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Before the fire bearer was fully over the edge, I was connecting the ropes and throwing them over the other side.
I wanted nothing more than to leap after them, damn my hurting hands. But there were times to hurry slowly, as our mother said. I would not throw away our advantage by breaking my neck on the way down.
Hand by hand, testing each foothold and daring a mage light to help, I used every instinct and skill I’d gained robbing nobles, and made it onto the broken branch, leaves now dead.
Maksim followed, losing his footing halfway and landing with a crash. Crawling out of the foliage, he complained of nothing more than bruises.
Orso came so slowly I wanted to scream at him the world was not waiting.
I allowed my mind to drift. People fought in the city. Spirits—new and old—rose. The dead walked on to the palace. I could feel it all. Not the details, but the song of Tal changing into cacophony.
Pyre, perhaps as impatient as I or in a display of the famous fire bearer temper, started his descent when Orso was halfway.
The rope swung against the ledge.
Once. Twice. Orso was only six feet above the ground. Pyre halfway.
Metal I had been promised was unbreakable snapped under their combined weight and month-long exposure, and a figure encased in flame fell like a comet into the dry brush.
There was a reason fire bearers were known as explosions, Mariska had told me while trying to teach me to steer my magic. When their power got away from them, their mind did not fill with the emotions and thoughts of others; they did not draw inward like my power and water seers did. Elementals pushed outward, consuming everything in their way.
It had not rained for more than a three-day.
The summer heat, which had seemed oppressive before, became a second thought as fire leaped with heat like a furnace.
Orso was inside the bonfire. I could not hear his screams above the woosh of the flames as they consumed the dead branch.
Cold hands tried to pull me back, less substantial in the face of thefire.
Then human ones wrapped around me, and Maksim hauled me back.
Fire burned in the city. Fire burned in the palace forest. Had my interfering already brought more damage than Ealhswip’s plot? Even if she would hurt no other, would be a wonderful ruler, I would have come for the man who hung me.
For him, I had set Tal on fire.
Death tore through the music. Spirits and something darker called Lumi.
Maksim shouted.
A dark figure rose inside the flames. It resolved into two, one leaning on the other.
As they came closer, the fire drew inward instead of spreading. The darkness returned, absolute after the brightness, and smoke filled my senses.
My magic was stretched so far my vision started to warp; a laugh climbed up my throat.
“I tried to tell you they’d be fine,” Maksim said in the silence. “Pyre isn’t some untrained hack.”
“Watch that tone, son,” came the pain-filled answer. “Damned heights, never liked them.”
Listening to them bicker, I rebuilt my internal wall stone by stone. I could not afford the distraction of what was happening in the city. I had almost burned, unable to move away.
The effects of the magic were not as obvious as before I broke Popova’s curse, but this call was no less insidious.
Slowly, I returned, the world muted.
Mage lights and Lumi illuminated the woods.
Pyre had only twisted his leg when landing and was already preparing a splint.
