Too quick and brief to reveal anything, a muzzle flash showed at one of the lower windows. And another, several rooms away. A short time later, torchlight gleamed at those windows. Swiftly, it moved on.

Moonlight showed more men marching like shadows into the bailey. They seemed endless. Torchlight glinted on their swords and their iron armor as they surged inward.

Belleger’s Fist was small compared to the Repository, a minor pile of inhabitable stone. And it had been raised to endure a siege, not to be defended room-to-room. Nevertheless it was huge, hived with corridors and stairs, halls and chambers. Despite their hundreds and their constant inrush, the Great God’s forces might need hours to search the whole keep. But they cut down everyone they found. Bifalt might contrive to stay alive a while longer. He had Jaspid and Elgart with him. His bodyguards. His surviving riflemen. He might last longer than Estie expected.

Tears ran down her cheeks, dripped from the line of her jaw. Sweat bled into her eyes. With every beat of her heart, she tried to give up hope, let it go. But she could not. She could not.

Surprise me, Bifalt, she begged. Please. Surpass yourself. I am not enough without you.

“We are done,” wheezed Magister Bleak. “Without light?” The distance was gone from his gaze. He looked around him like a man who had never seen any of these people before. “We must rest. We will study whatever remains when the sun rises.”

He turned to go.

The librarian put out a hand to stop him, then let it fall.

But the albino was angrier. His spouse or sister or friend had been killed. “Wait,” he demanded. “There is more.”

“More?” panted Joyly.

“The torches over the doors. They waver. Some wind has risen—” The albino caught himself. “No! Look, Magister. The doors crack. The whole front of the keep shudders. It is the Decimate of earthquake!”

Magister Bleak jerked up his head, squinted into the east. “What?” he asked. “The torches have gone out.”

“Now they have!” shouted his comrade. “But there is moonlight. Can you not see? The walls crack. The cracks run upward. Windows shatter.

“That tower!” He pointed at something that only the Farsighted could see. “It leans. It will fall!”

“I see.” Bleak seemed to be sobbing. “The stones are breaking. They cannot stand.”

“It is the Decimate of earthquake!” repeated the albino. “The Fist crumbles. It will collapse on itself.”

“But how?” Magister Threnody may have been trying to shout, but her voice was a whisper. “How did he persuade his Magisters to kill themselves? And him? And all his men?”

As if she had heard enough, the Knight of Ardor suddenly left her corner and stamped out of the workroom, clanking as she went.

More loudly, the librarian repeated, “How?”

“Why?” protested Magister Oblique. “Why would the King do such a thing? To himself? To his people?”