Cursors's Fury

Amara bobbed to one side in an effort to evade the gargoyle’s pounce-but before the fury could attack, an enormous block of stone attached to a heavy chain slammed into its posterior, flinging it out of the tower to fall to the stones and share the fate of its companion.

Lady Placida appeared in the opening, the chain still attached to her collar. She held it about two feet above the section of stone attached to its end, as if it were a flail. She gave Amara a curt nod, set the heavy stone down, and snapped the chain with all the effort a seamstress might use to snap thread. “Done! Get to the roof!”

“See you there!” Amara shouted. She soared upward while Lady Placida drew Rook back up into the bedchamber. Amara heard another crash a moment later, presumably the sound of bedchamber’s locked door being smashed down, and she landed on the roof of the citadel, eyes searching for the presence of any further gargoyles or guards, but the roof was devoid of them-at least for the moment.

The tower’s roof was quite plain, its surface broken only by two distinct features. The first was a square opening in the floor in its center, where stairs led down into the tower. Amara heard steel ringing on steel inside the opening.

Not far from the stairway down was Kalarus’s aviary-a simple dome of steel bars perhaps five feet across and only waist high to Amara. Inside it was a young woman who could not have been more than fifteen or sixteen years old. Like Lady Placida, she wore nothing more than a white muslin underdress, and her dark hair was straight and listless in the heat and humidity atop the tower. There were blankets strewn about on one side of the cage, the subject of the letter she and Rook had found, no doubt.

The girl crouched in the center of the cage, eyes wide-and Amara was somewhat startled by her resemblance to Gaius Caria, the First Lord’s second, quasi-estranged wife; though this child did not have the sense of bitter petulance to her features that Amara had generally seen in Caria’s. The girl stared at her with a mixed expression of despair, worry, and confusion.

“Atticus Minora? “ Amara asked quietly.

“Call me E-Elania,” the girl said. “W-who are you?”

“Amara ex Cursori,” Amara said, simultaneously holding a finger to her lips, urging the girl to silence. “I’m here to take you from this place.”

“Thank the furies,” the girl breathed, keeping her voice down. “Lady Placida is inside. I don’t know where.”

“I know, “ Amara said.

The clash of steel nearby was suddenly drowned out by an enormous hissing sound, and Amara turned her head to see the head and shoulders of an armored Immortal emerge from the hole in the floor, still facing down the stairs. But before he could emerge fully, there was another chorus of hissing sounds, and what Amara could only describe as white-hot raindrops shot up from the tower’s interior in a cloud that pierced the doomed Immortal soldier wherever they struck his armored body, streaking through him as easily as needles piercing cloth, leaving small, glowing holes in the steel of his armor. The man staggered, but grimly kept his feet, thrusting his blade down at someone below him.

A woman’s voice rang out in an imperious tone, then a second swarm of streaking firedrops flashed through the doomed Immortal. This time, the attack left half a dozen red-hot holes in his helmet, and the man fell.

“Hurry!” called Lady Aquitaine ‘s voice. Aldrick emerged from the stairway first, hard-eyed gaze sweeping the tower’s roof. His eyes widened a bit at the sight of Amara, and the Cursor found herself unconsciously tugging down the hem of her tunic.

“Move!” insisted Lady Aquitaine. “Kalarus is about to-”

Then Amara heard a man speak in an impossibly loud, roaring voice that literally shook the stones of the tower beneath her feet.

“No man makes a fool of me in my own house!” boomed the fury-enhanced voice.

Then a woman’s voice answered, every bit as loud, nowhere near so melodramatic, and drily amused. “While the rest of us hardly need try. Tell me, Brencis,” Lady Placida taunted. “Do you still have that little problem bedding women, the way you did in the Academy?”

Kalarus’s answer was a roar of pure rage that shook the tower, raising dust in a choking cloud.

“Move, move!” Lady Aquitaine shouted from below, then Odiana appeared, shoving frantically at Aldrick’s back. The big swordsman stumbled onto the roof, while Odiana and Lady Aquitaine hurried frantically up the stairs, diving to either side of the opening.

Less than a second later, a titanic roar shook the tower again, and a column of white-hot fire exploded from the tower below, roaring up from the stones and rising for hundreds of feet into the sky above Kalare. The air turned hot and dry in an instant, and Amara had to throw her arms across her face to shield her eyes from the blinding light of the flame Kalarus had crafted into being.