The Queen of Death

24

Esprë removed Kandler s hand from her shoulder and stood up. Far below, he heard the door give way and the guards come streaming into the building’s first floor. From the noises below, there had to be far more than the three elves he’d left behind the door. They cried out in dismay when they saw the remains of the basket scattered about the stone floor there, but he knew it wouldn’t take them long to find an alternate route upstairs.

Esprë moved toward her father, calm and collected. Kandler knew her better than anyone alive, and he noticed how stiff her gait was. He was sure that Ledenstrae would think it the movements of a proper young elf obeying her father’s orders, but the justicar recognized it as the kind of resolve he’d seen her display when forced to face up to a mistake she’d made, unsure of what punishment she might be made to endure.

When she reached Ledenstrae, Esprë turned her back to him. “It’s between my shoulders,” she said. “I’ve only seen it once.”

Kandler had seen it just once himself. He moved around to Ledenstrae’s side to get a better look at Esprë’s back. The fact that this brought him closer to the elf in case he had to start swinging his sword did not escape him.

Majeeda craned her neck over from her chair, and Burch padded over to stand behind her. The ancient elf wrinkled her nose at the shifter’s scent, and Burch allowed himself a vicious smile, confident she couldn’t see it.

Ledenstrae reached up with a steady finger and pulled the back of Esprë’s collar back and down.

The dragonmark stood out against Esprë’s ivory skin like a livid wound. The mark itself almost glowed a bluish-black. The edges of its border with the girl’s skin shone like an angry, red welt.

To Kandler, the dragonmark seemed like some horrible cancer that threatened to keep growing, taking over Esprë’s flesh an inch at a time until it covered her from head to toe. At that point, there would be no more of the young elf he’d come to love so much. Only the dragonmark would remain.

The justicar fought the urge to lash out with his fangblade and try to cut the dragonmark from Esprë’s skin. He wondered if a tool fashioned from a dragon’s tooth would have a better chance than one forged from cold iron, but he knew that to even try might kill her.

Kandler had never heard of someone trying to remove a dragonmark. In every other case, their owners cherished them for the amazing powers they bestowed. With the Mark of Death, though, it had become far less of a blessing than a curse. Perhaps some great magic could manage it. Maybe he could persuade Majeeda to try.

“So,” Esprë said. “Is it?”

Duro sprinted toward Xalt and the still-chained mooring cleat, Sallah fast on his heels. “It was a good plan,” he said. “It should have worked.”

He wheeled about, scanning the sky for the changeling. He spotted her off to the south, trailing smoke and fire as she angled toward the deck of the airship like a wounded duck. She’d be lucky to land on the Phoenix, and if she did, she’d land hard. Instead of working as a distraction any longer, she’d draw more attention to the airship instead.

The ballista crew had already reloaded, and the catapult team didn’t seem to be far behind. They’d gotten the arm reset and were muscling a fresh ball of pitch into the weapon’s bowl. One of the elves stood next to the bowl, ready with a burning torch to set the pitch alight as soon as it sat solid in its home.

Duro eyed the straining cleat. Xalt’s efforts hadn’t done much to the wood around it, and they didn’t have much time left to finish the job. Even if they broke free right then, they’d have to deal with the siege weapons from those nearest turrets and possibly from others farther off. To add to their troubles, a patrol of guards had reached the edge of the docks and were leveling their bows at the airship.

They needed another distraction, now.

“Hit that cleat,” Duro shouted to Sallah. “Hard!”

Before the lady knight could ask what he planned to do, the dwarf leaped atop the gunwale. A flight of arrows whizzing around him, he launched himself out into the gap between the swaying airship and the dock below. As his feet left the Phoenix, he slung out his axe and caught the taut chain under the curved side of the weapon’s head.

Hanging from his axe, Duro zipped straight down the chain at a dizzying speed. Just before he reached the dock, he wrenched himself up and forward. His axe came free from the chain, and he tumbled straight into the elf archers arrayed at its base, knocking them over like a stand of loose-stacked rocks.

Kandler brought his sword up behind Ledenstrae, and he saw Burch swing his crossbow up to bear on Majeeda. If the pair of elves said the wrong thing, made the wrong move, Kandler and Burch would attack. They’d probably only get one shot at killing their foes, so they’d have to make it count.

“I—I don’t know,” Ledenstrae said, frustration marring his ageless face. “I had thought it would be obvious just from looking at it. After all, the Mark of Death is the stuff of legend.” He turned to Majeeda. “Can you tell?”

Majeeda pushed her fragile frame up out of her chair and leaned over Esprë’s bared back. Her bones creaked as she moved, and Esprë shuddered at her touch when the deathless wizard pulled her collar even lower.

Majeeda cleared her throat as if to speak, and the action coughed a fistful of dust up from her bone-dry lungs. As she waved it away, she said, “I cannot be sure. It resembles the drawings I’ve seen of Vol’s mark, but those were printed by hand on parchment that was already ancient when I saw it. This dragonmark could be the Mark of Death.”

“Or?” Ledenstrae asked.

“Or it could just be an aberrant mark, a magical mistake.”

“How can we tell for sure?”

“We could bring her to Vol, of course, to compare it with the skin she no longer wears. I understand she keeps it stretched out in a glass case in Illmarrow Castle.”

“That would entail entanglements in which I would rather we not become ensnared.”

Kandler tried to nod in agreement and readjust the grip on his sword, but his head and hand refused to comply. Panic rising in his heart, he realized he could not move at all.

Majeeda turned to smile at him and Burch, showing a mouth full of teeth attached to their gums by only the tiniest bits of pale, dry flesh. “You don’t really think I’d let you kill us, do you?” she asked.

Sallah screamed at Duro to stop, but she couldn’t reach him before he plunged over the airship’s edge. Determined not to let his sacrifice be in vain, she set to the gunwale fast and hard with her silver-burning sword. As she worked, she heard something thud into the deck behind her, but she was too engrossed with her work to even turn her head to look at it.

Within a handful of strokes, the battered railing creaked and then snapped. The airship zoomed backward, and Sallah tumbled toward the broken railing. She might have fallen through it had Xalt not managed to grab the back of her tunic and haul her back.

“Go back for Duro!” Sallah shouted as she scrambled to her feet and clambered on to the bridge. “We can’t just leave him there.”

Monja screwed up her face as she brought the airship about in a tight curve and pointed the Phoenix toward the fortress. Below, Sallah could see Duro swinging his axe back and forth, cutting a swathe through the elf guards foolish enough to get close to him. As she watched, another patrol of archers streamed onto the docks and leveled their bows at the battling dwarf.

Sallah watched in horror as the airship’s prow eclipsed the scene below. “What are you doing?” she said, grabbing Monja by her shoulder.

“What Duro would have wanted,” she said as she pulled the Phoenix hard to port. “If we go back for him now, his effort will be wasted. We have to let him go.”

A flaming ball of pitch spun past the starboard gunwale and arced out into the distance beyond. Then something slammed into the bottom of the ship and shook her hard. Sallah fell to her knees.

“Ballista bolt,” Monja said as she leaped down from the spars on the wheel. “Here, take over—and fly for Esprë’s father’s tower. You know where it is, right?”

Sallah leaped forward and grabbed the wheel before the elemental trapped in the airship’s ring of fire could take control and destroy the ship. “I think so,” she said.

“You’d better know so,” the halfling said as she left the bridge. “Soon we’ll have a whole fort full of soldiers out after us.”

“Wait!” Sallah said. “Where are you going?”

Monja pointed toward Te’oma’s collapsed form, still smoldering in the middle of the ship’s main deck. Xalt knelt over the changeling, beating out the flames on her wings with his bare hands.

Sallah reached out with her mind and urged the elemental to swing back to the starboard. As she did, the top of Ledenstrae’s tower appeared straight in front of her, and she prodded the Phoenix forward at full speed.