Prince of Dogs (Crown of Stars 2)

She ran up the hill, easily outpacing people burdened with buckets. A ragged procession filed past her down the hill, some with empty buckets, some with handcarts heaped with furniture and books and chests and every kind of item salvaged from the fire. A cleric clutched an ancient parchment codex to her chest; her face was streaked with ash and she had a weeping red welt on her right arm where her cleric’s robe was ripped open. Other clerics followed behind her, each holding something precious. One man had pressed unbound parchment sheets against him, hands struggling to keep them all together. A woman held her robe out as a basket, full of quills and inkpots, stands and styluses and tablets all jumbled together, ink leaking through the fine gold fabric of her rich vestment. The youngest of them stumbled behind, looking stunned, carrying a magnificent eagle’s feather quill and a little pot of red ink that, tipping, had stained his fingers. A child cried. Servants staggered under loads of bedding salvaged from the blaze.

“Make way!” cried a man in Lion’s tabard. “Make way for the princess!”

Hanna stepped aside as Princess Sapientia was carried past reclining on a camp bed. She looked only half conscious, but both of her hands clasped her swollen abdomen and she moaned as she passed Hanna. Behind her, sobbing or gabbling like panicked geese, more servants hauled chests, tapestries that kept coming unrolled, even the splendid chair carved with lions and dragons and an eagle’s wings that Hanna recognized as belonging to King Henry.

At the palace gate, grim-faced guards forced back the curious and only admitted those persons carrying water—as though such a trifle could stem the inferno. The wind off the fire singed her skin, and her eyes stung with heat and burning ash.

“Make way!” she cried, pushing forward to the guards. “Where is the king?”

“Out on the hunt, thank God!” shouted the one nearest her. He had no helmet; part of one ear was missing—but it was an old scar. His red hair was stained with ash. “There were few enough therein, by Our Lord’s Mercy, but surely some have perished.”

“Is there anything I can do?” she yelled. She had to yell to be heard above the roar of flames. Already her voice was hoarse from heat and ash.

“Nay, friend. This is one foe we can’t fight. Ah!” he exclaimed, a gasp of relief. “There’s one of your comrades who’s run mad. Can you calm her?”

Shifting to look past him, she saw a crowd of some twenty people, a handful of men in Lion tabards, servants, and one man in noble garb who directed the others. He had golden hair, and as she watched he reached to help two figures struggling out of the smoke: a dark-haired young woman in an Eagle’s scarlet-trimmed cloak who half-dragged and half-led a man in a singed and dirty Lion’s tabard.

“Liath!” Hanna bolted toward the fire.

A sudden pop sounded, followed by a low thundering gasp of air, a thousand breaths drawn in. People stumbled back from the courtyard, crying out, as the roof of the back portion of the palace collapsed in a huge unfolding bloom of flame and smoke and stinging red hot ash. Four men grabbed the harness shaft of a wagon loaded to bursting with iron-bound chests: the king’s treasure.

“Liath!” shouted the golden-haired nobleman as Liath turned and vanished back into the boiling smoke, back into the burning palace. He started after her. Three soldiers broke forward, grabbed him, and dragged him away from the raging fire.

“Liath!” Hanna cried, running forward. She hopped awkwardly sideways to avoid being run over by the wagon, which had now gathered speed as the men at the shaft got momentum. One small chest jolted, bounced, and fell out, splitting open at Hanna’s feet to spill delicate cloissoné clasps and buckles onto the cracking mud.

“My lord! There is nothing you can do! You must come away, my lord!” So the Lions shouted at the nobleman, and he cursed them once, without feeling, and then began to weep.

Ai, Lady. Surprise brought her to a jarring halt while fire blistered the timber walls of the palace and parched her lips. It was Hugh. He dropped to his knees as if he meant to pray, and only when the Lions hoisted him up bodily could he be persuaded to move back to safety as the fire scorched the peaked roof, spit, leaped the chasm of an alley between buildings, and kindled a new fire on the roof of the fourth quarter of the palace—the only quarter as yet untouched. Everything would go. Everything.

“Lady forgive me,” said Hugh as he stared into the blaze. “Forgive me my presumption in believing I had mastered the arts you gave into my hands. Forgive me for those innocent souls who have died needlessly.” He looked up, saw Hanna, and blinked, for an instant examining her as if he recognized her.

She almost staggered under the weight of his stare. She had actually forgotten how glorious he was.

Then he shook his head to dismiss her and spoke to himself—as if to convince himself. “Had I only known more, it would not have happened this way. But I cannot let her go….”

“Come, my lord,” said a servant, but Hugh shook him off.

“Father Hugh!” A new man had come running up; he was clearly terrified to stand so close to the blaze. “Princess Sapientia calls for you, my lord.”

Torn, he wavered. Rising, he could not bring himself to follow the servant.

“She is having pains—”

Clenching a hand, he glared at the raging fire, cursed under his breath and then, with a last—beseeching?—glance at Hanna, spun and followed the servant.

Liath had gone back inside the inferno.

“Keep your wits, Hanna,” she muttered to herself, recalling the first Lion’s words: “Your comrade has run mad.” Pulling her cloak tight over her mouth and nose, she pressed forward into the blaze.

“Come back!” they shouted, those Lions who remained. “Eagle!”

Her skin was aflame, but no flame touched her. She crossed into a great hall ragged with smoke and blowing ash. Heat boiled out. She saw nothing, no one, no figure struggling through the smoke. The thick beams supporting the ceiling above smoldered, not yet in open flame. A far wall cracked, splintering, burst by heat.

She heard the scream. It was Liath.

“Help me! God save us, wake up, man!”

Hanna could not take a deep breath, for courage or for air. But she ran forward anyway into the fire. Ash rained on her head. The boom and surge of fire raged around her as harshly as the tempest of battle. Smoke burned her eyes and the air tasted acrid.