First Blood

The legion came on the ninth morning, and it came in the way of an army that has been told to expect no resistance.

She saw it from the wall.

The watchtowers had given warning at dawn, a long low horn from the south tower, answered one after another along the whole length of the rampart, and by the time she climbed the stair the air was full of the sound of running feet. The Ashborn took their stations in silence. Archers lined the parapet in rows of twelve. Pikemen filled the gate-courts behind. Boys ran with buckets of sand. She stood on the broad stone walk, in the thin bright cold, with her cloak whipping round her knees, and looked out over the snow at the thing that was coming across it.

It was black.

That was her first impression: a long dark stain spreading over the white, like ink in milk. It resolved as she watched into rank upon rank of men, marching in step. She saw the glitter of spear points. She saw banners, black on ash-gray, each with its single emblem of a dragon in profile, wings folded, eyes closed. She saw the long dark snakes of the baggage trains and the lumbering shapes of siege-engines. She saw, high above the rest, borne on a pole by a mounted man, a standard she knew: the arms of the Empire, the black dragon on the field of ash.

"How many?" she said.

"Twelve thousand foot." Teodra stood at her shoulder, grim, with a long bow in her hand that looked nothing like a Wardmother's ornament. "Three thousand horse. Siege-train. Four ballistae of the Greater Pattern. A banner of the Ash Guard, the Emperor's personal troops." She spat over the parapet. "And a Marshal of the Empire, if that's his flag."

"He sent them?"

"No." The old woman's jaw set. "That's the puzzle. We have eyes in the Bone Palace. The order came from the throne three days ago, and it was clear. The Emperor commanded that no man of his should touch whatever came out of the north." She shook her head. "Marshal Voss has marched anyway."

"Why?"

"He doesn't believe it. Or he doesn't like it." Her mouth twisted. "The Empire has been run by its marshals for four hundred years, Majesty. The Emperor has sat in his chair and said nothing. The men who held the realm together have grown used to deciding for themselves. And now, suddenly, there is a queen at the gate, and a dragon in the sky, and an Emperor who gives an order he has never given. Voss is no fool. He knows what it means." A pause. "It means the end of everything he has built."

"Then he'll fight."

"He'll fight."

…

A herald rode out under a white flag.

She was on the ramparts to hear him. He was a lean young officer in black plate, mounted on a gray stallion, and he halted a bowshot from the gate and raised a brazen trumpet. His voice rang clear and cold across the snow.

"By the authority of Marshal Aurelian Voss, Warden of the Southern Marches and Lord Protector of the Empire! Hear and obey! Whoever harbors in this place the foul sorceress calling herself Solaia, whoever shelters the demon-spawn who flies with her, is declared an enemy of the Throne! Open your gates and give them up, and the garrison shall be spared! Resist, and every man, woman and child within these walls shall be put to the sword!"

Silence fell.

She felt the Ashborn tighten on the wall, a long shudder of muscle and breath. Beside her, Teodra raised the bow. Solaia put out a hand.

"No."

"Majesty—"

"I'll answer him."

She stepped up on the stone coping. The wind took her hair and cloak, and the whole length of the rampart seemed to hold its breath. She looked down at the herald, small and black and bright on his horse, and at the twelve thousand men behind him, and she thought: How strange. I know none of them. And they have been told to hate me.

"Herald."

He flinched. She had not raised her voice. But it carried; she felt it go out from her, steady and cool and clear, across the white field.

"Tell the Marshal that I am Solaia Vraelyra, Queen of the Sky. Tell him I came back in peace. Tell him I have no quarrel with his soldiers and no wish to spill a drop of their blood." She drew breath. "And tell him that if he will not turn back, then I cannot answer for what happens."

The herald stared up at her. His face had gone the color of paper.

"The Queen of the Sky is dead," he said, in a high thin voice. "Dead five thousand years."

"Then I must be a very good liar."

A ripple of dark laughter went along the wall. Even the herald's mouth twitched. He caught himself, and wheeled the gray, and rode back at a gallop to the lines.

…

It began with arrows.

They came up out of the snow in a black curve, from ten thousand bows at once, and she heard them whisper through the air with a long, sibilant rush. She did not move. She lifted her hand, and the White Fire rose about it, bright and cold, and the arrows burned to nothing a yard from her face.

The wall roared.

They were shooting back. Ashborn longbows, hard and quick, thudding into the lines below. She saw men fall in rows. She saw the great black ballistae swing, heard the crack of releases, and ducked as a bolt as long as a man smashed into the rampart a few paces to her left and brought down a spray of stone. A woman screamed. A boy ran past with a bucket, white-faced, spilling sand.

"Veyran!"

She looked round wildly.

He was not at her side. She had left him in the council room with Ferren. She had made him promise, on his honor, on his wings, to stay out of sight. She had told him a dozen times: You are not to fight. You are not to use it. This is not your battle. She saw now, with a lurch of horror, that the door of the stair-turret was open, and a small figure was standing in it, black against the lamplit dark.

He walked out onto the wall.

He was very calm. That was what frightened her. He walked along the parapet in his gray tunic, with his hands at his sides and his wings half open, past the archers and the pikemen, and the Ashborn drew back from him as water draws back from a hot stone. He did not look at her. He looked out over the field with the wide still gaze of a sleepwalker.

"Veyran. Stop."

"They're going to hurt you."

"They can't."

"They want to." His voice was flat. "I can hear them. They're afraid. They think you're a demon. They think I'm a monster." He tilted his head. "They want to kill us, Mama."

"Veyran, listen to me—"

The sky darkened.

She felt it before she saw it. A coldness, flowing over the field like the shadow of a cloud. The White Fire in her palm guttered. The wind dropped. A deep, thrumming silence came down on the wall, and the Ashborn froze where they stood, and an arrow that had been in mid-flight hung for an instant in the air.

"Don't," she said.

"I won't hurt anyone who doesn't hurt us."

"Veyran—"

"I promise," said her son.

He opened his hands.

…

It was beautiful.

That was what she would never be able to forgive herself for. It poured out of him like a river of dark glass, wide and slow and shining, violet shot with black, and where it touched the air it sang. It rolled over the parapet in a wave. It slid down the face of the wall. It spread across the snow like water seeking its level, and where it passed, the snow did not melt. It vanished. It went away in a breath, like a word unspoken, and the black ground beneath it lay naked and steaming.

The first ranks of the legion saw it coming.

She saw them break. She saw the standards fall. Twelve thousand men turned all at once and ran, and the great siege-engines overturned in the press, and the horses went mad. The violet fire reached them. It did not burn. It simply passed through, and where it passed, there was a quiet. A man stopped in mid-stride with his sword raised. A horse sank slowly on its haunches. A trumpet fell from a nerveless hand and rolled away down the slope, ringing.

They did not scream. That was the worst of it. They did not scream at all.

"Veyran!" She was screaming it now. "Veyran, stop! That's enough! That's enough!"

He did not hear.

He stood at the edge of the parapet, with his arms spread and his head thrown back, and the dark flame streamed up around him in a pillar a hundred feet high. His eyes were open. They were burning. They had gone entirely violet, shot through with white, and the gray slits at their centers were wide as coins. He was smiling.

It was not a cruel smile. It was worse. It was the radiant, unguarded, helpless smile of a boy who has discovered, for the first time in his life, that he is very, very good at something.

"Veyran!"

She seized his arm.

The fire leaped. It struck her like a wall, a vast cold sweeping pressure, and she was flung back, sliding on the stone. But she caught herself. She struggled up. She threw her whole weight against him, with her arms around his chest and her cheek against his shoulder, and she poured out everything she had. The White Fire, the old fire, the fire of the Queens. It rose from her palms in a flood, golden-white, soft, and flowed into the pillar of violet, and the two flames twined and wrestled in the air above the rampart like serpents.

"Come back," she cried. "Come back to me! It's enough! It's enough!"

The pillar shuddered.

It faltered. It dimmed. And with a sound like a long indrawn breath it collapsed upon itself, and he sagged against her with a gasp, and they both went down on the stones.

…

The field was silent.

She heard that first. No horns, no shouting, no steel. The wind had dropped. A thin cold sun lay on the snow. And in the sun, spread out in rank on silent rank as far as she could see, lay an army.

They were not dead. She saw that at once, with a shaking relief that nearly undid her. They lay on their backs, in their black armor, with their eyes open, and their chests were rising and falling. They were breathing. But they did not move. A horse lay on its side with its legs folded. A standard-bearer sat propped against a gun-carriage, his face slack and blank. Twelve thousand men lay in the snow, stunned, silent, empty, as if every one had been struck by the same blow.

Asleep, said Obsyra, wondering, from overhead. They are all asleep. He has taken something from them. Not their lives. Their will.

Solaia lay on the wall with her son in her arms. He was cold. He was shaking. His eyes were closed, and his breath came in small hard gasps.

"Veyran. Sweetheart. Can you hear me?"

"I'm sorry."

"It's all right."

"I didn't mean to." A whisper, hoarse and thin. "It was so— it was so easy."

"I know."

"It felt good, Mama." His eyes opened.

They were gray.

Not gray in the pupil. Gray all through, from rim to rim, the clear pale gray of ash, the gray of a winter morning. She looked into them and could not breathe. The shape of the brow. The slight tilt at the corner. The long, level, unsparing stillness of the gaze. She had seen those eyes in the dark of a Void-night. She had seen them across a snowfield, over a teacup, across a bed. She knew them as she knew her own hands.

Kieran, she thought. Oh, Kieran.

And in that moment, in that cold bright silence, with the army sleeping on the snow and her son's face in her arms, she understood exactly what she had brought into the world.