All of us were temporarily blinded by the sudden glare of torches, but when we had blinked away the spots in our eyes, we saw that we were barred from the second door in the city wall.
“Get behind me and Evangeline,” Reed instructed, his manner somehow still in repose. He stepped to the front of our gathering next to me and his sister.
Before us, Father Starling stood, arms crossed and smiling. He, as always, wore his plain long tunic over trousers with his red-and-silver sash pinned to his chest. But, with the torchlights dancing behind his tall, strong frame, he looked like a demon straight out of Rodwin’s hell. On one side of him stood Lord Torm, and on the other stood a sneering Bertram. Behind them, Gerard and two guards stood holding torches.
“Roberta,” started Lord Torm. “I turned a blind eye for winters to your depravities. For the sake of your dear mother and then your sister being my daughter by marriage. But both are dead. And you defy the orders of a king.”
“King Pollux gave you a place to stay, and you shirk it off,” addedBertram. “I suppose witches are always ungrateful in the face of true charity.”
To their right, the long channel of spittle was an indolent river of reflected light.
Behind me, I heard the caught breaths of Tessa along with Jade’s and Adelaide’s outright sobbing. “Grandfather!” my niece cried out, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw her step towards them.
“No,” I spoke harshly. “Adelaide, do not go to him.” I threw out an arm as if to bar her, but I was far enough away that my fingertips only grazed her.
Torm frowned and shook his head at me. “You have always wanted to take everyone down with you. You certainly tried with my son. Give me my kin, his child. Come, girl.”
“Go to your grandfather,” Starling crooned. “Save yourself from the vice and sin of your aunt. She will corrupt you to your downfall, child.”
“Niece,” Bertram said, his forefinger lifted at her. “You’ve been led astray, as has my brother, by this woman’s witching.”
“You’ll stay right here with me,” I heard Tessa say. “Right here.”
“It’s five to two,” Evangeline growled to Reed. “They’re all armed, save the priest.”
“Hold,” he replied. “Just hold for now.”
“I am so sick of you lot,” Ilsit complained loudly. “All we’re trying to do is leave. Why must we stay? Can’t you be content feeding the rest of these poor people to the fate’s mouth and let us few go?”
“Itold youthey knew,” Bertram said to his father.
“Keep your lips sealed, wife,” Gerard barked, his face furious.
“Do not speak to the dead,” Starling corrected, his gaze on Ilsit. “Your wife is among the deceased, captain. And has been for more than a winter. You no longer need to concern yourself with her.”
“He never concerned himself with me when I was alive,” drawled Ilsit. “Honestly, Gerard, it’s not my fault your prick didn’t work right.”
Gerard hurled an obscenity at her, and Ilsit hurled one right back.
Starling reprimanded him again about communing with a dead woman.
“We have to kill them all,” Bertram pronounced, arm swinging out at us. “They know what they know, and I’ve had it with the witch. She’s been asking to be set on fire since her girlhood.”
“Do not speakthat word,” Starling bit out at the younger lord.
Bertram began to protest that he had made a mistake, and Torm shouted over him that the priest’s every directive was sacrosanct.
Then a tiny object flew through the air, sailing between our two groups, and hit Gerard in the face. He screamed in pain and fell back, his cresset torch crashing next to him and rolling in a circle.
“Get that torch off the ground!” Starling shrieked. “Get it off the ground!”
Bertram and Torm both swore and turned to chase the rolling torch.
One of the two guards bent to help Gerard up while the other also scrambled after the torch.
Starling was still shrill and frantic about the torch.
Ilsit was laughing. “I knew I took up smoking for a reason.”
