Flint’s eyes rolled up inside his skull. He was losing everything. In his mind, gold ingots fell over the edge like leaves, forever too far from his failing grasp. It had all seemed so easy, so long ago. His lips parted as his mind finally snapped. “Not … King … Arborium … Mfffff.” The next few words were gibberish. A string of frothing dribble unraveled down the side of his mouth.

Ark turned away and inclined his head toward Quercus. “Death is a great friend compared to the companions that will accompany this traitor’s mind for the rest of his days.” But despite the strength of his speech, Ark was trembling all over. He could taste the bile rising up into his throat, feel the twisting of snakes in his stomach. It took every remaining ounce of strength not to throw up there and then.

The King could not speak, though his hands clenched the hilt of a bloody sword dug into the wood. How could he judge a boy who had saved both his life and the country?

Two of Quercus’s men tiptoed in fear around Ark, grabbing the body that was once Commander Flint and tying the hands behind the defeated man’s back.

“It’s finished,” said Ark, his heart filling like a cruck well as he surveyed the courtyard carpeted in corpses. A terrible tiredness overtook him. He had done as the Warden asked, killing none himself, though he could not stop the Rootshooters exacting their revenge. But to bend a man’s mind like a sapling and then snap it? If this was what leadership required, he wanted none of it. He felt as empty as the dark scene that confronted them all.

The battle was over, but it was the bleakest of victories.

45• A SUDDEN TURN

A sound filled the night air, echoing around the wreckage of the courtyard.

Somewhere up above, a giant woodpecker hammered at invisible branches in a repetitive rhythm. The noise was so loud that all the survivors put their hands over their ears to block it out. At the same time, a fierce wind blew down, tugging at cotes, riffling through the hair of prone bodies, and blurring the eyes of those who dared look up. A thin black line hissed down from the sky. At its end came what looked like a fully garbed Holly Woodsman, descending at an impossible pace. Before the King could even speak, the figure landed and pulled back the hood.

“My lord. I don’t think I have had the honor?” Despite the noise overhead, the voice cut through as clear as glass.

It was brave, Ark thought. All was decided, but her arrogance had lost none of its unnatural shine.

Quercus studied the woman who stood before him, fur-clad boots resting on the blood-spattered boards. “Lady Fenestra!” he shouted above the din of the rotor blades. “Envoy of Maw, I presume? Have you come to surrender now that you are surrounded?”