Page 127 of The Dragon and the Dove

Drawing a shuddering breath, Anouk pulled another boulder from the water.

Ransom returned to his shadows, sweat beading his brow as he conjured his dragon.

She whistled. ‘Where have you been hiding that?’

‘Saving it for a special occasion.’

As it perched behind them on the bridge, Ransom felt the stretch of his magic like a rubber band pulling taut.

Let it fly!

Let it kill!

The city will cower at your feet!

He ground his teeth, shoving the old voice down, down, down into the dark of his soul.

Not to be outdone, Anouk flexed her own magic. Along the riverbank, chunks of pale stone and mossy boulders stacked themselves into lumbering giants.

Another flare went up. Red. Andreas was almost upon them.

Paola’s storm clouds rose.

Anouk’s golems picked up their heads.

Ransom’s dragon spread its wings.

As the Silver-tongue’s army turned onto Merchant’s Way, a sea of Rose-bearers appeared in the distance.

Anouk grimaced. ‘Do you hear pipes?’

There was a strange trill in the air.

‘And fiddles,’ he said, frowning.

‘It’s … a folk song.’ Anouk climbed up the stone railings, squinting at the advancing soldiers. ‘Bastian, come and look.’

The urgency in her voice propelled him up the railings after her. He blinked, sure his eyes were betraying him. Andreas’s army wasn’t marching.

It was dancing.

The bridge began to tremble.

‘Breathe,’ he reminded her.

Anouk was starting to panic. She stiffened as the rest of Andreas’s army came into view. Behind the Rose-bearers were throngs of ordinary villagers. They laughed and danced and kicked up their heels, while children pranced between them, twirling colourful ribbons.

Ransom’s heart sank like a stone.

This wasn’t an attack.

It was a parade.

There were drummers and pipers and fiddlers, and bannermen with gleaming smiles and polished boots, waving the prince’s flag. That taunting image of a rose was now accompanied by a different motto:

Let peace dance in every corner of Valterre

Behind the bannermen, a troop of minstrels played the jauntiest damn jig Ransom had ever heard. It was like something from a dream. Or a nightmare, rendered in vivid colour.