The streets of New Cabora were far from deserted this night, Anton realized as he moved the glasses back and forth across the approaching town. There were guards in the streets near the Palace, and one or two buildings seemed to be on fire, their smoke rising thicker and blacker than the moon-silvered smoke from the city’s many chimneys. Here and there Anton glimpsed movement in open spaces, and, of course, he had no way of knowing what was happening in between the buildings where he could not see. Dogs seemed to be barking everywhere. Some of them were no doubt barking at the strange object in their sky, but anyone hearing them would surely think they were barking at the guards in the streets. They wouldn’t look up. Why would they? Until very recently, there had been no possibility of anything being in the night sky but the moon, stars, and clouds.
He focused on what seemed to be the main locus of activity. The airship was drifting closer and closer, but also lower and lower, which in turn hid more and more of the streets behind the walls and roofs of buildings. But in an intersection he saw a man on horseback whose posture and bearing seemed familiar even without the binoculars. With them, there could be no doubt:
Lord Falk.
As he watched, another man on horseback galloped up and exchanged words with Falk. Falk, who had been sitting still, suddenly seemed galvanized, wheeling his horse, shouting something loudly enough that, though he couldn’t make out the words, Anton heard a hint of the sound, two or three seconds later.
And then the guards began streaming through the streets.
Lower and lower Anton sank, closer and closer he drifted. He would have to make up his mind soon to either land in the Square or lift again and perhaps circle back. But that would take time, and setting off the burner and starting the propellers would announce his presence in a way Falk could not miss. And in the back of his mind, Anton couldn’t help wondering just who it was Falk was searching for through the streets of New Cabora in the middle of the night. He wasn’t privy to all the security concerns of someone in Falk’s position, of course, but he could certainly think of one person Falk would turn out all the guard for.
Brenna.
Anton judged his rate of descent against the Square. He would make for it, he decided. He could abort his landing up until the very last moment. The night was still, and the airship silent. As he got closer, he might hear something that would confirm or deny his suspicion… if the damned dogs would shut up long enough… and then make a final decision.
The Square, still bordered mostly by crumbled ruins-the buildings Falk had singlehandedly destroyed, Anton remembered with a quiver of apprehension-slipped slowly toward him, growing larger and larger. A few blocks from it, a good two miles north of the Lesser Barrier and the bridge into the Palace, the guard had now formed a cordon around a nondescript building with a tall central chimney, and a lot of wagons drawn up around it.
I’ll have to make my mind up within ten minutes, Anton thought. He aimed his glasses at the gathered guards, and waited to see what would happen.
Brenna had begun the day well north of Berriton, spent most of it riding in the tense silence of Falk’s magecarriage, been dragged socked-footed through the Lesser Barrier and into the snow, and now, in borrowed boots and cloak, had hurried through the streets of New Cabora to the one place that, for all her interest in the city during her previous visits, she had somehow never thought to ask to be taken to: the stable of the nightsoil collector.
The place didn’t smell as bad as she feared, but she suspected that was due mostly to her good fortune-such as it was-to be making her visit in midwinter rather than in high summer.
Silent wagons stood around them now, still some hours from being harnessed to horses. They were black, to slip as unobtrusively as possible through the dark streets-and to hide any unattractive stains, no doubt. In the back of each were sealed wooden barrels, empty now. It occurred to Brenna that one way to sneak out of the city would be to ride inside one of those barrels, but the thought sent a shiver of disgust through her.
Fortunately, that was not what was planned. Vinthor took them down the line of wagons on one side of the huge echoing space in which they stood, a long, narrow building with the wagons at one end and stables for the horses at the other. After one brief whinny and a few snuffles, the animals had accepted their presence, and now stood silent and sleeping.
Behind the stable area was a chamber containing a furnace, used not to provide magical energy-this was a strictly Commoner enterprise-but to burn some of the refuse that a second fleet of wagons in another long stable on the other side of the furnace collected each evening. That which could not be burned or salvaged made its own journey, to a tip a mile or so east of the city.
The nightsoil went several miles farther, as a matter of good public hygiene, to a noisome pit where it was buried by Commoner laborers. A horrible job, she thought, but they’re probably glad to get it. At least there they work for Commoners instead of Mageborn.
Vinthor halted behind a wagon that appeared exactly the same as all the others to Brenna’s tired eyes. “Help me,” he said to Karl, and together they lifted down the empty barrels. Vinthor reached underneath the wagon and pulled or twisted something that made a loud click. Then he put his hand underneath the wagon’s back end and lifted.
The floorboards, hinged at the front, raised to reveal a space swathed with sacking, just deep enough for someone-provided they didn’t have a large belly or breasts, Brenna thought in horror-to lie in. “We’ll smother!”
“No, you won’t,” Vinthor said shortly. “I’ve ridden in these myself. It’s not pleasant, but it certainly isn’t fatal.” He looked around. “The night watchman is a Causer. And we’ll need him to seal us in. But I haven’t seen him since we entered.”
Brenna peered around in the darkness. The only light came from a couple of lanterns in the central space between the wagons and the stable, and two more at the other end, one on either side of the big double doors that would swing open to let the wagons exit. Nothing moved in the gloom, but down in the stable, a horse stamped its foot and whinnied. As though that were a signal, all of the horses suddenly became restless, shifting in their stables, making loud snorting noises. Another horse whinnied, a shrill cry of challenge…
… and from outside the stable, that cry was answered.
Vinthor whirled at the sound. “Someone’s outside!” he said. “I’ll-”
Whatever he would do was lost in a huge, splintering bang as the double doors blew inward, hurtling through the air like fallen leaves caught in an autumn gale. One door crashed into the wagons on the far side of the stable, snapping the axle of one and bringing it thudding to the ground in a cloud of dust. The other skidded down the center of the wagonry. Karl and Brenna were beside the wagon with the false floor and thus out of its path, but Vinthor wasn’t so lucky.
The door slammed into his feet, tossed him heels over head into the air, and then smashed into the last wagon in line, folding its rear wheel under it so that it crashed onto its side. The empty barrels it carried rolled across the floor with a noise like thunder, one ending its journey against Vinthor’s unmoving body.
Karl and Brenna hadn’t had time to do more than cower between the wagons. Karl recovered first, grabbing Brenna by the hand. “Come on,” he shouted above the noise of the now screaming horses, and, pulling her after him, he ran toward the central space.
The stable doors were also open, though they hadn’t been blasted inward; instead, perhaps to spare the horses, they had been forced outward, ripped off their hinges. Guards were entering from that end as well, and as Karl and Brenna emerged into the light of the lanterns, the one in the lead pointed and shouted.
His companion raised his hand and Brenna felt an icy chill as something like a rope of blue fire lashed out at them…
… touched Karl…
… and vanished, as the guard who had cast it was hurled from his horse, hitting one of the stable doors so hard it smashed open. The terrified horse inside reared, hooves flailing at the motionless body, and then raced into the stable, shouldering past the other guard and thundering toward Karl and Brenna.
Karl pulled Brenna out of its way and through a door into the furnace room. A wave of heat met them. They ran around the massive round brick structure. Karl eased open the door in the far wall and took a look into the refusecollection side of the building, but slammed it shut again at once. “More guards!”
“Trapped!” Brenna said bitterly.
Karl bolted the door. “There must be another way out of here! Where do they tip in the garbage?”
“Outside?”
“But it doesn’t come in here. There must be a lower level…” He cast around on the floor. “There!”
“There” was a trapdoor, with a big ring to pull it open. Brenna was closest; she grabbed it and pulled with all her might, but it wouldn’t budge. Karl joined forces with her. No luck.
Karl swore. “They’ll be ripping the doors off the hinges any second!”
But Brenna wasn’t looking at him. She’d looked past him, and saw, on the side of the rounded brick wall, a metal ladder… going up. She let her gaze follow it. It ended in another trapdoor. “There!” She pointed.
Karl spun, saw what she was looking at, and shouted, “Come on!”
He clambered up the ladder, and seized the bolt. It stuck, then flew open with an enormous crash. Karl flailed, almost fell, then caught a rung with his hand and pulled himself back onto the ladder again. Holding on with his left hand, he pushed the door open with his right, and peered up.
Above them towered the great central chimney. The ladder continued to its top. “Dead end!” Brenna said.
But both doors into the furnace room had suddenly turned white with frost, and Karl said, “Better up there than down here.” He swung to one side. “You first.”
Brenna hesitated. “I-”
“I’ll be between you and their magic,” he said.
The two doors groaned, folded like paper, and ripped away in a thunder of shattering masonry. Brenna jumped up the ladder as far as she could, then climbed.
Karl followed close on her heels, kicking the trapdoor closed behind them as guards burst into the furnace room. Brenna climbed as fast as she could, the ladder’s rungs slippery in the grip of her borrowed gloves, her too large boots threatening to slip off her feet with every step. She didn’t look down. Instead she kept her head up and headed for the black sky above her, even though she knew at this point it was only empty defiance.
But empty or not, defiance was all that was left to her. To climb was to defy Falk.
And so she climbed.
The guards in the furnace room wasted valuable time hurling magical lassoes at Karl, trying pull him from the ladder. He felt nothing, the insubstantial ropes of blue fire recoiling from him like snakes from a hot stove, lashing back at their casters, who fell out of sight in the room below. Their futile efforts allowed Karl and Brenna to get halfway up the ladder before anyone down below physically came after them.
But even as he watched Brenna’s feet moving from rung to rung just above his head, he knew she had been right. This was a dead end. Once they reached the top of the chimney, their flight would be over. He would turn and try to fend off the guards climbing after them, but.. .
He’d already realized that he was not His Royal Highness to any of these men. They belonged to Falk. Probably Unbound, every one of them. They would laugh at him if he tried to order them to stand down.
Worse, though he was certain they would do everything in their power to avoid harming Brenna, who was vital to Falk’s plans, they must know that he was dispensable.
Though they might not yet have thought of the term Magebane to apply to him, they had learned by now that they could not magic him off the ladder. But they could certainly still pull, shoot, or cut him from it.
And so he, too, climbed, to what he expected to be his last stand.
Down in the courtyard, he heard Falk shout.
“Don’t harm the girl,” Falk shouted. “I don’t care about the boy, but keep her alive.”
He’d watched with satisfaction as Brenna and the Prince had first emerged from the roof onto the chimney and begun to climb, since they were clearly going nowhere. But then he had seen the magical lassoes of his men slip away from the infuriatingly magic-impervious Prince, and his satisfaction turned to annoyance.
He studied the chimney. The distance from where he stood wasn’t so great. And it would give him great satisfaction…
He dismounted, then reached up and pulled his crossbow from its holster alongside his saddle. He ignored the enchanted bolts in the quiver, instead drawing out one of the perfectly ordinary steel-tipped shafts. Deliberately he loaded and cocked, then raised the bow in his right hand, held his left arm across his body, and steadied the bow on it. He took careful aim…
By the time Mother Northwind reached the nightsoil collector’s yard, she had had to call on her spell of invisibility several times to avoid the guards with which the streets of New Cabora seemed to be filled this cold, dark night. But avoid them she had…
… only to reach the place where she had anticipated joining with Vinthor, Brenna, and the Magebane and find it swarming with guards… and Falk himself, standing beside his horse, shouting orders.
She stood very still in the shadows, watching as the doors were blown in and guards rushed into the stables. She heard the horses screaming. Falk’s attention was entirely on what was happening in front of him.
She felt mentally and physically exhausted, more exhausted than she could ever remember. She had already drunk a second of her restorative vials, half an hour before. That had been far too soon after her imbibing of the first vial, back in Malia’s room. She would pay a terrible price when the restoratives wore off. But that didn’t matter. She needed every possible ounce of energy now, and so she reached into her bag, took out the last two of the precious vials, and uncorked and downed them both, one after the other.
A roaring filled her head and for a moment the whole word seemed to recede, as though it would vanish forever… but then it came rushing back, and with it a new surge of energy, enough to do what had to be done.
Falk had long thought she worked to further his Plan. It was time, and past time, she made certain he instead worked to further hers.
Drawing invisibility around her once more, she stepped into the courtyard and stalked toward Falk.
Anton saw the blue flashes and heard the scream of torn metal, the rumble of falling masonry and the crash of wood against stone as the doors at both ends of the two long, narrow buildings that came together at base of the tall chimney were either blown inward or ripped outward. He was very close now, though still a hundred feet or so higher than the chimney. Soon he would have to light the burner to avoid hitting some of the city’s taller buildings, looming ahead of him. The moment he did that, though, he would announce his presence. And right now, with Falk down there and obviously after someone inside those buildings, he preferred to silently watch.
Suddenly a trapdoor opened at the base of the chimney. Anton raised the binoculars and focused on it… and to his astonishment, saw Brenna emerge into the cold air. She began to climb the chimney, a young man behind her… the Prince!
But there’s nowhere to go up there, he thought. Unless…
He studied the envelope speculatively. If he waited until he was almost on top of the chimney, started the propellers, could he hold steady enough and close enough to it to somehow get Brenna and the Prince aboard?
It would immediately betray him to Falk, but so what? What could he do from the ground?
Besides rip us from the sky with magic and hurl all of us to our deaths? Anton answered himself uneasily.
No, he thought. Not with Brenna aboard. She’s too valuable.
To both of us.
He raised his glasses to take one last look at the scene below. There was Falk, off his horse now, standing beside it. He blinked. For a moment, he’d thought he’d seen something crossing the dark cobblestones behind him… but it must have been a trick of the light.
And then he saw Falk reach for the crossbow slung on his saddle, crank it, load it, raise it, aim it at the climbing pair…
With a curse, Anton flung the glasses aside and grabbed up the loaded rifle. The air was still, the basket steady, and the Professor had made him practice his shooting long and hard before they crossed the Anomaly. Kneeling in the bottom of the gondola, he took careful aim…
… and pulled the trigger.