Unfortunately, someone must have alerted her that a prince was among them. She had spent considerable time in her covered livery doing her best to shove her surprisingly generous breasts high whenever he happened to pass. Still, even if the two weren’t distantly related, those were two peaks he would never climb.
Anskar cast his gaze up the tiers of the school, eyeing the twin pyres with a scathing glare. He swiped one palm over his crimson scalp and scratched his nethers with the other. “That’s a long haul, especially with bullocks balking at even getting their horns near that cage.”
“I had considered as much,” Goren said. He lifted an arm and motioned off to the side, past the raft. “I sent a man to fetch someone who knows bullocks right better than anyone else in these swamps. Here he comes now.”
Kanthe turned as a well-weathered swamper crossed through the crowd, thumping along on a cane. The man looked like he had spent all of his life here, along with generations before him. Kanthe half expected moss to be growing in his beard. And though the fellow was aged and worn, he carried himself with a measure of stubborn strength. He was accompanied by a taller and stouter young man, hale of limb and brighter of eye.
No doubt his son.
Goren crossed to the old swamper. The two gripped each other’s forearms, not warmly, more in a greeting of respect. Both had likely managed the breadth of these swamps all their lives.
“This is Trademan Polder, the best bullock drover in all of M?r.”
The swamper merely shrugged, accepting the compliment as fact, not bothering with any false modesty. “I a-heard your problem,” he said, leaning over to inspect the cage on the raft. “Bullocks know to keep clear of those winged daemons. Nothing but problems them are. Somethin’ I know all too well.”
Anskar grunted his disappointment. “Then looks like we’ll have to shove poles through the cursed cage and try to haul it upwards ourselves.” He turned to the highmayor. “Or we can stoke a bonfire on these rocky shores and burn the beast, cage and all, right here. And be done with it.”
Goren’s face darkened to an angry bruise. “Sard that!” he swore. “My son died up there, so will that bastard.”
Anskar looked like he wanted to argue, but clearly he was under an order to appease Goren. Not only was the highmayor distantly related to the king, but trade with Fiskur—a town that culled a rich bounty of hides and salted meat from the swamp’s wilderness—was important to Azantiia. A small measure of courtesy and accommodation here would serve the realm well.
The impasse was broken by Trademan Polder. “I didn’t say I couldn’t get no bullock to help. I got an old ’un that fears nothing. I can put blinders on ’im and hang a bag of fresh-ground bitterroot under his nose to mask any scent.” He thumbed at his son. “As extra measure, I’ll have Bastan guide him up by hand, too. To help keep the bullock calm.”
The big lad nodded his assent. “Gramblebuck won’t disappoint.”
The old man added one warning: “’Course, best you keep that beast bundled up right tight.”
Goren crossed his arms and sneered at Anskar. “What’d I tell ya.”
Anskar shrugged. “Then we better get things moving if we want to be done by Eventoll.”
The two swampers turned and headed back the way they’d come.
Kanthe started the other way, only to note Goren’s daughter lift up on her toes and whisper in the highmayor’s ear. She pointed at the departing pair.
Goren’s eyes went wide, and he scolded the girl under his breath. “Trademan Polder’s daughter? You’re saying she was the one up there with Byrd? Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
She cowered before his anger and shook her head, clearly having no answer.
Goren glanced over to the old man and his son. The highmayor’s eyes had narrowed, glowering and angry. “Then I swear by all gods above, I’ll burn the lot of ’em.”
Kanthe backed from that fury. He slipped away before the highmayor realized his threat was overheard. Still, he stared after the two swampers, baffled by whatever politics were at play here. It seemed in a heartbeat old colleagues had become enemies. At least, on one side.
Kanthe sighed. What did it matter?
I’ll be gone by the morrow.
He headed toward a fresh bonfire blazing along the shore, promising the possibility of dry clothes. As to everything else going on here …
Not my problem.
16
WHAT AM I going to do?
As the fifth latterday bell rang throughout the Cloistery, Nyx stood at a rail atop a crowded balcony on the fourth tier. The perch offered a view across the breadth of the main stair that climbed from the gates of the school to its summit. At long last, the drizzling skies had dried out, and the scud of gray clouds had broken in places, letting through spears of bright sunlight. The mist in the air even glowed in brilliant bows.
A nonne on her left pointed skyward. “It’s a blessing of the Father Above. He smiles His grace upon us all.”
Nyx glanced to the shining arches in the air, marching off into the distance across the emerald of the swamp. She could not discount the nonne’s words. Nyx had never viewed such majesty, such divine radiance. The shimmering azure, the rosy reds, the glowing yellows.
How could it not be a blessing of the gods above?
Still, as joyous as this display was, it could not dispel the misgivings in her chest. She gazed from the sky down to the procession slowly winding up the steps. First had come rows of knights. They had donned light armor that glinted in the sun, their helms topped by bristled horsetail plumes. They carried shields strapped to their left arms, bearing sigils of different houses. The clinking of their armor sounded like the ticking gears of the school’s bronze orrery, as if the procession was a vast machine set in motion, one she had no hope of stopping.
Behind the knights now came a large hump-backed shaggy beast with his head down low. It was led by a tall figure marching alongside it, leather lead in one hand and a grip on a bridle in another.
“Isn’t that your brother?” Jace asked on Nyx’s other side.
Nyx swallowed. “And Gramblebuck.”
The bullock shouldered into his harness, the straps digging deep into his pelt and muscles. Behind him, a flat wagon bumped up the steps on iron-shod wheels. A tall cage, wrapped in leathers, had been lashed atop the cart.
Nyx pictured the wounded bat inside. She swore she could hear a faint wailing of its distress. Or maybe it rose from her memories. Still, she rubbed an ear with a shoulder, trying to ease the itch deep in her skull.
Around her, the crowd whispered at the sight of the cage. Some sounded awed, others frightened. Several kissed their fingertips and touched each earlobe in a ward against evil. A few even glanced her way with sympathetic expressions.
No one suspected what lay within her heart.
Earlier, she had entertained a hope to somehow free the bat, to pay back a debt long overdue. She now recognized the futility of it all. It was the fancies of a silly girl, one who had deluded herself into thinking she was capable of such a defiant act. She only had to stare at the long line of knights that would encircle the ninth tier to accept defeat already. Only a handful of people would be allowed atop the summit where the cage was headed—and certainly not any student.