Goredd’s last peaceful morning dawned drizzly and gray. I stumbled down to breakfast, having barely slept, but before I could sit, Jannoula was at my elbow. “Today’s the day,” she said breathily in my ear. “You’re coming with me.”
“Coming where?” I said, instantly wary, but she only smiled in answer and steered me out of the tower, across the puddle-flecked courtyard, and into the palace proper. Down some corridors, up some stairs, and into the royal family’s wing of the palace we went, stopping before a familiar door. The guards grunted and nodded, barely looking at us.
I entered the airy gold-and-blue sitting room. The table still stood before the tall windows, where once they’d fed Queen Lavonda her breakfast, and seated there were two of my dearest friends. Kiggs was on his feet at once, his face disconcertingly clean-shaven and his dark eyes twinkling; Glisselda, dressed for council in her stiffest brocades, smiled radiantly and cried, “Surprise!”
Her expression took me aback more than the word; she hadn’t looked so merry in nine months. I smiled back, momentarily forgetting the Saint at my elbow.
“We’ve got council in half an hour, but we hoped you’d take breakfast with us,” said Kiggs solemnly, tugging at the hem of his scarlet doublet. “Blessed Jannoula said it’s your birthday in two days, but we’ll be too preoccupied to celebrate properly then.”
My smile hardened. Truth from Jannoula made me just as suspicious as lies. Kiggs stepped up to lead me to the table; I let him take my arm, but kept one eye on Jannoula. She grinned like a fiend. She was up to something, but I did not discern what until I had a chance to really look at our breakfast. Amid a surprisingly simple spread of tea, rolls, and cheese sat a marzipan torte covered with plump blackberries.
That torte was the only thing I remembered about my twelfth birthday; I’d shared the taste with Jannoula. The sight of it brought a flood of memories: how she’d run rampant in my head; how she’d stolen, twisted, and lied; how Orma had saved me.
I glared at Jannoula; she smirked back.
“Blessed Jannoula told us you love blackberries,” said Glisselda.
“She’s too kind,” I managed to say.
Kiggs, to my right, handed me a flat parcel wrapped in linen, no bigger than the palm of my hand. “The thought is going to have to count for rather a lot, I fear,” he said. I tucked the gift into my sleeve; if Jannoula had picked it out, too, I didn’t want the royal cousins to see my expression when I opened it.
This was all her doing, some game she was playing with me, I was sure. The worst part, almost, was that Kiggs and Glisselda seemed perfectly themselves. I couldn’t see how far Jannoula had influenced them. No doubt it would be a nasty surprise when it surfaced, like finding a spider in your slipper. I couldn’t relax; that was when she’d hit me hardest.
Here I was with my two dearest friends, and I felt completely alone. To my left, Jannoula’s smile turned feline.
“I am grateful that there was time for this before the war comes to us,” she said, taking a knife to the torte at once, not bothering with the breakfast foods. “It is such a privilege to have gotten to know Your Majesties over these few weeks. We have much in common, and not merely that we all love Seraphina.” Jannoula patted my wrist with one hand, licking marzipan off her other thumb. “Although of course we do. Seraphina is very dear. She’s why we’re here this morning.”
Jannoula transferred a large piece of torte to her plate. “I feel especially blessed to have spent time with you this week, Prince Lucian,” she said, waving the tines of her fork at Kiggs. “What a joy it was to discuss theology and ethics with you, to learn that you value truth above all else. I admire that deeply.”
Kiggs, gazing at her rapturously from across the table, actually blushed. Was she glowing at him, too, or was flattery enough?
“Honesty is the cornerstone of friendship, don’t you think?” said Jannoula, looking at me and licking her blackberry-stained lips. “These two, of course, go well beyond friends. They’re cousins, raised together like siblings, and they’ll soon be married. It was their grandmother’s dearest wish.”
Kiggs became very busy slicing more cheese; Glisselda examined the bottom of her teacup. I watched Jannoula narrowly, still not gleaning her purpose.
“I think we four friends should strive to have no secrets from each other,” Jannoula said, and suddenly I understood the point of this charade.
In Porphyry, she’d seen Kiggs coming out of my room. She was going to extort some concession from me. I kicked her under the table. “We’re done,” I said through clenched teeth. “We can discuss what you—”
“You see,” said Jannoula, ignoring my kicks, “an awkward indiscretion has come to my attention. It would be best to clear the air so we can trust each other as we should.”
“Stop,” I snarled. “You win, but let’s talk about it in—”
“Someone has fallen in love with Seraphina,” she said, smiling awfully. “Confess—it’s good for the soul—and then we can all discuss it, openly and honestly.”
Kiggs clapped a hand to his mouth; he looked green. Glisselda, across the table from me, looked worse. She’d gone deathly white, and she swayed dizzily, as if she might fall out of her chair.
We had hurt her. She shouldn’t have had to learn the truth this way.
She pushed back from the table and fled deeper into her suite. Kiggs exchanged a glance with me, then rushed after her.
Jannoula shoved an enormous chunk of marzipan into her mouth and grinned.
“Why would you do that?” I cried, furious with her.
“For your birthday,” she said with her mouth full, a wicked spark in her eyes. “My gift to you: an understanding that everything you love is mine. Mine to spoil, mine to bestow.” She plucked blackberries off the torte, piling them in her left hand, and then rose to go. “Come, we’ve got a busy day ahead of us.”
“You have caused my friends Heaven knows what heartache!” I cried. “I’m not walking away from them like a villain.”
Jannoula clamped a hand on my arm and pulled me to my feet. She was stronger than she looked. “The amusing thing is,” she said, exhaling damp blackberry breath in my face, “you don’t know the half of it. I know them better than you do. I know so many things you can’t even imagine, Seraphina. I know the Loyalists will arrive sooner than anyone realizes, and that I could make St. Abaster’s Trap all by myself.”
Her words struck fear into my heart. This talk of making the trap by herself … had she learned what we were planning? I couldn’t tell. She made sure to leave plenty of doubt.
She marched me back to the Ard Tower. I didn’t resist—there wasn’t time. Jannoula swept me upstairs to the chapel, where the ityasaari lingered over their porridge.
“Forgive me for interrupting your meal, brethren,” cried Jannoula, “but it’s time! The Loyalists approach, and the Old Ard will be close on their tails. St. Abaster’s Trap must be put to its holy purpose. Today the world will witness what the minds of the blessed can do.”
The others leaped to their feet, muttering enthusiastically, and filed up the spiral stair. Camba wasn’t with them; she took her meals in her room because she couldn’t climb the stairs. She wouldn’t know things were moving forward earlier than expected. It was hard to feel for her mind-fire in my garden without calming my mind first, but sometimes desperation did the trick. Camba, I thought at her, be ready to start unhooking people if Jannoula falls.
Jannoula grabbed my arm again, and I jumped. “Come watch us. Even one who insists on walking this world alone must be awed by what we can accomplish together.”
She’d anticipated my request. That could not be good. I followed her up the stairs, my heart sinking into my shoes.
The others were already gathered on the roof, twelve ityasaari: Nedouard, Blanche, Lars, Mina, Phloxia, Od Fredricka, Brasidas, Gaios, Gelina, Gianni Patto, Dame Okra, and Ingar. The rain clouds had parted, and the sunlight made their white garments gleam like a beacon, like the ard fires of old. They stood in a semicircle before the low balustrade wall. Blanche was tied to Lars with a rope too short to wrap around her neck, safe against her will.
If our plan worked, Blanche might soon be free. I hoped for it fervently.
They joined hands in a horseshoe, open toward the northern mountains, Ingar at one end and Nedouard at the other. I lingered to one side. Jannoula joined the very center of the line, her mouth bowed upward into a hard little smile. She began a ritual chant from St. Yirtrudis’s testament, what the Saints of old had recited when they strung their minds with St. Abaster’s: We are one mind, mind within mind, mind beyond mind, warp and weft of the greater mind.
I edged up to Ingar and quietly said, “Guaiong.”
Ingar came to himself, eyelids fluttering open, and nodded at me. He remembered what to do. At the other end of the chain, Nedouard nodded back.
Jannoula closed her eyes. I could almost follow her mind-fire traveling down the line, each ityasaari gasping in turn, expressions melting into something ecstatic—except for Blanche, who whimpered in pain.
Ingar and Nedouard tensed their shoulders as if bracing for a blow, ready to cast their wills against Jannoula’s. I pressed my hands together, praying to no one in particular. This had to work.
Jannoula opened one eye and looked at me, a slow-motion wink in reverse. She grinned with perfect feline malice, threw her head back, and cried out. I thought—hoped—she had been hit with reflected fire, but then Nedouard and Ingar screamed and fell to their knees, writhing in agony.
“I can be a mirror, too,” said Jannoula. “And Nedouard can be my spy without even knowing it.”
Nedouard rolled around, weeping and flailing; Ingar clutched his head in torment.
“Stop!” I shouted. “Don’t punish them. It was my idea.”
“Oh, I’m punishing you, too,” she said. Nedouard and Ingar screamed louder. Tears sprang to my eyes; I could not bear this.
Jannoula stood between Od Fredricka and Brasidas. She stepped out of line and joined their hands together behind her, like latching a door. I backed away from her without looking, remembered how high we were, and sank to my knees dizzily. Jannoula hauled me to my feet. The world reeled.
“Look!” she cried, forcing me up to the low retaining wall, pointing at a dark line rising above the peaks like a storm front. There were more dragons than I had ever seen at one time, Comonot’s Loyalists making their strategic retreat.
“Now look here,” she commanded, wheeling me around to face the southwest. Past our encamped knights, past our baronets and their bivouacked armies, past the colorful force arrived this week from Ninys, columns of dark-uniformed troops crossed the horizon.
“The Samsamese,” I croaked. “Whose side will they take?”
She shrugged. “Who can say?”
“Surely you can. You maneuvered them here.”
Jannoula laughed. “That’s the beauty of it. I genuinely don’t know. Perhaps Josef will sit and watch. Perhaps some of the Goreddi and Ninysh knights he pressed into service will turn on him. That would be interesting, wouldn’t it?
“You haven’t even seen the Old Ard yet. The sky will be full of fire.” She raised her pointed chin into the wind, like she was posing for a portrait. “Of course, there might have been more, but a third of the Old Ard’s forces went back to the Kerama to intercept Comonot.”
That news arrived like a punch in the face. I had thought myself such a skeptic, the only one who knew what she really was, but I’d believed her when she said she wasn’t working for the Old Ard.
She gazed at me coolly. “Oh, come now, don’t sulk. Comonot has a chance. He’s taken four labs, gaining momentum and support as he goes; he’s persuaded backwater settlements to join him, and every quig in the Tanamoot is his friend.” Her face puckered when she said quig, as if she could smell one. “At least, that’s the last we’ve heard. The Queen’s only communication link to him has been mysteriously severed.”
I suspected this was not so mysterious, at least to Jannoula.
“Anyway, it seemed unsporting that he should walk into the capital virtually unopposed,” she said. “No one would die. Peace might break out before I wished it to.”
“You’ve bent this entire war to your own ends,” I croaked. “You shaped this new ideology of draconic purity so they wouldn’t mind sacrificing themselves.”
“Oh, it’s not new.” The wind made her short brown hair stand up on her head. “It just needed refinement so they wouldn’t mind fighting to the death. After all, a pure dragon should not care about dying. Caring is an emotion; emotions are human and corrupt. A dragon who cares is not a dragon.”
“You don’t care,” I said. “I’ve felt so much guilt for having abandoned you to them. So much pity and remorse. But you just want dragons to die.”
“Not just dragons,” she said, her eyes diamond-sharp. “Humans are no better. My mother left me the memory of my human father and my violent conception. She wanted me to understand human nature. She was a bell-exempt student, walking home at night; he was a rapist. I had nightmares about it when I was small, but now I’ve visited the alley where it happened. I understand what a fool she was. She should have killed him then and there, the treaty be damned. He was a monster; she was not monster enough.”
“I’m so sorry,” I half whispered, as if my pity could make any difference now.
Jannoula scoffed. “We are Saints, Seraphina. It is our right to decide who dies, our privilege to move pieces across the chessboard of history.” She gestured as if she were crashing two stones together, or two skulls. “We may break this world as we see fit.”
Her face had become a mask. “This is my war. All sides will destroy each other, and those who survive will be ours. We shall rule them with justice and mercy, and we shall finally be free. I have ordained it.”
The first wave of Loyalists had reached us; they screamed by overhead. Jannoula smirked and reached over Ingar’s twitching body for Dame Okra’s hand. Jannoula threw back her head, and the force of her will rippled down the chain. I could not see the light they made, but I didn’t have to.
Dragons began falling out of the sky.