Chapter 9: The East Wall

The knife came out of the pines in a flat silver arc.

Linnea threw herself sideways, and it buried itself in the ward stone where her head had been.

A man in a grey cloak dropped from the wall, broad and quick, with a second blade in his fist.

"Duchess!" Perpetua cried.

The old woman swung her ring of keys, and it cracked across the stranger's jaw.

He barely flinched.

He seized Linnea by the hair and dragged her back against the stone.

"The baron sends his greeting," he said in her ear.

His breath stank of onions.

The blade came up under her chin.

She did not think.

She reached back with her free hand, found the cut in the ward stone behind her, and slammed her palm into the gash.

The rune on her wrist blazed.

Cold exploded out of the stone, a white pulse of frost that crawled up the man's arm in a heartbeat.

He screamed and let go.

Ice sheathed his fingers to the elbow, and the knife shattered on the ground.

Linnea whirled and pressed both hands to the broken stone.

"Close," she whispered.

She drew the spiral with her fingertip, as Perpetua had taught her an hour before.

Silver light poured along the groove, knitted the cut shut and sealed it flat and smooth.

The ward stone hummed.

All along the wall, the other stones answered, and the air shivered.

The man stared at his frozen arm, and then at her.

"Witch," he breathed.

He turned to run and found the courtyard full of guards.

Aldric came through them at a dead run.

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