22 #3

“You’ve seen the chains. You can order them to free the others.”

He clenched his jaw.

“I need the routes to do that.”

“They’re in your archives.”

A horse whinnied. Darian reached his free hand toward her. Isolde stepped back until she felt the harpoon’s wheel against her calf.

He left his hand suspended.

“I thought you were dead.”

“You saw me trying to hold on. You ordered them to leave while I was still on the stone.”

Darian lowered his arm.

The water dragged a lead weight between his boots. Isolde heard it strike the wheel; she needed that sound to keep her eyes on his sword.

“Varek controls the eastern exit,” Darian said.

“And you have men in the south. Open that passage.”

“If I let you go with the plate, he’ll close every route to Caleryon.”

“He’s been closing them for four years. Aelyn is still getting people out.”

“Give me an hour.”

Isolde looked at the hand he had tried to offer her. She remembered its trembling during the vows, the care with which he had waited for her to find her voice. Darian knew the value of an answer freely given. Here, he had chosen to demand another.

“The boat is leaving with the wounded,” she said. “Decide what your guards will do.”

Darian raised his sword to block the way between her and the wagon.

“The plan stays.”

Isolde picked up the harpoon operator’s mace. Her left hand needed a second to close its grip.

“You’ll have to stop me.”

His first attack sought her wrist. She deflected it with the handle and retreated toward the channel. Darian had left behind the impatient violence of the border. He measured the distance, feinted, and waited for the ground to punish the weak footing of her left leg.

He knew the injury.

Isolde moved the mace to her other hand.

Darian attacked her right shoulder, where she had just been struck. She caught his sword on the iron ring and turned. Pain ran down to her fingers. She used the momentum to strike his forearm.

The sword fell into the water.

The regent caught her wrist. Isolde head-butted him. Darian lost his grip and struck back with his elbow. She felt blood inside her mouth.

One step separated them.

“Kaoran trained you,” Darian said.

Isolde held the mace low.

“Kaoran picked me up where you left me.”

Darian went pale.

A black flag appeared on the hill.

Varek emerged among the containment troops. He rode behind two tall shields. He had waited off the road until Isolde was inside the arc.

“Captain Tor!” he shouted. “Full containment!”

Cevran raised both hands.

The two remaining cores began to hum.

Darian looked at the plates, then at the civilians.

“Stop the charge!”

Cevran hesitated.

Varek had the flag lowered.

The technicians inserted the rods.

The marsh lit blue.

Isolde felt the fire retreat toward her chest. The air vanished from her lungs. She dropped to one knee. Rheskan answered from the sky with a furious burst of flame.

The plates changed orientation.

Peren was running with Beren toward the boat. One of the false salt workers stepped out of a hut and threw a needle. It struck the boy in the calf. Peren fell beside the channel.

Beren went back for him.

“Sial!” Darian shouted.

The young guard ran toward them. He raised his shield just as a second needle crossed the air. Its point bounced off the edge and vanished among the rushes.

Varek lowered the flag again.

The charge grew.

Horses began to fall. A hired worker clapped his hands over his ears. Col became trapped between a net and the chest wagon’s wheel.

Darian retrieved his sword from the water.

Isolde braced to meet him.

He turned toward the nearest core.

He struck the technician’s hand and cut the strap holding the rods. The mechanism spat out a tongue of light. Darian fell backward. His cloak began to burn.

Isolde reached him and smothered the fabric with mud.

For an instant, she held the mace over his throat.

Darian opened his eyes. The burn drew the skin of his neck taut.

“Do it,” he said.

The invitation held her still for a heartbeat. Even lying beneath her weapon, he seemed to expect her to finish the decision for them both.

Col’s cry crossed the causeway. Isolde turned her head: Dira was pulling on a net, and the wagon was tilting over them both.

She set the mace beyond Darian’s reach.

“Your men are waiting for an order. Give them one.”

She ran toward the wagon.

The fisherwoman’s leg was under the net. Dira pulled at it, unable to move the weights. The iron chest was sliding toward them both.

Isolde wedged her shoulder beneath the platform. Her left leg gave way. The axle drove her back down against the water.

Rheskan descended.

His claws closed over the wagon’s roof. He beat his wings and lifted one side. Dira cut the net. Col crawled out with a twisted ankle and blood on her knee.

The chest broke its chains.

It fell into the channel.

The lid sprang open against a stone. Several waxed sheets escaped into the current. One turned black on contact with the water. Another released a reddish powder that began to boil.

The trap in the plan.

Rheskan roared and sent Isolde an image: hinges, powder, fire being fed inside a tunnel.

“Out of the channel!” she shouted.

Dira lifted her sister. The nearby soldiers retreated. Isolde saw a copper plate fixed to the bottom of the chest. The engraved lines continued beneath the blackened edge.

She plunged her hand into the water.

The burning powder bit her skin. She tore the plate free and threw it toward Dira.

“To the boat!”

The fisherwoman tucked it beneath her shirt.

The powder reached a sheet covered in oil.

The channel exploded.

Rheskan covered Isolde with one wing. The burst of flame ran over his scales without catching. He nudged her toward the southern exit with his snout and turned his head toward the men raising another harpoon.

His intent came clearly: he could destroy them.

Isolde looked at the technicians. Two had dropped their weapons. Cevran was trying to force them back to the bases.

“The core,” she said.

Rheskan accepted the target.

He gained height, let the harpoon pass beneath his belly, and dropped onto the wagon carrying the plates. His claws tore through the tarp and dragged the mechanism into the flooded ground. Brine entered its joints.

The core went dark with a whine.

The pressure left Isolde’s chest.

Darian was on his feet again. A red burn marked his neck. He looked at the southern exit, where Sial and Beren were carrying Peren toward the boat.

Then he looked at Isolde.

He could order the vanguard to close the channel. Four guards waited for his voice.

“Evacuate the wounded,” he said.

The men opened a path.

Isolde understood the choice. She also saw its limit: Darian kept the rest of the convoy, Cevran, and the pages still inside the chest.

Varek reached the water’s edge.

“You allowed the prisoner to escape.”

Darian kept his eyes on the huts.

“I stopped your unit from killing thirty people.”

“The target was inside the containment.”

“So were my guards.”

“The kingdom will pay for this weakness.”

Darian turned toward him.

“Captain Tor is under arrest until the commission delivers the complete weapons register.”

Cevran put a hand on his sword.

The vanguard’s guards raised theirs.

Varek studied the distance between the two groups.

“You have no authority over my technicians.”

“I’ll establish it in Caleryon.”

“If you return in office.”

The threat hung over the marsh.

Darian took a step toward Varek.

“Repeat that before the Council.”

Varek smiled.

“The Council will receive a report. The dead princess attacked a royal transport and freed a saboteur. Her regent recognized her and left the route open.”

Isolde stopped among the rushes.

Darian could deny it. He could order a pursuit and repair the story before she left the salt pans.

“The person who attacked the convoy remains unidentified,” he said.

Varek looked toward her. Distance and smoke kept him from seeing her face.

“You said her name in front of two guards.”

“I’ll question my men.”

“I’ll question mine.”

Isolde entered the south channel.

The boat was moving away under a makeshift sail. Yssa had tied the remaining cloth to an oar. Beren held Peren. Vela was bandaging the boy’s leg. Col lay beside the tiller.

Kaoran stood waiting against the broken mast.

Isolde swam the last few yards. Dira and Beren hauled her over the gunwale.

“Sit,” she told Kaoran.

“I got up to see whether four flashes were still necessary.”

“The boat was the right place.”

“I appreciate the confirmation.”

Vela made him lie down.

Rheskan passed overhead. A net hung from one claw. He flew toward a low island, cut the rope with his teeth, and let the weights fall. Then he traced a wide circle over the convoy.

He was watching over their retreat by his own choice.

Yssa guided the boat among the channels. The rushes hid the causeway.

They left the smoke behind.