The Providence of Fire

11

The Flea was waiting.

Even as Valyn rolled to his feet, shielding his head with one hand from the rubble still raining down from above, retrieving with the other the blade he had tossed away from himself while falling, even as he scanned the room for his Wing through the kicked-up haze of smoke and stone dust, even as he tried to slow the hammering in his chest, to see the scene clearly, to fucking think, he knew something was wrong.

It’s too bright, he realized, squinting about him, flexing his left elbow, which felt badly bruised but not broken. It’s lit.

The realization punched him in the gut. He had fallen from near total darkness into a chamber hung with lanterns. Even in the smoke, he could see Talal lurching to his feet across the room, see Laith pressing a hand against the side of his head. The flier’s twin blades lay on the ground just a pace away, but a pace, in a tight spot like this, might as well have been a mile. Gwenna had made the jump, too, and Annick, all according to plan, and yet, as Valyn’s eyes adjusted to the light, his stomach soured further. The light came from Kettral lanterns, tactical lanterns almost identical to his own, three spread around the perimeter of the room.

He squinted.

His Wing was not alone. There were other figures in Kettral black, figures Valyn recognized all too well from his long years on the Islands, men and women with blades out and bows drawn, arrows trained on his chest.

“Just stop, Valyn, before someone gets hurt.”

The Flea’s voice, again, although this time it was coming, not from above, but from one of the exterior windows. A moment later, the Wing leader stepped through, down into the room, nodding as he surveyed the rubble.

“Rigging the floor was smart,” he said. “Risky, but smart.”

“A man who takes no risk will rot,” the Aphorist observed.

The Flea’s demolitions master, a short, ugly man with a long, ugly beard and bright eyes, slouched against a doorway on the far side of the room, flatbow pointed at Gwenna. “Valyn was right to trust the girl. She knows her work.”

“Fuck off, Newt,” Gwenna snarled at him. She had sheathed her swords before blowing the floor, and crouched empty-handed, eyes fixed on the Aphorist. “I’ll bugger your ugly ass with a starshatter before this is over.”

A few paces away Sigrid sa’Karnya made a harsh rattling noise deep in her throat. Despite her pale skin, the Flea’s leach was the most beautiful soldier on the Islands, a stunning blond woman from the northern coast of Vash, but the priests of Meshkent had cut out her tongue years earlier, and aside from hand sign, the only language remaining to her was a set of guttural hacks and scrapings.

“My gorgeous friend here,” the Aphorist translated affably, “takes issue with your language.”

“Tell your gorgeous friend that I’ll go to work on her next,” Gwenna spat.

Sigrid didn’t respond. She just fixed the younger woman with those bright blue eyes and dragged the tip of her belt knife-the only weapon she had bothered to draw-along the inside of her own arm. A line of dark blood welled up behind the steel. She pointed the blade, still dripping, at Gwenna’s throat. Gwenna wasn’t afraid of much, but Valyn saw her swallow heavily. Back at the Eyrie, Sigrid’s reputation for beauty was matched only by the stories of her cruelty, and though the Flea had been a fair, if demanding trainer, the rumors surrounding his Wing were much darker.

“How did you know?” Valyn coughed. His head throbbed, and he could taste blood, hot and bitter on the back of his tongue. He felt the dark anger rising inside him, anger at Gwenna for blowing the floor before his order. Anger at himself for failing to outthink the Flea. Jaw clenched, he waited for the wave of fury to pass. No one was dead. That was the important part. Despite the explosion, despite all the drawn steel, no one was dead. There was still time to talk, to negotiate. It was still possible the Flea wasn’t trying to kill them at all, that they could work something out. Valyn just needed to keep the arrows from flying a little bit longer. “How’d you know we were going to blow the floor?”

The Flea shook his head. “We’ve been doing this a long time, Valyn.” He sounded weary rather than triumphant. “You did well, with the camp and the escape. Against a lot of other Wings, you’d be free now, and we’d be cursing as we dusted off our blacks.”

Valyn smiled bleakly. “But we’re not up against the other Wings.”

The Flea shrugged. “Like I said, we’ve been doing this a long time.” He gestured toward Annick. “Now tell your sniper to put down her bow. Then we can talk.”

Aside from Valyn’s own drawn blade, Annick was the only one who had managed to bring a weapon to bear: her string was drawn, the arrow’s point fixed on the Flea. If it bothered the other Wing’s commander to stand a finger’s twitch from death, he didn’t show it. His lined face didn’t show much of anything.

There were plenty of vets back on the Islands who looked like Kettral from their boots to their brains, all muscle and jaw. Not the Flea. Short and dark, middle-aged and pockmarked, with gray hair hazing his scalp, he’d always looked to Valyn more like a farmer stomping in after a long day in the fields than the most successful Wing commander in the history of the Eyrie.

“We shouldn’t disarm,” Annick said. “Not after last time.”

“I wasn’t there last time,” Blackfeather Finn interjected in his deep, urbane baritone, “but a precise observer would be obliged to note that you’re not exactly armed in this situation.” The Flea’s sniper sat reclining against the doorframe, flatbow cradled in the crook of his arm. He might have been the Flea’s opposite-tall, olive-skinned, clean somehow despite the rigors of the mission, and almost preposterously handsome. He smiled apologetically, teeth white in the lamplight. “Annick and Valyn are the only ones actually holding weapons-for which I commend them-and even Valyn is missing one of his blades.”

“Who else is here?” Valyn asked, ignoring the sniper, trying to see the whole picture, to formulate some kind of plan. “What other Wings?”

“There’s a few looking,” the Flea acknowledged, “but this is a big range of mountains. Guess we’re the only ones that found you.”

So it was five against five if it came to a fight. The sudden brightness of the lanterns dazzled, and Valyn squinted, trying to make sense of the room. No sign of Chi Hoai Mi, the Flea’s flier. So five on four, maybe, giving Valyn’s Wing the numbers, not that the numbers were worth a steaming pile of shit, not when you were pinned down and exposed. Not when you were fighting other Kettral.

Slow down, Valyn reminded himself. No one’s fighting yet.

The Flea sucked something out of his teeth and nodded toward Annick again. “So. About putting down that bow…”

“You understand,” Valyn said, studying the other Wing leader for any hint of his intentions, “that it’s a risk. You’ve got the drop on us as it is. If you’re lying…” He shook his head. “You’re asking me to take an awful chance. To put my Wing in danger.”

The Flea pursed his lips as though considering this. “Thing is,” he replied finally, “there are the chances you take because you want to, and those you take because you have to.”

The Aphorist nodded. “Seeing a door is not the same as unlocking it.”

“And please,” the Flea went on, “tell Talal not to do anything dumb. Usually, we’d knock out a leach right away, but I’ve left him conscious as a courtesy. A gesture of good faith. We all know what he’s capable of, and if he gets twitchy, someone’s going to have to shoot him.”

Talal met Valyn’s eyes. Sweat glistened on his bare scalp. Though the night was cool, Valyn’s own blacks were likewise drenched, and his heart battered at his ribs. Kettral lore was filled with stories of Wing commanders in similar situations-outmaneuvered, overmatched, caught wrong-footed-who somehow managed to string together a series of desperate gambits to save their Wing. Only, Valyn was all out of gambits.

Any action, any attack, could only end in defeat and death. Even Annick’s arrow, so carefully trained on the Flea, would probably be swatted down by Sigrid’s strange powers before it left the bow. Valyn hated disarming, but, as the Flea said, you took some chances because you had no other choice. His elbow throbbed and his head ached. His throat felt too dry to speak, but the words came out clearly enough.

“Stand down. Talal, Annick, everyone just stand down.”

Annick hesitated a moment, then lowered her bow. Talal looked relieved.

“Sometimes,” Newt said, nodding in approval, “it is the fool who fights, and the fighter who folds.”

The Flea ignored him.

“Where’s the other one?” the Wing leader asked, “the woman with the knives?”

Valyn shook his head. “I’m not sure.” He hadn’t seen the Skullsworn since her boots had sent Triste running panicked through the gate and caused Gwenna to blow the floor. She should have fallen, just the same as everyone else, but Valyn could see no sign of her.

“‘Not sure’ makes me nervous,” the Flea said, flicking a sign toward Blackfeather Finn.

“She makes me nervous, too,” Valyn replied. “She’s not with us.”

“Sure looks like she’s with you. Don’t lie to me, Valyn. We’ve been watching. We know about the monks, about the girl. Where are they, all of them?”

Valyn hesitated, unsure how much to reveal. According to Tan, no one else could pass through the gate. Kaden was free. Safe. At least, that was the theory. Valyn couldn’t see any reason to put it to the test before he had to.

“I’m not sure where they are,” he said again.

The Flea’s lips tightened. His fingers darted through another two or three signs. Valyn didn’t recognize them.

“You’re playing games, Valyn,” the Flea said, “and there’s too much steel out for games.”

Sigrid and the Aphorist shifted to cover Finn’s position as the sniper rose to his feet. Flatbow leveled, he stepped into the dark hallway beyond the doorframe, paused, then groaned.

“What?” the Flea asked.

Finn turned back, his mouth open, gestured with one hand-a graceful, florid little motion, as though he were getting ready to take a bow-to the hilt of a knife plunged in his chest. He stood there a moment, blood flecking his lips, then fell. The Flea was shouting orders before the body hit the floor.

“Burn it, Sig. Newt-get hunting!”

For half a heartbeat Valyn just stared at the body. Two things were clear: Pyrre had killed Finn, and no one had killed Valyn himself. Before he could think it through further, a series of detonations rocked the hallway. The empty doorframe, murky black a moment earlier, erupted in a fog of blue flame. Sigrid’s work, Valyn realized, a leach’s kenning rather than munitions. If Pyrre was out there, she was dead now, but Newt darted through the fire anyway, blades drawn, while Sigrid flicked a dismissive hand at Annick and Talal. They reeled as though struck, the sniper’s arrow careening off through an open window as she struggled to keep hold of her bow.

The Flea’s Wing was fully in motion, and Valyn hadn’t moved. None of his Wing had. He shifted his weight, stepping backward to create space just as the Flea attacked. Valyn knocked aside the first blow, parried the second, slid under the third, the man’s double blades raining down in a series of forms too fast for Valyn’s mind to follow. He abandoned thought, letting his body do the work it had been trained for, that the Flea had trained him for, parrying and slicing, stabbing and riposting, lunging and countering … and then it was over, fast as it had begun, his own sword forced wide by one of the Flea’s blades, the soldier’s other steel pressed against his neck.

“I didn’t know…” Valyn said.

The Flea shook his head, eyes hard. “You killed Finn.”

Valyn glanced over his shoulder toward the sniper’s crumpled form. “Pyrre-” he began.

“Save it,” the Flea cut in. “We’re done talking.”

Valyn stared. It was a hopeless position. Beyond hopeless. The Flea could slice his throat with the barest twitch of his wrist. The fight was over; it had been over from the beginning, really. Only … Valyn’s mind scrambled for purchase on the situation. The Flea hadn’t killed him. No one had killed him. Despite the madness unfolding all around, his entire Wing was still shouting, fighting. Which meant the Flea wanted to take them alive. It was a slender thread to hang his own life from, but Valyn had nothing else. He took a deep breath, raised his hands as though in surrender, then, with a roar, half fear, half fury, he lunged forward, directly into the sword’s bright point, tipping his head back to bare his neck more fully.

For half a blink he thought he’d fucked up and badly, killed himself on the other man’s blade, but the Flea was as fast as Valyn had hoped. The Wing leader cursed, yanking his weapon awkwardly aside, and Valyn seized the advantage, bulling directly ahead, knocking the man hard into the wall, gaining just enough space to pull free and bring his own weapon to bear once more.

“That was stupid,” the Flea said, shaking his head.

“Look-” Valyn said, raising a hand.

Before he could finish the sentence, something whistled past his ear, a soft, almost timid flutter, and the Flea jerked back. One of Pyrre’s knives sprouted from his shoulder. Not a bad wound, but had the man not moved it would have taken him straight through the neck. Without pausing, the Flea shifted stance, putting his good arm forward, letting the hurt one drop into a low guard. If the pain bothered him, he didn’t show it, but the distraction had put a space between them, and Valyn used it to glance over his shoulder.

The Lord of all Chaos had unleashed his full fury upon the room.

The advantage, so skewed toward the Flea at the start, had changed dramatically with Pyrre’s appearance and the death of Blackfeather Finn. There was still no sign of Chi Hoai, which meant that Valyn had the numbers, six to three, and Newt had gone after the Skullsworn, ineffectually, it seemed, which made five to two inside the room itself.

Unfortunately, the advantage didn’t seem to be doing them much good. Sigrid’s attack had snapped Annick’s bowstring, and Gwenna’s demolitions would be suicidal in the tiny space. That left the four members of Valyn’s Wing facing Sigrid. It should have been good odds, but the blond leach had managed to hold her ground, twin blades naked, one of the two dripping blood. As Valyn watched, Gwenna went down cursing, clutching at her knee, and Laith reeled backward, battered by another invisible attack.

Valyn turned back to the Flea barely in time to knock aside the flat of the other man’s blade. The flat. Valyn stared. Even now, even bleeding from the shoulder, the Flea wasn’t trying to kill him. That the two Wings were fighting at all looked more and more like a horrible mistake.

Valyn parried two more attacks, stepping back to buy space, time. If he and the Flea were alone in a room, they could talk things out, but they were not alone. Behind Valyn, steel rang viciously against steel, Laith and Gwenna were cursing, and Sigrid’s unnatural fire continued to rake the chamber. The Flea might be pulling his punches, but the rest of his Wing was not, not anymore. Valyn couldn’t blame them. Somewhere back there crumpled on the crumbling stone floor lay Blackfeather Finn, the man who had taught them all to shoot. He was fucking dead.

Valyn stared at the Flea, trying to think of something to say, some way to stop the madness. There were no words. Some things you just couldn’t take back. The only goal now was to get clear, get free, before more people started dying.

He beat away the Flea’s weapons with a vicious fury of blows, then spun. “The doorway,” he bellowed to his Wing, slashing a sword behind him to cover his retreat. “Get the doorway.”

As though summoned by the words, Newt crashed back into the room, reeling unsteadily, blood sheeting down his face from a vicious gash across his scalp. Valyn smashed him out of the way with the flats of his blades. The Flea was closing again, and from across the room, Laith was shouting and waving. He’d taken the doorway, he and Talal. Valyn lunged toward it, but halfway there a sharp, hot punch in the back of the shoulder slammed him forward into the floor. A flatbow bolt, he realized, as the pain erupted through his back, straight through the muscle, and lodged against the bone. He tried to push himself up, but his wounded shoulder buckled beneath his weight, and his chin smashed against the floor. Were they trying to kill him finally, or just slow him? There was no way to be sure.

Pain and confusion clamped a dark hand over his eyes, and Valyn fought against the beckoning oblivion. The bolt hadn’t killed him, but the sharp head ground against the bone every time he moved, each hot swell of agony threatening to drown him.

“Get up, you bastard!” Someone was shouting in his ear, hauling him forward by the armpits. Gwenna, he realized. “Get up!”

Valyn bit into the side of his cheek hard enough to draw blood, the bright new pain somehow balancing the old, holding it at bay. His arm should have been useless below the shoulder, but he could feel a knotted strength even in the mangled tissue, some sort of animal endurance. You can move, he growled to himself, or you can die.

He moved.

Annick and Talal were in the doorway, the leach grimacing with concentration. Both were bleeding from half a dozen minor wounds, but Valyn himself seemed to have the worst of it, and even with one arm, he could still fight. Annick had managed to get her shortbow restrung in the madness-he had no idea how-and she was laying down covering fire, hands moving so fast Valyn couldn’t track the motion. He shoved Gwenna through the doorway in front of him, then followed, crashing to the floor as another arrow whispered overhead.

“How the fuck did they get in?” Laith demanded, panting hard.

“I would be tempted to place more emphasis,” Pyrre said, stepping from the shadows, “on how we are going to get out.” The assassin held a slender knife loosely in each hand. A constellation of fresh blood-evidently not her own-flecked her face, but other than that she looked calm, relaxed, as though she’d just come from chopping carrots for the evening meal. With the back of her hand, she brushed a few stray strands of hair from her forehead.

“We’re not going anywhere,” Gwenna snapped. She was hunched over, fingers busy with some munitions Valyn couldn’t make out. “We’re fucking winning.”

“I do like winning,” Pyrre mused. Then her arm flicked out, one of the two knives streaking end over end through the doorway. “But your old friends are quite good, and I think it might prove a disappointment were we not to continue winning.”

Valyn rounded on her, rage taking him by the throat, blotting out everything but the assassin’s face. He brought his sword level with her neck in a single smooth motion, and despite the new blades in her hands, blades that she seemed to keep drawing from some inexhaustible supply, she made no move to resist. If anything, she looked amused by his sudden fury.

“Are you planning to kill me?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “Before you do, I’d like to observe, in my defense, that I seem to be the only one here capable of actually beating your talented colleagues.”

Something coiled and furious, some beast buried deep in Valyn’s brain, was snarling at him to kill her, kill her, kill her. It would be simple enough, a single gesture and it would be done. With an effort, he held the sword steady, forced down the voice, dragged a few jagged words from the depths of his chest.

“Killing them is what started all this.…”

Pyrre waved a knife dismissively. “They started it,” she said, “when they crept up on us in the night with weapons drawn.”

“I could have talked them down,” Valyn spat.

“Really?” she asked. An arrow whistled past Valyn’s head, then another as he threw himself against the wall. “They don’t seem like the conversational type,” Pyrre continued.

Two more arrows. They were shooting blind with all the smoke. Evidently, the Flea had given up on taking people alive.

“What’s the play?” Laith called. He’d taken up point a dozen paces away at the head of the stairs while Annick and Talal continued to hold the door.

“Kill her or don’t kill her,” Gwenna said, her fingers a blur as she rigged the charges, “but quit fucking talking.”

“Don’t kill her,” Annick said. “We need her.”

“Valyn,” Talal groaned. “Please hurry.”

Valyn locked eyes with the Skullsworn, his blade hovering at her throat. “No more deaths,” he ground out.

Pyrre pointed down the hallway with a knife. “Why don’t you tell that to them?”

“No more killing,” he said again.

“I like you, Valyn,” Pyrre said. “You’re a nice young man with a strong sense of civic virtue. But I don’t work for you.”

Valyn took a breath, pressed his blade against her throat until it just drew blood. The assassin didn’t pull back. She didn’t even flinch.

“Are you willing to die for this?” he demanded.

She smiled. “I don’t think you understand. Skullsworn are always willing to die. It’s what makes us different, you and me. It’s what makes me better.”

“Valyn!” Laith snapped.

One more heartbeat, then Valyn let the blade drop. He hated the woman, hated her for what she was, for the fight she’d so casually caused, but now the fight was on, and Annick was right, they needed her. The exchange had taken only a few moments, but moments were everything when the arrows were flying.

“Stay close,” he told the assassin. “If you fall behind, I’ll leave you for the Flea.”

He didn’t wait for her to reply, turning instead to the open doorway, running the options. The Flea was bottled in the room, but he wouldn’t stay bottled for long. Chi Hoai was still out there somewhere, but that was just tough shit; there was no time to go inching down the hallway looking in every room.

“They’re regrouping,” Annick called, ducking back behind the doorframe as a flatbow bolt skittered off the stone where her head had been.

There would be no more chances, that much was clear. Not with Blackfeather Finn’s blood smeared all over the floor. There were only three possibilities now: they could run, they could kill, or they could die.

“Gwenna,” he said, grabbing the woman by the front of her blacks. “Two starshatters in the doorway.”

She shook her head. “They’ll bring down the whole ’Kent-kissing place.”

“Do it!” he bellowed, digging in his belt pouch for the Kettral whistles. There was no way to know if the birds were still circling, if they were still alive, even, but sometimes you had to roll the dice. If they could win free of the building, if they could get out on the ledge, they’d have a chance. Blind grabs were risky; a bird without a flier was less precise, less predictable. A blind grab from a cliff ledge in the darkness was near madness, but even madness seemed preferable to going toe-to-toe with the Flea’s Wing now that they’d had a chance to regroup.

“Talal,” he said, glancing over, “can you screen the door?”

The leach was panting, and sweat poured off his forehead. For a moment Valyn thought he hadn’t heard the question; then he nodded.

“All right,” Valyn said. “Gwenna-smokers in the room. Talal, throw the shield. Gwenna, starshatters here. Then we go. I’m going to bring the bird in hard. It’s gonna be a goat fuck, but we’re getting out of here.”

He took a ragged breath. The flatbow bolt tore at his shoulder with each movement, a bright bar of pain through his flesh, but it was only two levels down to the ledge. He’d lived through Hull’s Trial; he could make it down a couple flights of stairs.

“Bringing the bird in hard sounds very exciting,” Pyrre said, “but I worry it might pose problems for those of us who are … less experienced.”

Valyn cursed. The maneuver was going to be difficult enough for his own Wing, and they had thousands of hours of training. There was nothing to be done for it now, though. If they waited for ’Ra to settle, they were all dead.

“Just stay by me,” he said, “and you’ll be fine.”

Pyrre raised an eyebrow, ran a finger along the tiny slice Valyn left on her neck. “How reassuring.”

Valyn started to say something more, something about cueing in early on the trace strap and the importance of flexing with the takeoff, but an explosion ripped the words away, seemed to tear the very air itself in half, knocking the wind from his lungs and leaving him breathless. A moment later Gwenna staggered from the smoke, head gushing blood, one arm clutched at her side. Valyn seized her with his good arm, and a moment later Talal appeared on her other side.

“I’m fine,” she screamed, but he could feel her sagging against his grip.

“Let’s go,” he shouted, hauling on Gwenna, bulling his way down the hall. “Go!”

Pyrre glanced back toward the explosion, threw another knife, although Valyn couldn’t see that there was anyone to throw at, slipped two more from somewhere in her coat, and followed.

They burst from the building onto the broad ledge. After the dimness and smoke inside the orphanage, the pale rock seemed to positively glow in the moonlight, and Valyn sucked in the fresh air, feeling, for the first time, that they might just survive. He put the silver whistle to his lips, then blew a few short bursts, hoping to Hull he was thinking clearly through the chaos and the pain. His plan, which had seemed so sound before the Flea attacked, now looked like the most ludicrous fantasy. Not that there was any time to change it.

He looked up, scanning the windows above. Smoke poured out of them in great, gray billows. That, at least, would give them a little cover as they fled across the ledge. It was impossible to say just where the Flea’s Wing was, whether or not Gwenna’s starshatters had killed anyone, but once Valyn’s Wing ventured farther out onto that ledge they would be ducks for anyone with a bow and a clear shot.

“Where’s ’Ra?” Laith hissed at Valyn.

“It’s a whistle, not a ’Kent-kissing leash,” Valyn snapped, scanning the darkness for some sign of the bird. “And I’m not calling ’Ra.”

The flier stared. “Are you insane? How do you expect to get out of here?”

Valyn ignored the question.

“There,” he said after a moment. The bird was little more than a silent smudge on the darkness. She was coming in at a low angle-standard blind-grab posture-that would put her right over the center of the ledge.

“I’m waiting for the next instruction,” Pyrre said.

Talal stared at her, evidently realizing the problem for the first time.

“Tell me it’s just like mounting a horse,” the assassin went on, then frowned, “although I was never much good with horses.”

“There’ll be two straps,” Valyn said, heart hammering as the bird approached. “Get a hold of the lower of the two.” He turned to the group. “We’re all underneath, which means three to a talon. Talal and Laith, you’re with Gwenna.…”

“I can make the grab myself,” she growled, but her face was as pale as the stone, and it looked as though simply standing was an effort.

“Just make sure she gets on the bird. Annick and Pyrre with me on the far talon. Remember we’re on the edge of a fucking cliff, so blowing the grab’s not an option, dropping is not an option. Get on and stay on, I don’t care if your shoulder rips out of the socket. You fall”-he waved a hand toward the darkness-“you’re gone.”

“It’s all well and good to talk about it,” Laith said, gesturing furiously, “but we’ve got to move if we’re going to make it.”

Valyn laid a hand on his flier’s arm. “Not yet.”

“What in Hull’s name are you waiting for?”

Valyn stared at the bird until his eyes hurt. Had he misgauged the situation? There were so many variables, so many things that could go wrong. If he’d made the wrong assumption about one of them, then the rest …

Then the second bird appeared, above and behind the first.

“Oh,” Laith said, staring.

“Tell me it’s Chi Hoai,” Valyn said, voice tight. The flier could recognize the various kettral far better than Valyn ever would. “Tell me that second one is the Flea’s bird.”

“It is.” Laith sucked a worried breath between his teeth. “She’s going to tear Yurl’s bird out of the air.”

Valyn blew the second whistle just as Chi Hoai struck. She had the height and the angle both, and her own kettral seized Yurl’s by the back of the neck. The lower bird shrieked as claws sank into her neck and shoulders, as the hooked beak plunged again and again, savaging her eyes. A kettral could slice through a horse with those talons. Valyn had watched them hunt back on the Islands, watched them snap the heads off of sheep and carry off whole cows in their claws. Yurl’s bird twisted in midair, screaming as she tried to fight, but the fight was over, or as good as. Chi Hoai was already pulling her own mount back.

Then Suant’ra hit.

She smashed down from above like a ton of falling rock, silhouette blocking the stars, stabbing at the other kettral with her beak, raking the wings with her talons. Chi Hoai’s bird shrieked, her own prey forgotten, and rolled in the air, trying to come to grips with her assailant. The two tumbled from view, tearing furiously at each other. For a moment Valyn could only stare. The whole thing had worked as he’d planned-the bait, the attack, the counter-until ’Ra disappeared. If all the birds were gone, they were stranded. The Flea’s kettral might be dead, but the Flea himself was very much alive.

“Into the tunnels,” Valyn shouted, pointing with his blade. It wasn’t what he’d hoped, but hoping too hard was a good way to get dead. Once inside the actual cliff, they could disappear. They could figure out later how in ’Shael’s sweet name they were going to get out of the mountains without ’Ra. If they lived that long.

Laith, however, was shaking his head. “No!” he shouted. “We have to wait for the grab!”

“’Ra’s gone!” Valyn said, taking him by the blacks and shoving him toward the cliff.

The flier shoved back. “She’s not gone. She had the speed and the elevation. She’s just tangled up! We have to wait for the extract!”

A flatbow bolt struck just at Valyn’s feet, raising a line of sparks as it skittered away across the ledge.

“They have the range,” Pyrre observed, shifting to put Valyn between herself and the orphanage.

“I know my bird, Val,” Laith said, lips drawn back in a snarl. “I know her. You gave her every chance and she will win. We just need to hold for a few more heartbeats.”

“There’s no cover,” Talal said. “We can’t hold here.”

“The tunnels,” Valyn said, grabbing Gwenna under the arm. “Now.”

As he said the last word, however, a great winged shape rose up over the ledge, screamed once at the stars, and came to rest on the very lip.

“That’s ’Ra!” Laith yelled, surging forward.

Even in the moonlight, Valyn couldn’t be sure, but Laith was already running. As Hendran wrote: Sometimes the good leader has to quit leading and trust his men.

Valyn swallowed a curse, hauled Gwenna around, almost passed out as the bolt in his shoulder grated against the bone, and then, with a brief prayer that everyone else was doing the same thing, ran as hard as he fucking could.