High Commander Drakon halted fifty yards outside the glowing iron archway.
The soles of his black-iron boots sank an inch into the melting granite paving stones.
White-hot law-flames swirled around the tip of his twenty-foot meteoric bronze siege-lance. The heat was so intense that the surrounding brick walls began to blister and flake into red dust.
Drakon threw his head back and laughed, his deep voice rolling like grinding boulders.
“A caravan mercenary in dented steel,” Drakon sneered, eyeing Sera Thorne with heavy contempt. “The Vance brat hides in an iron kettle, sending his indentured guard girl to die for him.”
Sera did not reply.
She stood twenty paces outside the garden threshold, her boots planted firmly on the cobblestones. Storm-Pike rested across her forearms, its dark shaft reflecting the dancing flames.
Behind her, through the iron gate, the garden remained bathed in Mina’s sound-dampening snow-fog.
