Page 151 of A War of Three Kings

Crowds mill about in dirty streets, arguing with each other or whispering gossip in corners. I wrinkle my nose at the stench of this place. Every surface is stone. The paved streets and squares. The tan bricks of the buildings and terracotta-tiled roofs. Greenish sludge coats the roofs, black smears slide down many of the walls, and I don’t even want to think of the muck on the ground. Especially the piles of refuse in the alleyways.

There are no rivers to wash the human filth away. No trees to soak up the nourishment. No patches of greenery to function as nature’s drains.There are fountains in every square, but that water is contained and washes nothing away.

Caitlin selects a site in the middle of a square, before a fountain with a sculpture of three women pouring water out of vases. I scan the area around it, a ring of busy porticos with cafe tables spilling out into it.

I send Klara, Silvan and Zinnia to different points in the terrace as lookouts. Drake and Hawthorne pretend to line up for a drink of water from the fountain. They will join the crowd of Caitlin’s onlookers and discreetly feed her power for her show.

I enter what must be a guild hall with Cyprien on my heels, and immediately race up the spiral staircase to the bell tower I spotted from the ground. The entire balconied space is dotted with bird droppings, and the creak of the bell’s rope as it gently moves overhead is a little disconcerting, but the stink of so many people pressed together is gone.

The tower gives us an excellent view of Caitlin striding toward the fountain and the streets funneling into the square,providing anadvance warning if unrest breaks out. It functions as a lookout beyond the city wall, to the shantytown that rests up against it and the road Edmund will arrive on with the armies of the North and South combined.

I can’t help glancing behind me, deeper into the sprawling city, where the palace lies. A savage beast of fury awakens in me at that sight, claws extending, teeth bared and craving blood.

The royal castle is as ugly as the rest of this city. A squat thing of low buildings of different styles haphazardly shoved together, bland and monotone with only a handful of spires and turrets to break them up.

Keira is there, in a prison of opulence.

It takes everything within me not to charge up that rise toward her. To scale the wall around the palace and kill every guard on it. My hands twitch at the thought of the pain I will inflict on the mad king when I get my hands on him.

“Aldrin, you cannot do anything for her today.” Cyprien’s voice drags me back to the moment.

“I am so sick of hearing that.” My teeth grind so hard thatmy jaw hurts.

“I know.” He puts his hands on my shoulders and guides me back to the other side of the bell tower, forcing me to look at Caitlin and the fountain below.

She stands before all that flowing water, raising her hands over her head and clapping multiple times. Her air magic amplifies the sound to the intensity of thunderclaps.

“Heed my warning!” Caitlin’s words bounce off the porticos, the echo whispering back in a dozen voices. The crowd stops and everyone turns to her. “Heed the warnings of the High Priestess. Of your Mothers of Magic!”

I lean my arms on the brick railing, grim satisfaction filling me at the way the humans below mutter frantically between themselves and crowd around Caitlin. A breeze whips aroundher, lifting her auburn hair and rustling the divided skirts of her white gown.

A stronger gust kicks up the pool of water in the fountain. Tendrils of it form a platform beneath her feet, then raise her off the ground with an air base that is invisible to the humans. Slowly, Caitlin is brought to the apex of the tall fountain, a pedestal of churning water beneath her feet.

The weaves of magic from Drake and Hawthorne as they hold their magic trick are clear to me, but the humans stare at Caitlin as though she is a messiah.

“Your king has gone mad! His reign has brought nothing but war. Death. Famine,” Caitlin yells, and the commoners call back their agreement. “The good people of this city pay for his war in the North with their taxes and their sons, so King Finan could kidnap a woman who had no interest in marrying him. A Mother of Magic who had given herself over to the temple, no less!”

There are more angry murmurings, but this is old news to the people.The priestesses have been lecturing them about this since the war began.

“Now, King Finan is slaughtering priestesses! The sanctuary in this city is closed because the king murdered every single woman within it. He has gone to other sanctuaries to kill their Mothers of Magic. When will he stop this sacrilege? When all Mothers of Magic are dead?”

The crowd eats up her words, yelling and thrashing. More people channel in from the four streets that feed into the large square. I watch them all closely in case we need to pull Caitlin out. Cyprien and I could build a staircase of air for her to run to us.

“You have had no priestesses in this city for weeks because the king slaughtered them,” Caitlin roars. “Who has helped the expecting mothers in this city birth their children? Who hashealed the sick in their darkest hour? The king is to blame for those avoidable deaths of your loved ones!”

The people react, throwing up their arms and screaming.

Caitlin doesn’t miss a beat. “When the crops fail because there are no Mothers of Magic to save them, the famine will be your king’s fault. When the magic dies in this land because there are no more pilgrimages, it will be your king’s fault.”

Voices ring out in the crowd.

“The king must be stopped!” a man screams.

“The gods will curse us for such sacrilege!” a woman bellows.

“The mad king is no longer fit to rule!” Caitlin growls. “An army is marching on this very city to stop him. King Finan would sit behind his palace walls and allow you to starve under a siege. To die in the streets if a battle broke out. When has he ever dirtied his hands to save you? He has only ever robbed you!”

Wails rise from the amassed people and I grit my teeth. This is the most dangerous part of Caitlin’s speech. We cannot have uncontrolled riots in the city. The mob needs to be turned into a finely tuned weapon.One that we wield.

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