It took an hour to race across the city. The panic from the fire drew people out into the streets. Church bells tolled, ringing out a warning. It was as crowded as the wedding and harder to see in the dark.

　　 Maertyn stopped to wait for Professor Lawson. The old man was spry for his age, but he was tired after two days of imprisonment. He would have left Professor Lawson behind, but Maertyn did not think he would be able to get into the palace and all the way to Anryn with the professor`s help.

　　Maertyn was tired from running. He was tired from ignoring the voices in his head for days without anything to drink them quiet. Some part of Maertyn would have liked to turn away and walk all the way back up the mountain, to pretend none of this had happened.

　　Yet he could not bring himself to let Anryn down again. Maertyn pushed past his exhaustion and uncomfortable sobriety, and kept moving. Determined to reach the prince and convince her to leave, before the mages came to take her. Maertyn would burn all the rest of Mahaut to the ground before he let them take her.

　　 At last, they made it to the palace. Columns of guards and servants poured out of the open gates, armed with poleaxes and buckets. They marched out into the city to fight the fire, and whatever else they found in the streets of Mahaut that night.

　　Professor Lawson led Maertyn inside. Shouts rang out down the halls. Maertyn looked around, his eyes straining. He did not see Anryn among the dozens of faces rushing past. He did not see any mages.

　　Maertyn followed Professor Lawson to a room with a giant gold tapestry on one wall, and many chairs all around. The King of Ammar was there with a map of the city before him. He barked orders to the men around him, and jabbed at it with his fingers. Maertyn looked around. He did not see Anryn in the room. He thought that Griff might be there, but he didn`t recognize any of the faces. They all looked grim, and afraid.

　　It stirred a memory in Maertyn, something that filled him with dread.

　　I should not be here, he thought.

　　"I don`t see the prince," Professor Lawson said as he reached the same conclusion. He was just turning to usher Maertyn back out of the room when the King`s eyes snapped up from the map to settle on them. His eyes were blue, like Anryn`s.

　　"Lawson! Who is that man with you?" the King called. Maertyn thought that he even sounded a little like Anryn. Demanding, shrill.

　　Professor Lawson bowed. He glanced sideways at Maertyn, and said, his voice scraping over the smoke in his throat, "This is& Maertyn Blackfire, Sire. The man sometimes called the Winze."

　　The King stared at them a moment. Then he said, in a very different voice, "Out, my lords& out! Close the door behind you."

　　Professor Lawson hesitated, unsure if he should go too. Maertyn looked at him, silently begging him to stay. The dread seemed to seep from the very air all around him. It stuck in his throat, making it hard for Maertyn to speak. Even the voices in his head were muffled by it.

　　The King came to stand before Maertyn. Stalked around him in a circle. Looked him up and down, his sharp eyes never wavering. Maertyn wondered whether he should bow. Anryn did not like her father very much. Maertyn thought that meant that he shouldn`t like the man, either. He stayed standing.

　　"So& is it true what they sing about? That you saved my son?" the King asked.

　　"Yes," Maertyn answered.

　　"How& lucky for Anryniel that you were there. That by some miracle you crossed paths." The King of Ammar looked at him like a hungry dog. He drew the sword he wore at his side. "Unlucky for you, though."

　　"Your Highness&?" Professor Lawson said.

　　The King lunged. Maertyn stumbled, caught off guard. The tip of the blade nicked his chest.

　　On instinct, Maertyn grabbed the sword. Dumb as the brigand Anryn maimed. The edge sliced into his palms.

　　Maertyn tried to rust the blade, Unweave the steel. The King moved too fast, wrenching the blade out of his hands. Maertyn cried out as the sword cut its way out of his grip. The King slashed again. Drove Maertyn back, and back. He moved so fast that Maertyn could not See, could not Weave. The secret of Ammar`s resistance to magic—keep moving, always moving. The Lightning King, they called him, and he moved like the legend he was.

　　There was nowhere to run. The King was between Maertyn and the door. Professor Lawson stood back horrified, covering his mouth with his hands in shock. No help at all. Maertyn called the black flames to his hands. He tried to reach past the blade to burn the King with it. With the sword between them, Maertyn could not get close enough to touch him.

　　Beneath Maertyn`s feet, the floor jolted. The rattling floorboards threw him off-balance and the King lunged. The tip of his sword caught Maertyn in the chest and slid right through to his back.

　　Maertyn screamed. Never since Nynomath had he felt pain like this. In all the years of drinking and not dying, he had not once impaled himself, even by accident. He fell onto the high backed chair behind him. The King heaved his body against the hilt of the sword, driving the blade deeper. It wedged into the wood behind Maertyn, pinning him to the chair.

　　Maertyn writhed on the blade that held him in place. He could not pull it out. His blood flowed down his belly, over his legs. It gushed from his hands still wrapped around the sword in his chest.

　　The King stood over him. Before Maertyn`s eyes, his face began to change. The color ran out of his cheeks. The white hair on his head and steel gray curls of his beard fell from his skin in clumps.

　　He was Unweaving, Maertyn realized.

　　"Maeve& Maeva!" the Lightning King shouted. Even his voice fell apart, cracking and wheezing as the strength ran out of him.

　　Somewhere behind the chair, a door opened. Maertyn heard soft footsteps rush into the room. The Queen of Ammar ran to her husband`s side, her blue veil fluttering. In a daze, Maertyn watched as the woman grabbed onto the King. She prised his fingers from the hilt of the sword. The Queen held the King as he sagged onto the ground by Maertyn`s feet. She knelt alongside him.

　　"I did it. I did it& I found him for you," the King wheezed. "You were right, you were right all along& The Winze was still here! Does that make you happy&?"

　　"How can I be happy? You`re leaving me!" The Queen`s veil shook, her whole body rocking beneath it. "I can`t& I can`t believe it. Oh, thank God, thank God you found him for me, my love& Everything, everything you ever promised me, all your vows fulfilled. Go. Find your brother&"

　　"The lamb," the King wheezed. He pressed his face to the ground, lying flat against it. Getting ready to die, the terms of his enchantment now fulfilled.

　　"Anryniel will be King after you," the Queen said. "You have a son, Anathas. Not even God could take that from you."

　　Only then did the Lightning King pass, the light leaving his eyes as quickly as his moniker moved across the sky. A single thunderclap marked his passing, so loud and so close that it shook the beams of the castle around them. The stained glass windows in the throne room shook, some of the panes cracking.

　　When the last echoes of the omen faded, the Queen of Ammar spoke. The words that slithered from her mouth were in the language of Nynomath. Her voice was high and delicate. It was a voice that Maertyn remembered.

　　"Lie down and be still."

　　Professor Lawson collapsed to the ground. His body went rigid with the spell, the powerful magic sweeping through him all at once. To Maertyn, it only felt like the faintest tickle, somewhere well outside the agony of the blade buried in his chest.

　　"Of course it doesn`t work on you," the Queen said in a much harsher voice.

　　She threw the hem of her veil back over her head. A tear-stained face like his own glared back at him. Her golden curls, her dark black eyes frozen in time at the same point as Maertyn, on the day she wrote the curse onto his back. The ninth mage ground her teeth the same way her daughter did.

　　"You are Anryn`s mother?" Maertyn asked.

　　She lashed out, slapping him across the face. "Don`t you ever say my baby`s name! Aberrant, miserable ditch-witch!"Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

　　The Queen fumbled at a pouch on her golden belt. She took from it a small, silver shard. A piece from a broken knife. She held it between a thumb and forefinger and dragged its edge along her palm.

　　In the same voice that she used to call down the stars, the Queen spoke to the blood cupped in her hand: "To me! Children of Ny—beloved of Mat! Where a daughter calls, her brethren will answer!"

　　For miles around, every witch and every mage heard the call. It was one of the Greater Curses. Sacred magic known only to the archmages. Witches, not knowing what it was, would scream in sudden terror. Maertyn knew that it even reached Anryn, somewhere far away, and she would have cried out.

　　The mages answered—nine of them. They came through every door that led to the room. One by one they entered, some dressed as lords or ladies, some dressed as servants. Some were stained with raindrops and ashes, having come from the chaos of the streets. Maertyn recognized the bald one that got away from him at Java, and the one he grappled with at the pyre. But his Sight was drawn to a third mage whose hands were stained with blood.

　　Anryn`s blood.

　　"What did you do?" Maertyn hissed. He surged against the blade, straining to free himself. Spots danced in front of Maertyn`s eyes.

　　The Queen saw the blood, too. He could hear the clicking of her teeth dragging against one another. After a moment, she burst out in her native tongue, "How dare you& All of you! Skulking around my prison. Meddling in my affairs. You disfigure my son with your crooked crescent. Do you mock me?"

　　The mages glanced at each other. One woman, dressed as a maid, spoke first. She curtseyed to the Queen. "Archmage& We thought you were dead. And the Winze along with you. Forgive us—we could not See you."

　　The Queen slapped the hilt of the sword embedded in Maertyn`s chest. He let out a strangled cry.

　　"Does he look dead to you, fool? Is this what they teach at the Dome, now, not to use your own eyes?" She spit out the words in a furious mix of her adopted and native tongue. "Witness and abide—this is the Winze. My torment and my shame. All yours, now! I remand him unto you. Take him and let the High Court do what they want with him. I served my term."

　　None of the mages moved to obey her. The Queen was not an archmage anymore, and no longer an arbiter of their laws. The only authority she could wield was as the Queen of Ammar, and she was only a woman whose husband had just died. She had no power in that room with which to command anyone.

　　When none of them moved, the Queen turned her rage on the mage stained with Anryn`s blood. "What is your name, pit-mage? By what right do you vandalize my life`s greatest work with your butcher`s hands?"

　　"Ciamon Kaltevuus," the man said. He drew himself up straight and addressed the Queen in her adoptive language: "Your child would have died if I did nothing, my lady. If not now, then in a few years when he kills himself because he can`t stop wondering what`s wrong with him."

　　"How dare you address me as lady?` Don`t you know who I am?" the Queen screamed back. "My name still lives even if I am an Apostate—Maeva Sininen, magistrate of the High Court. I wrote the names of the stars your grandmothers prayed on. You think I didn`t know you lurked in my halls? Tried to read my letters? You`re blind. No inch of this place escapes my notice. It is my palace and my prison. Mine that I built with my own hands!"

　　Maertyn looked up again. Now that he knew what to look for, he could See the scratches on the walls. Little words, little curses she`d written all over, even on the glass. They were in the whorls of wood on the floor—they glittered in the gold thread of the Queen`s veil draped down her back. Like him, the Queen of Ammar had tried to escape from the wreck of their lives, stuck somewhere between living and dead. Never able to let go of what she had been.

　　You should try drinking instead, Maertyn wanted to tell her.

　　"You do not judge me, pit-mage. You cannot understand what the Winze truly is," the Queen said to Ciamon. She reached her hand down and grabbed Maertyn by the hair. She fixed her black eyes on Ciamon Kaltevuus and spoke another Greater Curse aloud: "Death—there stands a heretic! Claim him!"

　　Maertyn felt the room move. The mage Queen pulled on the stars millions of miles away, opening a hole in the heavens large enough for a soul to slip through. That power slipped down through the sky and funneled through the Queen. A shadow of it passed through her, over the floor, the black stain flowing along the lines of the curses she wrote onto each individual panel of wood.

　　The shadow faded before it could reach Ciamon. Maertyn could still feel the pull of the stars overhead, but they were tethered to him. The shadow they cast could not reach Ciamon all the way across the room. If that hole beneath him opened up, they would come down, he thought. But Maertyn was in too much pain to do more than moan, wishing that she would let go of him. Then, that furious burn of starlight would fade from his Sight.

　　At last, the Queen abandoned the death curse and let go of Maertyn. Her hands trembled, feeling their true age in the wake of her failed spell. "You see what he does? His star is dark—it pulls the very light from all other stars around it, leaving only misery and woe in their wake. None of you can judge me. He already broke me. No spell I`ve worked since the day he crossed my path has ever gone right."

　　Not even Anryn? Maertyn wanted to ask, but he was too tired to speak.

　　Somehow, she must have heard his thoughts. The Queen wheeled around and slapped him again. She went on hitting him until Ciamon stepped forward and tried to get her attention.

　　"Archmage," said Ciamon. "What do you want us to do? I know you no longer wear the crescent, but a Child of Ny calls, and your brothers and sisters are here to answer. Just& tell us what you want us to do. Should we take Anryniel home&?"

　　"He is home. Anryniel of Ammar is bound for the Blood Throne, not the shrine at the Dome," the Queen said. She stood there, shaking with a rage she could not slake. Her immortal life damned her to feel that anger for an eternity.

　　"But, my lady, the Prince of Ammar is a witch," said one of the other mages. "Their name is in the Sight Pools—the Dome must have its due. The Lightning King robbed us for years&"

　　"My husband and I spent years burning witches, looking for him. He alone wouldn`t have burned on a pyre," the Queen spat. She pointed at Maertyn. "Take him instead. The Dome wants every witch in the world for themselves? Then they can claim this one as their own—him and all his sins. Go and the Devil take you."

　　None of them moved. No one wanted to approach the Winze, lest his eye fall on them. More real than the stick men covered in ash and glass, more deadly than the Lightning King who deprived them of their witches and plotted their doom. Any spell cast on Maertyn was destined to fail—or rebound on the one who cast it, as it had Maeva Sininen.

　　I thought that I killed them all, Maertyn thought.

　　He wished that he had—until he thought of Anryn. He pictured her kneeling over his Seeing mirror. Saw her again under the water in Java, while the air ran out of her lungs. He remembered his stomach dropped when he realized she would not come back up on her own. Would Anryn ever have gone under the water if he hadn`t ruined her peace?

　　His hate dissolved into shame.

　　Misery and woe. They were right about me. I am what they said I was, Maertyn thought.

　　He drew a ragged breath into his failing lungs. He thought of Anryn again, and what she would say when they told her that she was King. "You are worth saving, Maertyn Blackfire& As your King, I command you: save yourself."

　　"I will go with you," Maertyn heard himself say. His throat was dry. His hands were too weak even to move. "I will go& in the King`s place."

　　The Queen stopped shaking. She looked at him again, her face wet with tears. A sob tore itself loose from her throat and the fallen archmage covered her face with both her hands. Unable to look at him, her enemy, who offered himself up in place of her only child.

　　"Call: Will we take this man in place of Anryniel of Ammar?" said one of the mages. They looked from one to the other.

　　Slowly, six of them raised their hands in the air. "Done. Ny calls, Mat answers."

　　Now eight of the nine turned to look at Ciamon. He alone among them had stood up to the Queen. Now they looked to him to approach the Winze.

　　Ciamon sighed and walked toward the throne. When he brushed past the Queen, she seized his hand.

　　"You think the Dome will go easy on you because your clumsy blade is less sinful than mine?" she said, her voice heavy with the Sight. "Think again. I need not even curse you myself& You`ll dream of her every night, and despair."

　　At her hateful words, Ciamon went pale. Yet the hand he reached for the hilt of the sword stuck in Maertyn`s chest was steady. The mage wrenched the sword out of the throne. It tore from Maertyn`s chest like a cork popped from a bottle, and all of his muscles went slack, dragging him to the floor.

　　Maertyn lay beside the shriveled body of the King of Ammar. His mind started to darken, fading as his body went to work Weaving his wounds shut.

　　Before he lost time, Maertyn twisted his head to watch the Queen. She stalked over to Professor Lawson`s rigid form. She knelt by his side, her fingers moving as if she blessed him. The last thing Maertyn heard before the mages took him was the awful sound of her voice, speaking another spell while the heavens opened high overhead.

　　"No, no, no& Struggle too hard, and you might die, Doctor. Live instead, and do my bidding—and through me, you shall have your fondest wish. Go and tell my son that he is King."