The frozen harbour below Freight Expectations had gone entirely still. The red light that had been building on the ice was almost Agony's colour now, and in the east the sky held the last dark before dawn.
The cannon fire broke them out of it. They were through the door and onto the street before the echo had finished, the frozen harbour at their backs, the cold air hitting like a fist.
“It's coming from the east,” Wylan said.
“The King's army.” Laila was already moving towards the carriage. “They'll be coming down the Rue Saint-Veridian. Quick.”
They piled in. The driver needed no instruction beyond the direction; the sound was enough. The carriage lurched forward through streets still dark and wet, the cobblestones gleaming where the blood had been and left nothing behind.
The Rue Saint-Veridian was the widest street in Pharelle: broad enough for eight horses abreast, lined with the facades of merchant houses and guild halls, built in the era when the city had still believed it might host a king. It opened before them as the carriage turned, and Laila lowered the window.
? Streets built for ceremony develop institutional expectations. The Rue Saint-Veridian had not been designed with armies in mind. For one, they were failing to take advantage of the numerous shops and amenities.
The army filled it from wall to wall: rank after rank of infantry in royal blue, moving in steady unhurried columns that stretched back further than she could see. Between the infantry columns, at intervals, walked the King's automatons: golden, man-height, moving with the mechanical certainty of things that did not tire and did not doubt. Here and there a face appeared in an upper window, looked, and withdrew. A baker's boy stood frozen in a doorway with a basket under his arm, watching them pass and then looking quickly away.
“Several regiments,” Wylan said, scanning the column. “Can't be more than fifteen thousand. But enough.”
Something at the head of the column caught the light. Wylan had his spyglass out before anyone else had registered it. He was quiet for a moment.
“That's the King,” he said. “Lucian himself—seated, throne on the palanquin.” A beat. “Vaziri is standing next to him.”
“It's a procession,” Lambert said.
Lambert looked at the column again. Fifteen thousand soldiers, and the King had chosen this morning, of all mornings, to remind everyone who held the crown.
“It's an invasion,” Isabella said.
By the time Lambert reached the Place du Bastille, the citizens of Pharelle were already arriving.
He stood at the edge of the forecourt and watched them come in ones and twos, drawn by the cannon fire and the rumours that travel faster than armies. They gathered at the margins of the square and watched the gate, not yet having decided whether to stay.
Maximilian arrived in a carriage that had been driven too fast, his coat straight and his arm in its sling, his face saying he had not been adequately briefed.
“Someone,” he said, looking at Laila, “sent me a very unpleasant feeling at four in the morning.”
“It worked, then,” she said.
He looked at her for a moment, then at the square, the gathering crowd, the distant sound of the army growing closer.
Lambert gave him the short version. The vault, the egg, the harbour, the mist. The blood rain. The frozen harbour. Maximilian listened without interrupting.
The infantry appeared at the far end of the Rue Saint-Veridian as Lambert reached the kraken.
“So it's in the city,” Maximilian said, watching the columns emerge into the square.
“We believe so.”
The automatons came next, moving at the same steady pace as the infantry, indifferent to the crowd that had pressed back to the edges of the square at the sight of them. A child near Lambert grabbed her mother's hand without being asked.
“And the army,” Maximilian said.
“The King is with them.”
Maximilian looked at him then. Lambert held the look.
The crowd had gone quiet. The infantry filled the square in disciplined ranks, the automatons taking position at intervals along the perimeter, and then the palanquin came through the gate: large, gilded, built for theatre. Lucian XVI sat on his throne above the crowd as though the square had been arranged for his comfort, his regalia catching the morning light. Beside him, standing, was Vaziri.
Maximilian studied the palanquin.
“Right,” he said. “What's the play?”
Lambert opened his mouth.
From the direction of Notre Reine, a procession entered the square. Valère at the centre, taking the square at his own pace, and at his right-hand Esteban, Pontifex, in full vestments: he had been waiting for this morning. Behind them, the clergy of the reformed Church: some in vestments, some not, all certain this was already decided.
The crowd in the Place du Bastille parted for them.
Valère stopped at the edge of the square and surveyed it: the army ranked along the perimeter, the automatons at their posts, the palanquin at the centre with the King enthroned above the crowd. Then he walked forward.
He paused at the palanquin and looked up at Lucian XVI: acknowledgement without deference. Then he moved past it.
Vaziri was waiting at the foot of the palanquin steps. She had not moved since the procession arrived.
The palanquin had stopped. Lucian XVI rose from his throne.
The square went quieter still.
He was a small man, made large by elevation and regalia. He looked out across the Place du Bastille: the crowd, the army, the clergy assembled on both sides of the square. The silence, in sufficient quantity, was a form of address.
“Citizens of Pharelle.”
His voice was trained for this. It found the edges of the square without effort.
? The Crown employed seven speech writers, two theological consultants, and one man whose sole function was to remove sentences that would later prove embarrassing. He had been busy lately.
“In the days past, this city has been subject to a campaign of sedition dressed in the vestments of faith. A man of unknown origin, claiming divine authority he does not possess, has used the credulity of this city's people to advance an agenda that belongs not to Sol Invictus but to those who believe themselves above the Crown's jurisdiction.”
He let that settle.
“We are not unaware of the families who have lent this pretender their support. We are not unaware of the interests his elevation would serve. Gallia has seen such arrangements before. It has not been well served by them.”
He turned to Vaziri. From within his robes he produced a circlet of gold worked with solar motifs, the gold worn dull at the edges. He held it above the crowd.
“The Crown of Gallia stands with its Church. Its legitimate Church. Its lawful shepherd.”
Vaziri descended the palanquin steps without assistance, her attendants moving to flank her as she reached the ground. She watched him come.
“Espérant,” she said. The name was a verdict. “You claim to be the man who founded this Church. Who wrote its founding texts. Who installed its first Pontifex. Who has been absent for two hundred years and returned, by remarkable coincidence, at a moment of political crisis.” Her voice carried without rising. “The Church of Invictus was built on Reason. It does not accept extraordinary claims on faith alone.” She raised her crosier. “Before Sol Invictus and these witnesses, I call you to answer. I issue challenge.”
Valère listened to all of it.
“Then I invoke La Conviction,” he said. “The old rite. Here, before these witnesses.”
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Vaziri's expression did not change. “La Conviction has not been conducted in over a century. It is reserved for—”
“Do not cite the old laws to me, woman,” he said. “I was there when they were written.”
“The rite cannot be conducted,” Vaziri said. “The focal lens was fractured during the reign of Lucian XIV. The cost of replacement has never been approved. The apparatus does not exist.”
“No,” Valère said. “It doesn't.”
He looked up. The crowd felt it before they saw it: warmth without source, the light sharpening between them until it held a shape.
Maximilian watched the shape the air had made. “How. It's midwinter. Where is that heat coming from.”
“It's not heat, exactly.” Wylan was already talking. “He's bending the light—concentrating it, the way a lens does, except there's no glass. Shaped air, held precisely enough to—” He stopped himself. “The thermodynamics alone should be completely—”
“It's not thermodynamics,” Lambert said. “He isn't generating anything. He's asking Agony's light to gather.” A pause. “The rite requires a focal apparatus. He's made one from the air itself.”
Vaziri looked at the shape the light had made, then at Caliburn at his side.
“I have faced men who wield stolen relics before,” she said. “I have not come unprepared.” She turned to the palanquin. “I invoke the authority of this Church, and the protection of Sol Invictus. I will have my shield of faith.”
Lucian had not moved. He had watched the lens form, and whatever he had expected, his face said this was not it. He met her gaze when she found him.
He gave a short nod.
Wylan touched Lambert's arm. “What is that.”
A servant was descending the palanquin steps with something on a cushion of dark velvet. Lucian descended two steps from his throne and took it himself.
Lambert was quiet for a moment. “La Couronne Solaire,” he said. “He brought it from Aurilienne.”
“What is it?”
“Aeloria's crown. From her reign as Sun Queen of Gallia.” He watched Lucian descend two steps towards Vaziri and raise the circlet above her head; each movement performed for the square. “The dynasty that exiled her has just crowned her Primate with her own crown.”
Lucian placed it on Vaziri's head.
The Couronne Solaire caught the gathered light. For a moment it simply gleamed.
Then Vaziri began to glow.
Vaziri stepped forward, the Couronne Solaire blazing as she closed the distance. She stopped close: too close for a public exchange.
“What are they saying,” Wylan said.
Lambert was already watching.
“She's calling him dragonborn,” he said quietly. “Saying he's chosen a test that cannot burn him.” His eyes moved between their faces. “He's smiling. He's telling her that she's just conceded his claim in front of everyone.”
Wylan almost laughed. Laila said nothing.
Vaziri's reply was short. Lambert read it and went still.
“She says he was always unreasonable. Even as Espérant.”
“And?”
“He says: yet you always took my advice.”
Valère turned and looked across the square. Esteban stepped forward.
The square went quiet in a different way.
Esteban walked to the edge of the circle of gathered light and faced the crowd: crosier, vestments, thirty years of waiting.
“La Conviction,” he said. “The oldest rite of this Church. It has not been conducted in living memory.”
“Two figures will take station within the circle. The light will find them both. As the rite proceeds, the circle will narrow. The light will concentrate. The heat will grow. It will burn away all falsehood. All pretence. What cannot withstand the light will not survive it.”
A pause.
“Whoever withdraws is without conviction. Whoever stands at the end will be consumed by light, and in that consuming, proved. The light does not lie. It never has.”
He stepped back.
The light found them both at once.
Lambert felt it before he saw it: a pressure behind his eyes, the weight of theurgy working at close range. He had felt it in the Champ de Soleil, but distantly. Here it was close enough to taste: copper and warmth and divinity the Church had spent two centuries learning to name.
Vaziri stood with her crosier planted before her. The Couronne Solaire blazed above her head, and Lambert could see the theurgic current moving through her: Agony's light drawn down in steady pulses, absorbed and redistributed, each one placed. Her eyes were open. She was looking at Valère.
Valère stood with Caliburn raised, the blade pointing skyward, catching nothing yet.
The square was very still.
The boundary contracted by half a metre and the temperature in the square jumped.
Lambert felt it on his face: actual heat, pressing outward from the circle's edge. Around him the crowd shifted back without discussion, the movement spreading outward through the square in a wave. A woman near the front pulled her coat closed. A man beside her simply turned and walked away.
Inside the circle, Vaziri's current intensified. The Couronne Solaire was working harder now, the pulses coming faster, the crown's glow no longer steady but urgent. Lambert watched her absorb it: each pulse taken in, held, redistributed. Her footing had not shifted. The crosier had not moved.
Valère was still too, Caliburn raised, the circle narrowing and he simply letting it come: he had set this fire.
At the circle's edge, where the concentrated light met the cobblestones, the frost began to steam. Then a broadsheet caught: one of the overnight papers pasted to a wall six metres back, its edge curling yellow, then orange, then gone. A banner above a guild hall doorway went next. The crowd nearest the wall lurched back, and the wave of retreat spread further through the square.
Lambert did not move. Beside him he felt Laila's hand find his arm, and hold it.
The circle began its final contraction. The boundary drew inward until they stood half a metre apart, the concentrated light bearing down on them both in a sheer column that bleached all shadow from the square. Lambert raised a hand against it and could still feel the heat through his palm.
The cobblestones within the circle had begun to glow.
Vaziri's current was no longer pulses. It was continuous: the Couronne Solaire channelling everything the column drove into her, a flood rather than a river, the crown blazing so brightly Lambert could no longer look at it directly. Her vestments were smoking at the edges. She had not moved. Her fingers had locked on the crosier and her chin was up and she was still standing.
Her voice carried across the square.
“While I wear this crown I remain untouched by the fire of Agony.” She held his gaze. “Just as you are.”
“You forget, Invictus came after the shepherd,” he said. “And the sword has laid low the crook before.”
He struck.
The top of the crosier struck the cobblestones.
A moment later so did Vaziri's head, and the Couronne Solaire rolled away.
The column dispersed into the cold morning air and left nothing behind but the smell of scorched stone.
“You have always used borrowed light, Lydia,” he said quietly. “I have made my own.”
In the space that followed, the cold returned all at once.
Lambert was still looking at where she had been standing.
Valère crouched and picked up the Couronne Solaire.
He held it for a moment, running his thumb along the solar work. Then he straightened and looked at the palanquin.
“Lucian.” The name crossed the square on its own. “I am the Aurarch. This city is mine. These are my people.” He let that settle. “You have brought fifteen thousand soldiers into a city of four hundred thousand who know exactly what they have just witnessed. Look at them.”
Lucian looked. The crowd filled the Place du Bastille from wall to wall and spilled back into every street that fed it. They had not moved during the rite. They were not moving now. They were a tide that had not yet decided to come in.
The infantry along the perimeter had stopped facing forward. Somewhere in the ranks, a horse shifted and was quieted.
“If you do not leave my city,” Valère said, “I will take your crown next. Stay, and I will remove it myself.”
The square was silent.
Lucian XVI sat on his throne above the crowd. When he spoke, his voice was level.
“The Crown of Gallia does not answer to a pretender's ultimatum.” He straightened in his seat. “We withdraw at our own discretion. Not at yours.”
It was the best available answer. Lambert recognised it as such.
Valère looked at him for a moment. Then he turned and threw the Couronne Solaire: a discard, not a gesture. It landed at the foot of the palanquin steps.
“Keep your crowns,” he said. “I have the people. I have no need of trinkets.”
Lucian did not look at it. He raised a hand and the army began its withdrawal: orderly, measured, the infantry peeling back from the perimeter in disciplined columns, the automatons following. The palanquin turned and the procession reformed.
Lambert watched them go. Beside him, no one spoke.
The Couronne Solaire lay at the foot of the steps until a footman descended, retrieved it without looking at the crowd, and carried it back up to the King.
The carriage moved north. The world had changed in the Place du Bastille, and the carriage had not been informed. Outside, the crowds were dispersing into the afternoon. Laila watched them through the glass: people who had not yet found words for what they had seen, carrying it in the set of their shoulders and the direction of their eyes.
? Pharelle processed its historical moments primarily through the broadsheet. By nightfall there would be twelve competing accounts in circulation; by morning, a commemorative biscuit tin.
She had perhaps three hours.
Maximilian sat with his arm in its sling. “We seem to be at an impasse.”
“We have until dusk to ruin a vampire ritual.” She looked around the carriage. “I am open to suggestions.”
“A frontal assault is probably deadly even for us,” Isabella said.
“Hyperion's flame proved a useful weapon.” Wylan had his notebook open. “Perhaps we use that as a spearpoint.”
“I would advise against it.” Lambert folded his hands. “I would leave it with Maximilian. And—pardon me for saying—Aurora.”
Maximilian looked at him. “You will not use my daughter as a weapon.”
“I'm not suggesting we do. But she and Max are among the few people I trust to wield it.” He paused. “That's not my main consideration.”
“She's three,” Laila said.
“The vampires won't care. Aeloria didn't care.” His voice did not change. “However. Seraphina, R?zvan, Lampetia—they need a source of solar energy for the ritual, and it looks as though they're using the dragon egg. I think it might be tempting fate to bring the flame with us.”
“It's easily one of our most powerful weapons against them,” Wylan said, “and you want to leave it behind.”
“My suspicion is that any attempt to attack will be met with force—and force they are prepared for. I imagine they're ready for Valère himself.”
Isabella looked up. “What if we point Valère at them? He took care of Lydia easily enough. Even Aeloria seems to be thinking otherwise.”
“I fear that for two reasons.” Lambert turned to her. “I don't know if we could get him to agree—his purposes are clearly his own, and I suspect he is too preoccupied at this moment for a side venture. And if he were to expend considerable resources bringing down R?zvan, it might weaken him enough for Aeloria to find an opening. We find ourselves precisely where we began.”
“What about Valère equipped with the flame.”
“No.” Lambert said it without heat. “I think we would be adding fire to more fire.”
Wylan looked up from his notebook. “What other option do we have.”
Laila let the question sit for a moment. Outside, a bell was still ringing somewhere (Notre Reine, probably), its note thin and persistent above the sound of the wheels.
“I have an idea,” she said. “It is risky, bold, and not without considerable danger.” She glanced at Maximilian. In a different light, she might have been smiling at him. “So naturally you'll have to stay behind and play house.”
Maximilian looked at her. “You know, for someone who gets to be addressed as Your Grace, I seem to spend a great deal of time being left out of things.”
“Yes. And the one time we let you out, you went and broke your arm in a silly little fight.”
“Silly fight?” His voice sharpened. “It was him or me.”
“You've just proved my point.” Her tone did not rise. “Count d'Aubigne nearly had you by leveraging your temper. Until you get that under control—and until that arm heals—no adventuring.”
“I can't help but notice,” Lambert said, “that you've rather strayed from your original point. The event. How do we gain entry?”
Laila settled back against the seat. “Why, as guests.” Outside, Notre Reine was still ringing. “We have, after all, been extended an invitation. By R?zvan himself.”