He didn't say "I won't." Instead, he said, "Send the horn when the window opens."
Shazi clasped his forearm, hard and quick, then dropped away, already in motion, already merging with the shadows. Below, five riders separated cleanly from the ridge and disappeared into the shallow trough where frost covered the scrub like glass. The eastern fireline flickered as if disturbed. The Ketheri soldiers beat their shields rhythmically, trying to reassure themselves.
Rakhal turned his face into the wind and tasted river. He let the tug through the bond-mark settle his pulse. Through that connection, he could sense Eliza’s progress across the city. The link allowed them to coordinate without signals or messengers—a connection forged in the blood ritual that had named her queen and him her equal. Her mission mirrored his: while he planted the symbols of her rule, she was gathering supporters and reclaiming key positions throughout the lower districts.
He felt the moment when she confronted the Ketheri guards—her determination flowing through their bond like strength into his own limbs. Though the Shadow resented this connection to a human, even it couldn't deny the power they wielded together. Their shared purpose—to liberate Maidan and create a new kind of rule—had become more than alliance. It had become destiny.
The bond-mark responded beneath his skin, answering her resolve with its own rhythm.
He set his hand on the coil of rope at his hip and descended toward the drains.
The old river culverts were exactly where the council elder had promised they'd be—water always found its way, regardless of what men built to contain it. They stank of iron and flood and decay. The orc scout ahead of him—thin and agile with more Shadow than sense—lowered into the drain mouth and disappeared. Rakhal followed, noticing the crushed pepper in the mortar where smugglers had mixed spices to confusetracking dogs. The tunnel swallowed their footsteps. The Shadow pressed eagerly against the ceiling. He allowed it to touch him but kept it from clinging.
They moved in single file: six, then eight, and after two more turns, twelve warriors threading through darkness. At a rusted grate, the scout paused and touched a rune chalked high on the wall where only a child would mark it. It glimmered faintly—Maidan's poor had been leaving signs for each other throughout the occupation. The scout pried the grate open; the metal gave way like brittle bone. The smell of the River quarter flowed in—wet rope, river fish, and sweat.
They emerged inside a ruined bathhouse where the tiles were shattered and the roof opened to the sky. Rakhal crouched and pressed the banner cloth to the floor. Eliza's colors were hidden under his palm, muted with ash but powerful with meaning. The Shadow recoiled from the banner. Mercy and law were woven into the very fabric—things it could not tolerate.
A soft noise made him turn. He steadied a boy who had tripped on the edge of the old bath with two fingers under his elbow. The child's pupils were wide with fear from months under occupation. Rakhal eased his grip. "You have a job," he said evenly, "or you wouldn't have found me."
The boy nodded quickly. "The roof, lord. The loft still holds. Three houses have sight." He hesitated. "My aunt says to tell you there are eyes across the river that still speak the Queen's name without spitting."
"Tell your aunt I heard," Rakhal said. The Shadow wanted to dismiss the boy, but Rakhal forced it to accept the interaction.
They climbed through the skeleton of beams that had once supported the bathhouse ceiling. The roof was rotting but the boy moved confidently, leading them to where they could see the city spread below. The River quarter met the waterway in a hard line. Men moved like ants, hauling nets and barrels. Threestreets over, a Ketheri patrol marched in perfect formation: eight men, two spears each, and a captain with a lion emblem on his helmet. Up the hill, the lamps of the wealthy districts burned bright, undisturbed by the troubles below.
Rakhal planted the first banner where everyone in the lower ward would see it. He used both hands, securing the shaft in a crack in the tile. For a moment, nothing happened. Then someone in the river yard looked up and made a sound between a gasp and a prayer. More heads turned, hands loosened on their tools, and even a rat in the gutter grew bold enough to cross the street openly.
A Ketheri horn sounded from beyond the warehouses. The patrol turned as one. Two men pointed at the banner. One laughed nervously. Rakhal let them have their laugh. It would be the first stone in a wall they wouldn't notice building around them until it was too high to climb.
The Shadow rolled along his shoulders, delighted at the prospect of confrontation. He kept his hands open, refusing to direct it where it wanted to go. It hissed between his teeth when he turned away from the first flag and back toward the drain.
The second climb took them through a shuttered counting-house where the hinges were well-oiled and no child had ever entered. The ledger smell lingered in the plaster—ink sweetened by dampness. He stepped carefully over a weak spot in the floor, thinking of Eliza's hands moving over ledgers like these, tracing numbers.
On the roof, he found the perfect angle—visible from the cross-street, the stairway, and the terrace where a woman put out a wash-basin each night. He planted the second banner where men pretending not to look would see it. As the cloth unfurled, a horn sounded from the east.
Shazi had begun her diversion.
The ground vibrated beneath his boots as the attack commenced. Shazi always laughed when fighting began in earnest. The Ketheri responded with shields banging and the sound of enamel armor. The commotion rolled downhill and filled the lower streets. Faces turned toward the sound, then noticed Eliza's colors catching the light. The Shadow reached greedily for action. In a nearby reflection, Rakhal saw it veiling his hand—a glove of darkness so thin he could still see his calluses and old scars. He pulled it back with a thought. It retreated, unhappy but obedient.
In the third district, the drains ran wetter, the water sounding like whispered prayers. They widened and climbed a side tunnel that still held the memory of sieges past—soot clung to their throats even after all these years. A head-high grate opened onto a narrow courtyard where laundry hung as if summer hadn't ended. Rakhal listened to the air. The ward-network hummed unevenly—Azfar's work was having effect.
The horn sounded again with a different note—the one used when words fail and only music remains. The air suddenly lightened. Rakhal felt it on his teeth. A hundred magical wards sighed open, temporarily disabled.
"Now," he said quietly, and they moved with practiced precision. They crossed the courtyard, took a stairway. A woman opened her door, saw the skull tattoo on a Ketheri guard's throat through her curtain, and closed the door quickly, pressing her back against it. Rakhal crossed a roof where someone had planted rosemary in a pot with an old shoe for luck. He followed the paths people take when tired, when the body remembers the way home without conscious thought.
The tower was modest—an abandoned watch post with crumbling mortar. The roof seemed uncertain of its own stability. He crossed it with arms extended for balance. A Ketheri archer on a nearby building raised his bow when hespotted movement against the stars. Rakhal didn't unleash the Shadow to eliminate the threat. Instead, he planted the third banner.
The cloth snapped open in the wind. The city went quiet, as if watching. In the wealthy district, a window went dark then bright again—a knocked-over lamp quickly righted. In the east, Shazi's laughter cut through the night, joyful in her dangerous work. The archer loosed too hastily; the arrow flew high and wide.
Beneath Rakhal's ribs, the bond-mark suddenly flared—not painfully, but intensely, like a hand guiding him home. Through their connection, he sensed her movements with startling intimacy. He could tell when she was climbing stairs, her rhythm changing as she ascended. He knew the moment she paused to speak—likely confronting a soldier, offering mercy instead of violence.
The awareness of her filled him with emotions he was still learning to name. Pride. Admiration. And something deeper that went beyond their alliance. Even with city walls between them, he felt connected to her. Heat spread through him at the thought of her—not just as his queen, but as the woman whose strength had matched his own. Whose touch had steadied him when the Shadow threatened to consume everything.
The Shadow sensed these emotions and recoiled. It hated constraints, hated being denied the violence it craved. Most of all, it resented Eliza's influence—someone who had not surrendered to its power yet somehow commanded it through him. It tempted Rakhal with visions of what they could accomplish together: how easily they could turn the Ketheri soldiers into corpses, how swiftly they could take the city through terror rather than hope.
"Enough," he said aloud, and the Shadow withdrew, slick with disappointment.
A Ketheri horn answered Shazi's with a note of fear poorly disguised as discipline. Men shouted about the eastern postern in multiple languages. A woman on a terrace began ringing a bell—one of the city's old chimes the Ketheri hadn't found in its hiding place. The sound traveled, finding other bells in other homes, until they rang together as if the city was finding its voice again.
