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Even as he spoke, Jaciel put out one finger and touched the foot of the goblet. It was the slightest touch, a mere graze of her fingernail, but as it passed, tiny white sparks flew from her hand.
‘You didn’t make this alone,’ said Jaciel, her voice harsh. ‘This was made by a Dwerllin or Hish. It was forced by Free Magic from the raw gold!’
‘True,’ sighed Aronzo, and drew his sword in one swift motion. A moment after he did so, Kilp thrust his chair back and drew also. The servants, all save the major-domo, drew daggers. Clariel pushed her chair back, but before she could rise there was a dagger at her throat from the servant who been standing behind her, and another had her weapon at Harven’s neck. He looked bewilderedly from side to side as two more servants moved in front of Jaciel, their daggers ready, though they did not lift them.
Jaciel stood very still, clearly unarmed in her white and gold silks.
‘I’m sure we can forget this,’ said Kilp. He darted a sharp glance at his son, who looked down and bit his lip. ‘So my son had some help. It is of no great importance. Let’s sit down and talk, there are many arrangements we need to make –’
‘I beg to differ,’ interrupted Jaciel. She stood tall and imperious, speaking as she might to a forgehand who had spoiled the work of days. ‘You have knives at the throats of my husband and daughter. You deal with Free Magic. No.’
She spoke a word then that could not be properly heard or understood, a word that Clariel saw emerge from her mouth in a flash of golden brilliance. A master Charter mark that was linked to hundreds of other marks, that came out of her mouth all together like a sudden storm of rain, but here the drops were molten gold, spraying out at neck height, passing over Clariel’s head so close she felt the burn of their passage. If it were not for her scarf, her hair would have caught on fire.
The servants in front of Jaciel and the ones behind Harven and Clariel screamed and fell as one, their faces dappled with burning holes. Jaciel stooped and picked up two daggers, wielding one in each hand. She lunged at Aronzo who frantically backed away and parried, and Kilp ran back to the doors and shouted, ‘To me!’
‘Flee!’ screamed Jaciel, parrying a riposte from Aronzo with one dagger as she drew Charter marks in the air with the other. The marks were bright as the sun, shining in the air with such brilliance they left after-images in Clariel’s eyes. She pushed her chair back but the legs stuck against the fallen servant, so she had to writhe under the table to get out, and then drag at her father’s hand. Harven was still sitting there, his mouth open and face aghast.
‘Father! Come on!’
She pulled his hand hard. He rose from his chair and they stumbled away. Clariel still had the small, blunt knife that she’d been using to cut the eel. She let go of her father’s hand and charged towards Aronzo’s back, aiming for his neck above his armoured coat, but he saw her coming from the corner of his eye and stepped away, and she was only saved from his counterattack by Jaciel parrying with a dagger.
‘Go!’ screamed Jaciel. She was still tracing Charter marks with her left hand, even as she parried with her right. Clariel had rarely seen her mother practise her swordcraft, but somewhere along the line Jaciel had been taught very well indeed. ‘Take the small stair!’
‘Don’t kill them, especially the girl! Shoot to wound!’ shouted Kilp as he opened the doors, a dozen or more of his guardsmen pouring in around him.
But even as he spoke three eager arbalesters fired their crossbows. Quarrels shot through the air, all three aimed at Jaciel. Yet they did not strike true, instead colliding with some invisible, or near invisible, barrier, for Clariel saw Charter marks flash as they struck.
Though the quarrels did not strike home, they did distract Jaciel for the barest instant. In that moment, Aronzo landed a cut across her arm. Blood flowed through the silk, spreading quickly.
‘You cut as easy as any, for all your magic,’ taunted Aronzo, stepping back so he could watch Jaciel and Clariel together, his blue eyes flickering. Harven was still gaping, his hands raised imploringly as if someone might step in to save them.
‘Do I?’ asked Jaciel. She leaned over and licked the blood from her shoulder, the smear of it frightful around her mouth. She laughed, a laugh Clariel had never heard before. A laugh that made her shiver from crown to toe. The laugh of something being released after a long, long captivity.
Another crossbow twanged, this time the arbalester aiming low at Jaciel’s legs. The quarrel struck the back of a chair, deflected off it at an odd angle, and struck Harven in the middle of his chest. His hands fell, the imploring gesture broken. He fell to the floor, blood pumping from the wound like a flooded gutter overflowing at the eaves.
Clariel felt him die. It was a sensation she knew well from hunting, though she had never realised it was the death sense of the Abhorsens, because she had never been so close to a person in the moment of their death. With animals it was like a fleeting, frozen touch in her mind. Here it was an icy gale that blew through a door that slammed shut again, all in one terrible instant.
A moment later Jaciel’s left-hand dagger flew through the air and the crossbowman who’d fired choked and gargled and plucked at the steel in his throat. Clariel felt his death too, another brief, icy waft deep inside her head.
‘Clariel! Go!’
Jaciel’s command was laced with Charter Magic. Before Clariel could even think to fight against it, she found herself at the small door, wrenching it open, the narrow stair below her dark. She turned sideways as she stepped through, fighting the spell, and saw Jaciel throw her second dagger at Aronzo. He parried it too slowly and too close, so the blade spun across his handsome face, opening his cheek from chin to ear. Aronzo screamed and dropped his sword, his hands clutching his face, the blood running out between his fingers.
Clariel had one last glimpse of Jaciel preparing to launch herself at Kilp and his guards. Her mother was casting a spell, a forge spell drawn with a single master Charter mark, sketched in the air. Flames grew from her fingers as she traced it, long white-hot flames like curving swords.
Jaciel’s daughter saw no more. The spell forced her away, turned her head and sent her stumbling down the stair.
Clariel did not see her mother charge her enemies.
Kilp fled before her, his guards closing ranks behind him. Jaciel killed one, cutting him almost in two. But she was struck herself twice, a terrible wound in her side, and another above her knee. She merely laughed again. Bloody foam dribbled from her mouth as she spun and hacked and drove steadily deeper into the panicked guards, her fiery blades hissing as they cut through armour, flesh and bone.
The guards fought back, chopping and stabbing in blind desperation at this terrible enemy who wielded fire and would not die.
Jaciel was almost through to Kilp when a blow from a halberd took her in the neck, and the head of the greatest Goldsmith and finest artist in the Kingdom flew from her shoulders, to roll bloodily across the floor.
chapter seventeen
seeking refuge
Clariel ran. She stumbled down the stairs, compelled by the spell. All she could think of was flight. She had to get out of the dark, enclosed stair, get out of the Governor’s House, get out of Belisaere!
Get out! Get out!
She collided with the door at the bottom, and frantically felt for the lever, handle or bar. But there was nothing, just smooth wood. She hammered on it with the eel knife, screaming, ‘Open! Open!’ until finally someone did open it and she fell out into lantern light, her clothes splattered with blood and the top of her head singed. Hands clutched at her, but she fought them off and ran, ran as fast as she could for the front door through people shouting questions, and then all-too-slowly beginning to run after her.
Then she was outside, the door behind her. Out in the courtyard, crowded with
soldiers, and there was an instant, just an instant, when no one noticed because it was noisy and everyone was excited with the coming battle or riot or whatever they wanted to call it.
That moment passed as Kilp shouted behind her.
‘Stop her! Catch her! Do not use steel!’
Clariel didn’t slow down. Even as everyone began to react, she was running, this time for the gate in the curtain wall. She was halfway there when she heard Kilp again, closer.
‘Stop her! Catch her!’
A grinning guardsman stepped into her path, the grin gone instantly as she kicked him in the groin and ducked past, cursing the flimsy shoes she wore instead of her proper boots.
She was almost at the gate when one of her own guards, the grim-faced Reyvin, stepped out from the shadows and thrust her spear-shaft at exactly the right point between the young woman’s knees.
Clariel came crashing down on the flagstones and lost her eel knife. She rolled quickly and got onto her knees, just as the spear-shaft came down again, this time to tap her quickly on the back of the head.
It was meant to knock her out, but it didn’t. Clariel rode the blow down, flipped over on her side and kicked up at her attacker, getting Reyvin just under the knee. The guard cursed and went down herself, sprawling on the pavement. Clariel dived onto her, whipped a dagger from her belt and was up and away again, still compelled by her mother’s spell, Jaciel’s shouted ‘Go!’ echoing in her ears.
She was through the gate before any other guard came close, and then sprinting down the road faster than she had ever run, faster than on any hunt, this time the quarry rather than the hunter. She ran without conscious thought for any ultimate destination, seeking only darkness to shield her, turning off the well-lit roads that were illuminated by Charter-Magic lanterns suspended on iron poles, choosing always the darkest street at every intersection.
