“It is not.” She would have grabbed him to shake him, but she could see any touch would overset his tenuous balance. “I am no weather worker. Are you all such fools to let a man like Hugh of Austra walk as your ally?”
“She was.”
The body lying at his feet was blackened and distorted, the feathered cloak reduced to wisps of bright green and gold mixing into the sodden earth. Her throat burned, and her stomach rose, and she turned away, catching a hand against her stomach. Behind her, she heard one of her companions retching. Anna bawled.
“Where is my daughter?”
“Not among the dead. The Pale Sun Dog has taken her.”
The rain lashed them. She sucked in air, but it tasted of ash and roasted flesh. She spat, but the flavor coated her tongue. She tried to catch rain in her mouth, but that only made the taste run down her throat, and she could not bear to swallow the ashes of the dead. There were at least a dozen dead and twice as many wounded. More, a hundred at least, stumbling, vomiting, mouths opening and closing with no sound she could hear, and one screaming in pain like a wounded rabbit, but the sound existed a hundred leagues from her, audible only because it was so high and so ghastly.
It was strange to discover that nothing could surprise her, not after that bolt called from the sky. She had always known Hugh capable of anything, limited only by the scope of his knowledge. While she walked the spheres, many years had passed on Earth; he had possessed Bernard’s book, and other resources besides. He had studied with Anne and the Seven Sleepers. The laws of inheritance and custom had denied him power in the world of regnant and noble. Yet it wasn’t true he had no power. He had reached for, and grasped, the only power available to him.
She touched the astrolabe tied to her belt. It was protected by a leather cover, slick beneath her fingers. Even clouds—even daylight—would not stop him from weaving the crown.
“Hai!” She turned her back on Zuangua. Buzzard Mask was vomiting, but hearing her voice he sat back, wiping his mouth although he still gagged and shuddered. She shouted. “Sharp Edge! All of you! We’ve been outmaneuvered. We’ll run for the crown and catch him there.”
“Wait!” Zuangua called.
She turned back. “Speak quickly.”
His niece’s twisted corpse held his gaze. “So briefly she came into her power. Now it is stripped from her and she returns to the earth which births us. Who will walk as Feather Cloak?” His smile was a challenge. “Will you, Bright One?”
“Don’t mock me! Go to Secha, who led your people in exile. She is not a fool.”