“Your accusations are offensive and baseless, Prime Minister,” she called back to the warship. “Move your vessel away from the walls at once. Our conversation is over.”

To her disappointment and dismay, the Arishaig instead swung her bow back around toward the gate and began to inch forward. She was coming directly for the walls she had been told to move away from, weapons uncovered and soldiers in place. This was the prelude to the attack she had feared all along, and she could do nothing to stop it. The wards that protected Paranor would engage automatically once the airship crossed the vertical plane of the south wall. Since the time of their creation and placement soon after the end of the war on the Prekkendorran, no one had ever challenged them or witnessed what they could do. The Ard Rhys might know, but neither Aphenglow nor Bombax had the faintest idea.

They were about to find out.

Aphen took a deep breath and brought up her magic to form a protective shield. She was aware of Bombax doing the same.

Then, without any warning whatsoever, a rail sling positioned somewhere lower down on the weapons ports of the south wall fired a full load of metal shards into the hull of the Arishaig. The sound was startling in the near silence—like a momentary torrential downpour of hailstones on a tin roof—yet the damage to the warship’s reinforced steel plating was insignificant. Aphenglow had only a second to wonder who was responsible—who would be foolish enough to do such a thing—before the Arishaig responded by surging directly toward the Keep, all of her forward weapons firing at the fortress walls and towers at once.

The resulting explosions deafened her as she dropped behind the battlements, and the combined impact of scrap from the rail slings and white fire generated by the diapson crystals housed in the fire launchers caused the walls to shudder and crack. She scrambled for a vantage point farther away, catching a glimpse of Bombax as he moved in the opposite direction. When the flash rips opened up, everything was engulfed in smoke and ash and flames. By then, she was fifty yards down the parapets, crouched at the corner of the south wall and the mid-south tower, fighting to hold herself steady in the wake of a booming roar.

How can this be happening?