Behind Denynê, Naevros stood holding a bloody sword in his left hand.

Aloê let her evidence—letter, anchors, dead witness—fall to the floor between her and the murderer.

“Won’t you finish the job, Vocate?” she said, looking him in the eye for the first time that day. Her hands were empty and open, waiting. If he moved to attack her, she would close with him. No one, not even Morlock, could defeat Naevros with the sword, but she liked her chances if it came to hand-to-hand.

He did not move to attack her. He endured her gaze for a moment and looked away.

“You were foolish to entrust your evidence to us, Vocate,” Lernaion said coolly. “Did you not think that Naevros might have accomplices in the Graith?”

“On the contrary!” Aloê said. “I knew that he did. For one thing, there was Dollon, the thain who tried to kill me. He broke his neck trying to escape when he heard Naevros’ voice: Naevros must have had some power of fear over him. Then there was Bavro, the thain who stole the palimpsest of Earno’s last letter. He obviously expected Naevros to come to his aid. Then there was all this magic.” Aloê disdainfully kicked the bag of anchors where they had fallen by her right foot. “That was never among Naevros’ talents. He needed help for it. I had hoped that it was only one of these women whom he can get to do anything for him.” She noticed Naevros flinch when she said women and anything—exactly as she had meant him to.

“But, of course,” she continued to address Lernaion, “I thought of you.”

“You’re boasting now, Vocate,” Lernaion said shrewdly, “playing for time. We—”

“‘Shut your lying mouth,’” Aloê quoted, and smiled in his face.

Lernaion froze. Then he shook his gray head sadly. “So you heard that.”

“I heard it.”

“It has nothing to do with this, really.”

“I would need more than your word, Guardian, to accept that as true. But it doesn’t matter. It got me thinking along these lines. Then there was the magic. That is, famously or infamously, one of Bleys’ skills. And you were both here in A Thousand Towers when the palimpsest was stolen. If the thains were merely agents, as I suspected, who was their principal? A senior Guardian seemed most likely. I suspected you both, but only one was really necessary. But now I see you are both complicit.”

“I didn’t know about Earno’s murder in advance,” Lernaion said mildly.

“But you approved of it after the fact?”

“Yes.”

Aloê did not expect this. She found she had nothing to say.

“We are not Arbiters of the Peace,” Bleys said irritably, “nor half-witted lawmen gibbering of justice in the unguarded lands! We are Guardians. We don’t judge; we defend. The Guard must be maintained.”

“You have killed Guardians and the Guarded. And to justify yourself you claim you have done it to defend the Wardlands?”

The two summoners looked at each other in surprise.

“Of course,” said Lernaion finally. “What did you think we did it for? Money?”

Aloê laughed harshly. “Or love? Is that what drew you to their noble cause, Vocate?” she asked Naevros. “Was that what led you to do their knifework? Will you kill me now, too, to protect the guilty secret that you share? And to protect the realm, of course.”

Naevros looked at her and took a step back. He put his right arm on the dais. He raised his sword and slashed it down, cutting off his right hand.

He held the spouting stump and the bloody sword both toward Aloê, as if they were a great gift. “Take the other hand,” he said thickly, as if he were drunk. “Take everything that I am. Take everything that I could have been.”

She would not pity him, not with Denynê lying murdered at her feet.

“What you are isn’t much,” she said coldly. “What you could have been, you cannot give me.”

He fell, unconscious, across the corpse of his last victim.

She crouched down and undid her belt. It would do for a tourniquet, she hoped. As far as she was concerned, he could die. She’d prefer it that way. But he knew things the Graith would want to know, and it was clear he would talk without much prompting.

“And so, summoners?” she asked, as she twisted the belt tight around Naevros’ severed wrist. “Your henchman is fallen. Your plot is exposed. But I suppose you could still try to kill me before my peers arrive.”

“So you have already spread the tale?” Lernaion asked sadly.

“I told you she would,” Bleys answered, sourly. “Nonetheless, madam, your peers will not arrive as soon as you think. We instructed Maijarra to admit no one after Naevros.”

“Maijarra is a good fighter,” Aloê acknowledged. “I’ve sparred with her myself. But my friends will be coming in force. Noreê is marshalling all her thains.”

“She is not the only Guardian with a personal following,” Bleys replied. “Had you not guessed?”

Aloê had not. But she should have, she realized: the actions of Dollon and Bavro should have warned her.

From outside the door, and the street beyond, there were the sounds of combat. To maintain the Guard, Guardians were fighting each other in the streets of the Wardlands’ greatest city.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The Chains of the God

Danadhar and Morlock strode down the jail corridor side by side. Deor and Kelat fell in behind them. The other freed prisoners, the Gray Folk, stood by and held out their hands toward Danadhar as he passed.

“Ar ryn jyrthin?” Deor asked Kelat in Dwarvish: Do you understand me?

“Yes,” Kelat admitted, in Ontilian. “The Regent wanted some of us to learn Dwarvish so that we could deal with workers from the Endless Empire. But I don’t speak it very well.”

“No one does—certainly not in my family. You have unsuspected depths, Prince Uthar.”

“So does your mother.”

Dwarvish mating practices made this insult pointless indeed, but Deor laughed politely and punched Kelat on the forearm.

They found their packs and weapons in the vestibule of the jail under a shelkhide tarp. The other prisoners waited, politely or reverently, until their saint had passed before filing out into the coldly luminous spring night.

One of them ran back inside—a youngling with a long jaw and bluish scales. “St. Danadhar!” he cried. “The Enemy! The Enemy is coming for us!”

From outside in the dark they heard the cries of terror and exultation, “Olvinar! Olvinar! The Enemy!”

“Morlock,” Deor said urgently.

“Yes,” said the crooked man. He drew his dark, accursed blade and ran out into the night, Deor and Kelat at his heels.

“Ruthenen!” Danadhar called after them, but Morlock ran on, slithering through the crowd of Gray Folk when he could, shoving them out of the way when he had to.

Soon they saw what the Gray Folk had seen and paused to take it in.

The gigantic, cable-laid house at the north end of town was moving. The tower at the top that looked like a head—that was a head—wove back and forth and uttered a shriek like a straight-line wind running down a mountainside of pines.

There was red light coming from the center of the coil.

“Rukhjyrn! Rukhjyrn!” screamed someone in the crowd. The dragon-sickness! The dragon-sickness!

The gigantic snake began to move, uncoiling itself, reaching for the distant stars, shaking mundane fire from it as it moved.

“Wait!” Deor shouted, but Morlock had shouldered off his pack and was already running. There were human figures moving, dark outlines in the cascade of fire.

Morlock dashed into the burning torrent, dodging left and right to avoid planks and beams, heedless of the heat and fire.

Danadhar came to a halt beside Deor. “What happened to the Olvinar’s house?” he asked, gasping.

“Ambrosia Viviana, I think,” said Deor. “Look!”