The Queen tilted her head, her eyes narrowed, and a steel balest bolt hit her in the ribs, just below her left arm. It didn’t pierce her pale, seemingly soft skin, but the sheer force behind the bolt struck her from her feet and sent her down. She was up again almost instantly. Thirty yards away, all but invisible in the dark and the mist, Fidelias dropped his balest—and swung a second such weapon, already loaded, from his back, lifting it to his shoulder to shoot as he shouted, “Go!”

Windstreams rose in a howl as the Knights Pisces came streaking past Fidelias, thirty strong, some of them passing only inches over his head. A solid wall of wind preceded them, slamming into the vord Queen, forcing her back and away from Tavi like a leaf driven by a gale.

She looked at them for an instant, unimpressed and unafraid, her smile undiminished.

Then she let out another brassy, mocking laugh and bounded away, toward the northeast. She leapt into the air, gathering up a windstream of her own that ripped every tent within fifty yards from the earth, vanished behind a veil, and was gone in a howl of cyclonic thunder.

Fidelias tracked the movement with the second balest but didn’t shoot. He came sprinting toward Tavi after that, as the Knights Pisces streaked forward in pursuit—but the men didn’t go far before pulling up and spreading into a defensive formation over the camp. Tavi sagged in relief. If they’d followed her out there, she would surely have torn them to shreds.

“Your Highness,” Fidelias breathed as he reached Tavi. He set the Canim weapon down and began to examine Tavi’s injuries. “Oh. Oh, bloody crows, man.”

“Kitai,” Tavi grated. “Crassus. Back behind me. Dorotea and Maximus under the tent. Foss is dead. I couldn’t stop her.”

“Bloody crows, hold still,” Fidelias snarled. “Stay down. Stay down, sire, you’re bleeding. Stay down.”

“Poison,” Tavi mumbled. “Poison. Check her trail. Think we went by the water tanks. She could have dropped something in.”

“Be still,” Fidelias snarled. “Oh, great furies.”

Tavi felt the metalcrafting slip. A second later, he felt the agony of his wounds rush up as viciously as a rabid gargant.

And then he felt nothing.

CHAPTER 44

CHAPTER 43

Amara felt rather awkward, truth be told, about being given Bernard’s old room at Bernardholt-Isanaholt-Fredericholt, but Elder Frederic had insisted on yielding it to Count and Countess Calderon. She had only seen the chamber once, and that briefly, as Bernard had fetched her a pair of shoes that had belonged to his late wife, back during the hectic hours leading up to Second Calderon.