His home palace in the Dead Lands was a spectacle of bloody marble, Aeres imposing and austere. But he’d never seen a city like this. It was so intricate, so layered. He’d never seen so many buildings of so many sizes and shapes in one place before.
“Gods,” Rune wheezed, throwing himself down beside Náli in a graceless heap. He tried to swipe his hair out of his eyes and smeared snow across his face. “Oh, fuck me, fuckthis.”
“Hush,” Náli snapped.
“Why? No one can hear us up here.”
“Or so you think. You have no idea what sort of magic we’re dealing with.”
Rune sighed, but quieted. Settled in on his elbows the way Náli was. Then he whistled, softly. “It’s massive.”
“Yes,” Nali said, grimly. “And it won’t be easy to attack.”
“We have the drakes. And Amelia’s sister has five of them.”
“She only brought three with her,” Náli reminded; he’d said as much earlier, when they stopped long enough for Percy to pluck a mountain goat off a hillside for lunch. “So we’ll onlyhave six total. And the emperor will be expecting us. He’ll have scorpions and catapults in place. Not to mention…”
As though summoned, a high, whistling shriek pierced the air.
They both jumped, and wound up pressed tight together, shoulder to hip to heel. Percy growled behind them, and Náli whipped around to hiss, “Shut up.Be quiet.”
Percy bared his teeth, but, blessedly, shut up.
Náli faced forward and spotted two…no, three…no,fivewinged shapes circling above the city. Scaling them against the buildings below, he could tell they were four or five times larger as their cold-drakes. They swooped, gliding on open wings, tails whipping like rudders, lazy spirals above Aquitaine.
“They’re sentries,” Rune said. “They’re watching for us.”
“Yes.” Náli shuddered hard, and it had nothing to do with the cold wind blasting his face.
As they watched, more drakes flew in to join their fellows, some large, some small, some so tiny they looked no bigger than birds. They came from the bay, and they lifted up from the walls of the city, and Náli choked on his own heartbeat as he saw their numbers.
They could never fight them. They would be slaughtered. The Great Northern Phalanx, the Southern forces…they were all going to die.
He slipped down behind the ridge and pressed his snow-wet gloves over his face, breathing in ragged, open-mouthed gulps.
Snow sprayed as Rune slid down beside him. “What? What is it?”
“Matti,” Náli croaked out. “I have to dreamwalk. I have to talk to him. He has to warn Erik.”
“Warn him about what?”
“Oh…” Náli lifted his head so he could glare at Rune’s befuddled, pink-cheeked face. “You can’t bethisstupid. I have to warn him that we’re all going to be slaughtered the moment we enter the city!”
“We don’tknowthat.”
“Do you…are you…” Náli gestured sharply toward Aquitaine. “Did you see how many drakes they have? How large some of them are? And that’s not counting their soldiers, their long-range weapons, their—” He broke off, out of breath, and shook his head. “Just shut up. Leave me alone. Let me go walking.”
Rune frowned, lips pressing tight together, but didn’t argue.
Náli hunkered down in the snow, banded his arms tight around his middle, closed his eyes, and sought the Between.
It took him much longer than it should have to leave his physical form and find the gray, waving acres of grass of the astral plane. The distant mountains gnawed at the white sky, as usual…but he saw a plume of black smoke rising from beyond the peaks. That was new.
“Matti?” he called, turning in a circle. He pressed his hand over the diamond he wore around his neck, searched for his lover, andtugged. “Mattias.”
The captain of the Dead Guard phased into sudden existence with apop. He looked one way, then the other, brow furrowed, knees bent, hand on his sword hilt, ready for a fight. Then he faced forward, spotted Náli, and melted.
Náli had spent his entire adolescence pining for Mattias. Even when he was too young for lustful thoughts, he’d wanted to sit close to him, to ride on his shoulders, to earn a compliment or a smile from him; wanted to send the other Guards away so it was just the two of them, practicing with swords or skipping rocks. And then he’d been older, and he’d wanted to be kissed,and held, and loved. So fierce and selfish had his want been that he hadn’t noticed the subtle signs of Mattias’s suffering.
