The High Lord’s tower was the sole island of order and calm within the city walls. Lights blazed all around it, reflecting from the shining armor of the singulares on duty there. The tower had a wide stone balcony winding around its entire exterior, from which the High Lord could look out over his city. As Amara approached, she could see Lord Riva’s entourage, gathered around the man himself, as he paced a steady circle around the balcony, delivering orders to messengers who came and went with desperate haste.

Far too much desperate haste, Amara realized. The havoc resulting from the vord assault had thrown the entire defense of the city into chaos; there was no visible air patrol over the High Lord’s tower. Doubtless, Riva was planning to leave the city within the next hour and had dispatched the majority of his fliers to escort the fleeing refugees. Most of the other fliers were even now saving the lives of those trapped behind burning buildings, much as Amara had done during a fire in the capital during her days in the Academy, starving fires of air on a small scale or using walls of wind to shield those the fires would have consumed. Any remaining fliers had doubtless been pressed into service as messengers, coordinating with Gaius Attis and the Legions.

Black shapes darted and flitted through the smoke and firelight and shadows that covered the city, seemingly moving at random through the crisis. Amara gritted her teeth. She and a class of first-year Cursors from the Academy could have flown into the city blowing trumpets and breathing fire without being noticed, much less stopped. Any of those swift-moving human forms could be enemy fliers.

Amara looked wildly around the city, struggling vainly to identify Gaius Attis or one of the High Lords or Ladies. She darted up several dozen yards to try to get a better view. Riva’s lofty towers—Great furies, what kind of crowbegotten competitive delusion infected this city’s architects, to build so many of the bloody things?—presented a dizzying aerial maze of cornices, arches, and spires. The fires below and the rising columns of smoke threw off every angle, made distances difficult to judge, and reduced every airborne figure to a featureless outline.