The floor suddenly jolted to a halt, snapping Blackthorn's attention to his immediate surroundings. Only the seaward side of the tower was in danger of collapsing; the western side remained intact. Blackthorn grasped Dryden, who had begun to slide forward, by the neck of his robes, and tossed the judge onto the stable section of the floor where Saduj, somehow alive, had managed to crawl. Blackthorn was about to follow when he heard a desperate cry. The fingers of a gloved hand, blackened and burned, slipped steadily from an outcropping of stone. "Suturb!" Blackthorn cried, and leapt with all his strength. He landed upon his leather breastplate, slid forward, and grabbed his friend's wrist just before the Captain fell.

"My Lord!" Surturb cried with a strange mixture of terror and relief. Below him, the waves of the ocean swept upon the bluffs. It was not a long drop, but far enough. "Thou art alive! I thought that the dark mage—"

"He is an ally," said Blackthorn. "I am sorry that I did not tell thee, but I know how thou dost feel about mages." He tried to pull the captain up. He could not, not positioned like this. "Give me thine other hand," he said, then noticed that his friend's free arm hung limply at his side, blackened and caked with blood. Flain's magic had ensured that the captain would not be moving it any time soon.

The stones around the two friends cracked. Rubble fell past Suturb who peered at his leader, sadly, hopelessly. "Leave me, my Lord," he whispered. "Save thyself."

"No," Blackthorn said, and managed to struggle to his knees. "We have been friends far too long for it to end now." He grasped Suturb's wrist with his other hand. "Thou art coming with me."

"And why is that?"

Blackthorn, who had been about to pull Suturb to safety, stopped and looked behind him. There, in a section of the tower seemingly untouched by the explosion, was Whitelock, still sitting in his chair, alone. Dryden and Saduj had fled. "Why is it that thou dost wish to save this man?" he said.

"What?" Blackthorn asked incredulously, nearly letting go of Suturb, who stared at Blackthorn with astonishment and fear.

"'Twas not the dark mage he aimed for, Blackthorn, 'twas thee," Whitelock said. Ash, dust, and smoke curled around the scribe. "Thy life was the one he meant to take. The rest of the Black Company were to be spared, assuming they could survive the assault on the tower." He shifted something with his foot: An arm, jutting from a pile of rubble nearby. Blackthorn recognized Veribed's smoking gauntlet, fingers crushed around a smelted goblet. He could smell the burnt flesh from here.

His grasp on his friend slipped. "No, my Lord!" Suturb cried at Blackthorn. "'Tis not true!"

"Thou art a traitor, Captain Suturb," Whitelock shouted. "Thou dost claim to dislike and distrust magi, yet ironically, thou didst sell thy allegiance to one, ever since he promised thee a position in the Royal Guard should the Great Council be given power over them."

"Windemere," Blackthorn hissed, and his grip slipped again. Far off in the distance, the flag of the second ship took flame.