The Wheel of Osheim (The Red Queen's War 3)

Double rose to the bait. I didn’t expect him to. Still, I played along, shouting out an agonized “no!” as he beat the thing against the wall. Bullies are to be avoided but often their cruel streak does allow them to be manipulated. “No!” I cried, as if he were swinging my child against the doorposts. When he finally did manage to pull some minor piece free, a metal pin of some kind, nobody was more surprised than me to see the whole side clasp come away in his hand. I’d always thought of the holy stone as an iron pineapple, impervious to any harm.

“There!” He grinned. “I doubt that’s holy any more. It’s not even whole. What do you think of that, Prince Jalan?”

I don’t recall making any reply. In fact the next thing I recall is finding myself horizontal, on a bed, in a room with an oak panelled ceiling.

“What?” I’ve never been very creative with opening lines when recovering consciousness.

Lisa DeVeer’s face swam into focus above me. I jerked into a sitting position, narrowly missing breaking her nose with my forehead. Micha stood at the foot of the bed, clutching Nia to her breast. Snorri occupied the doorway, his back to us.

“Double!” I patted my hip, hoping to find the hilt of my sword. “Where’s Double?”

Lisa pointed to the left and slightly up, Micha to the right and down. Both of them seemed to be speaking at once but I couldn’t make out the words through the ringing in my ears. I lurched off the bed, found my sword on the dresser close by, and pushed Snorri aside.

An acrid smoke hung over the landing outside. Ten yards of the banister had vanished, splintered stumps of the railings punctuating the gap. The flesh-spider appeared to have been returned to a scattered collection of ill-matched limbs, and I could see that the sisters had technically both been correct about the location of Double. Some pieces of him were sticking to the wall on both sides of the doorway.

Snorri said something but the only word I caught was “exploded.”

“Holy hell!” I turned back into the room. “Let’s get out of here!”

“Where to?” I could see that Snorri was shouting though I had to struggle to make out his words.

“The Inner Palace. That’s the safest place. Garyus might be there too.” I could hardly hear my own voice through the ringing in my ears. I took one of the lanterns from the mantelpiece and ushered Lisa and Micha out of their sanctuary. “Quickly. Quietly.” And I led the way out of a place I couldn’t ever imagine would feel like home again. We walked through the scattered remains, a red lesson in how the church rewards an abundance of curiosity in its clerics. Clearly dismantling your holy stone against strict orders results in it reducing you to several hundred small and bloody lumps.

TWENTY-ONE

“How many men have you?” Garyus sat in Grandmother’s throne, propped by cushions, flanked by two of the elite guard in their fire-bronze mail. He had another ten such men arrayed around the hall, some bloodied from their night’s work.

“Sixty or so.” I stood before the dais with Snorri at my shoulder. “There are dozens more scattered about the palace. I’ve sent officers to gather them by the gates.”

Garyus regarded me with one dark eye. The other had been closed by Hertet’s fist. Uncle Hertet had come to Garyus’s tower room after nightfall. A week before I had asked my great-uncle why he didn’t move his quarters into the Inner Palace now he was steward but he had shaken his head and told me that he thought more clearly in a high place. “Also, people only bother you if it’s important. A hundred steps put a different perspective on what matters and what is just time-wasting.”

“Hertet?” I asked. “Has he been found?” He would be among the dead. The slaughter at Milano House had been thorough.

“Not yet.” Garyus touched the swelling around his eye. “There were fires at the house, and part of the rear wall collapsed. It may be that even counting the dead proves beyond us. But I’ve had no word that he escaped.” He shook his head, the sorrow seemingly genuine. “Foolish boy.” Perhaps he remembered the child and not the man that replaced him.

“I should take what men we have and get back to the Appan Gate.” The sentence didn’t sound like something I would say, but then again, if the dead broke through in numbers none of us would see the next sunset.

“I’ve a more important task for you two,” Garyus said.

I raised a brow at that and wondered if Hertet’s fist had scrambled his uncle’s wits. “What could be more important? Christ! They were over the wall hours ago. For all I know they’ve taken the gate by now. We need—”