R ebellion simmered in Palenque, and Blue Jay relished every moment of it. According to the Mazikeen and to the other Borderkind and legends who had joined their underground movement, dissent and suspicion had begun to spread through the city. No matter what official edicts came from the palace, many of the citizens of Palenque weren’t going to believe a word unless they heard it from the lips of their next king himself.
“Every day that the prince does not return from Atlantis, suspicion grows,” Li said.
Jay nodded. “But now we’ve got to focus on getting our friends out of that dungeon.”
“It’s time, then?” Li asked.
“Yeah. I think it is. We’ve done Smith’s work. There are hundreds of legends in Palenque-dozens of Borderkind among them-whose hatred of Ty’Lis is rising. Time to get Frost and the Legend-Born out of Atlantis’s hands.”
He almost mentioned Julianna, Oliver’s fiancee, but Li didn’t have a personal relationship with Bascombe the way Blue Jay did. None of them had been a part of the original group that had fled across the Veil when they’d been betrayed in Perinthia. Kitsune and Frost would understand.
Oliver might be Legend-Born-he might have some destiny that made him greater than ordinary men-but to Blue Jay, he was just a courageous, resourceful companion, a man who always seemed to lighten moods and hearts.
He was a friend.
Glancing away from Li, Blue Jay took in several of the other Borderkind who had gathered in that room. A Mazikeen stood motionless in the corner. He and his brothers shared an empathic and perhaps telepathic rapport. If anything were to happen within the apartment-if soldiers or Hunters were to attack-the others would learn of it instantly and be able to react, either getting themselves to safety or coming to the rescue.
At a small table, a jaguar-man sat gnawing on a leg of lamb beside an Ewaipanoma. The latter was an odd, headless thing with a wide mouth in the center of its chest. The mouth panted and its tongue traced its teeth from time to time. Otherwise it seemed entirely without intelligence or purpose. Blue Jay had learned this was far from the truth. The Ewaipanoma ate mostly vegetation and small rodents-rarely humans-and were both perceptive and fierce in battle.
The trouble was, the thing gave him the creeps.
Blue Jay smiled softly and turned to Li again.
“The sun will be up soon. We should wait until tonight. Pass the word to Grin and Cheval. I’ll speak to the Mazikeen and the others who’ve volunteered to help.”
Li nodded. “Tonight. Good. I grow impatient.”
“Me too, my friend. Me too.”
Then a wave of dread passed through Blue Jay. What if Frost wasn’t there when they went to break Julianna and the Bascombes out? Hell, what if they were all dead?
“Blue Jay? Are you unwell?” Li asked.
In the corner, the Mazikeen glanced up, perhaps in concern. It was almost impossible to tell what they were thinking.
“Just hoping nothing goes-”
He was about to say wrong when the door of the apartment swung open. The timing sent a chill of dread up his spine.
A vampire serpent-one of the Pihuechenyi-slithered through the door, tall as a man, its wings pinioned behind it as it glanced around the room, searching for threats. Cheval Bayard entered behind the creature. When she stepped into the apartment, her face glowed with uncharacteristic excitement. At her side, she carried a leather satchel, and she seemed more alive than he had ever seen her, a lightness sparkling in her eyes and lifting her step.
Blue Jay rose from his seat. “What’s going on?”
The kelpy laughed. “Half the work has been done for us, my friends.”
“What do you mean?”
Cheval reached out and touched his cheek. “It appears that we will no longer need to break our friends out of the palace dungeon, Jay. They have done it without our help.”
The trickster stared at her. “You’re serious?”
“Completely.”
The Mazikeen moved to stand beside Blue Jay, motion so fluid he seemed to flow.
“What, exactly, have you heard?”
The other Borderkind all began to gather around. Li, eyes now churning with such fire that Blue Jay felt certain his glamour would be burned away, crossed his arms imperiously.
“Three or four hours ago, a large section of the western wall of the palace collapsed, revealing part of the dungeon,” Cheval explained, swinging her satchel. “Frost and Collette Bascombe escaped through the Veil. Oliver’s fiancee is Lost, but he would not have left her. Bascombe and Julianna Whitney were seen running through the plaza into an alley.”
“The damage could have been caused by anything,” Li said. “Even if our friends tried to escape, we have no way to be certain they succeeded. Did anyone see Frost and the Bascombe woman cross the Veil? And this witness who saw Oliver and the other fleeing, do we have reason to believe it? Have any of our allies seen anything at all that would support the story?”
Cheval seemed irked. She sniffed and focused on Blue Jay. “The very questions I asked myself. I would not have come in so happily if I did not have answers.”
The kelpy bared her teeth in a different sort of smile, then reached into the leather satchel and drew out the bloody head of a soldier of Atlantis. The soldier’s head had been torn from the body and so its neck was a ragged stump, trailing several inches of spine.
“All that I have heard, I confirmed with this handsome soldier. That, and more. The official alliance with Atlantis will be declared today. Hordes of Atlantean troops will join the war against Euphrasia. And Ty’Lis’s handpicked guards witnessed Frost and Collette crossing the Veil with their own eyes.”
Blue Jay felt a strange lightness. “And Oliver and Julianna are out there, somewhere, on the streets of Palenque?”
The kelpy dropped the soldier’s head back into the satchel and let it fall to the floor. “Yes. Somewhere.”
Blue Jay smiled and looked around at the gathered Borderkind. “All right, then, spread the word to friends and allies. Everyone get out there. Let’s find them before Ty’Lis does.”
King Hunyadi’s encampment was arrayed along the ridge of a bald hill, a dozen tents comprising the field headquarters of his army. One open tent held the map of the Two Kingdoms upon which he and his commanders kept track of the troop movements for both their own forces and that of their enemies. To the north, at their backs, lay Jamestown. Many of its people had evacuated, to stay with relatives in other towns and cities. They knew without being told that their hometown was ripe for the plucking. There were bigger cities to the west and the northeast, but as the crossroads of midwestern Euphrasia, Jamestown had become the core of the kingdom.
If the Yucatazcans and the Atlanteans could take Jamestown, the rest of the kingdom would feel as though nowhere was safe. King Hunyadi could not afford such a loss. He needed the people to rise, to fight against the invaders. If Jamestown fell, they might flee instead, thinking the war unwinnable.
Reinforcements had been trickling in, and Hunyadi would take them all. With every thrust northward that the invaders made, his commanders were reporting heavy casualties, thanks in large part to the presence of Perytons, Atlantean giants, and Battle Swine in the southern ranks.
This morning, however, he began to believe that the tide might turn.
Jamestown will not fall today.
King Hunyadi stood on the hill outside his tent. With a telescope to his eye, he gazed at the broad trade route that ran south from Jamestown. More than a mile to the south, the road curved westward. There, the armies of the Two Kingdoms were at war, staining the ground with blood.
Through the telescope, he watched a sphere of green flame slingshot into the sky-Greek fire, deadly in battle. It struck a Peryton and the Atlantean Hunter plummeted to the ground. The wind had turned, and Hunyadi thought he could hear the creature shrieking as it fell.