Jax doesn’t laugh like I expected. Instead, he nudges me in the ribs and points at something in the distance, toward the front of the palace.
A plume of smoke rises into the clear sky like a sinister, twisting serpent. Grabbing my sword—the real one I’d set out of reach before practice—I race toward the palace’s front gates with Jax and Simeon running alongside me, Kasmira and Meredy not far behind.
As we draw nearer, a buzzing like angry hornets fills my ears. It’s a good thing we’ve started training. Our volunteers are about to see firsthand why there’s a need.
Rounding a final corner and emerging onto the palace’s front lawn, the source of the smoke and the shouting becomes clear:Beyond the wrought-iron gates and the line of guards protecting them—guards who must have been forced to retreat up the hill—a figure burns high on the hillside while a crowd looks on. Some watch in horror, but a few have a certain gleam in their eyes that tells me exactly who started the fire. Others break away from the crowd, running to fetch buckets, I’ll wager.
But somehow, given the distance to their homes, I don’t think they’ll be fast enough.
The burning figure is about three times the size of a normal person, with an old man’s gnarled face and a stack of books clutched to his chest, made entirely of straw. A hastily and poorly constructed statue of Change.
Monsters I can handle, but I have no idea what to do about unhappy people.
As the figure continues to smolder, its legs, thick as tree trunks, give way. It collapses facedown on the hill in the direction of the palace, setting the grass ablaze in the same place where Hadrien turned a beloved king into a soulless monster.
Though I should be hot from running here, the sweat that clings to my skin is cold as winter rain.
Jax, pushing his way through the guards, bangs a fist against the iron bars of the gate and shouts an obscenity at the crowd. Of course, that only riles those who started the fire further. Even among those who didn’t, there are some who join in the chanting with a certain note of desperation that rattles my bones.
“The inventor queen is mad!”
“Bring back our Dead!”
Following the path Jax created, I push my face up against the gate as the crowd grows, so many expressionless faces turned toward the fingers of flame reaching toward the palace. Unlike our meagervolunteer army of forty, there are hundreds of unhappy Karthians. Some even climbed the hill to swell their ranks despite bearing signs of pox and other illnesses.
The first few who left now come running back up the hillside with buckets, sloshing water everywhere, but the fire is spreading toward the bountiful palace gardens too quickly for them to do much good. If they don’t stop it in time, we could lose everything from ancient strains of flowers to our precious citrus trees.
“Now isn’t the time for this!” I yell through the gate at the angry and worried people alike, even though there’s no way they can hear me over their own shouts. “You’re all impossible!”
These people, the same people who helped stop Hadrien and killed Shades to save the city, seem to think Valoria is no different from her brother, hungry for progress at any cost. I have to help them see that the only changes she wants are ones for the better, because right now, all they’re doing is hurting the person who wants to protect them most. Yet while defending Valoria against threats involving the Dead comes easily to me, I don’t know how to begin changing people’s hearts and minds. Spirits are simple. The living perplex me.
Someone touches my shoulder—Valoria, having limped her way here at last—and I extend an arm, inviting her to lean against me for a moment before I join the palace guards and our volunteers rushing to put out the flames now licking at the garden’s edge.
She shakes her head, smiling regretfully, then steps forward to address the crowd. “Who did this?” she demands, her voice ringing out like a battle cry. “Whose idea was it? Please, I’m not going to shoot you.” She motions to her closest bodyguards to lower their weapons. “We’re too much at odds already. In Vaia’s name, I just want totalk.”
“How about you listen instead?” someone challenges. “Or do we need to keep destroying your creations?”
I pass a bucket off to an older man and decide to linger at Valoria’s side a while longer. I want to see who spoke, and with some of the crowd now joining the guards in attempting to douse the fire, I’m not needed as urgently.
There’s a small stir as a tall, blond young man breaks free from the crowd and lopes up to the gate. His big hazel eyes gaze steadily at Valoria as he approaches, his hands raised to show he has no weapons. “Tell me: What else will we have to burn,Majesty, before there’s no more change in Karthia? Before you honor King Wylding’s ways? Our demands are simple: Rebuild Grenwyr City as it was, not how you want it to be. Uphold the laws we’ve always had instead of writing new ones. And most importantly, have your necromancers return all the Dead you sent away.”
Valoria and I exchange a glance. “At least he’s not trying to murder anyone,” I mouth to her before directing a glare at youngish man’s angular, lightly bearded face. I like that he’s direct, but I don’t like the threat he poses to my friend.
Squaring her shoulders, Valoria meets the man’s eyes. “Assuming you don’t want to set any Shades loose within my walls, would you consider sitting down and speaking with me further about these demands over tea, sir—?”
“Devran,” he supplies at her prompting. Narrowing his eyes, he adds, “And my people didn’t have anything to do with the Shade. We understand how dangerous they are. We didn’t know the weather mage who attacked you, either. We don’t want you gone or hurt or anything like that—I mean, at least you’re a Wylding—but until our demands are met, we’ll keep destroying whatever you try to create. We didn’t mean for the fire to spread like this, only to send a signal you couldn’t ignore.”
“Death to the queen!” someone shouts over the end of Devran’s words.
“That’s not the way!” he yells back. Shaking his head, he mutters more to himself than to Valoria, “There are weirdos in every rebellion.”
“Very well, Devran. I’d like to hear your concerns.” Raising her voice, Valoria adds, “I want to hearallof your concerns! I want everyone to be happy, but in order to work toward that, we’ve got to start talking. There’s so much I want you to know—and so much for you to say to me, I’d imagine. At least give me a chance to hear you and see if I can meet your needs before you continue scaring away my work crews and wrecking everything I’m trying to build.”
Devran smiles thinly, his gaze cool and calculating.
For a long time, they just stare at each other. Either he’s trying to read her mind or trying to make her lose her temper. But Valoria is unwavering, hardly even blinking.
At last, Devran says, “I’ll need your word that I’ll come out alive.”
