The air was thinner. Moving. It tickled her throat. Brushed her hair, caressed her cheeks, and folded into her arms as if it were embracing her as she stood with the sway of the boat beneath her. The dark of the tunnel, the pitch of the bricks hanging in their permanent, ancient arch, receded from above her to shades of deep blues tinged with hints of light glowing between drifting clouds and whisps of smoke. Alicia didn’t hear droplets, like the ticks of an immortal clock in some great beyond, deep within the depths echoing between walls, but the laps of water on the edges of the canal they were drifting along.

  She heard shouts, yes. There were cries. Weeping. But she also could hear singing. She could hear crickets. The songs of a breeze through grass and over vast emptiness that only could be heard by someone who hadn't felt vastness in a long time.

  She watched as they passed tall shops with roofs pointing into the sky full of blues scattered with stars. She watched as they went under bridges. Saw birds nestled snuggly in nests built beneath them.

  The knight beside her—Marion, Nina had called him—put a cloak over her shoulders with a warm grin and a rub of her back.

  “Soon,” he said. “Soon, you’ll be safe.”

  She nodded, but she didn’t sit down. She looked back to Nina, who was slowly pushing herself to sit upright with moaning breaths. She, too, grinned up at her. And then her eyes returned to the sky. The stars. The clouds. The vast openness above her. The moon shining down on her. This was real? This was real.

  In the courtyard of the Palais Rohan, Draka helped pull the wounded out of the path of the battering ram being pushed over the rubble. Baron’s Men, knights, Clerics, even some of the mob had joined in the fighting when he hadn’t looked. It didn’t matter. They were all his people.

  He cried as he pulled them, glad it was too dark, that his face was too covered in gore and ash for anyone to see. He kept running to get others before they were flattened by the wide, plated wheels. The long wooden-ribbed wagon, hooded by shields bolted over the wooden ribbing, had a bundle of thick logs hanging loosely by thick chains inside it. Others were doing the same as quickly as they could. They weren’t able to get all of them. Even without the arrows raining down on them from the windows and few remaining balconies, they couldn’t reach all of them in time.

  As the fifty Monastic Knights finally got the six wheeled juggernaut over the rubble and pushed it across the square at their fastest, there were screams that ended. There were cries for mercy suddenly silenced. There were some who pleaded for them to stop, but they were crushed the same as all the others they didn’t reach.

  The fifty sprinted the battering ram fast as horses across the courtyard to slam into the front doors of the Palais. Arrows rained over them as they crossed, felling many who had to be replaced by others who were trying to pull wounded out of their path while arrows plunged around them in a, more often than not, deadly rain.

  Wounded were dragged behind the shield walls formed in small lines around the courtyard, but they still fell victim to the volleys along with the men and women trying to protect them. Arrows and bolts were shot at back as the logs were pulled until the chains were taut and rocked forward to slam into the doors again.

  Draka blew his horn for the archers to concentrate their volleys. Blew it again for reinforcements to move in from the square to stop the slaughter.

  Again, the chained logs were swung back and slammed into the doors. The boards of the door splintered.

  He signaled with his horn. The chains were made taut again. The logs rocked forward, aided by the men around them to hit harder.

  The door finally gave.

  Draka drew his sword and stood straight over his line of men crouched behind their shields. He whirled it around over his head and pointed.

  The door toppled into splinters. He blew the horn and ran for the opening created by the men pulling the plated wheeled battering ram back from the Palais steps.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Christophe couldn’t believe his eyes as he rushed along the second floor gallery to reach Lisbeth’s room. He grabbed onto the rail just before reaching for her door and gaped as the knights poured through in all directions.

  He threw her door open. Lisbeth was crouched in a corner, crying. When she saw him, she leapt to grab him, but he pushed her out of the room and continued pushing her to where Clarissa waited with a lamp in her hand. Lisbeth’s chemise fluttered around her like a translucent laced cloud moving across the dark wood floor.

  Below, Draka’s knights and Clerics forced the unarmed staff to their knees at spearpoint. Halberds were thrown to the floor. Tabards were torn off and hands raised as shields toppled. Draka sent some left with a point of his sword, others he sent right with a point of his finger. The rest, he waved to follow him up the stairs. He looked up to meet Christophe’s glance from the gallery.

  Christophe pushed his wife and daughter to move faster for his study down one of the halls. They were frantic, screaming and shaking, crying, questions filled with curses, with confusion and more questions. Clouds floating across darkness.

  Christophe kept pointing, his sword in hand, his head constantly looking over his shoulder and back. When they finally reached his study, he pushed them in and followed with a slam of the door.

  They fell into each other’s arms in a corner, at the little space where the shelves of books he never bothered to read didn’t quite reach the corner. Together, they cried and screamed. He pushed his desk with all his might, scraping it across the floor to block the door.

  He snatched the lamp from where Clarissa had set it beside her. He threw it at the desk, splashing oil and flames across the door to the raised screams of his wife and daughter. Then, he began pulling from the cabinets and tossing papers, feeding the flames.

  Marion used the boat’s long handled rudder to ease the boat toward the ancient stone canal steps. Nina had her arms around Alicia, waiting for them to get close enough, still reeling with pain and the loss of blood. She stepped onto the stone steps first, easing Alicia to follow.

  “We’ll be okay from here,” She called to Marion, who nodded.

  Alicia stared at the stones under her feet. She didn’t want to move. She didn’t want to step up or down ones like these.

  No, she thought, this is another trick. I’m not going back! I won’t—

  Nina was wavering, but she turned Alicia’s face to look at her.

  “Alice, right through those doors,” she pointed, but Alicia didn’t look away from her face or where she turned to, “is someone who cares deeply about you and was willing to give up everything in the world to make sure you were safe. And I,” Nina shifted to keep from falling over and dragging them both into the canal, “I need to get to someone who can do more than just stop the bleeding. So, if you would beg my finest pardon, Head Mistress, please start moving.”

  Alicia blinked a moment. Then, she leaned her head sideways, “Nina?”

  “Yes,” Nina grinned. Her knees were shaking into numbness. “On second thought, you just…”

  Alicia pulled her arm over her shoulder and lifted her. “I don’t know where I’m going.”

  “The Cathedral, just ahead.”

  Across stones laid a thousand years. Along a canal built long before that. Into the shadowed gaze of the single rising tower of the Cathedral built when those stones were laid, they limped toward those tall open doors guarded by knights armored so thickly that they were steel statues nodding as they passed. Those facades of saints looking down upon them, those angels blowing trumpets into the heavens above them, the red battle flag of the Seven Pointed Star and Cross flying, they slowly crossed the threshold into the great nave of the Bastion of Our Lady of Strasbourg.

  Nina barely made it two steps inside before collapsing. A monk was near enough that he caught her before Alicia had to drop her. With the help of a nun, they carried her away, leaving Alicia standing alone, within the nave, surrounded by the simple beauty of the Cathedral.

  It wasn’t like she remembered. It wasn’t dripping with gold and flower petals. There were no wreaths of green leaves and red blooms. There were no paintings like the ones of the Palais Rohan. There were only a few scriptural carvings and paintings of saints, colorful stained-glass windows, and chapels of decorative gold fans that were easily recognized as simply rods painted to look gold.

  Alicia wrung her hands together, turning in circles, not realizing that she was moving down the nave. Not realizing that she looked like she was slowly dancing across the breadth of the Cathedral to the tall, grinning old fellow with a felt hat in his hands and wire rimmed glasses that always fell a little too far down his nose.

  She stopped when she saw him. He smiled with bashful teary eyes.

  “Good morning, Madame Reneaux. It appears,” he let out a long sigh and swallowed with a clearing of his throat.

  Alicia covered her gaping mouth, shaking in disbelief as she floated toward him.

  “That I actually am not capable of making my orders on time without you reminding me,” Valmond finished, smiling through his tearful joy. “I missed you.”

  Alicia only nodded and wrapped her arms around him, letting the cloak fall to their feet.

  “It was you. It was always you,” she said into his shoulder, refusing to let go of him. “It was always you, Valmond. I prayed but all I could pray for was you.” She smiled at his arms around her. “I’m not going to wake up, am I?”

  “No, Alice, you’re safe now.”