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“What do you want me to do?” he whispered. Pinar showed him, with whispers and gestures, and he dug his fingers into a crevice in one of the rocks by their heads, gave his other hand to Pinar, and let her lean out over the gap until she was nearly horizontal. She was light, and his muscles hardly strained.
He pulled her back when she’d finished. “Want a turn?” she said.
“You strong enough to hold me?” he asked, only a little uncertain. She was strong enough to haul herself up, after all.
“Yes, of course.”
It wasn’t as easy as she’d made it look—he had no fear of heights other than that of any rational person, but leaning out over a sheer drop onto hard stone, in the middle of the night, with the only thing between him and gravity being the grip of a strong hand around his wrist . . . There had definitely been places he favored more than this.
The warehouse inside was nearly three times the size of his mother’s house. A wave of warmth rushed over his face as he came level with the window. The forge was going, and several stone crucibles amongst the flame-blown coals glowed inside with molten metal. Perhaps a dozen people were working inside, pouring gold or silver and chunks of scrap metal into the crucibles, pouring out the metal into ingots, rolling the cooled ingots into long strips, punching out blanks from the strips, and finally striking each blank between two dies with a powerful single swing of a hammer.
There was a very large chest, already half-full of gold and silver—or at least, what looked like gold and silver—and a knot of people on the far side of the warehouse, arguing. “I don’t care!” one of them said, just loud enough to be heard over the noise of the workshop. “Throw this batch in the harbor for all I care, justpack it up and clear out!” The man turned, and the light fell on his face: Siranos.
Evemer’s foot, braced against the rock, slipped. He fell sharply, his arm yanked in its socket, and he heard Pinar grunt with pain. He scrambled on the rock, trying to find a handhold, and then her grip on his wrist slipped, and he was sliding down the rock, making far, far too much noise, and crashing to the ground with a thud as all the air was knocked out of him.
“Fuck,” Tadek muttered, as from inside the warehouse a shout came:
“Intruders!”
Pinar landed on her feet next to Evemer, as light as a cat, and helped Eozena and Tadek haul him up. “Run!”
“Fool!” Eozena hissed at him—yes, he knew. He cursed himself as he ran, feet pounding on the stone and sand as they rounded the warehouse again. They dove into the copse, branches whipping at their faces. There was a great noise behind them, shouting and more running footsteps, and—and just at that moment, the treacherous wind blew a cloud clear of the stars and the moon—one a slipper-sliver, one in its last quarter. Compared to the chthonic darkness from moments before, it was suddenly terrifyingly easy to see Eozena and Pinar before him, darting through the trees.
He heard the hiss of an arrow. It clattered off the side of a tree trunk with a spray of bark and leaves, followed by a second, a third. He urged his legs faster, praying that the ground was level enough that he wouldn’t fall and twist his ankle.
Another arrow hiss. A line of fire across the top of his shoulder. At the same moment, Tadek gave a sharp cry and stumbled, falling to the ground. Evemer skidded to a stop and turned back. “Not a chance,” he snarled, hauling Tadek up again.
“It’s nothing,” Tadek gasped. “Just winged me across the calf.”
But then their pursuers were upon them. Without even having to think about it, Evemer shoved Tadek behind him and drew his sword, swinging wildly.
He killed two of them and was turning toward the third when another arrow grazed him just below the elbow, deep enough that his hand spasmed and he dropped his sword. He lashed out with his fists instead, seeing out of the corner of his eye Eozena, coming in like a meteor from his left flank, giving him enough cover to retrieve his sword.
Then it was easy—he’d trained for this: the division of the field into two hemispheres, the types of swings and thrusts you could and could not do with a person behind you.
There were more people around them than he had first seen in the warehouse, and they were trained with weapons as the thieves in the alley had not been.
But thinking of that night, comparing it to this, sent an arrow of pain and alarm through Evemer’s chest. What would Kadou do if they died here tonight? What would he do without Eozena, without Tadek? “Run!” he shouted, flinging himself anew at their attackers.
Light flooded the area—someone had lit an alchemical flare, and it blazed a blinding greenish white that made spots bloom in Evemer’s eyes like dozens of solar eclipses.
But the enemy cursed as well. They had been expecting it as little as he had—all of them, Evemer included, threw their arms up to shield their faces from the scalding-bright light and stumbled, fumbling their weapons and tangling up together. Evemer flailed for Eozena, dragging her away. With his eyes watering and smarting, he stared in the direction of the light. Someone was holding the flare up above their head, the only person still even partially in shadow—Evemer’s night vision was ruined too much for him to see, but by the silhouette, he would have guessed it was Siranos.
Siranos, who was looking right at him, who now had seen his face as clear as it would have been in the noonday sun.
“Run, Commander.Run.”
“You too, idiot!” she snarled at him.
They caught up with Tadek within seconds—he was staggering, the light hit to his calf clearly not as light as he’d claimed. Evemer ducked under Tadek’s arm and took most of his weight, just as he had for Kadou the night before—Tadek was only slightly heavier than the prince, but at least he wasn’t drugged.
Siranos—yes, it was him, Evemer recognized his voice—shouted for the others to get themselves pulled together and continue the pursuit. He wasn’t a man who knew about fighting in darkness, then. He must have thought he’d been helping his guards by lighting that flare.
Pinar had slashed the rope and was holding the boat ready to launch. Evemer all but flung Tadek into it, and then he and Eozena were shoving together, wading thigh-deep into the cold water to get the boat out of the shallows.
He heard shouts behind them. He heard a thump, Eozena’s sharp cry beside him, the clatter of arrows on the stony beach or hissing into the water around them. He gave the boat a final shove as Eozena leapt up into it. She turned immediately to grab him by the back of his collar and haul him in after her, one-handed, as Pinar and Tadek dug the oars into the water and heaved for all they were worth.
Evemer hit the bottom of the hull with a groan for his sore ribs, bruised by the fall from the window, and pushed himself up, staring desperately back at the island—but the people on the beach had already vanished, either to conserve their supply of arrows or (more likely) to dispose of the evidence and flee, since their quarry had escaped.
