They circled the tower. At its foot stood a gleaming mechanical dog the size of a small pony. Ruso had been busy. Two apprentices were struggling to wind up the metallic beast with a thin iron rod thrust through the bow of a key set between its shoulder blades. With each jerk, its head rose a notch and flanges twitched lips back from iron teeth.
Beyond that, they found a side portal that opened into the servant quarters. These were deserted, everyone either apparently having run away or been driven out. There was indeed an internal stair, spiraling up the center of the tower’s shaft. They climbed, all the time hearing the muffled shouts of battle outside the walls. Past guard rooms, kitchens, offices, the chambers of royal ladies. . . .
Here was Krothen’s apartment, once so elegant, now ransacked to provide material for the barrier raised on the landing outside its door where Ton’s militia swarmed. The inner stair went no further.
Someone was sobbing. Jame circled the ruins of a massive bed and found Lady Cella crouched on the floor in the crimson pool of her skirts, cradling the body of her handsome boy toy. His head lolled over her arm, a swathe of golden hair hanging over his eyes. Someone had broken his neck.
“He tried to defend my cousin Krothen,” she wailed. Tears had soaked her veil so that it clung unflatteringly to her nearly chinless, middle-aged face. “Oh, I should have taken him away before Prince Ton’s bullies burst in! Ton never understood about us and, when he was dead, Princess Amantine only laughed. Gods damn her!”
“I’m sorry,” said Jame. What else could one say? “How do I get to the top?”
Cella gulped, trying to compose herself. “Krothen’s dais rises and falls. Right now, it’s stuck in the throne room.”
Outside, someone shouted a warning. Jame heard the scrabble of steel claws on the stair, circling the tower. Rotating, she followed the silver body as it surged up the steps. Gaudaric’s men hastily made way for it. The mechanical hound slammed into the barricade raised by Ton’s followers and shattered it. Debris hurtled into the room and out over the balustrade, likewise most of the militia. Cella screamed. Then someone caught the dog in midstride, off balance, and tipped it sideways. It hit the railing and bumped along it from baluster to baluster, legs churning, until stone gave way. The metal dog flew out into space and down, to a cry of protest from Ruso.
“No,” said Brier, as if echoing him, but her attention was fixed on the one who had destroyed his creation. “Amberley.”
She stepped out onto the stair to confront her former lover.
“Why?” she asked.
Amberley tossed back honey-gold hair and smiled at her. “Sweet, sweet Brier Rose. You always have to be right, don’t you?”
“Have I said that?”
“Not in so many words, but I watch rather than listen.”
She began to circle the other Kendar, who stood rigid on the landing. Her fingers slid under Brier’s hair to caress the nape of her neck. Auburn hair rippled at her touch. Brier shivered.
“Was it your fault, though? The Knorth tempted you, and you fell, like your mother before you.”
“Rose Iron-thorn never swore to the Knorth.”
“She might as well have, after what happened at Urakarn and in the Wastes.” Amberley flicked Brier’s hair and stepped away. “Lord Caineron never forgave her for that, or you, by extension. It was clear enough that he meant to break you to his service. That’s why I didn’t want you to go to Restormir to become a cadet. And I was right, wasn’t I?”
“About Lord Caineron, yes.”
“So you came back to me, until the Knorth lordling whistled you away. Well, what if I told you that there was a stronger lord than Torisen? And no, I don’t mean Caldane. I met him, the Master of us all. He came to me in the mountains when I was on patrol. My horse spooked at his shadow and threw me among the rocks. When I looked up, there he was, and there was no gainsaying his power.”
“You mean Gerridon,” said Brier evenly.
Jame was surprised. Few Kencyr thought about the Master of Knorth anymore, as if he were lost in the mists that confused history and legend. That was one of his strengths.
“Who else?” Amberley’s white teeth flashed again in her sun-darkened face. “The Karnids may call him their prophet, but we know who he is, and what he will become.”
“And what is that?”
“Why, our Master again, as he was always meant to be.”
“Have you encountered Torisen since he became Highlord?”
“No. Why?”
“Then you don’t know his true strength.”
Amberley’s smile became a grimace. “As I said, you always have to be right, and now you are bound to that freak whom he has named his lordan. Oh, Brier, Brier.”
The Southron took a step forward and Amberley, despite herself, took a step back. Her foot struck the first step of the final flight.
“What do you know of so ancient a bloodline and of its last descendents? It was you who told the Karnids the lordan would be on wide patrol the day she was nearly kidnapped, wasn’t it? And I suppose you arranged for that note to be slipped under her door in the first place.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Will you stand aside?”
“What do you think?”
They drew back into fighting position, Amberley mounting the stair to gain the higher ground. Gaudaric’s forces watched from below. Ton’s above were too scattered and shaken to care.
Jame shook her attention away from the members of the militia lying groaning on the apartment floor. She crossed to the opposite eastern side of the tower, dodging through wreckage, and leaned out a window. Above her was the ring of stone thorns from which the Gemman raiders had hung. She jumped and caught one. It began to give way. Hastily, she swung a leg up over it and scrambled onto the walk that circled the marble rose petals of the dome. Voices rose within.
“Abdicate,” Prince Ton was pleading. He sounded exhausted and near tears, his adolescent voice cracking. “Even now, physicians may save you!”
Princess Amantine’s deep voice answered him with a scornful snort: “Pull yourself together, boy. You know that there can be only one god-king.”
Krothen laughed, choked, and laughed again. “That may not be you, cousin . . . whatever happens to me . . . especially if it be . . . at your hands.” He paused, wheezing. “Only you and I . . . are left . . . among the male heirs of our house. Who comes next? Your mother?”
Jame slipped between the stone petals, emerging behind Krothen’s massive bulk as it slumped on the dais. Bending to peer under his arm, she saw Amantine draw herself up to her full if negligible height, her court gown rising to reveal shoes with improbably high heels. Ton hovered at her elbow like an overstuffed bolster, in sweat-stained, premature white with bedraggled pink trim.
“Would it be such a disaster if I came to rule?” demanded the princess. “I have more courage and skill than either you or my son.”
“Mother . . .”
“Face the truth, boy. Where would you be without me? Even if the white should truly come to you, you need my guidance.”
“Your Magnificence,” Jame whispered to Krothen under cover of the growing familial ruckus. “How can I help?”
He laughed again, ending with a wet, racking cough. “You see Life on my right hand . . . Death on my left.”
In the filtered, predawn light, Jame made out Mother Vedia’s plump form wreathed with restless snakes to one side of Krothen and the crone with a box to the other. The box was open. The crone raised a skinny finger to chapped lips.
“Only the god-touched can see us,” whispered Mother Vedia.
Jame could hear the muffled sound of Brier and Amberley battling on the stair. At a guess, they were moving upward. She wondered briefly which form of combat, Kencyr or Kothifiran, they were using. Did one favor unequal ground over the other?
A sudden glow of light came through the stone petals behind her and began to climb Krothen’s back. Sunrise. To the north of the chamber, it slanted in through the gap where a petal had broken off during the earthquake when Jame had last been here.