"How many?" he said.
"All of them," Jasper said.
Another shot took a chunk of the doorframe. I pulled Jasper and Eight back from the hall, and the three of us pressed against the kitchen wall with plaster dust in our hair.
Rhadamanthys came up the cellar stairs dragging his leg, one hand on the wall, the other holding a shotgun someone had shoved at him. He took position by the cellar door, racked it one-handed, and said nothing.
A shape came through the courtyard at a dead sprint. I got the shotgun up before I recognized him.
Danior. Shirt untucked, jaw still showing my fist from the mountain, rifle in one hand and two of his men behind him. Hecame through the door and pressed his back against the counter, chest heaving.
He was here. He'd lost the mountain. He'd lost his claim. He'd stood in that circle with my fist in his face and yielded. And when the shooting broke out, he ran toward it instead of away.
"Road's gone," he said. "Both ends. They've got vehicles across the bridge and men in the tree line on the south side."
"How many on the south?"
"Enough." He checked the rifle's magazine. "We're boxed in, Diego."
Jasper pulled me into the back hall. He gripped my arm hard enough to bruise, and I let him because his grip meant he had a plan.
"House won't hold," he said. "They're pinning us until the full line gets down from the ridge. When it does, they come through every door and window at once."
"So what do we do?"
"We leave."
"Jasper, they blocked the roads."
"Not the roads."
Eight stepped between us. She tugged my sleeve hard and pointed down, at the floor, at the stone under the floor. She pointed toward the back of the house with the kind of certainty that only comes from someone who's already mapped every exit in every building she's ever been inside.
She meant the tunnel.
My grandmother's house sat on a cellar that sat on a passage running under the mountain to the valley on the other side. My tío had shown it to me when I was twelve, a candle in one hand and my wrist in the other.This is how we survived when surviving wasn't supposed to be possible, he'd said. The passage was old. The stone was older. Generations had kept it clear andkept it secret because a door nobody knows about is the only door that's always open.
Eight had found it on day one. Of course she had.
I turned to Jasper. A shot punched through the back wall and hit a shelf. Something ceramic shattered. Neither of us flinched.
"Women and children first," I said. "Lorenzo. The wounded. Everyone who can't fight."
"Yes."
"Then us."
He didn't answer. He put his hand on the back of my neck and pressed his forehead to mine. His skin was cold. His breath came fast and shallow. The shots kept coming through the walls around us, and he held me there for two seconds that cost him something I could measure in the pressure of his grip.
Then he let go.
"Get them moving," he said. "I'll buy you time."
The kitchen window blew inward, and I turned toward the cellar stairs and started giving orders.
I stepped into thecourtyard with my katana drawn and a cigarette between my lips.
The road stretched downhill in front of me, dirt and gravel cutting through the olive groves. I walked to the center of it and stopped. Behind me the others took position: Rhadamanthys hauled himself up onto the low wall by the fountain, Lorenzo scraped across stone to find cover behind the well, Danior and Alonzo checked their rifles with metallic clicks. I smoked.
