Liv squeezed her eyes shut, but the bars of light connecting twenty Mountain Home soldiers to the exposed archers below the wall were so bright that she could still see them. Even when the light died away, she had to blink away the glare, and after-images of the magical strike lingered across her field of vision.

Most of the wooden barricades behind which the crown forces had taken shelter were already little more than dust, rotted away by the coordinated spellcasting of House Däivi. What wood hadn’t been obliterated in that preparatory strike was now burning, and thin tendrils of smoke rose all across the width of the pass.

The corpses were burning, as well: smoldering piles of charred flesh which had been living and breathing people only a moment before. Liv’s eyes caught on one body that had been burned in half crosswise; the right arm, head, and part of a torso of a woman had fallen a pace distant from the lower body. The wind shifted, and brought the faint, distant scent of scorched human flesh to her nose. It was enough to make her stomach seize, and Liv gritted her teeth to keep from vomiting.

To her surprise, however, no more than two dozen enemy soldiers had been downed by the beams of burning light. The crown mages had been too slow to stop the initial assault, but now five rectangular panes of coherent mana flickered at the front of the besieging force. Four were blue, veined with shining gold, but the largest and brightest, at the center, reversed those colors.

“Genevieve Arundell. She’s right there.” Liv put her hand on the pommel of her wand before she could think.

“Let them pull back for the moment,” Baron Henry said, though his voice was mild. “A siege is a test of endurance, and wit. It’s them who have to break our defenses, not the other way around. Let them expose themselves, give us an opening. Patience will win us the day.”

But the Lucanian army seemed to have no intention of mounting any further assault that evening. The archers and crossbowmen finished pulling back out of the range of their counterparts atop the wall, and at Henry’s nod, Liv’s great-uncle Eilis passed along the command to the Eld to set aside their bows and rest. Sir Randel, the knight who’d challenged Liv’s authority during the Bald Peak eruption less than two years before, served as the Baron’s runner to the Whitehill crossbowmen. Liv noticed that the man studiously avoided meeting her eyes.

While there were no further volleys from the crown crossbows, however, the enemy siege engines didn’t let up. At a calm, unhurried pace, the three great catapults on wheels continued to hurl rocks at the wall that stretched across the pass. With every impact, a shiver ran beneath Liv’s boots. As the sun dipped beneath the western mountains, setting in the direction of Mountain Home, torches and campfires sparkled light stars in the night behind the enemy lines.

Atop the wall, as well, torches were lit, casting circles of warm orange light every thirty feet. Liv picked her way through the cluster of her friends and allies until she stood close at Keri’s side, placed a hand on his arm to get his attention, and then leaned in so that she could lower her voice.

“Your cousin Sohvis led the troops from Mountain Home,” Liv told him. “I wanted to warn you, so that it wouldn’t come as a surprise. I suspect he’ll be finished getting them settled in shortly.”

Keri snorted, and shook his head. “The irony does not escape me,” he muttered. “He only ever stayed behind because I wouldn’t allow him to come with me. Now he’s off to the fighting at the first chance he gets. I can’t imagine Rika was very happy with him.”

“Do you miss her?” Liv asked, and then almost immediately regretted opening her mouth.

“I miss what it was like at the beginning,” Keri said, after a moment’s thought. “But it’s clear to me now that there’s no chance of going back to that. Not with her, at the very least, and probably not until this war is over, and Ractia defeated. In any event, thank you for telling me. Better to hear it from a friend than just walk around a corner and find myself face to face with him.”

☙

Once Baron Henry was confident there would not be an immediate nighttime assault, he had Brom lower him from the top of the wall down to its base using a disc of coherent mana. That neatly solved both the mystery of how he’d gotten his wheeled chair atop the wall, and why he was keeping a member of the mage’s guild close at hand.

The soldiers manning the wall were rotated, and those who took the night watch were set under the command of Eilis ka Väinis, with Sir Randel to serve as his second. Having gotten a look at the fortifications, Vivek Sharma excused himself to see that the healers from Lendh ka Dakruim had settled in; the rest followed Henry and Julianne to the Sign of the Terrapin, where Liv recognized the same gray-haired man who’d tended the bar all those years before, when she’d first visited with Matthew. For all she could tell, he was still wearing the very same pair of spectacles, carefully preserved from wear.

“Master Meriet here has allowed the Terrapin to be used as our command center,” Henry explained, once Keri and Arjun had helped get the wheels of his chair over the threshold.

“Aye, as long as his lordship keeps the coin coming to pay for rooms and board,” Meriet called back, with a jocular grin. The innkeep lowered a mug and the cloth he’d been scrubbing it with, raising one hand to count one by one as the group entered. “Meals for fourteen, then, with mana-rich food for the Eld.”

“I do not eat,” Ghveris rumbled, having had to first turn sideways to get through the door, and then duck his head beneath the exposed beams of the low ceiling.

“Make it fourteen in any case,” Keri said. “I expect my cousin will join us shortly.”

Henry’s chair was situated at a table close to the hearth, and cloaks were hung from pegs on the wall. While the heat of noon had, save for the crests of the mountains, made a good start on melting all the snow away from the lower valley, the nights were still cold to a degree that Liv suspected would surprise the lowlanders in the crown army.

Master Grenfell, Brynn, and the Ashford Court Mage, Fulke, took a table off to one side, while Julianne sat next to her husband by the fire. With the thought that her adopted parents might want a moment to catch up in peace, Liv found herself a chair at a third table, the largest she could spot, where Keri, Rose, Arjun, Sidonie, Kaija and - to her surprise - Miina piled in, even dragging a spare chair over from nearby.

“I’ve met Keri and Ghveris,” the blue-haired Elden girl said, leaning her chair back so far that Liv worried it might fall over. “And my father’s told me a bit about my little cousin. But who are the rest of you?”

“Arjun Iyuz.” Liv’s friend stood from his own chair long enough to lean across the table and offer his hand in the Elden way, and Miina somehow clasped him forearm in return without toppling over.

“That’s not a Lucanian name,” Miina remarked. “One of those Dakruiman healers who were supposed to be coming?”

“I’m from Lendh ka Dakruim, yes,” Arjun said. “But I’m a member of the mage’s guild now.”

“Kaija, armorer of House Syvä,” the stocky woman announced herself, standing up to clasp arms in turn.

“Sidonie Corbett, guildmage.”

Miina paused when the two young women clasped hands. “I’ve met your father, I think,” she said. “He brought just over two hundred, didn’t he?”

Sidonie nodded, with a smile, and removed her spectacles to scrub at them with the hem of her sleeve. “I’ll have to find him after we have something to eat,” she admitted. “I don’t think I’ve seen him in person since the coronation at Freeport.”

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“Lady Rosamund Lowry,” Rose said, clasping arms in turn. “You won’t have met my family, because they won’t be here. It’s a fair bet whatever side I end up on, they’ll be far away from it.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Miina said. “That’s a lot of guild rings I see. Do you really still consider yourselves one of them, with all that’s happened? I’ve heard - well, I’m sure I don’t even know the half of what the king and the new guild mistress have done.”

“The mage’s guild is a good thing,” Liv said. “The entire purpose is to protect people, to teach, and to recover some of the knowledge that’s been lost. One bad person’s gotten herself put in charge of it, but that doesn’t mean the guild was a mistake. It just means we have to take it back.” She was slightly surprised at how vehemently the words came tumbling out of her, but she also believed every one.

A serving girl interrupted them with a jug of watered wine and enough goblets for the table, along with a loaf of hot bread and a jar of butter. “I’ll have the stew out next,” the girl promised, before vanishing as quickly as she’d come. When Liv looked about the room, she saw another two women at the other tables, each with enough of a likeness in their jaw and brows that she guessed they were sisters. Was Meriet’s wife back in the kitchen, then, she wondered?

Of the entire crowd that had come in together from the wall, only Ghveris stood off to one side, not too distant from the door, as if keeping watch. It looked, to Liv, like a lonely place to be. She thought back to how she’d found Wren sleeping, tucked up against Ghveris’s side, one morning in the painted desert, and wondered just where her friend was.

The door banged open, letting in a gust of cold evening wind, and for just a moment Liv expected a group of drunken sots to fill the common room with their crude insults. She could still remember what they’d called her: a knife-eared bitch, an Eldish whore. She shivered, half from the sudden chill, and half from the memory.

But rather than a group of drunks, it was Sohvis who ducked down, cast about the room, and then made his way over to the table where Baron Henry and Duchess Julianne sat.

“The reinforcements have settled in,” the Eldish man announced. “I told Sir Gervase I’d come ahead to report, but he should be along soon enough.”

“Thank you.” Henry nodded from his wheeled chair. “I don’t believe we’ve met before; I am Baron Henry Summerset.” He extended his hand.

“Sohvis ka Auris kæn Bælris, of Mountain home.”

Liv had leaned forward to listen, and was ignoring the conversation at her own table so thoroughly that when Miina appeared behind her and threw an arm over Liv’s shoulder, she jumped like a startled cat.

“Why’re we staring at Sohvis?” the blue-haired young woman whispered in her ear. “He’s handsome enough, but I always thought he was a bit of a cold eel.”

“Fish,” Liv said. “In Lucanian, it’s cold fish.”

“There’s no way I’m going to remember that,” Miina said. “Anyway, eels are all wriggly. Much worse than fish. So why are you looking at that guy like you want to pin him to a wall with a knife?”

“That’s probably my fault,” Keri said, with a sigh. He pushed his chair back, stood, and crossed the room to meet Sohvis just as his cousin was turning away from Henry and Julianne.

“Why’s it his fault?” Miina asked, but Liv shushed her so that she could hear what the two men said to each other.

“Keri.” Sohvis actually seemed to hesitate. “I wanted to apologize. I never intended to-”

“Are you here to fight?” Keri asked, bluntly.

“Yes.”

“Then you can trust me to shield your back,” Keri said, extending his hand. “Don’t ask me for anything more.”

Sohvis looked down at the extended hand for a long moment. “Very well. If that is the way it is for now, I can accept it.” The two men clasped hands, not with warmth, Liv thought, but at least the assurance of mutual trust. She let out a breath she hadn’t consciously been holding, and reached for a slice of hot bread.

☙

After not only a bowl of stew, but a generous helping of salted and roasted beef, along with spiced turnips that Liv guessed had been in the cellar beneath the Terrapin all winter, she found that Baron Henry had somehow managed to wheel himself over to her without being noticed.

“A moment, Liv?” he asked, and she stepped away from the light and warmth and company of her friends to follow him to the corner of the room.

“What is it?” Liv asked.

“My wife would like to attempt a parley with the crown forces in the morning,” Henry said. What he didn’t say, but Liv could read in his expression, was that the baron didn’t think there was much point to talking at this stage of things.

Liv looked across the room, to find that Julianne was visiting the Grenfell table. “That sounds like her,” she said, after a moment. “And I’m sure she’s got some plan to come out ahead of it, even if there isn’t much chance they’re going to turn around and go home.”

“She says she wants to see who they send,” Henry admitted. “To try to get a feel for them. There is a problem, however.”

“You can’t trust Genevieve Arundell not to just turn around and try to kill her?” Liv guessed.

“No, I don’t think even the houses who have lined up to support the crown would let that pass,” Henry said, shaking his head. “We’ll be sure she goes well guarded, of course, just in case I am wrong. There’s no cause to take chances. No, the problem is that, three days ago, when we first had reports of their van approaching, I laid down dessication wards in front of the wall.”

Liv blinked. “Dessication - you mean that anyone who crosses a ward will have every drop of moisture sucked out of their body by Ters.” It would be a horrifying way to die; she knew he'd used that king of ward years ago, during the eruption that cost him the use of his legs. “That must have taken a lot of ground mana stone.”

“We pulled a lot out of the Bald Peak mine when I ordered the workers moved here.” Henry shrugged. “However, now I can’t risk someone triggering one of those wards by accident - either on our side, or on theirs. It would be bad enough to lose one of our own to a wrong step, but if the crown forces watch one of their barons suddenly scream and collapse while going to parley with us -”

Liv could imagine it. “They’d probably just charge, absolutely enraged, and our people would be scrambling to get back behind the gate.”

Henry nodded. “You see the difficulty. I have to admit, I don’t really have a good grasp of your current capabilities. I know you did just over a year at Coral Bay, and I’m certain you’ve learned more while you were in the north. When I brought this up, Julianne told me to have you handle it.”

Liv considered for a moment. “If we ride out first, I should be able to sense the wards with Aluth, and make sure they don’t go off,” she decided. Her Authority should be capable of that, though she hadn’t exactly tried it yet.

“It will be a small group,” Henry said, “if that helps. Will the wards still function, after its done, or are we giving up that layer of our defenses?”

“I’ll see what I can do, but no promises,” Liv told him.

“That’ll have to be good enough. Try to get some sleep, if you can. The rooms upstairs are all for us.” Henry turned his chair about by manipulating the wheels, and crossed the wooden floor back to his wife.

Liv glanced at the table where her friends were sitting, and observed that a grinning Miina had produced a set of bone dice from somewhere, and was teaching them how to play. Rather than join them, she approached Ghveris.

“Lady of Winter,” the Antrian rumbled in greeting, inclining his head.

“There’s going to be an attempt at parley in the morning, and I’m going to have to go along,” Liv explained, speaking in Vakansa. The war-machine was learning Lucanian faster than she’d expected, but she didn’t want to take any chance of being misunderstood. “I’d like you to come along, if you’d be willing. I don’t trust the crown forces not to try some sort of ambush or assassination.”

“If they do, I will crush them,” the steel-armored juggernaut declared.

“Thank you.” Liv reached a hand up to touch her temple, and winced. While her food had contained light traces of mana, with hundreds of Elden warriors at the pass, they had to be carefully rationing supplies. It might be enough to keep most of her people in fighting condition, but she’d been out of a rift since leaving Bald Peak the day before, and was already feeling miserable.

Liv walked back to the table, placed a hand on Rose’s arm, and leaned down to catch her lover’s ear. “I’m going up to find our room and try to sleep,” she said.

Rose turned to regard her with a focused intent. “Already feeling sick?” she asked.

Liv shrugged. “It isn’t too bad yet.”

“Let me come up and rub your neck,” Rose offered, and pushed her chair aside to stand up. “Maybe that will help.”

Liv nodded, but all the way upstairs, she wondered just how long this siege was going to last - and what sort of state she’d be in by the end of it. At least here she didn’t have to worry about Rose succumbing to mana sickness.