of a sandcastle in the rain. The foundations bulged. Walls sagged. The parapet collapsed.
I held on just long enough to give Charlton’s men a decent chance to flee. Then, with another burst of song, I turned the mortar to liquid. The entire gatehouse peeled away from the castle and rumbled down the hill, a roaring landslide of slick stones and mud. When it stopped, all you could smell was earth, and all you could hear was silence. And then, in the silence, moaning.
Was that Barrington? Or had my landslide taken some of Charlton’s men with it? My throat tightened, and the brief pleasure I’d found in the singing disappeared. Even after more than a year of this work, I found some of its consequences hard to handle.
They wanted to kill you, I reminded myself. And your men.
With the gatehouse fallen, the castle was wide open to the world. Moving closer to it, Knollys bellowed, “Surrender now, or the Chantress will sing again.”
Men appeared at the wide gap in the castle wall, hands over their heads. They watched me as rabbits watch a snake. After divesting them of any remaining weapons, my men tied them up.
“It’s treason to shoot at the King’s forces,” Knollys told them. “But if you cause no more trouble, and if you tell us where to find Lord Charlton, your lives may be spared.”
This was our usual policy—if we were overly harsh, it might provoke more rebellion—but most of our current captives were too petrified to speak. A few, however, were eager to take Knollys up on his bargain and told us where we might find Charlton. As the hunt began, my men moved into the castle, leaving only a handful of us outside, including the guard by Barrington. At my request, Knollys set some of Charlton’s men to checking for survivors in the landslide.
“I think you can take care of the rest of the wall now,” Knollys said to me as we both dismounted. “We’ve waited long enough for it to come down. I’ll go inside and take charge of the castle.”
I nodded offhandedly, not wanting to let on what a challenge the rest of the wall presented. But a challenge it most certainly was. As we’d seen for ourselves, Charlton’s enclosure went on for miles. It was by far the biggest wall I’d ever had to bring down.
At least there was no one shooting arrows now. I could take what time I needed. Listening to the world around me, I chose my songs carefully. First, a song to draw water up from the ground and into the wall, and then another to call a wind down from the chilly sky.
Wind was something I was still learning to work with. No matter how sweetly or imperiously I sang, it would not always do my bidding; sometimes it ignored me completely. But today my luck was in. If anything, the wind responded rather too strongly. I had to weave a tight net of song around it as I soaked the wall, then froze and melted it again and again. Only at the very end did I set the wind free. With a burst of explosive joy, it drove the stones and timbers apart, demolishing the wall all down the line.
A kindred spark of joy lit up in me. I’d done it. I’d taken the wall down.
“Chantress!” A call from my men.
As I turned, a wave of weariness hit me. Great magic was always draining. Yet if I’d learned anything as a Chantress, it was that I couldn’t afford to show any weakness. Certainly I’d have been a fool to betray any vulnerability now, when my men were dragging Charlton out to me, his velvet-clad arms tied behind his back. Above his cravat, his face was apoplectic, and he was cursing the men with every step.
“Save your breath, Charlton!” I called out. “You’re my prisoner now, and the King’s, and you’re bound for the Tower. And it will go better for you if you show some remorse.”
If there was any remorse in Charlton, he hid it well. As the men shoved him forward, he spat at my feet. “You hellhound!”
I blinked. Was he too furious to care what I might do to him? Or was he deliberately trying to goad me into doing something rash?
“She-devil!” From the crazed look of his eyes, it was fury alone that drove him. “The King will rue the day he allied himself with you. You suck men dry, you harpy! Even the