“What’s all this?” he said, eyes moving up and down the spectacle gathered at his door.
“All this” was a line of wagons, the same wagons from the Council’s assault on the Spirit Court Tower earlier that morning. Each was large enough to carry eight men with room to spare and filled with lumpy objects hidden beneath a cover of thick, tied canvas. There were ten wagons in total, all identical, and none with a driver or animals to pull them. They rolled on their own, much like Slorn’s wagons, though with wheels instead of legs. But these weren’t like Slorn’s wagons; Miranda was positive of that. One, Sara wasn’t that nice, or a Shaper, and two, the wagons didn’t move and fidget like Slorn’s awakened creations did. These wagons followed Sara’s instructions with a sluggishness that reminded Miranda more of bad puppetry than spirit work. Still, strange as this was, Miranda put it out of her mind. The threat, if there was one, wouldn’t come from wagons that moved themselves but from whatever Sara was hiding under their cloth covers.
Sara met Josef with a smile, her eyes flicking to the enormous sword on his back. “You must be Josef Liechten, master of the fabled Heart of War. I hear you’re king of Osera now. Congratulations, and my sincere condolences on the loss of your mother.”
Miranda snorted. Sara didn’t sound sincere at all. Fortunately, none of this seemed to faze Josef.
“Right,” he said. “And why are you here?”
“To honor the Council’s duty to Osera,” Sara answered with a shrug. “And to offer a new weapon in the war against the Empress.”
That got Josef’s attention. “What have you got?”
Sara smiled. “You’ll see for yourself as soon as the fog clears, which should be any moment now.”
“What are you talking about?” Miranda said.
Sara looked surprised. “Can’t you hear it, Spiritualist? Listen. The mist is straining. Something’s pushing on it.”
Miranda shifted her attention immediately to her mist, but Allinu felt fine. Nothing was different. Miranda frowned and pushed softly on the thread of power connecting them. The thread pushed back, but the push was weak and thin, and Miranda’s breath caught.
“Allinu!” she shouted, looking up.
“Sorry, mistress,” the mist whispered around her. “We’re holding as best we can, but the Empress has a wind. I don’t know how much longer we can keep this up.”
“A wind?” Miranda scowled. “How big a wind?”
“Big enough to blow your mist away,” Sara said, glancing up. “Look.”
Miranda looked. Sure enough, she could see patches of the evening sky overhead.
“I’m sorry, mistress,” Allinu whimpered. “We tried.”
Miranda made a soothing sound and held out her hand. The mountain mist spiraled down, sinking into her ring with a sigh. Banage’s fog was dissipating as well, and Miranda turned, staring out at the sea as the air cleared.
“Powers,” she muttered, blinking against the strong, unnaturally steady wind from the sea.
Behind her, Josef added a more powerful curse.
Just beyond the line of trees and wrecked ships was a wall of palace ships. There were seven in all, pulled so close to each other that their crews could step from one boat to the next. Their decks were black with soldiers arranged in alternating lines, the first row kneeling, the next standing just behind them. All of them were holding larger versions of the curved bows the soldiers who’d invaded the bay had been carrying, and every bow was drawn. Miranda swallowed as the full force of what she was seeing hit her. Thousands of arrows, notched and drawn, and all of them pointed at the top of the storm wall where the Oseran forces were standing.
“Durn!” Miranda shouted, but her rock spirit’s name was lost in the deafening snap of the bowstrings. A black wall of arrows shot over the bay. There wasn’t time to duck, no time for Miranda to do anything except to raise her hands in a pathetic shield as the arrows whistled toward her.
When the arrows were close enough that Miranda could see the fletching, everything suddenly went black. She blinked in surprise and then winced at the thud of the arrows striking something solid and smooth. Miranda stepped back, and then she began to grin. Durn towered over her, a great stone wall covering a ten-foot-long span of the storm wall. She grinned wider and slapped her hand against the stone. “Thank you.”
“Of course,” Durn answered, his gravelly voice thick with pride.
Beside her, Josef lowered his sword. “Nice trick.”
Miranda looked over her shoulder. By luck of where she’d been standing, Durn’s wall had also sheltered the road, the door to the tower, and most of their forces. Outside the stone’s reach, arrows lay everywhere. They stuck in the ground, lay broken on the stone, and a few were even embedded in the wooden shutters of the watchtower windows. Miranda swallowed. If Durn hadn’t shielded them, that surprise attack might well have been the end. Back on the road, the sailors and Spiritualists stood in a stunned clump, their eyes glassy as everyone realized how close they’d come to death.