Somewhere in the city, a church bell tolled. I barely heard it over the storm save as a faint, ghostly call. Next to me, Karog practically burned with impatience.

  I felt plenty of my own. This ritual combat was slow and methodical, and some of the knights took their sweet time ending their duels. Every minute seemed an eternity as I worried for my people, scattered and working towards the end goal I’d laid out for them the day before the tournament. I wondered when one of my allies might be compromised, or one of my contacts become an enemy.

  If I could disqualify Calerus from the tourney, it would make everything easier. I needed to see it done. It didn’t even need to be me who did it. My eyes drifted to Jocelyn across the way, who hadn’t fought yet. Karog remained a looming presence at my side.

  The herald called out Ser Gerard Grimheart, one of Laessa’s allies and a member of the Empress’s faction. He rode a creature not unlike a porcupine, though careful breeding left a gap in its spines for a saddle to be placed.

  A knight to my right chuckled. “Ah, maybe we’ll get to see the Ironleaf in action again!”

  I glanced at him, curious. He noted my look and lifted his eyebrows, visible beneath the shade of his raised visor. “What, you haven’t heard? Ser Jocelyn has been sweet on the Greengood girl, but recent rumor has it that her family is considering a formal alliance with the Grimhearts, at the Empress’s urging no less. Word is it’s our man there that’s most like to take the young witch’s hand.”

  He nodded to Gerard.

  “Hush,” another nobleman reprimanded the speaker. “She’s not a witch now, remember? She won her trial.”

  “Right. Sure.” The first knight laughed.

  I returned my attention to Jocelyn, a slow unease creeping through my feelings. His head was turned slightly to one side, his gaze fixed on Ser Gerard.

  Please tell me you aren’t going to dismantle this for some squabble with a rival lover, I silently pleaded with him.

  But Jocelyn did not move. I breathed a sigh of relief.

  That is, until Calerus spurred his horned hound forward.

  Several things happened at once. No less than eight knights moved to go into the ring. One of them was Karog, who practically leapt forward the moment the prince’s mount took a step. Jocelyn saw Calerus accept the challenge, paused only a moment, then moved forward himself.

  “Fuck,” I cursed under my breath. None of those who’d stepped forward could back out once they’d met the challenge. The herald leaned forward, and even from so far I could practically see his eyes wide with glee. He began to call off names.

  How would they do this? A group melee? More one on one duels? I glanced at Calerus, and saw him smirking. Bastard. He’d known there were hard feelings against his family from the war, and had no doubt anticipated this.

  He’s trying to pit his enemies against one another. I tightened my grip on Morgause’s reins and almost moved into that mess myself. I restrained myself. Better to play the trump card if needed, and not add to the chaos.

  “I see many have met Ser Gerard’s challenge!” The herald laughed. “How you honor this man, my knights! But only one may face the first called. Decide for yourselves who is worthy.”

  He aimed his scepter at the group, and almost as though on command they all glared at one another. Gerard looked taken aback. No doubt he was smart enough to realize why so many had stepped forward, and he looked none too pleased about it.

  I stared at Calerus, trying to figure out his game. This seemed foolish. He had to expect all those other fighters would gang up on him.

  Only, that probably would have happened at some point anyway, the moment he was called out. This way he caught us off guard, drawing out those with reflexive ire towards him. Still, the boy fought against stacked odds. Did he have some technique to even things out? A hidden weapon, a scheme? I knew too little about him compared to Hyperia.

  The knights paced their mounts around one another, no one trusting anyone else not to attack. Not unlike a flock of angry birds, each carving out a space in which they would peck any of their fellows who approached. Gerard remained at a distance, unable to participate until the last. One of those who’d stepped forward was the short man in the mushroom shaped helm I’d been behind in the tunnel. He held an odd mace with a ring-shaped bludgeon, wore distinctly plump looking armor, and stared out from a scattering of little round holes beneath his helm’s flaring top.

  Karog ended the stand off first. With a rumbling, throaty roar, he pointed his new cleaver at Calerus.

  “I have a dispute with you, Vyke.” He began to pace forward, his heavy feet crushing gravel with each prowling step. “I will collect on our debt today. Face me, vulture’s son!”

  Calerus stared at him, saying nothing. His helm had a barbute design, with a thin Y shaped opening to reveal his thin lips and dead-looking eyes. He did not move forward or prepare to defend himself from the advancing ogre.

  Three of those knights who’d stepped forward for the chance to fight Gerard at the same time as Calerus suddenly turned their steel-masked faces to Karog, and I understood the trap. I’d suspected the Vykes might have planted their allies in the lists. Now, they revealed themselves.

  Karog paused, staring at the mounted warriors around him. For all his speed, mass, and superhuman strength, there are few things more dangerous in warfare than a fully armored rider on a trained chimera. Urnic knights are world renowned for our martial potency, even without enchanted arms and auratic sorcery to enhance us, and we often have plenty of both.

  And there were three of them. Four, counting the prince.

  Did I move forward to help?

  No. If I did, it would give us away.

  Damn it.

  One of the knights, draped in tasseled yellow cloth over blue armor, spurred his cockatrice forward and stabbed with his weapon — a heavy spear with a fleur-de-lys head very much like a stylized lily. Karog dodged it, but a crow helmed knight slapped at the back of his head with a medal-banded club before he could retaliate. I heard the ogre’s snarl as the bludgeon struck the back of his helmet.

  And Calerus just stood back, watching.

  But there were other knights on the field. Jocelyn saw Karog’s predicament and spurred his pegadrake forward to help, only for another knight in an iron helm fashioned to look like a grinning pig to get in his way. I didn’t know if that one was another Vyke ally or just participating in the melee naturally, but Jocelyn was forced to defend himself. The last two of those eight, Mushroom Helm and a dame with goblin motifs on her armor, dueled on their own, heedless of the drama playing out around them.

  Did I move forward, or leave this to them? If I intervened, it would be questioned.

  Or would it? Three on one was not chivalrous. I watched the ring of knights, and saw none move forward to help Karog. Of course they wouldn’t. He was a foreigner and inhuman to boot. I doubted any of them batted an eye at this.

  On the other hand, Ser Sain had already shown his mien when it came to this very thing. I made a decision, propped my sword on one shoulder, and ordered my scadumare forward.

  The sky flashed. I wasn’t certain with the noise of combat around me, but it seemed like the wind circling the Coloss’s outer walls was louder all the sudden, the waves crashing against the island more fierce.

  I chopped crow head’s club in half while Morgause was in mid gallop, the strike in time with a fork of lightning almost directly above. The bird-faced knight reeled back. I didn’t stop, instead putting myself between Karog and the other two.

  “The Hyacinth Knight has intervened to aid the fomori!” The herald proclaimed needlessly. I heard excited rumblings from the stands.

  The ogre glowered up at me, his yellow eyes annoyed. “I did not need your help.”

  So much for gratitude. I shrugged at him, then glanced at the spire. Markham and Rosanna stared down, distant and still, but made no protest. Hyperia sat at the Emperor’s side still, and while I couldn’t see her face clearly she seemed to lean forward.

  Calerus watched me curiously, but he seemed more interested than angry. I ignored him and focused on one of his cronies, the rider with the lily-bladed spear. Tall and handsomely equipped, he looked a proper Urnic champion in his tasseled yellow cloth and bright steel. His helm bore a modern design, with intricate curves and a heavy protective visor lowered to shadow his features, topped by a wispy white plume. His steed, a feathered and barbed raptor nearly eleven feet from snout to tail tip, croaked at me.

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  Were he and his fellows Recusant plants? Or had the chorn gotten to them?

  It didn’t matter. I readied my sword.

  Karog faced off with the other two while I focused on the one who seemed the most skilled of the three. Calerus made no move to intervene, like it were he and not poor Ser Gerard we’d all challenged. He was right, in a way.

  I would not fight him. The watching knights would take issue if I tried to steal glory. My interference was only tolerated because it would be perceived as a reaction to the ambush against Karog.

  I often felt ill equipped for intrigue and politics, but when it comes to the customs of warriors I was much more sure of myself.

  The spearman swiped his weapon at me. It was incredibly long and could slash as well as stab, the curved blades on either side of the point acting as deadly talons. I parried, nearly had my sword ripped out of my hands as one of those hooks caught it, and had to do a complicated maneuver to extricate myself. Morgause moved, assisting me and bringing me closer to my opponent, but the cockatrice proved its own worth by flaring its barbed wings and batting at her. My mount was forced to dance back as the raptor snapped at her neck. She hissed, more snake than horse herself as she bared her needle teeth.

  The yellow knight took his spear in both hands and pivoted it over his head in a wind-whistling motion. I felt an unnatural movement in the air, an odd vertigo.

  A simple Art, all told, just a minor manipulation of wind and force. The lily-bladed spear seemed to catch the air and condense it, hone it, forming a blurring impression around the weapon’s head. Instinctively, I reinforced my sword with aura and used practically the same technique Siriks had in his duel with Nimryd — not a true sorcery, but a strike carrying supernatural force.

  I slashed the oncoming blade of phantasmal wind in an upward cut, severing it. There was a piercing crack! not unlike a lightning bolt clapping into a tree, a painful shock of impact through my arms. The ground on either side of Morgause suddenly erupted as steel-strong wind sliced into it, forming an expanding V around the chimera.

  The yellow knight tilted his head at me in an almost curious gesture, then slashed his spear sharply to one side. Once more, a whirling vortex of solid air began to twirl around his weapon.

  He has to catch the wind before he can release it in an attack, I noted. It’s a simple move. Strong, with a visible tell and a lot of power. My sword had a chip in it from the attack I’d already deflected. Probably it would have broken clean in half if I hadn’t reinforced it, and even with that precaution my limbs trembled with strain. I wouldn’t be able to do that many more times.

  Karog fought the other two at my back. I couldn’t risk turning to check on Jocelyn.

  Best to focus on my own struggle.

  Instead of risking him battering me to pieces from a distance, I had Morgause charge. Lily Spear was ready for this, however, and instead of sending another razor sharp projectile at me he slashed the ground in front of him, sending up a cascade of dust and blocking my sight. I threw up an arm to prevent any of that cloud from getting into my helm. Movement disturbed the veil. I slashed on reflex, cutting another wind blade an eye blink before it would have slammed into me.

  Even as I deflected it, the edge of that blast caught me near the neck and put a deep rent into my pauldron. I grit my teeth. Fighting without my fire magic was proving more annoying than I’d thought, and none of the tourney knights who’d made it past the first day were easy opponents.

  Lily Spear burst through the dust cloud. Instead of attacking me with another projectile, he’d wreathed his weapon in wind. He slashed at me with it. When I blocked, the wind dispersed in an explosive reaction that sliced the blue cloth of my surcoat, put more rents into my steel, almost took one of my eyes just as I’d done to Konrad and left a vertical scar over the opening.

  But that left him without his magic for a moment. If I were him, I’d have kept up the offensive. Instead, possibly wary of the unnatural strength I’d displayed before, he had his mount step back so he had room to ready his Art.

  I had Morgause leap forward, then I struck him on the underside of his upraised arm.

  Without magic, it’s not possible to cut good steel with a sword. The power of a blade is dispersed over too wide an area, and especially with well made armor you just risk ruining your weapon’s edge. That’s what maces, axes, lances, and a score of other increasingly complex tools are for.

  My heavy blade didn’t cut the yellow knight’s vambrace. It crushed it, crumpling the steel and breaking the bone beneath. A choked cry escaped his helmet as he recoiled from me.

  Konrad hadn’t stopped even after I’d taken one of his eyes, so I whirled my sword over my head and delivered a second strike to the back of the other knight’s skull as I passed him. His helmet saved him from losing the top half of his cranium, but I still knocked him from his saddle and probably gave him at least a minor concussion.

  Calerus caught my eye, and tilted his head in acknowledgement.

  I let a long exhale escape the little breathing holes in my helmet, then turned away from the prince to check on my allies. I needn’t have worried about Karog. He had Crow Helm’s chimera on the ground, one knee down on its neck and its rider unconscious a distance away. The third spurred his mount on while he lowered his lance. Karog waited until barely more than three heartbeats separated them before moving.

  He lunged forward, then sidestepped suddenly and grabbed the rider by his breastplate while the knight was still moving at full speed. Karog’s hand was large enough to nearly enclose the man’s whole chest. He ripped him off his saddle and slammed him into the ground.

  That blow would have stunned most, even made them black out. But the knight went for a dirk at his hip. Karog lifted him, slammed him back into the ground, then roared directly into his face.

  The man’s hand fell away from his dagger as he yielded. I let out a sigh of relief and turned to Jocelyn.

  What I saw made my blood run cold.

  Jocelyn was dismounted. His pegadrake limped a distance behind him, favoring one leg, and I could see blood trailing along the ground behind it. The knight he’d been fighting, the one with the grinning pig’s helm, rode an enormous boar not unlike the beast Doctor Olliard had favored during our journey to Caelfall. Only, this one had little in common with the placid Brume. Its tusks were wrapped in spiked rings of iron, with well scarred armor covering much of the rest of its leathery hide.

  I moved to help him, but a shadow fell over me. One of the other knights had moved out of the ring, and blocked me with his mount.

  “You’ve evened the field, Ser Sain, but this isn’t your fight. If you wanted it, you should have stepped forward earlier.”

  The knight was tall, with a tall chimera and a helm fashioned into the likeness of a wizened lord not unlike one of the statues ringing the Coloss. He seemed calm and unthreatening, but did not move out of my way. Many other knights in the ring were also watching me.

  I clenched my jaw and looked past him. The pig-helmed knight was big, now I got a good look at him, with ugly armor and a morningstar. His boar alone was lethally dangerous. It worried the ground with a hoof, let out a sound that was more bellow than squeal, and charged.

  Jocelyn looked injured. He’d lost his kite shield, and dust covered him from whenever he’d fallen off his mount. No longer the proud captain I’d gotten used to during my time in the capital. He still held his slender longsword though, and adjusted his grip on it as tusked death bore down on him.

  He managed to dodge the charging boar, almost getting gored on one of its tusks in passing, but not the pig knight’s spiked mace. It caught him on the shoulder with an audible crunch I heard even from a distance. I grimaced.

  Jocelyn went down hard. He started to get back up, managing to prop a hand beneath him even as the boar turned. It scraped the ground again, spat steam from its nostrils in a snort, then charged the downed mercenary.

  “He’s going to trample him!” I snapped, not bothering with playing the mute anymore. The lordly knight turned and saw what I did. Even still, he did not move to intervene or get out of my way. I was aware of Karog moving in my peripheral vision, but not to aid the Ironleaf. He still wanted Calerus.

  But I couldn’t spare any attention for that meeting. I didn’t know Jocelyn of Ekarleon well, but he’d saved my people and offered me critical information in a time of need. He’d acted to protect an innocent woman against the ire of the Priory, and was quite possibly one of the only active True Knights in the subcontinent besides myself.

  But I stood too far away to do anything for him. I could only watch, helpless.

  Jocelyn got to one knee, shook his head. His helmet had slipped off, revealing his brown curls. He realized his danger, tensed to move.

  Too late. The boar was on him. It tossed its head once, brought its spiked tusks to bear—

  I felt something I could not quite name, something I’d never felt before. It wasn’t unlike the uncanny sensation of an Art manifesting, but somehow different. More twisted, angrier. The aureflame within me stirred in warning, let me know it recognized this sensation. Just for a moment, I saw Jocelyn’s form ripple, like a reflection in water. I heard his voice, taken up by the ghostly winds of the Coloss which sometimes gave those within unnatural volume.

  “No… not here, please, I—”

  He suddenly bent backwards at the waist in a painful contortion. I saw his eyes, wide with pain and fear. The boar reached him in that same instant.

  And—

  Jocelyn erupted. That is the only way I could understand what I saw. It was like deep green water suddenly billowed out from him, shapeless and writhing. It swallowed him and the boar knight, and kept expanding in a fountaining tide of something halfway between shadow and liquid.

  The sky rumbled once, but then went strangely quiet. Even the wind seemed to stop, as though as shocked as the rest of us. Those spectator knights nearest the scene recoiled, their mounts panicking and backing away.

  Where Jocelyn had been standing, a writhing mass of putrid looking green bubbled and reshaped itself. It seemed to exude heat, blurring the surrounding air and making steam ripple up from the rock for nearly ten feet around. Somehow I knew it was phantasm, but of a kind I’d never encountered before. His Art?

  It felt wrong. My magic almost screamed in warning now. A flash of amber fire flickered around my left hand. I clenched it, wrestling down the surging power, but it fought me. Beneath my gauntlet, my skin blistered with the effort of containing it.

  A demon? Was Jocelyn possessed? No, it felt different. Yet, somehow no less dangerous.

  In the royal box Markham had stood up, while Rosanna held a hand to her mouth as though in horror. The herald looked confused as to what to do, and many of those spectators on the lower stands were crowding the edge, trying to get a better look. Karog and Calerus had also taken their attention off one another without even starting their fight, instead staring at that shapeless form now occupying the island.

  The mass pulsed once. It looked like some membranous sack, like a tumor of liquid amber. Its color had settled into a deep, almost golden green with darker shades lurking underneath. It bubbled again.

  The knight who’d prevented me from helping spoke. “What in the golden name of God—”

  All at once, the shape — the cocoon — sloughed away. It burned the very rock where it touched, like acid or magma, sending up a cascade of steam. There were shouts of alarm, panicked noises from animals. Where the substance had melted away, there remained a coiled mass covered in brassy green scales, ill grown, razor sharp, like a hideous cancer mocking the form of a reptile.

  It lifted its head and opened a single milk white eye, as though waking from deep sleep.

  The golden magic in me knew it, and did something it never had before, not in all the many ugly, terrible battles I’d fought against even the darkest things.

  The dragon opened its maw to hiss, and the blessed fire in me wavered.