Rookwood raised his maimed hand in salute and swung the lantern into the bed of the wagon. Glass shattered.
“No!”
Flames erupted from the bales of cloth, licking along the cart, spreading to the door—were those rags stuffed around the doorjamb?—too quickly, too quickly! Already we could hear the sound of shouts from inside.
“The Riders are in there!” Julienna cried, but I was already running for the alley. There had to be a side door, a back door, something. There has to be something!
There was a back door, and it was on fire.
The heat nearly barreled me over. Over the crackle of fire and broken glass I heard the crisping sound of singed hair. Smoke dragged black claws down my throat. I threw my arm up to protect my face and edged closer to the wall of flames that hid the back door. More shouts. Sheets of fire rippled like water down the oil-soaked wood as the trapped Riders beat at the door from the inside, but it didn’t budge. My thoughts churned thickly, sluggish in the smoke. Why won’t it open?
Steel flashed, and I heard a piercing whistle. “Aliza, the bar! He barred it!”
Julienna’s shout roused me. Sword drawn, tunic up over her nose, she crouched next to me and pointed to the slim iron bar wedged in the doorframe, just visible through the cascade of flames, which split and reformed like some ghastly lipless mouth.
How long are you willing to watch him burn?
How long? Oh gods, how long?
Julienna and I moved as one, sucking in the last of the good air before plunging toward the inferno. A protest lodged somewhere in the back of my mind, weakly citing the smell of burning flesh and boiling blood and heat and agony. Flames curled along our outstretched arms, driving us back. It was all we could do to see the bar, let alone touch it. Still the door shuddered, the blows from inside becoming increasingly more frantic.
I kicked at the bar. The angle was bad, but I felt the iron rod shift a few inches. “Help me!” I gasped. “Julienna!”
She staggered back, retching. My eyes and lungs burned, but still I kept kicking. Hair crinkled and singed around my face. Flames roared. The Green Lady’s prophecy laughed inside me. How long? How long? Through a haze of burning tears and blinding pain and the swirl of flames and smoke, I kicked. Thell, not today!
“Aliza!” Julienna cried, and coughed. “Get back! Get . . . away!”
Still I kicked. The bar was loosening, I could feel it.
“Aliza!”
A roar louder than the flames swallowed my scream as Mar’esh threw me aside, shattering the iron bar, the door, and most of the wall. I rolled out of the way as a surge of soot-blackened Riders, wyverns, and beoryns poured from the tavern, gasping clean air like drowning creatures. Julienna caught me by the elbow and pulled me clear of the crush, and I clung to her as coughs racked my body. She pressed a hot hand against my forehead.
“Alastair?” I croaked. “Alastair!”
I peered through singed eyelashes at the Riders and Shani around us. Most were bent double, coughing so their whole bodies shook, but I didn’t see Alastair or Edmund or Lady Catriona. An alarm bell rang in the distance.
“Back! Everyone keep back!” Mar’esh’s booming voice rolled like a wave from one end of the street to the other, scattering the horrified pedestrians who had stopped to watch. He leapt from the burning tavern, heedless of the flames, and cleared a wide space around the collapsing walls. “Is everyone out?”
“Cedric?” Julienna called. It came out in a wheezing gasp, and she coughed. “Cedric!” she tried again, louder this time.
Her grip on my shoulders eased as Brysney charged out from the crowd to our left, his red hair streaked with soot and ash. He rushed to us, Silverwing hobbling at his side. “Julienna? Aliza!”
“Is Anjey with you?” I croaked.
“She’s gone to your uncle’s,” he rasped, “but what are you doing here?”
“Alastair. Where’s Alastair?”
Brysney looked around. “He was right behind me. There! Alastair!”
Even roughened by the smoke, Brysney’s voice carried well beyond mine. A moment later a hunchbacked figure stumbled out from among the Riders, shrouded in smoke and a damp cloak. “Cedric, what . . . Thell, Aliza, is that you?” Alastair’s voice came muffled from beneath the cloak. “And Julienna?”
Brysney stood and helped peel back the dripping cloth. Two heads emerged: Alastair’s and the wrinkled, graying head of an ancient half-goblin. The half-goblin crouched on Alastair’s shoulder, knees drawn almost up to his enormous, bat-like ears, staring at the fire with glassy eyes. His mouth hung slack, the wisp of a beard around it badly singed. An abrasion on his forehead oozed brownish blood. Alastair set the half-goblin gently on the curb, where he curled into a ball with his arms around his legs, rocking on the stone and crying in silence.
Alastair turned to us, but I didn’t let him speak. I flung my arms around him and burst into tears. He hugged me hard. “What are you doing here?”
All of a sudden, I remembered Rookwood. Frantically I looked around, but in the rush of escaping Riders and tumult of the arriving water brigade, he had disappeared.
“Rookwood from Langdred,” I panted. “He’s in the city, he and his Vesh.”
“What?”
“They planned this, Alastair. They set the fire. They must know, they must want the Riders out of the way. We have to find him, we have to stop him!”
“Shh, shh, it’s all right,” he said, holding me tight. “We’ll find him.”
“We have to chase him! He’ll get away . . .”
“He’s made an enemy of every Rider in Edonarle, khera. There’s nowhere he can run.”
A new alarm bell began tolling out over the lower circles. Mar’esh growled in Eth and I looked over my shoulder. A second pillar of smoke rose from the outskirts of the city, beyond the Lower Quarter, black and belching.
“Oh gods. Alastair,” Julienna said, “look.”
The color drained from Alastair’s face.
“What is that?” I asked.
“The camp of the Free Regiments,” he said. “Every Ranger posted in Edonarle.”
Dread like thick smoke filled my heart. One tavern saved had not stopped Rookwood’s accomplices. The Vesh had done what they set out to do.
Chapter 16
The Gray Abbey
Ashes stung my eyes and burned my throat. I woke to the screams of trapped men, women, and Shani, begging for rescue, for the gods to save them, and then, when no one answered, for a quick death. It took the shock of cold water from the ewer basin to dispel the screaming images, and even then they lingered on the edge of consciousness, sending out poisonous roots into the well-tended earth of my nightmare garden.
I braced myself against the marble basin and looked down at my bandaged arm. Lucky, the Daired physician had called me, to have escaped with such minor burns. I did not feel lucky. Angry was a better word. I dried my hands and flung the towel to the floor. Livid, actually.
“How are you, khera?”
Alastair leaned against the doorway to our chambers, dressed in his riding leathers with his sword on his back. His face had not lost the drawn, anxious look from yesterday, and there were angry red splotches across his forehead and cheek where the flames had licked through the cloth.