Shadow Queen - By Deborah Kalin Page 0,99

his shield. An arrow thunked into the solid wood, tail quivering.

Dust puffed from the main gates with every smack of the battering ram, the noise of it like a pulse. Blood pounded in my ears, in counterpoint to the ram’s rhythmic thudding. The winch and chain shivered with each blow.

Sidonius and his men charged at the gates and the Turasi protecting them, again raising the song of steel. As they streamed past me, I stood in the open, forgotten. No one grabbed at me or insisted I follow. The blade pulled at my arms, only the tacky grip keeping it from falling. Sepp stood at my side. He had found a blade, and held it with more confidence than I gripped mine. Swivelling on his heel, he was scanning the battle all around us for direct threats even as he said, ‘We should find somewhere safer …’

I didn’t answer.

Catching sight of my expression, Sepp followed my line of sight and found the reason.

Dieter stepped out of the swirl of people and stopped before me, his black uniform bloody, his knuckles ripped raw beneath their torn leather bindings. Fear pinned me where I stood and turned my muscles to water.

He smiled as if he knew the effect he had on me. ‘I should have slit your throat at Aestival.’

‘Do it now,’ I said.

His smile faded. ‘Tempting, thank you, but no. I think you should try living with what you’ve done, Ilthean.’

The gates creaked and groaned as, inch by inch, they swung open. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Sidonius and his men momentarily besieged at the mechanism, but then Iltheans poured through the gap from outside.

There wasn’t a man who saw that gap didn’t know the truth: the Turholm was lost. It belonged to Ilthea now.

‘Enjoy the fruits of your labour, Matilde. You’ll find my brother a crueller master than I,’ said Dieter.

‘You were never my master,’ I retorted, ‘And your brother won’t be, either.’

He turned away and, swinging a white cloak over his shoulders, disappeared into the swirl of Ilthean troops.

I took a step after him, one hand raised, but he was gone amid the melee.

I had no doubt, come the end of battle, he would be vanished, counted among neither the living nor the dead.

FORTY

EVEN BEFORE THE battle wound down, Sidonius had sent a detail in search of Renatas, and another in search of Dieter. Achim insisted on accompanying the latter group, despite his injury, but only after promising Sidonius he would return within the hour.

Sidonius turned to me and gestured for me to precede him.

‘It’s time, lady,’ he said.

Fighting back my nerves, I led the way.

This time the sanctuary was clean, its parquetry floor unstained, its polish unmarred, the chandelier shedding glittering light over the empty hall. This time, Sidonius and I were the ones to track in the blood.

Every step I took left a smear, and blood dripped from my hems. Sidonius’s cleated sandals dug wounds into the polish and wooden boards alike, raising a clatter and squeak. More blood ground into the holes he left in our wake.

‘General …’ I started, trailing to an uncertain halt. ‘Wouldn’t it be better to do this later? When the people, Turasi and Ilthean both, have had time to rest?’

‘No, we do it now,’ he said, gripping me by the elbow and marching me forward.

I stared at the throne. It was a simple wooden chair, for all that the back had been inlaid with apple wood like a crowning sunburst, and the arms and legs and seat were delicately carved. Just a simple wooden chair.

I had fought long and hard to unseat Dieter and regain it for myself, for the Svanaten. But I had shed more lives in my pursuit than Dieter had in his coup. And I had never imagined it would be an Ilthean frogmarching me towards it, the blood of my people still warm on my clothes.

Dieter had killed my family – and united the Turasi more thoroughly than my family had for generations. And now I walked the Iltheans into the sanctuary – not as supplicants, but as conquerors.

You don’t have what it takes, Matilde, came Dieter’s voice, echoing through me, filling me with shame.

‘Go on,’ said Sidonius, releasing my elbow and propelling me forward. ‘Take it. It’s yours, after all.’

I climbed the steps that led to the throne: the first for the thralls, second for the freeborn, third for the drightens, fourth for the Duethin. A fifth step stood behind the throne,