Chapter 221: Burned Crown

If they were going to defend every route the Tithe was planning to burn, then the defense would have to start somewhere, and Eastgate decided to start at its inner gate, which now lay in ruins. Rinna stood by the public supply board with Kethra sitting beside her, hiding her tribute brand under a clean piece of cloth and keeping her eyes on the eastern ridge as though she expected it to move, while Tessa and Ceryn laid the Black Tithe map out on a crate near the water barrels and barricade materials.

Marcus and Elena relayed in from the Grand Meridian, and around them glowed more council lights from the various routes, with Seregate’s water council, Brinewatch’s port council, the Cindervale lock council, the Fenmarch ferry council, and other shelters that had no names on the older maps, all of them sitting as equals with no one above the others. It was only a mud clearing ringed with crates and lanterns, with injured defenders resting on their bedrolls and children running between them carrying water, but above it all the relay lights made the whole circle shine as if it were a constellation of every place that had decided to work together.

"It’s not a crown that a demon wears, it’s a war command," Kethra said. "The Tithe’s war lord speaks through it, and every tribute commander receives the orders as if they were coming from within themselves."

"How does it have that power?" Ceryn asked.

Kethra pointed to the black map. "The Cinder Host is a living demon fortress that travels like a mountain with a furnace in its heart. It gains power from every route it burns and every person it takes as tribute."

Austin Veyron looked at all the warnings across the freehold network and knew that part of him wanted to name a commander for the defense, put every route under his command, and have them ready to move at a moment’s notice.

Veyra knew exactly what he was thinking. "Name it."

"I want to lead the defense."

"What would that make you?"

"The warlord of everyone’s fear."

Sable’s crown shard lit up with a white pulse. "Then we make protocols instead."

Tessa started writing the defense protocol on a public sheet of paper for everyone to see.

All route counts stay visible.

No tribute will be listed.

No route will be shut off without public notice.

No one will claim a route as their own.

Every shelter decides on its own evacuation point.

Rinna read the list out loud, and the councils relaying in began adding to the protocol, with Seregate asking to put water first, Brinewatch wanting to work its flood gates in rotation, Cindervale wanting its locks kept at a certain heat, and Fenmarch wanting witnesses counted for every boat that went out to rescue.

Elena stayed on the relay for a little while after the others had finished, and when she spoke, it was only to him. "I know you wanted to do it again, but you didn’t," she said. "I’m proud of you." Austin Veyron didn’t know what to say to that, but it left him feeling warm inside long after her light dimmed.

A horn blew in the distance past the east ridge, and infiltrators from the Black Tithe appeared from the wagon lines of the refugees, having slipped through the breach in gray cloaks that burned away to reveal black armor and tribute hooks, the smell of scorched wool rolling across the clearing as refugees scrambled back from the flames.

WAR COMMAND BELONGS TO THE CROWN.

They were trying to reach the public defense board, and the first one swung at Rinna’s supply sheet until Tamsin blocked it and sent the hook flying into the mud, while Rin tore the tribute strip off the second and Veyra reached the third before he could burn the board down. They weren’t trying to take over the gate, because they were trying to destroy the protocol that was being made to defend the routes.

Austin Veyron saw the command on the hooks and understood that the Crown used command as a way to own people, because it wanted everyone to believe that only their war lord’s word mattered.

"Target," Austin Veyron said. "The war-command ownership claim. Not the defenders, the protocol, or the routes."

"Witnessed," Veyra replied.

"Witnessed," Sable replied.

Austin Veyron placed the white root chain on the hook still burning with tribute fire.

DEVOUR opened, and he tasted the command like an army marching because one voice had silenced all the others.

WAR COMMAND BELONGS TO THE CROWN.

He consumed belongs.

The hook went out, and the infiltrators stumbled as their tribute strips turned to ash, and when one of them tried to escape, Kethra blocked his path. "You know what the Host is going to do. Tell us."

The infiltrator smiled with blood dripping from his mouth. "The Cinder Host is on its way to West Rift, and it’ll get there before sunrise, and the Crown will break the routes that meet there and force the freeholds to pay."

Nyra held the heart shard up to him and knew that he was telling the truth about the Host.

Rin landed next to Austin Veyron and wiped her claws on her shirt, then nudged him with her elbow. "Three," she said, and he knew she was keeping track of how many times she had saved him.

A scout came out of the refugee lines and dropped his weapon, a demon man with small horns and a cloak from the Tithe. "My name is Orven. I was on the outer edge of the Cinder Host, and I left when they burned a route camp that still had people in it."

"Do you want to warn the network?" Rinna asked.

"Yes. The Host wants West Rift because all of the main routes meet there, and if it gets to West Rift, it can control every route that runs east to west and make the freeholds pay to cross."

Marcus put a marker on the relay map for West Rift, beyond the broken valley where all the routes met before heading on to the Grand Meridian and the coastline.

"If the Host can control that point on the map, then our warning boards won’t mean anything," Elena said. "It’ll control who’s able to reach whom."

Austin Veyron knew that he wanted to go after the Cinder Host, because it was a demon fortress with a furnace for a heart and DEVOUR could sense its power even from the map, and he wanted to hunt it down and devour it before it ever reached West Rift.

Veyra looked at him and asked what he wanted.

"The power of the Host."

"What would that make you?"

"The Burned Crown."

Sable turned the crown shard and pointed it at the West Rift marker. "Then we go there to stop the Host."

The councils started choosing how they would help with the defense of West Rift, with Eastgate holding and sending its wounded down the west road, Seregate sending water wagons and engineers to work the pumps, Brinewatch sending gate crews and metal from the river, Cindervale sending lock workers and heat maps, and Fenmarch sending scouts on their ferries through the southern marsh route.

Rinna added one more condition to the list, that no one should send fighters if their shelter couldn’t spare them, and that each council had to state what it was giving up in order to help with the defense.

The councils all agreed, and Marcus started building the West Rift board so they could all see it, listing how long the journey would take, how much water they had, which wagons could make the trip, and how many medics they could send, along with where the Tithe was located and blank rows for everything they didn’t know yet.

"We won’t pretend we know everything on the map," Elena said. "We’ll list what we don’t know, so it can’t hurt us."

Kethra looked at the black map and told them that the Host had an outer convoy of furnaces, and if it reached West Rift first, it would burn the walls of the pass and funnel the defenders into a single route instead of having to fight on all of them. Orven added that the fortress had living treads that could eat cinderstone, so broken roads wouldn’t slow it down.

Tessa added this information to the board, and Ceryn sent it to every council through the relay, watching each small light flicker in turn as the distant councils confirmed they had received it, so that while it was frightening information, it wasn’t locked away inside one defector’s mind anymore.

Before the councils broke up from the map crate, Veyra stood next to Austin Veyron and didn’t say anything for a long while. "You’ll try to go by yourself, won’t you?" she said finally. "Don’t. I’ll be upset if I have to follow you." She said it without any emotion in her voice, but her eyes told a different story.

They all knew they didn’t have a perfect plan, but they had numbers everyone could see, they knew which dangers were coming, and they wouldn’t allow any one person to own them all.

THE CINDER HOST: APPROACHING WEST RIFT IN SIX HOURS.

The relay lights dimmed one by one as the councils left to prepare, until only the lanterns and the low murmur of the wounded remained in the mud clearing, and the Host was on its way, while the route convergence would be their next battlefield.