Chapter 31

31

The harder life is, the more easily people will vote for change.

~ Dionadra, Essays on the Motivations of Men

One ranger remained in the kitchen with Frayvar and Sevarli with orders to shoot the mercenaries if they blew open the trapdoor and tried to enter. One remained by the back gate in the courtyard, also with orders to shoot anyone who got through the vines or climbed over the wall. Another was stationed in a rear tower to back him up.

Jankarr went with Vlerion to the front courtyard, grimacing after Targon told him to redeem himself by doing the right thing if Vlerion was threatened. Kaylina feared that meant Targon expected Jankarr to leap in front of an arrow to save their future king if necessary.

She climbed up to join the sentinel so she could watch Vlerion address the army—and coerce her botanical ally into helping any way it could. She held her sling in case she needed to fire through the tower window, but the meager weapon was laughable against armored men. Unless they succeeded in getting through or over the wall and into the courtyard, they wouldn’t be close enough for her to shoot effectively.

Of course, as she eyed all the cannons and siege engines that had been rolled in, she deemed that likely. The courtyard walls weren’t that high or thick. After all, Stillguard Castle had been an inn for generations before it had been cursed. Centered in the core of the city, it had probably been hundreds of years since it had repelled an enemy invasion, if it ever had.

It was somewhat mollifying that the men setting up the equipment and stuck in the front lines kept glancing nervously toward the sentinel’s tower. By night, its glow was all the more noticeable.

“We need to keep him alive while he addresses the army.” Kaylina glanced at the plant. “If we survive the night, I’ll bring the biggest pot of honey water you’ve ever seen up here.”

The sentinel shared an emotion of amusement that she was bribing it. At least it was still willing to communicate with her.

Vlerion stood in the courtyard below. Bracing himself? No, waiting. Crenoch trotted up to join him, and he spoke quietly to the taybarri.

Crenoch swished his tail, lifted his head, and whuffed firmly. Vlerion surprised Kaylina by wrapping his arms around the taybarri’s neck and burying his face in Crenoch’s fur.

Emotion swelled in her throat at yet another sign that Vlerion thought he was going to die. She wanted to call down that she and the sentinel would have his back—no, tonight it was his front that would be vulnerable—but she hesitated to yell anything the soldiers near the wall might overhear. Vlerion probably wanted his appearance to be a surprise.

After a moment, he swung up onto Crenoch’s back. Was that what he’d been asking? If his mount would risk his life by going up to the wall with him?

Vlerion would look more impressive, more like the ranger hero he was, on a taybarri’s back.

As they rode toward narrow stone steps leading to the top of the wall—it would be a tight fit for Crenoch—Jankarr jogged after them. Vlerion lifted a hand to stop him and shook his head. Jankarr said something—a protest?—and pointed to the other front tower. From her position, Kaylina couldn’t see through its window, but she knew Targon had gone up there with a bow.

Vlerion shook his head again, spoke firmly, and pointed to Jankarr, then up to Kaylina. Asking him to protect her?

No, she had the sentinel. She didn’t want Jankarr to sacrifice himself for anyone but agreed with Targon that he should go up there with Vlerion to help in case snipers started firing.

“You go with him, Jankarr,” came Targon’s harsh whisper from the other tower.

But Vlerion held his hand up again, and Jankarr’s shoulders slumped. With Crenoch balancing carefully on the steps, he rode up to the wall near the gate.

“Damn it, Jankarr,” Targon snarled. “This isn’t the time for you to disobey your commanding officer.”

“I’m not disobeying you, my lord. I’m obeying him.” Jankarr pointed solemnly to Vlerion’s back.

Kaylina expected Targon to scoff, but he didn’t. Maybe he accepted that if they somehow made this work, Vlerion would one day be their king.

Jankarr did remain at the base of the stairs, ready to charge up if something happened and Vlerion needed help.

Kaylina watched Vlerion as he rode into view of all the soldiers out front. Enough lanterns and braziers burned in the street that people spotted him quickly. The men in the alleys could probably see him as well. It grew quiet in the streets, the voices stopping, the preparations for storming the castle pausing.

“At least they’re not shooting him on sight,” she whispered.

“People of Zaldor, my countrymen and colleagues, I am Vlerion of Havartaft, ranger, defender of the borders, and warrior who’s always fought on behalf of the kingdom. As you may know, my ancestor, Balzarak, once ruled the kingdom, as his ancestors did before him, going back to the Era of Expansion, of the first gold discoveries in the Evardor Mountains. That was a time of great prosperity for commoners and aristocrats alike.” Vlerion’s words rang out strongly and loudly, but the army stretched for blocks, if not miles, and it wouldn’t carry to them all.

“Is there any druid magic that can help amplify his voice?” Kaylina asked the sentinel as Vlerion continued, letting anyone who wasn’t aware know who he was.

She couldn’t imagine how druid magic could achieve voice amplification but envisioned a trumpet flower.

A wispy tendril of magic flowed from the sentinel and touched her brand, making it tingle. Then a larger tendril of their combined power, probably visible only to them, stretched over the courtyard and toward Vlerion, attaching to his back. If he felt anything, he didn’t show it, only continuing to speak, but the power made his voice louder, allowing it to carry over the rooftops for many blocks in all directions.

“Thank you,” Kaylina whispered.

An arrow fired, not from the army but from the adjacent tower. No, the roof of the adjacent tower. Targon had climbed out the window and stood up there, his bow in hand. His arrow soared over the courtyard wall, over ranks of men, and to a rooftop two buildings farther up the street. It struck someone who’d been hiding in the shadows of a brick chimney, and a bow fell from the man’s fingers before he dropped. Targon’s arrow protruded from his throat.

Vlerion continued speaking, but he lifted his hand without looking back, acknowledging Targon’s protection. Kaylina didn’t know if the archer had been about to fire or merely put there to do so at an inopportune time, but she was glad Targon had keen eyes and had caught him.

A question emanated from the sentinel as it showed her a hypothetical Vlerion with green light glowing from him, making him look like he’d been blessed by a god. Or by one of the Daygarii.

“Let’s not go that far. Suggesting he’s magical or aligned with the druids in some way might creep people out.”

An indignant feeling came from the sentinel.

“Sorry. It could also make him an easier target for snipers. Uhm, speaking of that, can you tell if any more are out there, aiming at him? Or where the prince went?”

She hoped Enrikon was cowardly hiding somewhere, afraid to be struck again.

A vision washed over her eyes. As it had once before, the sentinel showed her what the vine poking through the roof of its tower could stretch up to see.

It didn’t focus on any nearby snipers and instead swept out over the streets all around the castle, each filled with rows and rows of soldiers. It paused to focus on a flat rooftop six blocks away.

Beside a large brick chimney, the prince stood with his six bodyguards around him and pointed angrily toward Vlerion. Assuming he could see Vlerion from that distance. He’d retreated well out of range of the sentinel’s beams. Too bad he didn’t look incapacitated from the earlier blow.

“Unfortunately,” Kaylina murmured. “What building is that?”

Without the sentinel’s help, she couldn’t have seen that far, and she had no idea.

The view shifted, showing her a sign out front. Sluice and Pick Industries.

While she debated what to do with that information, the view shifted again, sharpening as it focused on something farther away.

“As you’ve possibly heard,” Vlerion continued speaking, “the shameful secret that I’ve attempted to keep to myself my whole life has been exposed.”

Kaylina frowned at his words. It wasn’t shameful. And nothing about the curse was his fault. But maybe he meant to set himself up as sympathetic to these strangers? Or explain why he hadn’t let it be known before?

“My ancestor, King Balzarak, during a time of famine, ordered rangers into the preserve to hunt. All he wanted was to feed our people, but the Daygarii we’d believed long gone from the area appeared, and they cursed him for sending the rangers to poach in their protected forest. With their foul magic, they cast a spell on him, making it so he turned into a powerful beast.”

Surprisingly, that revelation resulted in a few cheers from the crowd. Kaylina reminded herself of the revisionist newspaper article saying the beast protected the kingdom instead of attacking anyone in his path.

The cheers were squelched, sergeants and captains telling their soldiers to shut up. Kaylina was surprised they weren’t yelling over Vlerion, trying to shut him up. Though, with the magic amplifying his voice, that would have been difficult. But surely any second, the army would start its siege.

A touch of vertigo struck her as the sentinel’s vision reached the plateau by the harbor, swept up the rock, and focused on the front of the royal castle. It was quiet up there, only a few guards on duty on the walls.

“Because they’re all here ,” Kaylina grumbled, “sent to make sure Vlerion dies tonight.”

The sentinel focused on a tower on a front wall, one with a balcony that overlooked the city and the harbor. As Targon had described, the queen was up there, with guards to either side of her. There were also several older men and women in rich greens, blues, and golds. Aristocrats? Advisors? Kaylina didn’t recognize any of them. At first, she didn’t recognize Petalira either because she had a fancy gilded spyglass to her face. It pointed straight at Stillguard Castle. At Vlerion.

Petalira lowered it and snapped something to a man in gray and black next to one of the guards. Chin to his chest and timid-looking, he nodded and rushed into the tower.

“I’ll wager she’s sending a message to her son, telling him to keep Vlerion from talking. Or to shoot him.”

The sentinel didn’t opine on that. Reading someone’s thoughts from more than a mile away was probably beyond its abilities. It showed a few more seconds of the queen on the balcony, ranting and gesturing to those around her, people who nodded firmly. One patted her on the arm.

Then the sentinel drew back, focusing on the prince’s building again. Enrikon was also ordering people around, two military commanders. He pointed emphatically toward Stillguard Castle.

“I think you’re going to need to wrap up your speech soon, Vlerion,” Kaylina murmured, wishing she could do something.

But the prince was too far away for the sentinel to attack. All of their true enemies were. Down below, the mercenaries and guards were simple men and women doing their duty, following orders, as their oaths compelled. That they were listening to Vlerion at all might be considered treasonous by their superiors.

A boom rang out, and Vlerion dropped low on Crenoch’s back as a cannonball shot overhead. A purple beam slashed out from the tower, scant inches from Kaylina’s ear. It intercepted the cannonball before it reached the castle.

When it hit, shrapnel flew, some clinking off the wall near Vlerion, some hitting soldiers. An arrow sailed from Targon’s tower. As with the other, it avoided armor by striking its target in the neck: the cannon operator. The man pitched backward, disappearing from view behind the smoking weapon.

Kaylina hadn’t realized Targon was such a good shot but couldn’t be surprised, and she was grateful to him.

“A little late that time,” Vlerion called up to his tower.

“I wanted to see what the plant could do,” Targon called back.

They both sounded utterly calm, as if that hadn’t been an assassination attempt.

“It doesn’t like me very much. I’d rather not count on it for my defense.” Vlerion nodded to Kaylina.

Thinking she’d been responsible for the beam lashing out? She shook her head, but he’d already looked away, down to Jankarr, who was coming up the steps toward him.

Vlerion saw and lifted his hand again.

“I’ll carry on,” he called.

Jankarr looked like he would protest, but, as orders came from the army for more men to load cannons, an earthquake rumbled through the city. Kaylina gripped the edge of the window for support as Vlerion watched for more trouble from below.

A curse came from the other tower. Targon.

Kaylina peeked out to check on him. He hadn’t fallen, but that roof had a steep slope. His bow was lowered, and he gripped a lightning rod for support. Stones tumbled from the courtyard walls, old mortar giving way. The floorboards creaked under Kaylina’s feet, and she hoped the castle could withstand these quakes.

Out in the streets, the troops looked around but didn’t break formation, not until a stone corbel on the corner of a roof snapped and fell, crushing someone. Men shouted, and some started to run, but it was too crowded for them to go far.

“Stay where you are,” a commander barked. “Man those cannons!”

The tremors grew less pronounced, and the troops recovered their equanimity. Kaylina supposed it was wrong to hope a great chasm would open in the street and swallow the entire army. She had no idea if such things ever happened outside of the adventure novels she read.

“Jankarr,” Kaylina called softly, spotting him standing in the gatehouse archway, probably hoping it would shelter him.

He jogged over to the tower and looked up at her.

“The prince is on the rooftop of the Sluice and Pick Industries building. Will you tell…” Kaylina groped for a name. Who would he tell? Targon was trapped here with them. How could they get a message to the rest of the rangers? “Someone,” she finished lamely.

Jankarr looked in the direction of the Sluice and Pick, though he couldn’t see it through the wall and intervening buildings. He nodded firmly at her. “Yes.”

Risking falling ceiling stones, he ran into the castle. Kaylina didn’t know who he would tell, but maybe he was checking to see if the way through the catacombs had opened up. Maybe he could reach someone who could put the intelligence the sentinel had given her to use.

“As you can see,” Vlerion called, sitting straight on Crenoch’s back as the tremors finished. “It’s possible the gods are not pleased with the current regime. I will not speak ill of the dead, but those who watch over us may know that neither Gavatorin Senior nor Junior created as fair and prosperous a kingdom as existed in the past. Perhaps that is why the gods have been causing the quakes. I don’t know. I’m a simple soldier, like you, sworn to protect the borders.”

Kaylina almost snorted at the idea that the gods had anything to do with the earthquakes, but the people who’d been scrambling about, readying cannons for more attacks, paused again to listen to Vlerion.

“I know what life is like when the gods aren’t pleased with you,” Vlerion added. “Though in my case it’s the Daygarii who weren’t happy with my family. That is why my predecessor stepped down all those years ago, and it is why the Havartafts have not attempted to reclaim the throne. But these are trying times, with uprisings within and threats from without.” Vlerion waved in the direction of the northern Evardor Mountains, to the frozen lands beyond, where the Kar’ruk made their homes, and many eyes tracked his movements. The Kar’ruk invasion was recent enough to be in people’s minds. “It is time for a Havartaft to return to the throne. Should you switch your allegiance from he who lacks experience with war to a soldier, to me , I’ll use the curse to my advantage. With the help of one who was born with Daygarii power, the beast will rise to protect the city—the entire kingdom—whenever it is threatened.” Vlerion risked turning his back on the crowd to look toward Kaylina in the tower.

Those watching him also shifted their gazes to her. Kaylina wanted to shrink down below the windowsill. She couldn’t imagine people would be delighted by anyone with Daygarii power. As Jankarr had for weeks, they would think her a freak, an oddity. Not normal.

“The mead maker!” someone called with enthusiasm.

Well, maybe that guy wouldn’t mind her.

Someone else yelled at him to shut up.

“She has the power to control the beast when the curse arises,” Vlerion continued. “But she has also sworn to obey me, the rightful King of Zaldor.” He looked back at Kaylina, offering a slight smile.

“Obey, right,” she muttered. When some of the eyes turned toward her tower again, Kaylina lifted her arms and curtsied toward Vlerion. If this would help him, she would pretend to agree, but she whispered, “I’d better get another reward for that when the curse is lifted.”

“I promise the beast’s protection for you all,” Vlerion said, turning back to the army, “but you must join me. I’ll not allow the prince or the queen to have me assassinated, as they’ve tried to do many times already. And you know in your hearts that you want something better for the future of the kingdom. You want to be led by someone who has slept on the cold ground as often as in a soft bed, someone who’s been injured more than fifty times in the line of duty, someone you can depend on to put the interests of the kingdom—of you —ahead of his own.”

“Shut that treasonous bastard up,” a yell boomed from a distant rooftop. From the rooftop of the Sluice and Pick Industries. The prince must have found a megaphone or another way to amplify his voice. “Commander Dashul, follow the orders I gave you before I left. Storm the castle, and kill that usurper!”

Still on the courtyard wall, Vlerion gripped his sword hilt. But he couldn’t do anything to the prince from there. Neither could Kaylina or the sentinel, not with Enrikon so many blocks away.

Unfortunately, that commander heard the order and obeyed.

“Batter down the gates!” he yelled to his men. “Climb the walls, and kill anyone who resists arrest.”

A few of the soldiers hesitated, looking to Vlerion for different orders, but the majority leaped to obey their commander. They were trained to do so without questioning right or wrong.

The troops with ropes and grappling hooks surged toward the courtyard wall while those manning the cannons lit fuses. A group with a battering ram approached the front gate.

Vlerion drew his sword, clearly intending to defend the wall rather than run. As Kaylina had acknowledged earlier, with the back gate and the catacombs entrance guarded, there was nowhere to run anyway.

“Help him defend the castle, please,” Kaylina told the sentinel, “while I think of… something.”

What, she didn’t know. She, Vlerion, and Targon could hardly keep out an army. The men with ropes were spreading out to find undefended spots along the wall.

The sentinel shared an image of Vlerion glowing again, as if to say, You should have let me limn him with magic.

“You may be right.”

But, as the battering ram struck the gate, Kaylina doubted it would have been enough.