An image came to her—Trinity as a fifteenth-century university town under siege, in perpetual twilight, shadowed by menacing black walls. “But…isn't everyone going crazy inside? What about the kids at the high school? And people…people have jobs…”
Jason hesitated, as if debating the wisdom of sharing a secret. “The Anaweir are gone. Seph snuck them out of town.”
“And Seph is…”
“He's using wizard flame,” Jason said brutally. “It makes him incredibly powerful, but it's dangerous, I guess. He's going to save the town and everybody in it or die trying.”
No. Focus forward. Don't look back. There's nothing back there but monsters. “But. Why are they doing this? What do they want?”
“They want the Dragonheart.”
Madison turned and stared out the kitchen window, over the sensuous hips and shoulders of mountains that rolled into the distance. She hoped the view would soothe her so she wouldn't vomit into the sink. “What do they want with it?”
She felt the hot pressure of Jason's gaze on the back of her neck. “They think it's a weapon—like, the mother of all weapons.”
“A weapon?” So that's why Barber wanted it. Madison had never thought of it as something dangerous. But what did she know? “Well. If it's a weapon, can't you use it against them?”
“We don't know how. We're not even sure what it does.” He took a breath. “And … we can't get near it.”
She swung round to face him. “What? Since when?”
“Ever since you left. It's like it's got some kind of force field around it. If we try to touch it, it erupts in flame or slams us down on our butts.”
“You're saying four wizards can't pick up a stone?” He nodded, and she said, “Why didn't you tell me?”
He shrugged unhappily. “I kept thinking it would settle. I … I wanted to try and use it.”
Could things get any worse? “But you handled it before, didn't you? The Dragonheart. Did you have any trouble then?”
“No.” Jason rubbed his stubbled chin. “Nick and Mercedes and I fooled with it for weeks, trying to figure out what it did. But it's like something woke it up. Power just rolls off the thing. It's like this big antenna that's drawing wizards and Weir from all over.” He looked up at her, fixing her with his blue eyes. “It seemed to respond to you before. I thought maybe…your leaving … set it off. Somehow.”
She'd last touched the Dragonheart the day she left for Coalton County. It had blazed up, so bright it hurt her eyes. Magic had poured into her until she ripped her hands away.
Maybe she'd had something to do with the change in the stone. Maybe she'd been the one to mess it up. Either that or the hex magic it had driven out of her.
Jason was still watching her, waiting for a response.
“What do you think I can do?” she asked.
He studied her, as if assessing his chances of success. “Two things. I want to see if you can do something with the Dragonheart. You're not vulnerable to magic, so you ought to be able to handle it, at least.”
“But…I'm not gifted,” Madison protested. “I don't know how to do magic.” She was torn so many different ways, she didn't even know how to strategize.
Jason gripped her hands and played his best card. “Look. Seph and Nick saw the painting you did. The hex painting. It put Seph down for days. He still hasn't fully recovered. That's why he's using flame. They thought maybe you were…maybe you'd sold out. That's why I came down here before. I was supposed to find out for sure.”
Madison flailed for an answer. “I would … I would never hurt Seph,” she stammered, feeling like the worst kind of liar. “He should know that.”
“He does. He never bought the idea that you'd turned. But he needs your help now. The Dragonheart aside, you can help us when the Roses attack. Maybe you can disarm them like you did at Second Sister, if we handle it right.”
I can't.
But, maybe, after she gave the Dragonheart to Barber, she could somehow help them. She could make up for what she'd done. If they weren't already dead. If they'd even accept her help.
Her plan was in a shambles now. There was no way she'd get in without Jason's help.
She swallowed hard. “The town is surrounded, you said. Can you get me in?”
He hesitated for a fraction of a second, then said, “Yes.”
“Guess we'd better go along, then,” Madison said. “Time's a-wasting.”
A relieved smile broke onto Jason's face. “Great,” he said. “Great. Um, could we take your truck? I kind of borrowed a car without asking. I'd rather not be driving around in it.”
Madison had planned to propose that she follow him in the truck so she could leave when she'd finished in Trinity. But there was a wired intensity in Jason's movements that told her this was nonnegotiable.
“Oh. Okay.” She scooped up her keys from the table and slung the duffle bag over her shoulder.
But he gripped her wrist and took the keys from her hand. “I'll drive,” he said.
Chapter Thirty-three Weirstorm
Before dawn, the Roses woke the remaining residents of Trinity with a fusillade of magical projectiles—cannisters of ligfyr—launched from atop the wizard barrier. They burst against the rebels' elaborate inner wall with bone-rattling force, drenching the territory between with wizard fire. Toxic smoke boiled up from the fires between the walls, bloodying the underbelly of the lowering clouds. Defenders toppled from the inner wall like rotten fruit, clutching their throats. The rebels answered with withering fire of their own, raking over the top of the outer wall, clearing it of wizards and weapons. Jessamine leaned forward, squinting into the murk, gripping the parapet. A tall, spare figure strode to the battlement at the front of the barbican over the rebel gate, ignoring the shells exploding all around him. McCauley. Again. He raised both arms, and the smoke roiled back, away from the rebels, enveloping the Rose fortifications in a cloud of poison.
Jess charged out of her bastion and attempted to drive the smoke back where it belonged, then dove for cover as a blast of fire slammed into the wall just beneath her.
Peering over the edge, she surveyed the damage: a huge bite had been taken out of the smooth surface of the wizard wall, and great chunks of stone lay scattered on the ground beneath. Much more of that, and the wall would be porous as a sieve.
How did he do it? Their barrier was built to withstand magical assault—that was the whole point. She stormed back along the wall, sweeping past the wizards flinging flaming ligfyr stones against the rebels from heavy cover.
“Send a patrol down to repair the wall immediately,” she ordered. “And kill McCauley,” she added, as an afterthought.
Outside the gate, the army of the Roses sprawled across farm fields and littered the wooded groves. Wizards, mostly, with a few sullen sorcerers stirring cauldrons of magically enhanced ligfyr. Others beat out throwing stars of glowing metal, infused with deadly enchantments.
D'Orsay's famous hoard had been disappointing to say the least. Jess couldn't help wondering if he was holding back—if he had a secret stash someplace. They'd been forced to use the weapons sparingly—more to inspire panic among the defenders than anything else. Some were delightfully horrible—like the glass spheres that broke open on impact, releasing hundred of deadly naedercynn vipers within the sanctuary. Or the gliwdream pipes whose high-pitched music drove the defenders insane.
Jessamine stopped to question her operatives at the gate. Still no sign of Haley.
Out on the drilling field, Geoffrey Wylie struggled to bludgeon hordes of wizards into order. Wizards were not terribly good at teamwork. It hadn't been considered a virtue up to now. When he saw Jess, he broke off his harangue and turned the command over to a handsome young wizard in Red Rose garb. Hays was his name, if she remembered right.
“I don't like this dual-wall system,” Wylie said, brushing ice from his shoulders (the latest Weirstorm had overshot its mark a bit). “We could be trapped in between and annihilated. We'd better take the outer wall down when the time comes to attack.”
Jessamine brushed away the suggestion. “And have them scatter like quail and regroup somewhere else? I think not. We need to teach them a lesson. Besides, we can't risk the possibility of losing the Dragonheart.”
“You're not the one who has to lead the charge through the gate against an unknown weapon.”
Jessamine twitched with irritation. Wylie had been chosen as commander because he'd attended West Point a century ago. And he looked the part, certainly, being tall and commanding.
But Wylie belonged to the wrong house. The second worse thing to losing the Dragonheart to the rebels would be to have it fall into the hands of the Red Rose.
“They're as good as they're going to be,” Wylie persisted. “If we're going to breach the walls, we should do it soon.” Wylie tilted his head toward his magical army. “If we keep this many wizards together much longer, they'll be killing each other.”
“Why don't you assign troublemakers to repairing the wall? McCauley is ripping holes in it, God knows how.”
Jess preferred to wait for Haley for a number of reasons. Anything could happen during a melee inside the fortress walls. Anyone could come up with the Dragonheart. Wylie, for instance. That would be a disaster.
But she knew she couldn't stall much longer.
Ellen couldn't help tensing and squinching her eyes shut as she heard the familiar whistle of incoming. Followed by the boom of impact. Another one had gotten by her.
She twisted round, gazing over the park and up Library Street. A column of ruddy flame and smoke rose from the town center. That one must have landed somewhere on the commons. There wasn't much left on the green to destroy, save a spectacularly ugly fountain that would no doubt survive the entire war.