Outside, dawn rose and people were running with bundles in their arms. Mothers held crying children to their breasts. Men struggled to push overfilled carts uphill. Down in the harbor they could see a forest of dark masts. Drumindor stood a mute witness to the sacking of the city.

Derning led them up refugee-choked streets. Fights broke out. Roads were blocked, and finally Derning resorted to the roofs. They scaled balconies and leapt alleys, trotting across the clay-tiled housetops until they cleared the congestion. They dropped back to the street and soon reached the city’s eastern gate. Hundreds of people were rushing by with carts and donkeys—women and children mostly, traveling with boys and old men.

Derning stopped just outside the gates, looking worried. He whistled and a bird call answered in response. He led them off the road and up an embankment.

“Sorry, Jacob,” said a spindly youth, emerging with four horses. “I figured it was best to wait out of sight. If anyone saw me with these, I wouldn’t keep them for long.”

From the crest of the hill they could see the bay far below. Smoke rose thickly from the buildings closest to the water.

“We weren’t able to stop it,” Derning said, looking at the refugees fleeing the city, “but between you defusing the explosion and my reporting to Cornelius so he could raise the alarm, it looks like we saved a lot of lives.”

They mounted up and Hadrian took one last look at Tur Del Fur as the flames, fanned by the morning’s sea breeze, swept through the streets below.

CHAPTER 26

PAYMENT

Merrick entered the great hall of the imperial palace. Servants were hanging Wintertide decorations, which should have given the room a festive feel, but to Merrick it was still just a dreary chamber with too much stone and too little sunlight. He had never cared for Aquesta, and regretted that it would be the capital of the New Empire—an empire whose security he had ensured. He would have preferred Colnora. At least it had glass streetlamps.

“Ah! Merrick,” Ethelred greeted him. The regents, Earl Ballentyne, and the chancellor were all gathered around the great table. “Or should I call you Lord Marius?”

“You should indeed,” Merrick replied.

“You bring good news, then?”

“The best, Your Lordship—Delgos has fallen.”

“Excellent!” Ethelred applauded.

Merrick reached the table and pulled off his gloves, one finger at a time. “The Ghazel invaded Tur Del Fur five days ago, meeting only a weak resistance. They took Drumindor and burned much of the port city.”

“And the Nationalist army?” Ethelred asked, sitting down comfortably in his chair with a smile stretching across his broad face.