3.3 KiB
The snow fell like ash.
Not the swirling, playful flakes of childhood winters, but the slow, deliberate descent of a funeral shroud-coating ramparts, helmets, and the splintered bones of the city below. From her perch atop the highest tower of the palace, Telaryn watched the storm drift across the broken skyline, each flake catching in her lashes like the touch of old ghosts.
Talpis was dying.
Below her, the lower wards of the city smoldered in silence. Smoke rose in long, slow columns from rooftops charred by siege fire. The market square-once bright with wool tents and spice carts-lay blackened and abandoned. Somewhere, deep in the maze of the slums, a bell tolled once. Not a call to arms, but the last note of a ruined chapel sliding into the frost.
She gripped the stone balustrade until her fingers ached. The chill bit through her gloves, but she welcomed it. Cold was honest. Cold did not pretend.
Beyond the far wall, the enemy waited. Their banners-dull red and sun-bleached bronze-were visible in clusters on the ridges overlooking the lake. The Third Legion, the butcher's blade of the Temerian Empire, had not advanced in three days. They didn't need to. Talpis bled without their push.
And still, the snow fell.
A soft crunch of boots on stone announced a presence behind her.
“You'll freeze standing there,” came a voice. Light, careful. Alisha. Her handmaiden. Her shadow.
Telaryn didn't turn. “It suits the mood.”
Alisha stepped beside her, pulling her own cloak tighter against the wind. She was shorter than Telaryn by a handspan, her dark hair pinned in a simple twist, cheeks flushed pink from cold or worry-likely both. She did not speak immediately. Alisha never rushed words; she laid them out like thread, measured.
“Another flare went up an hour ago,” she said at last, nodding toward the valley. “West quarter. Grain stores, we think.”
Telaryn nodded absently, eyes still on the snow. “It doesn't matter. There's no one left to feed.”
Alisha shifted uneasily. “The south wall still holds.”
“Until it doesn't.”
They stood in silence. A gust of wind swept across the parapet, dragging banners like torn flesh along their poles. The palace behind them loomed tall and grim, its spires rimed with frost, its stained-glass windows dark. Once it had been called the Jewel of the Lake, a city of towers and terraces, of snow-lanterns and storm hymns. Now, the lake froze around its edges and the towers burned from the base up.
Telaryn exhaled, watching her breath curl away like smoke.
“They'll come tonight,” she said.
Alisha hesitated. “Your father thinks-”
“My father,” she cut in, voice low, “is still trying to win a war that ended when the gates fell.”
From below, a trumpet sounded-long, low, and mournful. One note, sustained too long.
The king was calling his banner.
Telaryn turned her gaze toward the courtyard below, where armored men gathered like dark birds in the snow. Her father stood at the center, tall and still, his crown glinting dully under the stormlight. No armor. Only the black furs of the old bloodline, and a sword older than the Shattering. He looked like a statue carved from grief.
She gripped the edge of the wall again and whispered, “He's going to ride out, isn't he?”
Alisha didn't answer.
She didn't need to.