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“I will think,” he said, and the queen smiled at him, hearing confidence in his words. Even Antonia was swayed. He had seen many years of war, and although he was an Arethousan and therefore untrustworthy, he was also trapped and might be expected to fight as a cornered lion.
In the east, a strange light rose along the hills, a color like that of blood diluted until it runs pink. Guards along the wall pointed, and a murmur swept the men standing nearby as they—as all of them—stared at a thing they had not seen for months and had come to believe might never appear again.
“That is the sun!” cried Adelheid. “An omen, surely!”
The clouds had thinned to nothing at the eastern horizon, and the sun flashed as its rim breached the horizon. South, a haze veiled the lowlands. North, the rising hills turned from black to gray as light swept the heavens. Above, it was still cloudy, but all around, folk wept to see the sun.
Antonia blinked, reminded of the day she had walked free at long last from the prison beneath the rock of Ekatarina’s Convent, where she had been held. As she grimaced, shading her eyes, it seemed her vision sharpened. It seemed she saw a golden wheel moving off the road and into place along a low rise where grapevines were trained along rail fences. It seemed a man with a human mask for a face rode alongside the turning wheel. She knew him, although in truth he was too distant for her to make out his features.
“That is Hugh of Austra,” she said, finding that her voice was cold and her heart hot. “He has betrayed us.”
The name was only an abstraction to Lord General Alexandros, but Adelheid wept fiercely and then, as the storm passed, set her fists on the wall and stared as if her gaze were killing arrows. No one in that army fell, but movement rippled within the distant ranks surrounding the golden wheel and a person came running out of their ranks toward the gate.
“Hold! Let them approach!” called Alexandros.
The call was repeated along the wall.
A bedraggled, frightened man stumbled up to the gates. His tunic was ripped and dirty. He had blood on his cheeks and he cradled his right arm in his left hand.
“Let me in, I pray you!” he shrieked. He was obviously a local farmer, scared out of his wits and in pain. “I beg you! They spared me only so I could bring a message.”
“It’s a trick,” said Adelheid. “They want us to open the gates. They believe we will be merciful. Kill him.”
Alexandros signaled with a hand, and a dozen archers raised their bows and sighted.
“What message?” called the captain of the watch.
“Just this.” The man sobbed hoarsely, and for a moment Antonia thought he would be unable to talk, but fear goaded him. He croaked out a muddled speech. “The ones … the Lost Ones they call themselves, come home, they say. Ai, God! God have mercy! Let me in, I pray you!”
“The message!” called the captain.
“Just this. Ai, God!” A glance over his shoulder proved him terrified. He huddled on his knees and stretched his hands toward the soldiers half seen on the wall. “That one, they call her who wears the feathered cloak, she is the leader among them. She is mother to a field of blood. So we see! So we see! All my kinfolk slaughtered …” He choked on his weeping. He collapsed forward onto his hands. To the south, past the hill on which stood the stone crown, smoke rose from a dozen conflagrations as the enemy moved out across the countryside.
“Sanglant!” muttered Adelheid. “These are his allies! His kinfolk!”
“Blood calls to blood,” said Antonia. “Evil begets evil. He could never be trusted, after all.”
The farmer struggled up to his knees, looking back again as though he expected the minions of the Enemy to ride down upon him. And were they not there, in truth? The Lost Ones had been banished from Earth because they were the creatures of the Enemy, and now the allies of the Enemy had collaborated in their return.
“Let me speak!” he gasped. “Let me in, I pray you. Help me!”
“Your message,” repeated the captain. The archers had not shifted position. They were ready to loose.
“The feathered cloak sends this message. She wants peace between your kind and hers.”
A few guardsmen snickered, but most held to silence.
“She wants peace, but she comes with a demand. Peace, between you, in exchange for one person.” He trembled and coughed. He could, it seemed, barely scrounge up enough courage to go on. “The Holy Mother! She says, peace in exchange for the Holy Mother, who is a foul sorcerer and must be laid into death.” He bawled and pounded fists on the ground. “Forgive me! I pray you! I am only sent to speak the words. Help me!”
“She fears the galla,” said Adelheid. “But how comes she to know of them?” She turned to Antonia, and her frown was fearful and her bright eyes stricken with a kind of wildness. “How is Hugh of Austra still alive? You told me that he must be dead!”
“He can still be killed,” said Antonia. “Give me a prisoner, some man who deserves death. Let me raise a galla! He is so close. He cannot avoid the Abyss, not now. Not here.”
“Is this wise?” asked Alexandros. “A fearful thing, to kill a helpless man in front of the soldiers.”
Adelheid nodded. “A fearful thing, indeed. The enemy will see what we are capable of. That will make them fear us!”
Below, the farmer at the gates wept and pleaded, creeping forward to pound at the closed gates. Adelheid called one of her sergeants, and he was sent to roust a prisoner out of the dungeon. As they waited, the sun rose and slipped behind the skin of clouds running along the horizon. The light changed to a high sheen like the reflection of lamplight off pearls, something higher than the dull gray of a cloudy day but less than direct sunlight. Still, it heartened Antonia that they had been dazzled even for so short a time. Wind and time and tide must wear away the veil of clouds, just as in the end evil is ground down by the weight of God’s justice.
