Isabella woke to smoke.
Not hearth smoke. Not kitchen smoke. The dark, accusatory smoke of Something On Fire.
She was at the window before her feet caught up with her instincts. Pre-dawn grey, the city still sleeping. But there, rising above the roofline to the east, a column of black against the paler sky.
She didn’t bother with the stairs. The window of her second-floor room opened onto a narrow ledge, and from there the roof of the servants’ wing was an easy drop. Isabella crossed it at a run, leapt the gap to the neighbouring townhouse, and kept moving.
The rooftops of the noble quarter made for uneven terrain. Mansard slopes, chimney forests, the occasional treacherous patch of frost. But she’d mapped these routes years ago. These are my hunting grounds.
She moved low and fast, the smoke thickening as she closed the distance.
She crested the peak of a four-storey h?tel and stopped.
Below her, a building was dying, and it was not going quietly. Not a kitchen fire, not a chimney gone wrong. A whole estate alight, flames tearing through one wing, already licking at the main house. The heat reached her even here, two streets away.
She triangulated. Rue de Clairmont to her left. The spire of St. Velas behind. Which made this...
The d’Amboise estate.
“Shit.”
In the courtyard below, servants scrambled with buckets. Bucket brigade was perhaps too generous a term. It implied coordination. Effectiveness. This was closer to bucket chaos. Bucket-related panic. Water hit flame and vanished into steam. The fire remained unbothered.
Isabella assessed. West wing fully engulfed. Flames visible from at least three separate windows, too far apart for natural spread. And it was late Blotember, frost still on the ground. Fires didn’t start themselves in this cold. Someone had set this, and set it well.
Movement caught her eye.
Not below. Across.
A belltower rose from the parish church on the far side of the estate, silhouetted against the glow.
A figure.
Isabella flattened herself against a chimney stack, instinct taking over before thought could catch up. She watched.
The figure wasn’t moving. Wasn’t fleeing, wasn’t helping. Just standing at the belltower’s edge, watching the chaos below with the calm detachment of a theatre critic.
She knew that stillness. She’d worn it herself, on hunts.
Her eyes narrowed, focusing across the distance. The figure resolved. Broad shoulders, military bearing, a build that came from fighting and nothing else.
And then the profile turned, catching the firelight.
Ser Thornwood. Countess d’Aubigne’s bodyguard.
Phaedra entered with coffee, carrying it with the reverence of a priestess delivering a sacrament.
The air in Laila’s chamber was thick, stale with sleeplessness. Beyond the window, the morning light was filtered and wan. Laila sat by the window, fingers drumming an uneven rhythm against the armrest. Waiting.
Phaedra placed the coffee down with a gentle clink and a bow that carried just enough deference to avoid being sarcastic.
“Coffee, Madame. Black as midnight, strong as gossip, and just the right temperature for regrets.”
Laila took a sip. The cup was warm in her hands.
“You look tired, Madame.”
“Bad dreams. I’m sleeping fitfully.”
“Surely Madame la Duchesse is not troubled by a bad dream.”
“Dreams aren’t just troubles gone to bed, Phaedra. I’m an Enchanter.”
“I don’t take your meaning, Madame.”
“One bad night’s sleep and I can’t draw a phantasm or cloud a mind.”
“But your magic is based on colour, Madame. You have the pigments, which are very expensive, I am sure.”
“Phaedra. It’s magic.” She set it down. “We don’t call them the Arcane Arts as a clever turn of phrase. Colour is my medium, just as music is Alexisoix’. But all Mages — Enchanter or Bard — draw their power from a source. Even dear Max draws his power from elemental chaos as a Sorcerer.”
“And you draw power from dreams.”
“Just so.” She turned to face her spymaster. “Your inquiries into the household. Anything?”
“Nothing conclusive. Cedric remains inscrutable. Elariana remains professional. Percival remains suspiciously unsuspicious.” Phaedra’s lips twitched. “I continue to suspect everyone of everything. It is the only reliable methodology.”
“That must be exhausting.”
“It keeps me sharp, Madame.”
“Then let me give you something conclusive.” Laila set down the cup. “I’ve confirmed it. Alexios was poisoned.”
Phaedra went still.
“That changes the calculus. A leak is one thing. An assassin is another.”
“The traitor isn’t just passing information. They killed my husband.”
“Which narrows the field.” Phaedra’s stony eyes fixed on her. “Poison requires access. Intimacy. Someone close enough to know his habits, his routines. Someone trusted.”
“You’re describing half the household.”
“I’m describing kinfolk, Madame.” Phaedra’s voice softened. “Consider. Alexios believed in lifting us up. Bringing us into positions of power, giving us roles no one else would dare. You and I, a gorgon and a spriggan, hold our positions because of his actions.”
“Your point?” she said dangerously.
“Some of us are grateful. Others?” Phaedra tilted her head. “To them, such charity only deepens the resentment. It reminds them of where they came from. How they’ll always be seen. Rancour like that festers. It drives people to do foolish things.”
Laila said nothing. The thought wound deeper than she liked.
“The truth is here somewhere, Madame. You just have to be willing to find it.”
Laila turned back to the window. The haze she’d dismissed as morning fog hadn’t lifted. If anything, it had thickened, and it smelled wrong. Faint, acrid, unmistakable.
What she had taken for hazy morning light was something far worse. Tendrils of dark smoke threading their way across the rooftops.
“Do you smell that?”
Phaedra was beside her in three strides. “That’s not hearth smoke.”
Shouting rose from the street below.
“From the direction and distance,” Phaedra said, “I believe that is the d’Amboise estate.”
Laila went cold. They had only met yesterday.
“Rouse the household. Get everyone who can carry a bucket.”
“Madame.” Phaedra hadn’t moved from the window. “You seem unfazed.”
“So do you.”
“You pay me to be professionally unfazed, Madame. If you wanted someone who loses their head over drama, there are plenty of humans to hire for the role.”
Laila almost smiled. “Just get me my coat.”
Lambert knelt in morning devotion, murmuring prayers with the intensity of a man who suspected the god was only half-listening. He paused mid-verse. Smoke, threading through the morning air. Smoke tends to grab the attention, especially when bacon isn’t involved.
He stood, carefully marking his page in the holy book (they were expensive), and moved to the window.
? The Church of Invictus maintained that the high cost of holy texts encouraged reverent handling of the prophets’ marginalia, though the Scribes’ Guild had successfully reinterpreted this as reverence for profit margins.
The morning haze over the rooftops wasn’t fog. Darker. More deliberate. Enough smoke to mean something was properly on fire rather than merely smouldering.
Movement caught his eye. Below, in the courtyard.
A figure dropping from a window. Maximilian’s window.
Lambert leaned closer to the glass. The figure landed in a crouch, glanced both ways, and moved quickly toward the servants’ gate. Dark clothes. Not livery.
Percival?
The valet didn’t run. Didn’t flee. But he moved like a man who didn’t want to be seen, and that was worse. Lambert’s hand pressed flat against the cold glass, his mind cataloguing: the smoke, the timing, Percival slinking away at dawn.
What are you—
His door slammed open.
“Lambert!” Max filled the doorway, shirt untucked, hair wild, eyes bright with the madness that only fire could kindle in him. “There’s a fire. A big one. I can see it from my window. Come on, I need—”
“I saw. What was Percival doing in your—”
“—help with my leathers, he’s not answering, come on—”
Max seized his arm and hauled him into the corridor.
Lambert found himself half-running to keep up, wearing shoes entirely unsuited for emergencies, his questions dying in his throat as Max barrelled onward. The smoke smell was stronger here, threading through the pre-dawn air.
“West of here, maybe the d’Amboise quarter, big column, multiple ignition points from the look of it—” Max was talking without breathing, shoving open his bedroom door. “—which means arson, which means someone needs to contain it before the whole block goes up, which means me, where is my bloody valet—”
“Percival,” Lambert said. “I saw him. In the courtyard. Climbing out of your window.”
Max stopped. Turned. “What?”
“Just now. Before you came in. He was climbing out of your window and heading for the servants’ gate.”
Max shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. I need to get dressed. Help me.”
The fire-retardant leathers were already half-pulled from the chest, a tangle of straps and buckles that looked like they’d been designed by someone who hated the wearer. Max shoved his arms through the sleeves and turned his back to Lambert.
“The clasps. Down the spine.”
“I’m not your valet.”
“No, you’re my brother, which means you work for free. Clasps, Lambert.”
Lambert fumbled with the buckles. The leather was stiff, scarred, blackened in places where fire had tested it and lost. Up close, it smelled of char and old sweat.
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“Tighter,” Max said. “If it’s loose, the heat gets in.”
“If I pull any tighter, you won’t breathe.”
“Breathing is optional. Burning isn’t.”
Lambert yanked the strap. Max grunted approval.
They were moving again before Lambert had finished the last buckle, Max pulling on his gloves as he strode into the corridor, Lambert trailing behind still working the final clasp.
“We need Wylan,” Max said. “If it’s as big as it looks—”
“Maximilian.”
Laila came around the corner fast and nearly collided with them. She was already dressed, coat buttoned, face set in the expression that meant someone was about to have a very bad day.
“Fire at the d’Amboise estate,” she said. “I’m coordinating the household response. Get your brother and go.”
“Already on it.” Max was still moving, forcing Laila to step aside or be bowled over. “Lambert, come on—”
His hand was on Lambert’s collar, dragging him toward the east wing.
“Wylan sleeps like the dead,” Max said, taking the stairs two at a time. “We’ll need to be creative.”
“Define creative.”
“Loud. Wet. Possibly explosive.”
“Max—”
But they were already at Wylan’s door, and Max didn’t knock so much as apply his shoulder to the wood.
The door banged open.
Wylan’s room was a disaster. It was always a disaster, but this morning it had achieved new heights: flasks on every surface, papers scattered across the floor, something bubbling in the corner that Lambert refused to look at directly. The air smelled of sulphur and regret.
Wylan himself was slumped over his workbench, face pressed into a stack of notes, snoring.
Lambert grabbed the water jug from the nightstand.
“Allow me,” he said, and upended it over his half-brother’s head.
Wylan came up sputtering, flailing, knocking over three flasks and something that hissed. “I wasn’t—I was just—the vapours were—”
“Fire,” Lambert said. “d’Amboise estate. Big.”
“How big?”
“Big enough that Max is already dressed.”
Wylan looked at Maximilian, registered the fire leathers, and was on his feet before the water had finished dripping from his hair.
“Hold on.”
He crossed to the far wall, where a glass case hung between a diagram of molecular bonds and a scorch mark that had its own diagram. Inside the case, a large flask sloshed with water that moved a little too deliberately. The label read: BREAK IN CASE OF FIRE.
Wylan broke the glass, grabbed the flask, and clipped it to his belt.
“Right.” He moved through the chaos of his room without knocking anything over, grabbing vials and pouches, shoving them into pockets. “Let’s go,” he said, pulling on his coat.
They thundered down the stairs, through the servants’ corridor, into the courtyard. The smoke was thicker here, visible over the roofline, a dark smear against the sky.
Wylan slowed, assessing. “How do we get there? Run?”
“In this cold?” Max gestured at his fire leathers. “In these? No.”
Lambert caught up with them, breathing hard.
“And he won’t be able to keep up,” Max added.
Wylan’s face split into a grin that Lambert had learned to dread. “Brothers. I have a cunning plan.”
“Oh no,” Lambert and Max said together.
“Max, can you create a controlled burst of fire? Directional, sustained?”
“Oh yes,” Max said, eyes lighting up.
“Oh no,” Lambert said.
Wylan was already moving. A groundskeeper’s cart sat by the stable wall, flat-bedded and sturdy, meant for hauling soil and tools. He kicked out the wheel chocks and it rolled forward on the cobblestones.
Then he reached for the large flask at his hip. Lambert hadn’t noticed it before, stoppered and sloshing faintly. Wylan pulled the cork.
Water poured out. Far more water than the flask could possibly contain. It pooled on the ground, shimmering, and then it moved, rising, taking shape, flowing with purpose toward the cart. The water slid beneath it, lifting it off its wheels, and held it there with the quiet confidence of something that had done this before.
“What,” Lambert said flatly, “is that.”
“Water elemental.” Wylan signed something to the shimmering mass, a quick gesture with both hands. The elemental pulsed in response. “She’s very cooperative.”
“She?”
“Get in.”
Max vaulted onto the cart without hesitation. Lambert climbed up more carefully, feeling the strange buoyancy beneath him, solid and liquid at once.
“And then what?” Max asked.
“When I say go, fire a jet behind us. Sustained thrust.”
“And what am I meant to do?” Lambert asked.
Wylan swung himself onto the cart, gripping the side rail. “You can pray, brother. And hold on for dear life.”
? Physics had learned, over the course of Wylan’s alchemical career, that objection was futile. These days it simply watched, keeping a tally of which fundamental laws were being violated and in what order.
They careened through the streets of the noble quarter like a fever dream made of questionable decisions.
The cart skimmed over cobblestones on its cushion of living water, banking hard around corners, while Lambert gripped the side rail and prayed with an intensity he usually reserved for matters of actual theological significance.
“Left!” Wylan shouted, signing to the elemental.
“I see it!” Max adjusted the thrust, and they shot through a gap between townhouses that Lambert would have sworn was too narrow.
Another cart loomed ahead. Max didn’t slow down. The elemental rose, lifting them up and over it, and Lambert caught a glimpse of the driver’s face, pure uncomprehending horror, before they were past.
“Sorry!” Wylan called back.
They weren’t sorry. Lambert could tell. Neither of his brothers was remotely sorry.
The smoke thickened. The d’Amboise estate rose ahead, having moved beyond ‘on fire’ and into ‘enthusiastic conflagration’. Flames leapt through shattered windows with the giddy abandon of a housewarming party gone horribly wrong.
Max cut the thrust. The elemental didn’t so much glide to a stop as career sideways into a hedge.
Lambert found himself face-first in shrubbery. Somewhere behind him, the cart had come to rest at an angle that suggested it would never haul soil again.
“I guess we’re here,” Wylan said.
She should go back. Help with the fire. Report what she’d seen.
Below, something careened into the courtyard on a cushion of water and crashed into the hedge. Lambert emerged face-first from the shrubbery. Wylan was laughing. Max’s hands were still smoking.
I suppose they can handle the fire. I’ll take care of the intruder.
The belltower was three rooftops away.
Isabella dropped into the hunt. Her breathing slowed. Her weight settled into her feet, each step placed with care, because rooftops talked if you didn’t treat them gently. Slate. Lead flashing. A weathervane that wanted to creak but thought better of it.
She crossed the first roof. The second. The fire’s glow painted everything amber and shadow, and the smoke gave her cover she hadn’t asked for but would take.
The tower’s north face had a maintenance ladder, old iron bolted into stone. She climbed without sound, one rung at a time, feeling the rust under her fingers.
At the top, she paused. Listened.
Thornwood hadn’t moved. He stood at the tower’s edge, broad back to her, watching the d’Amboise estate burn. He had nowhere else to be.
Isabella’s hand found the knife at her belt. She drew it slowly, the blade clearing the sheath without a whisper.
Throat or kidney. He’s big, but size means nothing if he doesn’t see it coming.
One step. Two. The stonework was solid underfoot. No creak. No warning.
Three steps.
She struck.
Thornwood turned. Not startled, not surprised. He caught her wrist before the blade reached his throat. His grip was calloused, heavy, immovable. She twisted, jabbed for his eyes with her free hand.
He caught that too.
Oh.
The bodyguard pivoted. With effortless strength, he hurled her off the tower.
Wind tore past her ears. The rooftops spun below, the fire rushing up to meet her. Isabella’s mind raced through possible solutions.
It was a short race.
? Hindsight is 20/20, although in this case it was mostly just sky and rocks.
Lambert extracted himself from the hedge, spitting leaves.
Max was already moving, fire leathers gleaming in the inferno’s light. “West wing’s gone. Focus on the main house.”
“People first,” Lambert said, finding his feet. “Someone needs to check for survivors.”
Max didn’t argue. His fingers were already moving, tracing the precise gestures that would bend fire to his will.
“Wylan, find water. Lots of it.”
Lambert ran for the entrance.
The heat hit him like a judgement. Smoke clawed at his throat, seared his eyes. He should stop. He should wait for the flames to die, find safer passage, come up with literally any plan that didn’t involve running headfirst into an inferno.
Lambert was not, at this moment, a sensible man.
I have been touched by divine fire. You are not but sparks.
He pushed deeper. The flames roared around him, hungry and theatrical, but they did not touch him. He held to his faith as a shield. He checked rooms, called out, found nothing. The household had fled or been taken. The fire had the building to itself, and was making the most of it.
The gates of Notre Reine. Dragon-wind and ash. Isabella beside him, eighteen and steady, her bow raised against the chaos.
“People first,” she’d said. “The city we can rebuild. Lives we can’t.”
And above them, Aeloria herself. The Dragon Queen perched upon the cathedral’s spire, wreathed in flame, golden scales catching Agony’s light. It was like staring into the sun. Lambert had felt no fear. He had been touched by divine fire long before this pretender arrived. He knew not to fear the sun.
He had walked through Aeloria’s fire at thirteen. He had stood at those gates and survived. This? Sparks and timber. A tantrum, not a dragon.
Lambert stopped running.
He planted his feet, raised his hands, and commanded.
“By Invictus,” he said, his voice cutting through the roar, “be still.”
The fire obeyed.
Not extinguished. Controlled. The flames bent away from him, retreating to the walls, the ceiling, anywhere that wasn’t the path he needed. The heat remained, oppressive and sullen, like a dog told to stay. Lambert walked through the burning corridor like a man strolling through an unpleasant afternoon.
Outside, he could hear Max. Sharp exhalations, the whoosh of flame being redirected, a muttered curse in Old Gallian.
The building groaned.
Oh.
Wood cracked. Stone shifted. Lambert’s control over the flames did not extend to the structural integrity of a mansion that had been burning for the better part of an hour. The grand staircase surrendered with a shuddering roar, and the world became dust and falling masonry.
He threw himself sideways. Rubble grazed his shoulder, his hip, his raised arms. When the collapse settled, he was on his knees in a pocket of debris, coughing, intact, trapped.
Through a gap in the shattered roof, he could see the sky. The belltower of the parish church, silhouetted against the smoke.
And falling from it, a figure.
Isabella.
His chest seized. She was plummeting, arms working, whip snapping out to catch a jutting stone. The arc changed, became a swing instead of a fall, but the trajectory was wrong. She was heading for the tower wall.
There was no time to think.
Lambert thrust his hands toward the gap, calling on the earth, his voice raw: “Hold her.”
The belltower answered. Vines erupted from ancient mortar, spreading across the wall in a wild green net. Roots clawed into stone. Leaves unfurled faster than nature ever intended.
Isabella hit the growth with a heavy thud. The vines cracked, strained, held. Her fall became a slide, controlled if graceless, until the tangle deposited her onto a lower rooftop.
Lambert sagged against the rubble. His breaths were coming in hard.
Outside, the sounds of chaos continued. Max’s voice, Wylan shouting something about water. His siblings were handling it.
Lambert started looking for a way out.
The d’Amboise courtyard was chaos. Servants with buckets, none of them doing any good. The west wing had been lost to the fire and the fire knew it, already licking toward the main house.
Wylan scanned the space. Cart wrecked against the hedge, elemental still pooled beneath it. Fountain in the centre of the courtyard, ornamental basin, cherub spitting a thin arc of water into a crisis that was well above its pay grade.
It would do.
“Max!” He was already running. “Keep it contained. I need thirty seconds.”
Max’s reply was lost in the roar of flame, but his arms were already sweeping in sharp brandishments that bent the fire away from the main structure. Buying time.
Wylan reached the fountain. His water elemental surged across the courtyard at his sign. It hit the basin and kept going, drawing the reservoir up and into itself, swelling from a puddle to a torrent. The cherub toppled. The basin cracked. Wylan didn’t care.
“Now,” he said, and signed throw.
The elemental reared back and hurled itself at the mansion.
Water met fire in a wall of steam. The impact shook windows three streets over. For a long moment, the world was nothing but hissing white, and then the clouds parted to reveal the d’Amboise estate: scorched, smoking, but no longer burning.
Max lowered his hands. His fire leathers were blackened in new places, his face slick with sweat. “That was excessive.”
“It worked.”
“I’m not complaining.”
Max was already scanning the wreckage. “Lambert went in through the main entrance. I’ll find him.”
“I saw Isabella on the rooftops earlier,” Wylan said. “I’ll check there.”
Max nodded once and was gone.
Wylan circled the estate, scanning rooflines. The parish church rose to the north, its belltower dark against the smoke.
A figure at the belltower’s edge. Broad and dark against the glow. Not fleeing. Not helping. Just standing there, looking down at the chaos like a man admiring his handiwork.
Wylan’s hand went to his belt. The brass casing was still in his pocket, phlogiston residue clinging to the metal. He looked at the belltower. The stonework was slick with condensation from the steam. Water. Phlogiston. His mind made the connection before he’d finished the thought.
That could work.
He couldn’t climb fast enough. Couldn’t get a clear line for anything precise. But he had a good arm, and chemistry didn’t care about distance.
He threw.
The casing arced through the smoke, spinning end over end. It shattered on the stone at the figure’s feet.
Wylan counted. One. Two.
The phlogiston met the water.
The reaction tore through the air. Superheated steam erupted upward, a violent geyser that swallowed the figure whole. Wylan heard the scrape of boots on wet stone. Saw arms wheeling against the glow.
The figure went over the edge.
Wylan was already running toward the tower when the fall stopped.
He skidded to a halt. Looked up.
Two new figures at the belltower’s edge. A halfling woman in clothes too bright for the occasion, one hand raised, fingers spread. And beside her, an orc in dark chainmail, arm extended toward the empty air below.
The falling man was gone. Just gone. No impact. No sound. Wylan knew illusion magic when he saw it, smooth and practised and the kind that took serious practice.
The orc’s hand clenched. A dark spiral opened at his side, the air bruising and folding in on itself. A chain snapped taut through the void, reeling something back. The portal closed with a crack that Wylan felt in his teeth.
The two figures looked down at him.
Wylan looked back.
They held his gaze for a long moment. The halfling’s expression was almost amused. Then they turned, unhurried, and vanished into the smoke.
Wylan stood there, breathing hard. His hands were shaking.
Okay. Strange man in black dealt with. Now where in the Realm is Isabella?
And there, sprawling across one face of the tower, a decidedly unnatural bloom of vines. Lambert’s work, or he’d eat his coat.
He climbed. Found Isabella on a lower rooftop, pulling herself free of the tangle.
“Lambert?” she asked, before Wylan could speak.
“Alive, we think. Max is looking for him in the wreck. I came to find you.”
She nodded, wincing as she tested her weight on her left ankle. “I need to show you something.”
She led him to the belltower, moving carefully on the bad ankle. From the top, he could see the estate below: the scorched husk of the west wing, the fountain reduced to rubble, servants picking through debris. Heat still shimmered off the wreckage.
Around him, the stone was scuffed and scarred. Someone had been busy up here.
As Isabella crouched to scan the floor, Wylan turned his head. A strange brass tube rested against the pillar, and beside it, a scattering of brown powder.
He dabbed it. Smelled it. Tasted it.
He regretted it.
“Ptah!”
Isabella drew her knife and assumed a defensive posture, twisted ankle or not. “What? Where?”
“Calm down, it’s not an attack. I just...” He spat again, grimacing. “Look here.”
He held up the brass tube. “Casing from an incendiary device. And this powder is phlogiston residue. Immolator tech, though crude.”
“They were trying to light up the place?”
“This is probably a firework. A signal, or a timer.” Wylan wiped his fingers on his coat. “I’d bet we’ll find accelerants around the foundations. If I wasn’t certain before, I am now. The fire was deliberate.”
“I think you’re right.” Isabella pointed at the floor. “Look. Multiple overlapping tracks. He wasn’t alone.”
Wylan frowned. “Who?”
“Ser Thornwood.”
“Who?”
“The Countess d’Aubigne’s bodyguard. He was at the dinner party. Big man. Built like a siege engine. Scars. Black leather.”
“Oh, the muscle.” Wylan looked back at the tracks. “So wait, d’Aubigne had a hand in this?”
“Can’t say for certain. But it seems likely.”
Wylan traced the overlapping prints. Multiple sets. Heavy boots. “So who were the others?”
“I think they’re dragon cultists.” Isabella’s gaze swept the belltower, the scorched estate below, the smoke still rising. “And I think they’re done hiding.”