King's Cage

I pick up my feet up and slide down the stairs, the frozen rails slipping through my curled hands. On the street, out of the wind, the air is much warmer and the puddles are gone. Either frozen or the water was used above to assault the defenders of the Corvium wall.

Bombers face the crack in the wall, spreading farther with each second. Up on the ramparts it widens to several feet, but here the crack is just inches—and growing. Another shudder runs through the stone and below my feet, like an explosion or an earthquake in the ground. I swallow hard, imagining a strongarm on the other side of the wall, her fists raining blow after blow upon our foundations.

“Wait to strike,” I tell the bombers. They look to me for orders, even though I’m not an officer. “No explosions until it’s clear they’re coming through. We don’t need to help them along.”

“I’ll shield the breach as long as possible,” a voice says behind me.

I whirl to see Davidson, his face streaked in gray blood steadily turning black. He looks pale beneath the blood, stunned by it. “Premier,” I mutter, dipping my head. He responds after a long moment. Dazed by the battle. So different on the field than it is in the war room.

Instead, I turn my electricity on our attackers. Using the roots as a map, I run lightning along the plant matter, letting it curl and spiral with the path of the root. I can’t see the greenwarden at the far side, but I feel him. Though dulled by the dense root, my sparks ripple through his body. A distant shriek echoes through the cracks in the stone, somehow audible over the chaos above and around.

The greenwarden isn’t the only Silver able to bring down stone. Another takes his place, a strongarm judging by the way the stone shudders and cracks. Blow after blow sends rubble and dust through the widening gap.

Davidson stands on my left, mouth slightly agape. Numb.

“First battle?” I mutter as another thunderous strike hits home.

“Hardly,” he says, to my surprise. “I was a soldier once too. I’m told I was on a list of yours?”

Dane Davidson. The name flutters in my mind, a butterfly brushing wings against the bars of a bone cage. It comes back as if through mud, slowly, with great effort. “Julian’s list.”

He nods. “Smart man, Jacos. Connecting dots no one else even sees. Yes, I was one of the Nortan Reds to be executed by their legion. For crimes of blood, not body. When I escaped, the officers marked me as dead anyway. So they didn’t have to explain another lost criminal.” He licks lips cracked by the cold. “I fled to Montfort, collecting others like me along the way.”

Another crack. The gap before us widens as feeling returns to my toes. I wiggle them in my boots, preparing to fight. “Sounds familiar.”

Davidson’s voice gains strength and momentum as he speaks. As he remembers what we are fighting for. “Montfort was in ruin. A thousand Silvers claiming their own crowns, every mountain its own kingdom, the country splintered beyond recognition. Only Reds stood united. And Ardents were in the shadows, waiting to be unleashed. Divide and conquer, Miss Barrow. It’s the only way to beat them.”

The Kingdom of Norta, the Kingdom of the Rift, Piedmont, the Lakelands. Silvers at one another’s throats, squabbling for smaller and smaller pieces while we wait to take the whole lot. Though Davidson looks overwhelmed, I can almost smell the steel in his bones. A genius, perhaps, and dangerous certainly.

A gust of snow brings me back. The only thing I need to be concerned with is what happens now. Survive. Win.

Blue-tinged energy bursts through the splintering wall, pulsing across the foot-wide expanse of emptiness. Davidson holds the shield in place with an outstretched hand. A drop of blood drips off his chin, steaming in the cold.

A silhouette on the other side pummels the shield, fists raining knuckled hell down on the rippling field. Another strongarm joins the shadow and works to widen the gap, attacking stone instead. The shield grows with their efforts.

“Be ready,” Davidson says. “When I split the shield, fire with everything.”

We obey, preparing to strike.

“Three.”

Purple sparks web between my fingers and weave into a pulsing ball of destructive light.

“Two.”

The bombers kneel in formation, like snipers. Instead of guns, they just have their fingers and eyes.

“One.”

With a twitch, the blue shield cuts in two and slams the pair of strongarms into the walls with sickening cracks of bone. We fire through the opening, my lightning a blaze. It illuminates the darkness beyond, showing a dozen berserker soldiers ready to rush the breach. Many drop to their knees, spitting fire and blood as the bombers explode their insides. Before any can recover, Davidson seals the shield again, catching a returning volley of bullets.

He looks surprised by our success.

On the wall above us, a fireball churns in the black storm, a torch against the false night. Cal’s fire spreads and strikes in a snake of flame. The red heat turns the sky to scarlet hell.

I just clench a fist and gesture at Davidson.

“Again,” I tell him.

It’s impossible to mark the passage of time. Without the sun, I have no idea how long we spend battling the breach. Even though we push back the assault again and again, every attempt widens the gap bit by bit. Inches for miles, I tell myself. On the wall, the wave of soldiers has not won the ramparts. The ice bridges keep coming back, and we keep fighting them. A few corpses land in the street, beyond even a healer’s touch. Between strikes, we drag the bodies into the alleyways, out of sight. I search each dead face, holding my breath every time. Not Cal, not Farley. The only one I recognize is Townsend, his neck snapped clean. I expect a wash of guilt or pity, but I feel nothing. Just the knowledge that strongarms are up on the walls as well, tearing our soldiers apart.