of flame to singe the noble’s clothing. Still the spells battered at Fletcher’s barrier.
He could feel his mana draining, and the consciousnesses of Ignatius and Athena desperate to be unleashed. He forced through a last burst of mana into the shield and then let it hang without his reinforcement, shaking and shivering beneath the onslaught of blue lightning and orange flame. His mind twisted as he forced Ignatius through his hand and into existence.
It was harder now, for Ignatius was much larger and the pentacle on his hand was small, but within moments the Drake was roaring beside him.
The two men’s spells ceased at the sight of the Drake. A piece fell from the shield and dissolved on the smoldering red carpet beneath. All was silent but for the gentle sizzle of burning fibers and Sylva’s muttering as she read another page from Jeffrey’s journal.
Rook and Zacharias must have known they were in trouble. They had no summoning leathers, and Fletcher’s demons could easily tear through their shields.
Fletcher used the time to bolster his faltering barrier, draining the last dribble of mana within him to add a reparative layer across the fractured surface. He had been low on mana to begin with, for his reserves had not recovered from his time in the ether. But Rook and Zacharias didn’t know that.
Now all he needed to do was wait for Sylva to finish. Whatever Cress and Othello had done, it had worked—no guards had arrived yet.
“Why don’t you come face me, man on man?” Zacharias called out from behind his shield. “No demons, no Rook. Just me and you.”
“Sylva, how much longer?” Fletcher asked over his shoulder, ignoring the offer.
“A few more minutes,” Sylva called out. “I need to tell them what happened to Rufus.”
Fletcher smiled grimly and turned back to his opponents. He stared at them with what he hoped was cool confidence.
“Are you scared, Fletcher?” Rook said. “The great Fletcher Raleigh has a chance to duel with his worst enemy on equal footing, and he refuses. I always knew you were a coward.”
Fletcher knew they were goading him, hoping he would lower his shield and attack Zacharias head on, losing the defensive advantage.
“A fool and a coward, trusting dwarves and elves over his own race,” Zacharias spat, striding forward until he stood directly in front of Fletcher’s shield, the pale oval of his own still fixed to his wrist. “You’re so much like your father. Edmund was a race traitor too. Always visiting the elves, trying to broker trade between our nations.”
He paused, as if contemplating his next words.
“But that’s not the only reason I betrayed him,” he continued, his voice lower so only Fletcher could hear.
“What did you say?” Fletcher said. A chill ran across the back of his neck.
“My weapons business was stagnating. Too much peace, you see.” Zacharias’s eyes bored into Fletcher’s own, willing him to see the truth there. “I needed a catalyst. So I sent the orcs a
message. Told them about Raleighshire’s secret passage, when and where to attack, all of it. You would not believe how perfectly it came together—your family’s lands, inherited by your mother’s sister—my wife. A war with the orcs, to fuel my weapons business. And another race traitor dead, just icing on the cake. Tonight I’ll have to finish the job. Never send an orc to do a man’s work.”
Fletcher looked into the man’s cold, serpentine eyes and knew it was true. Perhaps he had always known, ever since Sir Caulder had spoken of a “betrayer” at his trial. But he had cast it from his mind. He hadn’t wanted to contemplate it—that a man could truly be that evil. He hadn’t wanted to give in to hatred.
But now that hatred bubbled inside his chest, caustic and hot. Zacharias needed to die. If this worked, the man would soon be locked away, out of Fletcher’s reach forever. There would never be a chance like this again.
The shield. He could resorb it into himself, replenish his mana. Enough for one, powerful attack.
Now.
Fletcher roared, draining the white wall in a vortex of swirling light. Even as he did so, he was already firing all three spells in a twisting beam from his fingers. It corkscrewed into Zacharias’s shield in a blaze of spitting energy. The oval split like an egg, exploding in a blast of spinning shards that hurled the noble into a pillar with a sickening thud. He crumpled to the floor, limp as a corpse.
“Fletcher!” Sylva screamed, and Fletcher’s shout of triumph died on his lips. Because Rook’s shield was gone, and a wave of fire was roaring across the hall.
Ignatius dove to take the brunt, his wings outstretched. Missed.
The blaze hit Fletcher like a flood, tumbling him from his feet and into the dark recesses of the throne room. He skidded across the ground as the flames billowed over him, blinding bright in his eyes. He could hear the roaring of the inferno, feel his clothing blacken and peel away into nothingness. The heat blew scalding hot against his skin.
But no pain. No agony of his flesh being scorched to ash, nor the stench of burning hair. Instead, he rolled and rolled, until the worst of the flames had left the tattered remains of his clothing. He staggered to his feet, beating at the smoldering cloth, blinking the smoke from his eyes.