Kingdom of Ash
A steady, horrible beat. Meant to unnerve, to break one’s will.
She knew they’d continue all night. Deprive them of rest, make them dread the dawn.
The keep was as full as it could stand, hallways crammed with bedrolls. She and Chaol had yielded their room to a family of five, the children too young to make the trip to the Wastes, even on a ruk’s back. In the frigid air, an infant might go blue with cold in minutes.
Yrene ran a hand over the waist-high stone wall. Thick, ancient stone. She beseeched it to hold out.
Catapults. There were catapults in the army below. She’d heard Falkan’s latest report at breakfast. The plain itself was still littered with enough boulders from the days it had been a part of the lake that Morath would have no problem finding things to hurl at them.
The warning had kept Yrene busy all day, relocating families who had taken rooms on the lake side of the keep or those who slept too close to windows or outer walls. Last-minute, and foolish not to consider it before now, but she’d been so focused these past five days on getting everyone in that she hadn’t thought of things like catapults and shattering blocks of heavy stone.
She’d moved their healing supplies, too. To an inner chamber where it would take the entire keep collapsing to destroy what was inside. The Torre healers had brought what they could from the fleet, but they’d made more when they arrived. Not their best work, not by any means, but Eretia had ordered that the salves and tonics need only to function, not dazzle, and to keep mixing.
All was set. All was ready. Or as ready as they might ever be.
So Yrene lingered on the battlements, listening to the bone drums for a while longer.
Chaol told himself it was not his last night with his wife. He’d still made the best of it, and they had rested as much as they could stand before they were up, hours before dawn.
The rest of the keep was awake, too, the ruks restless on the tower roofs and battlements, the click and scrape of their talons on the stones echoing in every hall and chamber.
The drums kept pounding. Had pounded all night.
He’d kissed Yrene good-bye, and she’d seemed like she wanted to say more but had opted to hold him for a long, precious minute before they parted ways.
It would not be the last time he saw her, he promised himself as he aimed for the battlements where his father, Sartaq, and Nesryn had agreed to meet at dawn.
The prince and Nesryn had not yet arrived, but his father stood in armor Chaol had not glimpsed since childhood. Since his father had ridden to serve Adarlan’s wishes. To conquer this continent.
It still fit him well, the muted metal scratched and dented. Not the finest piece of armor from the family arsenal beneath the keep, but the sturdiest. A sword hung at his hip, and a shield lay against the battlement wall. Around them, sentries tried not to watch, though their fear-wide eyes tracked every movement.
The drums pounded on.
Chaol came up beside his father, his own dark tunic reinforced with armor at his shoulders, forearms, and shins.
A cane of ironwood had been sheathed down Chaol’s back, for when Yrene’s magic began to fade, and his chair waited just inside the great hall, for when her power depleted entirely.
What his father had made of it when Chaol had explained yesterday, he hadn’t let on. Hadn’t said a single word.
Chaol cast a sidelong glance at the man staring toward the army whose fires began winking out one by one under the rising light.
“They used the bone drums during the last siege of Anielle,” his father said, not a tremor in his voice. “Legend says they beat the drums for three days and three nights before they attacked, and that the city was so rife with terror, so mad with sleeplessness, that they didn’t stand a chance. Erawan’s armies and beasts shredded them apart.”
“They did not have ruks fighting with them then,” Chaol said.
“We’ll see how long they last.”
Chaol gritted his teeth. “If you do not have hope, then your men will not last long, either.”
His father stared toward the plain, the army revealed with each minute.
“Your mother left,” the man said at last.
Chaol didn’t hide his shock.
His father gripped the stone parapet. “She took Terrin and left. I don’t know where they fled. As soon as we realized we’d been surrounded by enemies, she took her ladies-in-waiting, their families. Departed in the dead of night. Only your brother bothered to leave a note.”
His mother, after all she’d endured, all she’d survived in this hellish house, had finally walked out. To save her other son—their promise of a future. “What did Terrin say?”
His father smoothed his hand over the stone. “It doesn’t matter.”
It clearly did. But now wasn’t the time to push, to care.
There was no fear on his father’s face. Just cold resignation.
“If you do not lead these men today,” Chaol growled, “then I will.”
His father looked at him at last, his face grave. “Your wife is pregnant.”
The shock roiled through Chaol like a physical blow.
Yrene—Yrene—
“A skilled healer she might be, but a deft liar, she is not. Or have you not noticed her hand frequently resting on her stomach, or how green she turns at mealtime?”
Such mild, casual words. As if his father weren’t ripping the ground out from beneath him.
Chaol opened his mouth, body tensing. To yell at his father, to run to Yrene, he didn’t know.
But then the bone drums stopped.
And the army began to advance.
CHAPTER 40
Manon and the Thirteen had buried each and every one of the soldiers massacred by the Ironteeth. Their torn and bleeding hands throbbed, their backs ached, but they’d done it.
When the last of the hard earth had been patted down, she’d found Bronwen lingering at the clearing edge, the rest of the Crochans having moved off to set up camp.
The Thirteen had trudged past Manon. Ghislaine, according to Vesta, had been invited to sit at the hearth of a witch with an equal interest in those mortal, scholarly pursuits.
Only Asterin remained in the shadows nearby to guard her back as Manon asked Bronwen, “What is it?”
She should have tried for pleasantries, for diplomacy, but she didn’t. Couldn’t muster it.
Bronwen’s throat bobbed, as if choking on the words. “You and your coven acted honorably.”
“You doubted it, from the White Demon?”
“I did not think the Ironteeth bothered to care for human lives.”
She didn’t know the half of it. Manon only said, “My grandmother informed me that I am no longer an Ironteeth witch, so it seems who they do or do not care for no longer bears any weight with me.” She kept walking toward the trees where the Thirteen had vanished, and Bronwen fell into step beside her. “It was the least I could do,” Manon admitted.
Bronwen glanced at her sidelong. “Indeed.”
Manon eyed the Crochan. “You lead your witches well.”
“The Ironteeth have long given us an excuse to be highly trained.”
Something like shame washed through her again. She wondered if she’d ever find a way to ease it, to endure it. “I suppose we have.”
Bronwen didn’t reply before peeling off toward the small fires.