A single artefact rescued from the wreckage. Will’s pulse sped up. Was it something they could use? A weapon that could help them fight? Grace began to unwrap the bundle, and as she drew back each corner of the cloth, Will felt all the breath leave him.
Gleaming like a dark jewel, it was the Cup of the Stewards.
It rose from a flared stem to a curved drinking cup the shape of an upturned bell. The colour of polished onyx, it was ornately carved with four crowns. The inscription curling around the base like coiling flame read Callax Reigor. The Cup of Kings.
Drink, it seemed to say, offering the bargain that had enticed the Stewards. Drink and I’ll give you power.
There was a sudden scraping sound as Cyprian pushed his chair back from the table. He was standing in front of Grace, towering over her. Reacting directly to the Cup’s call, Cyprian’s face twisted.
In the next second, he slapped it out of Grace’s hands, and it hit the floor with a heavy clang, rolling over the stones into the corner, where it rocked for a moment before it lay still.
Will couldn’t help his eyes following it. It was the same for the others, all of them staring at it, unable to look away.
Cyprian stalked to the doorway without a backward look.
Will followed him out.
He half expected to have to chase him; but then again, there was nowhere to go. Cyprian had stopped in a small courtyard with an empty fountain and a distant view of the wall. Will saw the tense line of his back where he stood on the far side of the fountain, the stained white of his tunic, the long fall of his hair.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You didn’t do this,’ said Cyprian. ‘You don’t carry the blame.’
The words were a knife in Will’s gut. He tried to think of what he could say. What he had wanted to hear at Bowhill, stumbling through the mud, trying to survive.
He said, ‘You’re not alone.’
But it wasn’t true, not really. Cyprian was alone, in his grief, in his pain. The last of his kind, he carried a history inside him that was shared with no one else.
That was what Simon had done. He had whittled them down until each of them was alone. He had carved them away from connection and from family. I don’t want to kill anyone, Will had said. But the people he cared about always died. Simon kept killing.
And he could stop it. He was the one who could stop it.
If he didn’t, Simon would take, and take, and take, until there was nothing in the world that wasn’t his to command, or dead.
He took a step forward. He wanted to tell Cyprian that he would fight for him, fight for this Hall where for a moment he had felt safe.
‘You’re not alone, Cyprian.’
A tremor in Cyprian’s flesh, that he immediately stilled. Steward training, thought Will. Hold the blade tip steady though your arms were aching.
‘I should have been with them,’ said Cyprian. ‘I should have—’
Died with them. Will could almost hear the ringing words.
‘I shouldn’t be the last,’ he said. ‘Not me.’
His body was steady, but his voice was raw, like he didn’t know what to do. He had spent his life striving to achieve Steward perfection: to follow the rules, to excel in his training, to be immaculate in his discipline, and now all of that was gone. What was a Steward without rules, without traditions, without his Order?
‘You heard the Elder Steward,’ said Will. ‘It’s never truly dark while there’s a star.’
Cyprian turned to face Will, and with his long hair and old-fashioned clothes he suited this place so well, like one of its ancient and beautiful fittings. His eyes were wide, Will’s words seeming to strike something deep within him. Then his expression shuttered.
‘Look up,’ he said bitterly. Will followed his gaze to the battlements. He tried to understand, but saw only the empty jut of the outer wall.
‘Let him go,’ said Grace, arriving behind him, just as Cyprian turned and stalked away. ‘He was born in the Hall. It was his whole world.’ Her eyes were on the walls too.
‘What did he mean, look up?’ Will said.
‘The Final Flame,’ said Grace. ‘It burned since the founding of the Hall, a symbol of hope for the Stewards.’ Grace gave a strange, sad smile. Will remembered looking out of his window at the Flame on his first night in the Hall, its warm light a reassurance, a sign of safety. With an awful, dizzy feeling, he looked back up at the battlements and saw no light, only abandoned crenels and empty sky.
Grace said, ‘And now it has gone out.’