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Kadou flung himself back through the door and Evemer slammed it shut. “Out the back,” they both said in unison, and then they were scrambling across the room, dodging between the knee-high tables and scattered floor cushions.
Now was the time to run, though his every instinct screamed to look back, to make sure Evemer was behind him. He heard the slam of the door opening, the thunder of footsteps behind them, the crash of wood—Evemer must have upended some furniture to slow them down, to buy Kadou a few seconds.
Kadou shoved aside the parlor mistress, ducking through the cramped back rooms, seeing only glimpses of things as he passed—cabinets with a hundred tiny drawers, bunches of herbs hanging from the ceiling, a quality of light that was no less murky here than it was in the front.
Straight back, an arrowshot to the back of the building. Evemer was still behind him, yanking things to the floor, sowing chaos in their wake.
Kadou yanked open the alley door and leapt down to the cobblestones, straight into the waiting arms of . . . six more hired blades.
If only Evemer had had his sword, he might have had a chance of holding them off, but swords were impractical in the narrow alleys of Kasaba City, and too conspicuous to wear at your belt on the street. Instead, he and Kadou had only brought their daggers.
He didn’t have a sword, and some of Siranos’s thugs did.
He’d thought for a brief moment that they’d made it. That they’d hit the alley and lose themselves in the warren of the dockside district. Now all he could see was Kadou struggling viciously as three guards tried to hold him, fighting with elbows and knees.
Evemer drew his blade and threw himself into the fray like—like a man whose only reason to live was being captured.
He’d never been so angry before, or so scared.
There was a moment when Kadou broke free. The other thugs were at the threshold now. They were wildly outnumbered, and Evemer wondered if this was what a chess piece felt like when it was captured. “Run. Go,” Evemer said. “Go.”
He saw the words hit Kadou like a crossbow quarrel to the chest. Evemer didn’t need to survive—he only needed to give Kadou time enough to run, to make it to Melek—
Please, please run,Evemer thought, just as one of the thugs knocked his dagger out of his hand and got in a good kick to his knee that sent him to the ground. They dove upon him then, pinning him to the ground by his arms and legs.Please let him live, let him get away,he prayed to any god that might be listening.
Kadou didn’t run. Stupid, noble little fool.
Kadou drew his own dagger and slashed wildly, fighting his way to the edge of the struggle. One of the women blocked his strikes with her greaves, stepped inside his guard, and punched him in the gut. Another man seized his arm and twisted until Kadou dropped his blade—it rang as it clattered on the cobblestones.
Evemer roared and, with a huge surge of strength, threw off the three thugs that held him down. He dived for his dagger, only to feel a sharp kick to his side, then another to his back, and he was pinned again,fivepeople holding him down now, pinning him to the cobblestones as a sixth unlooped a length of stout rope from her belt. “Careful there, friends,” she said darkly. She had an Oissika accent. “The Arasti royals have their guards swear blood oaths to die for them, you know. He’ll take as many of you with him as he can.”
Evemer snarled and thrashed, but the guards’ grips were solid, and his shoulders screamed in protest.
They kept him pinned as they tied his arms behind his back with perfect knots that Evemer wouldn’t have had a hope of wriggling free from, even without the injuries—a twinge in one shoulder, a flare of hot pain in the other where his stitches from last night’s wound had pulled free. A few other, deeper aches were making themselves known too, ones he hadn’t noticed in the heat of the fight. But the physical pain of his body was nothing.
He’d failed his lord. His one sworn duty, the thing he had promised Her Majesty with his life and beyond, and he’d failed.
Where was Kadou? Where was he? Evemer thrashed again, looking for him—there, standing now, also being tied up. He was looking back at Evemer with his heart breaking in his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he mouthed. Evemer shook his head. How could Kadou be sorry, when it was Evemer who had been too weak to protect him? Who hadn’t lasted even long enough for Kadou to get away safely? If only Kadou had been able to get away, Evemer would have laid down his life at Kadou’s feet and done it gladly.
They were probably already dead. How was Evemer supposed to look Usmim in the eye when he came to the divine scales of judgment? How was he supposed to confess to the outcome of this last, great trial? This last, great failure?
The thugs hauled him to his feet, and took them inside.
Evemer hadn’t had a chance to see how much of a mess he’d thrown behind them as they’d run—he saw it now. Broken furniture. Overturned cabinets. Powders and herbs covering the floor so thick that their steps crunched as if on dry autumn leaves, sending heady, thick scent into the air.
Siranos was waiting in the front room of the incense lounge, his arms crossed. It had emptied out. There were more overturned tables here too. It looked like a typhoon had gone through.
It hadn’t been enough. Perhaps not even his life would have been enough, not even his heart’s blood spilled on the cobblestones at Kadou’s feet.
“That’s them,” Siranos said. He snapped his fingers. “Bring them along.”
They were dragged out to the street and thrown into the back of a boxy wagon—it looked like an ice-seller’s cart. The thugs bound their ankles too, once they weren’t required to walk any further, and slammed the doors on them, shutting them in the dark. Evemer heard theshunkof a metal bolt, the snap of a lock.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice cracked. His arms, tied behind him, were already twin columns of agony.
“I’msorry,” Kadou replied immediately. Evemer could hear him breathing, slow and deliberate. “Are you hurt?”
