The fall was short but damning. Remnants of air were crushed by the impact, flooding out of her in a stream of muted breath and wheezing. Agony tore through her ribs, her throbbing knees, her scalp.
Screams filled the theater, and through blurry eyes she saw the crowds dispersing and trampling one another, knocking over lanterns or braziers holding white coals. Dogwood soldiers sprinted down the pathways with ruji in hand, but none turned toward Anna.
Wincing, Anna forced herself to one knee and stared out at the chaos. Onstage was Jalwar’s body, the actors fleeing for the curtains, and the soglav, which now stalked timidly between the prop trees as the room overwhelmed its senses. Ahead was Shem, running with an awkward gait and eyes wide with panic. To her right was the booth, where something—no, somebody—drove a wedged blade through Josip’s cheek.
Bora.
Anna saw it in the sheen of her head, the elegant butchery of her stabbing and thrusting with the dagger. In a flash of wayward lamplight she recognized the cold stare, the tight incision of her lips, the effortless motion that buried the blade’s hilt in the man’s face and left his tongue lolling.
Darkened shapes moved along the opposite side of the theater, and Anna realized why the Dogwood paid her no mind: Dozens of incoming soldiers, their markings and armor decidedly Nahoran, had taken up cover behind the seats and booth rails. A woman with auburn hair called out orders in a flowing tongue, thrusting her finger in Anna’s general direction. Above their firing line, spindly legs raced over the walls and ceiling and rafters, dashing through the shadows and passing through candlelight along the curtains.
Tan scales of chitin and forged iron protected the azibahli flesh, and the creatures put all six of their limbs to use as they swept over the pillars and vaulted arches, burrowing back into darkness so rapidly that the Dogwood soldiers claimed their own cover and pointed their ruji helplessly at the ceiling.
“Anna!” Shem cried. He slid down at her side, patting at her arms as though curing her with touch alone. Youth bled through in his panic. “Anna, you are hurt?”
Just over Shem’s shoulder Anna spotted Konrad escorting the orza and her scribe away from the madness. He was holding Dalma close, as though preparing to yell a desperate order, when he plunged his blade into the woman’s neck. Before the orza could wrap her hands around the gushing wound, Konrad brushed past her and set upon another group of Dogwood men in cover.
The orza’s scribe gave a knowing nod to Konrad before fleeing.
“They killed him,” Anna mouthed. She couldn’t draw air into her lungs. Couldn’t care for the deaths she glimpsed across the theater. She met Shem’s eyes and thought only of the glistening punctures in Jalwar’s head, of Teodor’s laughter and the rattle of breaking bones. “They did it.”
Shem clutched Anna’s arms. “You need safety. We leave this place.”
Ruji broke the air with bitter hisses. Fabric tore apart and fluttered in the air; stonework sparked and disappeared into whirls of dust; flesh turned to pink mist and gristle. Fleeing patrons collapsed or vanished in mid-step, their dismembered lower halves illuminated by the spreading flames from toppled braziers and broken lamps. Plumes of smoke and grit erupted from the walls as the two lines exchanged fire, leaving dimples and pits and gouges across timber and stone alike. Azibahli wove through the storm of iron fragments and picked their way toward the Dogwood lines, unfazed.
“Anna?” Shem whispered.
Just before the first azibahli dropped, a Dogwood soldier produced a canister from his vest and spun toward Konrad. He lobbed the device and shrank behind cover. Within a second, the canister tumbled end over end, arcing toward Konrad’s face, glinting in the fire.
It exploded.
The air broke with a clap, and the world pulsed beneath Anna, and a black cloud shifted where Konrad once stood. Hearing trickled back to Anna through the ringing, but she heard only Shem’s voice, muffled and lost beneath water, and the dribbling of debris as it rained down around her.
Konrad surged out of the smog with half his face intact. Blood vessels and nerve clusters and muscle fibers wormed over his skull, repairing him in tandem with the remnants of his exposed chest and heart. Bits of his armor had been sheared away or pockmarked beyond repair. He stumbled midway through his run, but as he neared the cluster of Dogwood men, he increased his pace and drew a blade from the sheath on his lower back. Three ruji payloads to his chest and hands couldn’t halt him.
Another explosion ripped through the far side of the theater, where the doors had been torn from their hinges and failed to stem a tide of fresh troops. This time a crowd of patrons was framed in the flash.
Azibahli dove from the rafters and thrashed through the crowds, letting out hideous screeches as they impaled Dogwood troops with forelimbs and cast them aside. Growing flames were reflected across their chitin, in the beady clusters of their eyes.
“Shara,” a voice commanded.
Anna turned, dimly aware of the presence at her back.
Bora’s white cloak was speckled with blood. Her wrists and hands were slick, glimmering in the firelight. “With me, child.”
The booth section was still swarming with chaos. Dogwood soldiers raced down the aisles, barking wasted orders at one another as they tried to stir Nacek’s body, Josip’s slumping corpse, the—
The tracker was gone.
Teodor was gone.
Pushing through Shem’s grip, Anna forced herself to her feet and stared out at the swelling smoke and flames. The fire was a ragged field within the center of the theater, throwing wicked shapes upon the walls and burning white-hot in its core. It ascended the curtains and raced along timber balconies, throwing harsh light on the underside of the smog and billowing clouds above. Everything smelled of scorched metal and charred hair and superheated stone. She saw bodies toppling from the upper tiers, azibahli shearing the limbs from Dogwood men, squads of troops pouring in from every entrance.
Bora’s hand clamped onto the back of Anna’s neck.
Focus.
Anna locked eyes with Shem and extended her hand to the boy, who still knelt by her feet in a daze. Once his fingers meshed with hers, she wrenched him upright and moved away from the flames and the raining debris. With each pop and lightless explosion her hearing dampened once more, leaving her in stunned silence. Her lungs were heavy, pooling with acrid smoke and vapors of burnt flesh.
Bora moved ahead of them both, carving a path through the shadowed side aisle and kicking corpses aside.
Anna glanced back once, and out of the gathering smoke and licking flames and dying men she saw Konrad walking forth, his cuirass blackened and smoldering but still affixed. A skirt of mail hung down to his knees, its lower edge fraught with fused metal.
“He’s coming,” Anna said.
Bora was quick to spin on her heels and draw her blade, adopting a fighter’s stance with bent arms. She circled round Anna and Shem to form a barrier against Konrad, who was slowly picking his way over empty rows of seating and lit braziers.
Most unsettling was the youth that lingered in his face, in his eyes, in his haggard smile. He approached with his blade at his side and shoulders low, ignorant of the blaze and heat welling at his back.
Far behind him, the foreign troops had lost their momentum and now crouched among the rows, exchanging bouts of ruji fire with the Dogwood men between blasts. Most of the azibahli had been cut down or crippled, leaving them writhing as ghoulish, twitching silhouettes within the flames. Patrons continued to scream and shove and collapse under one another. Fire crept along vaulted ceilings and rained burning beams and banners over the crowd. Embers swirled down in fat, darkening motes, fireflies at dusk.
Bora glanced over her shoulder, mouthing her words with stark clarity: “Go, child.”
Anna lingered, ignoring the tug of Shem’s hand and the looming shadow of Konrad. Even as she
managed two steps down the aisle, she stared at Bora, wondering how long she could last in a fight against the captain. How long the mind and body could hold out against her ever-bright marks.
Cracking echoed through the theater like thunder. The crooked, glowing spine of a support beam plummeted through the darkness and crashed through the upper balconies, spraying plumes of cinder and ash into the air.
The flames blinded Anna, and as she raised her hand to her eyes and peered through slatted fingers, she saw Konrad close the distance with a running leap and crash into Bora.
They fell to the floor in a tangled mass, rolling and slashing wildly, short blades glinting and sweeping and sparking against stone.
Shem pulled for Anna’s attention, and although she followed him blindly, there was no hope of looking away from the struggle. “Shem,” Anna said, digging her heels into the floor.
The Huuri’s hands eased on hers. He circled to face her. “Come, come!”
Anna dragged him back toward the melee. Toward the flames that consumed her vision, the heat that pressed on her face and hands and threatened to bake her flesh into leather. She dashed up the aisle until she saw the shadows clashing.
Bora was kicking with her back driven into the floor, her blade knocked aside and shimmering. Konrad took blow after blow to his face and wrists, cumbersomely blocking her strikes and edging closer with blade in hand.
“Konrad!” Anna tried to scream, her voice cracking.
Konrad tore his attention from the combat and stared at her. His arms dropped low once again, and his eyes grew quiet and inviting and still, and his lips parted in a gentle gap that might’ve held soothing words.
Bora’s shin crashed into his temple, sent him sprawling to the floor. She threw herself down, rolled, grasped her blade in a tight tumble, shoved off her back leg, diving and thrusting, silent.
Konrad sat up, his head swaying in a concussed daze. But it was too late. Bora’s outstretched arm reached him within the space of a breath. She gripped the weapon with her knuckles skyward, the chipped point hammering down and through the graceful curve of Konrad’s forehead, a dull clap emanating as the hilt crushed into his skull and pinned him to the timber seating box.
And without words, without a spare glance, without remorse in her eyes, Bora stood and walked toward Anna. She didn’t glance at the myriad cuts and welts along her arms and chest, still raw and dribbling bright blood.
“Come, child,” Bora managed as she passed Anna. Her only indication of pain was that she fought to show none.
Anna felt for her necklace, tore the links open, and dropped the gemstone on the carpeting.
They descended into the darkness and the hidden egresses Bora seemed to know from prescience alone, but Anna couldn’t resist seeing the theater in its death throes. With one glimpse of the flames, she saw Konrad screaming, straining to free himself from the snare; she saw countless bodies smoldering and blackening among the embers; she saw dreams and purpose that was never meant to last.
Luxury and hope and victory, all flaking away.
Some sliver of the thinking mind had always known that it was impermanent. That eventually it would all fail, and she’d be left with nothing. That love and safety and joy would always be passing riders in the night.
But like Julek’s freckled face, hopeless dreams kept her alive when the world both despised her and craved her. They were necessary lies in a world of hard truths.
And so she followed Bora and Shem, thinking only of the curtains and stone corridors and partitioned stairwells she passed, begging her feeling mind to hold out for just one day longer. She would break and weep and surrender when the time was right.
But until then, she would survive.
Chapter 29
Eventually the bodies lining the corridors became more than lumps of mangled flesh and silk. Some were children with hands cradled inside oversized sleeves, their eyes glossy and pristine like an artisan’s marbles. Others were men with curly, playful hair, or women with hands too delicate to rest upon tiles. They left streaks of blood where they’d tried to crawl, often ending in broken, splotchy nests with interwoven fingers and small, fragile bodies embraced within larger ones. Ribbons and torn scarves and salt pouches formed trails down gilded staircases.
They weren’t all wicked. Anna stared at each body as she jogged past, biting hard into her lips to force away the newfound aches of bruises and battered bones.
But pain wasn’t enough to ignore perception, nor to fasten her attention on the white blur of Bora’s cloak and Shem’s frequent backward glances.
They’d been moving for ten minutes, fifteen, perhaps twenty. Time blurred together when the sifting sand rustles of the ruji and the subsonic clap of explosives became constant. Earlier, as they’d woven through passages that bisected the main corridors and pipe dens, Anna had been forced to shoulder her way through the crowds and link hands to avoid being caught in the press. But the crowd had gradually thinned and vanished between Bora’s shortcuts. The screeching and gurgled cries always seemed to be elsewhere, far enough to be invisible but near enough to make out final words and gushing liquid.
It crossed her mind that the unknown fighters may not have been Nahoran at all, and were simply a rival cartel; vengeance was a natural motive. But reality defied her hopes.
My consequence.
Ahead, Bora’s cloak fell still, remarkably bright in the dimness of the open-sky atrium. Shem stopped in turn.
Usually the rounded space was lit with the pale glow of Dogwood lanterns or shafts of sunlight descending through the open ceiling, but on that evening, clouded starlight guided Anna’s steps. Tiers of nerkoya dens, steam chambers, and sweet shops once made it more vibrant than the lower market. But that was in a different time. Now there were only shadows and rigid bodies upon tiles.
“Why are we stopping?” Anna asked.
The northerner tilted her head lower, bathing it in moonlight from the soaring gateway ahead. “No matter what you behold when we’re outside, child,” Bora said, her words resonating in the emptiness, “I expect you to keep moving.”
Anna strained to look beyond Bora, to glean some hint as to what awaited them. She saw only ripples of heat and palls of smoke, and beyond it, the menacing and uncertain peaks of Malijad. She heard, faintly, the hissing of ruji and the sobs of dying men, although the noises were so commonplace throughout the kales that they hardly alarmed her. “Bora, what’s outside?”
“Death,” Bora said. She moved forward, her cloak flowing over fragments of setstone and cooled droplets of iron shavings. “Your eyes may be hungry, but don’t indulge them. They often wish to gorge.”
Anna followed with reservation, taking hold of Shem’s wrist and dragging him along like a trinket.
“Anna,” Shem said quietly, far more collected than she’d anticipated, “I protect you.”
“I know,” Anna whispered.
“Through all,” he continued, glowing as the moonlight seeped into his skin and bloomed along thick bones. “I protect you through all. Through men with bad hearts like him.”
Men like him, Anna pondered. Men she’d trusted and even, in some way, had grown fond of. But such recollection was painful, prodding at the edges of a fresh incision.
They passed through a gateway large enough to accommodate wagons and hundreds of visitors, now so quiet that it reverberated with the thunder of glass shards cracking under Anna’s soles. She emerged onto the terrace devoid of flower-peddlers or children running with wind-swept ribbons, and below them, saw the massive sprawl of the courtyard without its giants and incoming merchants and craftsmen huddled within their shacks.
Then she saw fire.
Pools of dark, bubbling liquid covered the courtyard, their surfaces churning with low but bone-white flames. Most of the burning puddles were closer to Anna, gathered along the stretch of the courtyard
near the kales and the stairwells, but several of the tanning huts were doused in the substance and illuminated the field like wicker effigies.
Anna rushed to the crenellations lining the terrace’s wall. She blocked out the lower half of her vision with a flat hand, focusing on the void beyond the inferno. She saw Alakeph streaming in and out of the foundling hall with jars in hand, passing them to waiting brethren who were quick to hurl their payloads toward the kales in wild arcs. As the pots impacted and shattered, their contents ignited with a red-purple flash and splashed over packed earth. She saw not only the darting white robes, but the static bodies of fallen Alakeph littering the courtyard, some torn apart or burning within the fires. Many of the warriors crouched behind a wall of sandbags near the hall, their—
Not sandbags, Anna realized. Bodies.
Dozens of fallen Alakeph had been woven into the wall, their limp arms draped over crooked legs and white-clad torsos riddled with ruji pellets. Even in death, they offered flesh to the brethren who fought on behind them.
Bouts of river-tongue from below lured Anna’s attention. The crystalline grit of Dogwood armor flashed out of the shadows, and entire squads of the attackers pushed across the courtyard, edging back from fresh flames and creeping along the lanes of crafting huts. They were streaming from the market’s gates below, sprinting out into the blackness with ruji and blades and thrown explosives.
“Child,” Bora snapped. Her shadow edged to Anna’s periphery, and she hovered there, waiting. “If we linger, we will lose our breaths. Follow my heels.”
“Where are the foundlings?” Anna asked.
Bora turned and ran wordlessly along the terrace’s crenellations, her gaze fixed ahead and right, half-bathed in the light of flames. She stole a sharp right down onto the stairwell, disappearing into the masonry, and Anna followed.
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