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A scream from deep within the city pierces the night, high and chilling. My men shift uneasily, and I grab the grappling hook from Avitas and march down the wall, far enough from the Karkauns that they won’t hear the hook land.
I cast it up, and when it takes, I’m moving up the wall, hand over hand, even as Harper hisses quiet protests beneath me.
Once at the top, I survey the two Karkauns. They are of medium height and build, like most of their people, with long, matted hair and skin as pale as mine. Their thick furs obscure both vision and sound, and before they notice me, I am upon them. The first manages a small yelp before I part hishead from his body. The second draws his weapon—just in time for me to take it and stab him in the throat.
I drag the bodies to the side of the wall, throw them over in case any other Karkauns come searching for them, and rappel back down.
“That,” says Harper, his jaw set, “was foolish.”
“That was necessary,” I said. “Are we nearly ready?”
G’rus gestures for everyone to take cover as he lights the fuse. Moments later, a deafening boom tears through the air. It is followed by another boom moments later, farther down the wall, and then two more. Decoy explosions. They are larger, and closer to the center of the city. By the time the Karkauns ensure there are no intruders at those spots, we’ll be long gone.
“Shrike?” a soft voice calls through the dust and rubble, and a figure emerges out of the darkness. She is lean, with dark skin and curly hair. Neera, the woman who helped Faris and me escape the Karkauns.
I reach her in three strides, and before she can draw a weapon, I have a knife to her throat.
“Loyal.” She speaks the code she was given without the slightest hesitation. “To the end.”
“Well met, Neera.” I clasp her hand, and her smile is a flash of hope in the darkness.
“Quickly, Shrike,” she says. “Before the Karkauns come.”
My men enter the city two by two. They drip with weaponry, and each carries a long, thin package weighing five stones. Twenty scims, light and strong. They are concealed, wrapped, and strapped tight against the backs of the men. Ten thousand scims for our people, everything we could scrounge up from Delphinium and the now-shuttered Kauf Prison. Everything we could manage to carry.
“Go!” I hiss to the men. “Faster!”
Musa finds me moments later. “The Karkauns are on the way,” he says. “We have a few minutes, if that. And Quin is stuck in the tunnels. One of my wights says the passages you used are collapsed.”
Those tunnels were fine only two weeks ago. And as Quin loves to say, only a jackass believes in coincidences.
“It was the Karkauns,” I say. “Tell Quin his sappers must clear a path. The Karkauns are trying to herd him. They want to ambush him aboveground, no doubt, and stop his men from getting into the city. If he doesn’t get through, he might as well turn back.”
Harper takes me aside, voice low so that the soldiers still passing through the door don’t hear us. “He should have been nearly through those tunnels by now. He won’t make it on time.”
“He’s Quin Veturius,” I say. “He’ll make it.”
“We need those men,” Harper says. “We cannot take the capital with five hundred men and untrained citizens, no matter how many there are. Not with tens of thousands of Karkauns quartered here. It would be impos—”
“Don’t say it.” I put my finger against his lips, and he falls silent. “We know better. Keris trained that word out of us. Impossible doesn’t exist. Not when the Empire is on the line.”
The rest of the soldiers are through the doorway. Harper and I are the last. “I will take this city, Harper,” I tell him. “With my bare hands, if I must. Come. I have an idea.”
XXXIII:Laia
I walk along a river of death, but I am not alone.
“I have missed you, my love.”
A shadow walks beside me. Pale hands pull down a hood, revealing fire-red hair and dark brown eyes that hid so much more than I ever imagined. Not my foe, but the first boy I ever loved.
“Keenan,” I whisper.
My skin burns, and I feel like I cannot breathe. For the blink of an eye, I see seething, muddy water roiling around me.
Then Keenan speaks, and the image fades.
“You’re in trouble, my love.” He brushes a calloused thumb against my chin, and there is no lie when he calls me his love. “You’re drowning.”
