Chapter 21: SHE TRIES TO SHOUT

DIANA’S POV

The child stopped directly beneath the brazier.

Diana opened her mouth.

Her body remembered how to call a warning. Her lungs filled, her throat tightened around the shape of one, and air left her.

No sound followed.

The boy bent to pick up his wooden horse.

Diana recognized the toy before she placed the child. He was the boy from the guest corridor, the one whose mother had hurried him away after finding him in front of the Southern Grand Duchess.

He had looked back at Diana then.

He looked at her now.

She raised both hands.

MOVE.

The boy stared.

Diana signed again, sharper this time.

GET AWAY.

Nothing changed.

Alma had spent years learning the movements of Diana’s hands until they became a language between them. She knew the difference between wait, run, danger, and do not argue with me before Diana finished the motion.

This child had met Diana once.

Her hands meant nothing to him.

Diana pointed above his head.

His eyes followed her arm only as far as her face, as though the Grand Duchess behaving strangely was more interesting than whatever she wanted him to see.

The iron fitting shifted.

More pale dust slipped down the stone.

Diana opened her mouth again.

Her body still expected this attempt to be different because the need was different.

A child was standing beneath falling iron.

Surely that should have been enough.

Her throat gave her the same silence it had given her for years.

She shoved her chair back.

The child was three tables away.

Three tables had looked like nothing while people were eating.

Now every chair seemed to have acquired a person in the wrong place.

A servant carrying wine crossed between Diana and the child. Two guests rose because they had finally noticed something was wrong, blocking the narrow space between the tables instead of clearing it.

Diana moved left.

Someone moved left with her.

She tried the other side.

A chair scraped backward into her path.

Everyone was beginning to react.

None of them yet knew what they were reacting to.

She signed without thinking.

MOVE.

No one was looking at her hands.

The boy remained beneath the brazier.

Diana tried to push between the tables, but the nearest passage was crowded with chairs and people turning toward the music.

She could not reach him in time.

The anchor shifted again.

Diana struck the table with both hands.

A few nearby guests turned. The music continued.

At council, one tap of a brass seal weight had stopped twelve people.

Here, two hundred guests, musicians, servants, and scraping chairs swallowed the sound before it reached half the room.

Diana struck the table again.

More faces turned toward her.

Still not enough.

The child remained where he was.

Diana did not need everyone to understand.

She needed one person to look where she was pointing.

She grabbed the heavy metal wine pitcher beside the nearest place setting and hurled it onto the stone floor.

The pitcher struck the stone hard enough to cut through the music and conversation.

The Southern musicians stopped first.

Then conversation broke apart around them.

Faces turned toward Diana instead of the danger above them. Of course they did. She had made the noise.

Diana pointed toward the arch.

Once.

Again.

Captain Arven finally followed the line of her hand.

His expression changed.

"Move!"

The word did what Diana’s hands could not.

Guests nearest the child scattered. One woman dragged another backward by the sleeve. A chair overturned. The boy straightened at last, still holding the wooden horse.

Arven reached him first.

The anchor tore free.

Diana saw the iron brazier drop crookedly, one chain falling before the other.

Arven caught the child around the middle and threw his own weight sideways.

The brazier struck the edge of a table.

Hot coals burst across the stone.

Arven hit the floor with the boy beneath one arm while people stumbled away from the falling iron.

Diana could see only the overturned table between them.

Then the child moved.

Alive.

Diana’s knees nearly weakened with the relief.

There was no time for it.

A tablecloth caught fire. Then the lower edge of an old military banner ignited.

"Water!"

"Clear the east side!"

"Get the children out!"

Blackharrow guards were already moving.

Diana had seen panic spread through Valence halls over smaller things. A dropped ceremonial lamp had once produced six servants shouting six different instructions while nobles waited to discover who outranked whom.

Blackharrow did not wait.

The officer who had shouted for water was already dragging one table away from the fire. Two servants abandoned their trays and seized heavy cloth from the nearest service station. Another guard pushed guests back without stopping to ask which of them possessed titles.

No one looked toward Raigoro’s empty chair.

He was not there.

The people who were there acted anyway.

A soldier dragged the burning tablecloth away from the nearest guests. Servants overturned pitchers across scattered coals. Two officers pulled down the flaming edge of the banner before the fire could climb higher.

Diana thought they might contain it around the fallen brazier.

Then a coal rolled beneath the mourning display.

The cloth had been hung in long connected sections along the eastern wall. Flame climbed the first fold and reached the next before a guard could tear it down.

Smoke began gathering beneath the arch.

"Evacuate the hall!" an officer shouted.

People moved toward the main doors, and half the hall tried to leave through the same entrance that had admitted them. An older veteran was knocked sideways by the crowd. A child began crying. Someone shouted that the east-side public exit was blocked by smoke.

Alma caught Diana’s arm.

"We need to move."

The fire was spreading along the eastern wall faster than servants could strip the fabric down.

The main stairs beyond the great doors were broad enough for ordinary movement.

But they were not broad enough for panic.

Diana remembered the service corridor and the key with two square cuts. Her hand went to the smaller ring at her belt.

Mistress Hale had insisted she carry the daily household keys during the formal gathering.

Twelve keys had seemed excessive at breakfast.

Now Diana wanted every one of them.

Diana pointed toward the east service passage, and Alma followed.

Behind them, a burning section of fabric fell. Someone screamed. Smoke rolled lower across the hall.

The eastern service door waited beyond the crowd.

Locked.