“Don’t stay here alone,” Yven had told Medin. “Come be with me. You can stay with us. We’ll take care of you.”

Medin shook her head. “This is my home. I built this place with my boys.”

“Save your heart and your breath,” Yven said. “That’s where the love lives. Not in the buildings or the fields.”

Yven put Medin on the back of the old woman’s last mule and they put the farm behind them. At the bridge to the city, they waited, but the taskmaster who had stolen Yven’s sugar was missing. There were no guards on the bridge. So they just went on. Yven took the pink band from her arm and slid it onto Medin’s – the old woman protested, “You’ll need that!” but Yven countered that her taskmaster would recognize her, that it would be fine – and she put the enchanted scarf around Medin’s neck to protect her from the plagues.

As they crossed the bridge, Yven leading the mule by its harness, Yven watched the alder leaves blowing out over the water. They were like little suns, discs spinning end over end and then settling atop that, oh, so blue water where they shone such a perfect yellow. Medin sighed behind her, a whimper in her breath, so Yven sang:

All I know of alder groves is that they sing at night,

And all I see of the ocean breeze is the fog alight with light.

When the long day ends, the evening winds, smell so sweet of bloom and seed,

As the sunset’s fall and the nightbird’s call herald all the peace I’ll need.

With the Encyclia Isle behind them and the gate to the Marble City around, Yven heard an uproar in the square of three bridges. She felt a tension in the air that was very different from the typical fear of the plagues. The streets were empty; paupers huddled themselves into alleys and holes while workers watched from half-closed doors and windows. The golden guards had gone elsewhere. The guards on the parapets and in the towers all stared raptly toward the center of the square.

Yven glanced at Medin, saw the woman’s fearful gaze cast about, and so Yven avoided the square itself. She cut toward a sideroad she’d normally have avoided and she kept singing.

For the gentle purple lilium is a bird at quiet rest

And amaranths bloom together in a softly woven nest.

If the summer cedes or the seas recede we’ll still have encyclia,

And if you lose all else to fate’s soft bells, drink from cups of solandra.

They came out of the sideroad and the large thoroughfare that connected the square of three bridges to the gate toward the Amaranth Isle. Yven turned the mule directly away from the square, hurrying toward the gate and the bridge that would take her home, but she couldn’t help but glance toward the crowd. She saw the gathering, the soldiers, felt the silence radiating. She’d barely noticed the vermillion banners earlier, seeming to surround the soft blue-and-white banner of the Al’ain family. But now she saw, beneath that banner, a gold-gleaming seat and a red-haired woman in front of it. Was that the queen? Yven had never seen her. Why would she be in the square?

No. Yven didn’t want to know. Her place was on the Amaranth Isle, her safety there. She hurried on, trying to find the next words to her song. A verse with the names of the southern isles, she knew, but she couldn’t remember it. She forced herself to start over: “All I know of alder groves is-“

A shout went up from the soldiers on the parapet above her. Yven gasped, stopped, staggered back and looked up to see a dozen rifles. When they fired, she flinched and the mule bucked so hard she could barely keep hold. Yven twisted to look back at the square behind her.

*

The ragged man at the back of the crowd had born a great wound in his arm. A plagued, pathetic creature, he’d dragged his fishing knife through his own arm and thrown it at his Queen, maybe thinking he could share his plague with her. He’d barely had time to realize his failure – oh, he’d stained Aetha’s uniform and gotten his blood on her face, but she wiped it off with her sleeve and tossed his knife aside with disgust – before the golden guards on three parapets and two watchtowers fired their rifles at him. Almost a hundred iron rounds pierced him in a single moment, shredding his body into a mist of blood and a tangle of meat pierced by shattered bone.

At the shock of violence, the crowd scattered. “Now we’ve startled the hens,” Aetha muttered. She commanded her soldiers, “Release these people. Let them run for now. It’ll be more sport.”

The golden guards stepped away from the business owners, and they ran. Allid was slow, plagued, twitching to his knees. One of his neighbors tried to help him up, but he shouldered away, hissing, “Run, run you idiot!”

“Your queen has a proclamation!” Aetha drew her sword and held it out to one side. She didn’t call for a horn, didn’t take to a pedestal, didn’t call for silence. Her roar, like a sanguine lion’s, made itself heard above everything. “The banner of Al’ain protects you creatures from the wanton appetites of my sanguinates! Perhaps you have come to take it for granted, to feel safe beneath the gaze of your natural predators, to forget that you are here to be eaten. Therefore…”

*

“Oh, god,” Yven stumbled back as she watched the crowd fleeing, as she watched the queen draw her sword. The crowd ran in every direction, many of them coming right toward Yven and Medin. They trampled through the bloodied remains of the man who had been gunned down, and to Yven it was like watching the blood plagues flood toward her.

Medin grabbed at Yven’s shoulder, said, “Yven! Get away!”

And Yven spun, snapped, “I’ll catch up. Go!” She let go the mule, lifted a hoof and kicked it hard in the rump. The mule, already terrified, fled in a panic through the gate. As it bore Medin away, the old woman shouted for Yven, but Yven didn’t follow right away. She turned to look back behind her.

She watched Queen Aetha’al’ain, the woman who ruled the island, the distant power-over-all that Yven had never before seen. The queen turned and swung her sword through a stone pillar behind her, a flash of blue magic from her black blade cutting clean through ancient marble. The pillar had been preserved by divine magic cast eons ago, and it flared a brilliant yellow as it gave way, taking the blue banner of Al’ain down as it toppled. The queen turned a feral smile on the fleeing crowd.

Red hair gleaming in divine light, perfect white admiralty uniform stained with blood, magic flashing over her arms, Queen Aetha’al’ain glowed with a horrible beauty like nothing Yven had ever seen. There was a deep wickedness in her red eyes, an excitement, a monstrous bloodlust. Her chest swelled with breath as she lifted her arms to cry out, “For one hour, all protections are suspended throughout this district! Feast freely, my sanguinates! And you, lesser creatures, flee, hide, and feel the futility of what you are!”

Aetha had barely said this before the guards surrounding her lept at the crowd, eager and poised as though they’d been waiting for years for such a command. Maybe they had. The watchtowers emptied as guards rushed down. Those with the claws to do so simply jumped from the towers and hurried down the sides. At the sight of this, Yven looked up at the parapets above her, horrified to see golden guards casting their rifles aside and coming directly down at her.

Yven ran onto the bridge, hurrying for the far gate. She watched the Amaranth Isle’s taskmaster open the gate to let Medin through, closing it after the mule charged past him. He watched Yven running for him, looking behind her at the fleeing crowd, the fall of golden guards ready to feast. Yven didn’t want to see what was happening behind her. She could imagine it. She could hear the shouting, the screams of those caught, the hungry cheer of sanguinate soldiers falling upon them. She just hoped none were chasing her, grabbing at her ankles.