Occasionally they saw signs of life: a pair of eyes squinting through a cracked shutter, the patter of fleeing footsteps. At one house, a small boy watched them from the porch, idly sucking a finger, until a woman flew out the door, grabbed him, and disappeared inside.
Janto looked up at the palace on the hill, where the Kjallan troops had to be mustering. He couldn’t see them yet.
A musket cracked behind him, and a man beside him screamed. Janto whirled, along with half the marching column. One of his soldiers was down. Men clustered around the injured man, while others pointed at a pile of wine casks in an alleyway. Between the casks, metal glinted. Several of Janto’s soldiers fired, and the hidden man appeared, falling to the ground from behind the casks. Silence fell as they awaited more shots, but none came.
Janto shrouded two men and ordered them to retrieve the enemy. They did so, confiscating the man’s musket. He was wounded but alive. The Mosari soldier he’d shot was in similar condition. Janto ordered his Healers to help them both. These Kjallan civilians posed no serious threat beyond the odd potshot, and they were Rhianne’s people. She would not want them harmed.
Neither civilian resistance nor the enemy troops that awaited him concerned Janto; he had them outnumbered and expected a decisive victory. He had all of Kal’s men plus a large Sardossian army, while Florian had only a few centuries of soldiers stationed near the palace, plus the contingent Augustan had brought with him from Mosar. Together, the Kjallan forces amounted to less than a battalion. The greatest danger to his operation was not the opposition, but temptation. There was not a Mosari man among them who hadn’t lost something to the Kjallans—his parents, his family, his home. Now each soldier looked out at the Kjallan capital city, licking his lips and savoring the taste of vengeance. Each of these houses in Riat hid valuables they could steal, Kjallans they could rape or murder. Only discipline and Janto’s authority could prevent them from doing so.
A few days ago, as they’d sailed toward Kjall, Janto had visited each ship in the fleet and spoken to the men. “This is not a mission of war,” he’d said. “It is a mission of peace.” Kjall was large and powerful, he warned them; it would rebound quickly from the damage they inflicted. If Mosar could not establish a lasting peace following this attack, Kjall’s retaliation would destroy what was left of them. “Every Kjallan civilian you murder could bring about the murders of a hundred Mosari. Every Kjallan woman you rape could lead to the degradation of your wives, your sisters, and your daughters. Cruelty and brutality have no place here. Only restraint can win this war.”
The men had avoided his eyes and shuffled their feet. Janto knew what they were thinking. How could peace be established with the Kjallans, who’d razed Mosar’s cities, beheaded her leaders, and enslaved her children? How could such a nation understand any language but cruelty and brutality?
Janto knew it was possible. He’d met one Kjallan, so far, who spoke the language of peace, and he had hopes for her cousin as well. If he’d found two, there had to be more.
He looked over the column of troops, satisfied so far at how they were bearing up. He’d set a good example with his merciful treatment of the man who’d taken a potshot at them. He hoped his men had noticed it.
San-Kullen galloped up on a fine chestnut horse, entering the dome-shaped shroud Janto had placed over half his army. It was a rough shroud, poor in quality and with many defects, but at this distance it should serve. He didn’t want Florian to realize how big the invading army was, lest he and Lucien perceive the danger, slip away from the palace, and escape.
San-Kullen leapt off the horse. “For you, sire,” he said proudly. “The best we’ve found. My men are tacking up a couple more, but I thought I’d bring you this one directly.”
Janto took the reins and hoisted himself into the saddle. “Thank you.” The horse danced and tossed its head, rolling its eyes at San-Kullen’s brindlecat. “He’s not gun-shy, I hope. He? She?”
“It’s a gelding, and no, we tested him. Fired in front of his face, and he flung up his head, but that’s all. He’s levelheaded,” said San-Kullen. “Most of the animals we can’t use at all. They’re afraid of the cats, or gunfire, or both.”
“Find us some more,” said Janto. “Twenty at least. Sensible animals, but they don’t have to be perfect. We won’t be using them for combat.”
The war mage saluted and ran off.
San-Kullen and his squad returned later with thirty-seven horses.
As the army neared the palace, Janto dropped the shroud; its defects would now be obvious. The Kjallans would now see the full size of his invading force. He turned to his mounted war band, thirty enlisted men plus six zo and himself, and signaled them to follow. He rode to the head of the column where he found Captain Arvel, commander of the Sardossians, and Captain Kel-Charan, commander of the Mosari.
“We’re going around now,” he told the commanders. “I’ll meet you inside.”
“Yes, sire.” Kel-Charan saluted, looking uneasy. They’d gone over their plan the night before. Kel-Charan had wanted Janto’s shroud for the frontal assault, but Janto knew the fighting would go well enough for the Mosari and Sardossians without it. He had other important things to take care of.
“Remember: no looting, no rape. No unnecessary killing. Avoid harm to the emperor; his children, Lucien and Celeste; and his niece, Rhianne, at all costs.”
“Yes, sire.”
Janto wheeled the chestnut gelding and galloped with his band for the far side of the palace.
Kill? asked Sashi from within his shirt.
Soon, promised Janto.
The main assault would take place through the two south entrances and the servants’ entrance. That left three unguarded entrances through which Kjallans might try to escape. The heavy oaken gate at the east entrance, when he reached it, was shut and barred, probably with defenders behind it.
He selected twelve men. “Keep watch on this gate and all the surrounding area, including windows,” he ordered. “As long as the gate stays shut, leave it be. If it opens and someone slips out, or someone breaks a window and leaves that way, stop him. When possible, aim to wound, not to kill. And be careful; you won’t be shrouded.”
“Yes, sire.”
“If a war band comes out the gate and they’re more than you can handle, don’t engage,” he added. “Send up a signal and retreat. Reinforcements will be on the way.”
He rode on to the northeast gate, where he left another dozen, and then to the northwest. It was closed like the others, which disappointed him. He’d hoped one of the gates would be open.
“I need to get inside,” he told his remaining men.
One of the war mages stepped up—Janto couldn’t recall his name—and said, “Yes, sire. Through the gate?”
“No. A window.”
Leaving the others behind to watch the gate, Janto and the war mage rode around the palace wall until they found a suitable pane of glass, which they broke with the pommels of their swords. When no enemies appeared, Janto handed the reins of his horse to the war mage and climbed inside. “Go back to the others,” he ordered as he dropped down onto the parquet floor.
He was back in the Imperial Palace. He had to get to Rhianne before his men did.
“Go. Just go!” Rhianne pushed Tamienne out of her sitting room, toward the doorway. Shouts and gunfire echoed in the distance.
Tamienne hesitated. She looked at the doorway, then back at Rhianne. “My duty is to protect you—”
“And you’ll do it best by fighting with the others! It’s ridiculous you should stick by my side at a time like this. If the invaders overrun the palace, how can you possibly protect me?”
Tamienne looked torn. “First I’ll take you somewhere safe—”
“There is nowhere safe. Go,” insisted Rhianne. “There’s no time for this conversation.” She waved the Legaciattus toward the door, and Tamienne went, breaking into a run. Lesser soldiers might have avoided the battle out of cowardice, but Tamienne held back only out of duty. Decades of training had prepared her for this, a short span of heart-pounding action after years of uneventfully escorting her charge around the palace. Rhianne knew she wanted to go.
She ran to her bedroom window and squinted into the darkness. All she could see were distant balls of magelight and the occasional flash of a pistol firing. It didn’t look like much, not yet, but the enemies were out there.
She should not stay here alone, but to join the battle herself would be idiotic. She was not trained for combat. Her mind magic was defensive and required close contact. Someone would shoot her before she could get near enough to use it.
She would go to Lucien. He was crippled, but still a war mage. Between the two of them, they could defend themselves if a party of soldiers broke through the defenders.
She ran for the door to her suite but stopped short when a shadow loomed within it.
“Going somewhere?” Augustan leaned into the doorway. Fingers of red and blue lightning crackled, running along the door frame.
He’d set off her enemy ward. Why? She took a step back.
Augustan shifted so his body blocked the entire doorway. “Aren’t you happy to see your beloved fiancé?”
Her fear only increased his power over her, yet she couldn’t still her trembling. She took a deep breath. “I knew there would be some soldiers too cowardly to fight at the front gates, but I didn’t expect you to be one of them.”
His expression darkened. Then he smiled and sauntered into the room, dragging the heavy door closed behind him. “Do you wish me dead, Princess? Have no fear. Your wish will be granted. I will fight and die with the rest of our forces, once I finish here.”
Finish what? She backed away, taking one step for each he took toward her. “What do you mean, fight and die? Will our soldiers not prevail?”
Augustan laughed. “Prevail? When we’re outnumbered two to one, both in regular troops and mages, and the palace is indefensible?”
“The invaders are going to take the palace?” Horror washed over her so thickly that she forgot her fear of Augustan. How could this happen? She’d always felt safe in the palace. Her uncle was the Kjallan emperor. He controlled the largest and best-disciplined army in the known world. Her enemies had always been political rivals; the people around her, other Kjallans. Never had she imagined that she and her family would fall into the hands of foreign enemies.
What would they do to her? To Lucien, to Florian, to little Celeste? To all the people she loved?
Augustan grabbed her arm, and she cried out in surprise. Reflexively, she flung a confusion spell at him, but it flittered away, useless. War mages were immune to her magic.
“Yes,” he said. “They will take the palace.”
“But we have reinforcements on the way! Didn’t we send word from the signal towers?” She tugged at her arm. It was firmly held.
“The fleet’s three days out. Ground troops are even farther.”
“What can the invaders accomplish by holding the palace for only three days?”
“Bloodshed, looting, and murder. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” He dragged her, stumbling, into the bedroom.
“Of course not!” What did he mean, what she wanted? And why was he hauling her in here? Surely he wasn’t after sex. No. More likely he meant to kill her. She could see it in his eyes.
“You engineered it, traitor.”
“What?”
He shoved her against the bedroom window, pinioning her arms and mashing her nose into the glass. “Look,” he growled. “Look what you’ve wrought.”
It was all blackness out the window. “I can’t see a gods-cursed thing.”
He yanked her away. “Jan-Torres the shroud mage is at the head of that army. The Mosari king along with a horde of Sardossians.”
“The Mosari king is a shroud mage? Aren’t the Mosari kings usually war mages?”
“Usually,” said Augustan. “This one’s an anomaly. That’s not the point.”
Jan-Torres the shroud mage. Could it be? Surely not. “So the Mosari convinced the Sardossians to join with them in attacking us. What does that have to do with me?”
“We sent an attack fleet up the Neruna Strait to Sarpol just days ago. The Sardossian fleet could not possibly have known about the attack by now, unless your Mosari spy told them. The one you set free. Traitor.”
“No! That is not possible.” She tried to pry his fingers off her arm, without success. “He could not have known! We used a forgetting spell on him and exiled him to Dori. There was no danger of—no, it could not have happened.”
“It did happen. In all likelihood, your pet spy is in the midst of that army right now.”
Rhianne looked out the window again. Was Janto somewhere in that blackness? Was it wrong of her if she hoped he was? Better that than dead or stranded on gods-cursed Dori. But she was not a traitor. Lucien had taken precautions.
“Perhaps he’ll spare your life,” Augustan sneered. “Perhaps he’ll make you his mistress when all is said and done. Think he’ll keep you to himself or share you with the rest of the army?”
She stared at him, shocked. He didn’t know Janto at all.
“Fear not, Princess,” said Augustan. “I won’t let it happen.” He hauled her to the bed and shoved her down onto it. She struggled furiously, but he climbed atop her, pinning her arms.
She looked up at him with a sinking feeling. “What are you doing?”
“Administering a little justice,” he said grimly.
She gave her pinned arm a wrench and tried to twist away from him, but he was bigger and stronger. She couldn’t break his grip.
“It must be done,” said Augustan, running his eyes over her. “You’re a traitor, and none of us are getting out of this alive—least of all you. Consider this the first and last of my husbandly duties.” He brought a hand to her throat. “Wish I could make it last, pretty one, but I’m needed back at the front.”
“Augus—!” His hand began to squeeze, and she could not finish the word. Or breathe.
Augustan’s face became very intent.
Her chest heaved in short, unfinished gasps that brought little air. She writhed and struggled, clawing at him with her free hand. Before long, her lungs burned. As she weakened, Augustan moved his other hand from her arm to her throat, adding to the pressure. Her vision blackened around the edges.
It was only after the blackness was complete that she heard the pistol fire.