“We can and we will,” Cook says. “Move. The distraction I arranged will only work for so long, but it will give you enough time to get to the ring.”
But I cannot take my eyes off the child, who spins and searches the city around her, hunting for a way out. Her furrowed brow is far too old for her years, and her younger brother—for they are clearly siblings—looks up at her, waiting for her to tell him what they should do. She spots me and Cook, realizes that we are Scholars, and rushes to us.
“Please,” she says. “Can you help us get out? We can’t stay. We’ll die. Mother and Father and Subhan are already dead. I can’t let Najaam die. I promised my parents before they—I promised I’d keep him safe.”
I pick up the little boy, and Cook is on my heels. “Damn it, Laia!”
“We cannot get that ring by sneaking it off the Shrike at the wall,” I hiss at her. “Distraction or not. But we can save these two lives. We can do something. You’ve seen the tunnels. You know the way out. Get them as far as that. Give them a chance. Because skies know that if they stay in this hellhole, they will die. They’ll both die.”
“Put the child down, Laia. We have a mission.”
“Is that what you told yourself when you left us?” I ask her. “That you had a mission?”
Cook’s face goes hard. “You can’t help them.”
“We can give them a way out.”
“So they can starve to death in the forest!”
“So they can have hope!” I scream at her, an eruption born of my guilt over giving up my armlet to the Nightbringer. It is born of my rage at myself for not being able to stop him, frustration at my utter inability to do anything to help or protect or save my people.
“I will get you out,” I tell the children. This is one promise I’m going to keep. “Come on. We’ll take you through the tunnels. When you come out of them, there will be a forest, and you need to go through it and into the mountains to be safe. You’ll have to eat mushrooms and berries—”
The shrill screee of a missile rings out, growing louder by the second. It blazes with fire as it arcs downward, graceful as a falling star.
And it’s coming right for us.
“Sissy!” Najaam grabs for his sister, panicking. She yanks him from me and runs.
I turn toward my mother in a panic. “Run!” I say. “Ru—”
I feel an arm around my waist, powerful and familiar and searingly hot. The last thing I hear is a deep, scarred voice, growling as if it was born of the earth itself.
“You are a fool, Laia of Serra.”
Then I am flung much farther than any human could throw me, and the world goes white.
XLVIII: The Blood Shrike
I do not know how long it has been since the Karkauns descended. I do not know how many I have killed. I only know how many of our men have died. I know where our enemies are starting to push through the wall.
My men roll out pitch and rocks and flames. We throw everything we have at the hordes swarming up ladders and attempting to overrun us. With blood and sweat and unending toil, we hold them back. But they die slowly, if at all. And they keep coming.
The men slump against the wall, bloodied and exhausted. We need a victory. We need something to turn the tide.
I am considering this when Dex arrives, looking as much a mess as I feel. His report is as I expected: too many losses, too few gains. We underestimated the Karkauns and overestimated our own strength in battle.
“Harper says the tunnels are full,” Dex says. “He’s gotten about five thousand Plebeians up the Pilgrim Road already, but there are thousands left to evacuate. They’re all coming out just north of Pilgrim’s Gap. That land is hard to travel. It’s going to take time.”
“Does he need men?”
“He has all he needs.”
I nod. At least something in this skies-forsaken city is going right. “And the Paters?”
“Their families have fled. Most of them have holed up in their houses.”
We need those men out here, fighting. But it would take more men to drag them out, and we don’t have the manpower. The legions from Estium and Silas, which should have been pressing the attack on the Karkaun army’s rear guard, have been delayed by storms.
“The Empress?”
“Safe, Shrike, with Rallius and Faris. I still say we need more guards—”
“The Commandant will find her if we move any of her guards from the palace,” I say. “With just Rallius and Faris, she can remain hidden. How fare Keris’s forces? The Emperor’s?”
“The Emperor holds the western gate and refuses to be pulled from battle. They’ve taken the fewest losses. He’s in his element. Keris holds the eastern gate,” Dex says. “Pater Rallius and his men are sticking to her like burrs, as you’ve asked, but they’ve taken losses. The Karkauns are pushing hard. She’s requested more men.”
My lip curls. That traitorous hag. You don’t know what I want. I still haven’t worked out what it could be. But I know she won’t sacrifice the entire capital. She’ll have no one to bleeding rule over if she does. Everything that makes the Empire the Empire is here: the treasury, the Hall of Records, the Emperor’s palace, and, most importantly, the people. If she allows the city to fall, she’ll be Empress of nothing but ash.
I shake my head. We need the damned legions from the south. We need something to stop these monsters.
Work with what you have, not what you want. The Commandant’s own words. “What else, Dex?”
“The Karkauns were spotted spreading a white substance around the edges of their army, Shrike. Almost like a border. We’ve no idea what it is.”
“It is salt.” The shudder-inducing voice of the Nightbringer behind me doesn’t even make me jump. I am too exhausted.
“Salt?” I say. “Why the bleeding hells would they be spreading salt around their camp?”
“Ghosts do not like salt, Shrike,” he says, as if this is the most natural thing in the world. “It will not stop the Karkauns who are possessed, for their human hosts make them immune to such tricks. But it will stop attacks from the wild ghosts who approach, ghosts who are not enslaved to the warlocks.”
I gape at him. “More ghosts?”
“They have broken free of the Waiting Place and are drawn to the blood and violence of the battle here. Their arrival is imminent.”
The Nightbringer reaches a hand to my shoulder and sings a few high notes. Immediately, my body, which burned from a dozen wounds, relaxes, the pain fading. I accept his aid gratefully. He has done this every day since the Karkauns launched their assault, sometimes twice a day, so I can keep fighting. He does not ask questions. He simply arrives, heals me, and disappears again.
As he turns to leave, I stop him. “The day I healed Livia, you said that one day my—my trust in you would be my only weapon.” I shake my head at the disaster before me. The flagging men, the unending army of the Karkauns. Antium, the capital, the Pearl of the Empire, slowly crumbling.
“Today is not that day, Blood Shrike.” His eyes linger on my face—no, I realize, on my ring, as my hand is propped against my face. Then he is gone.
“Dex,” I say. “Find as much salt as you can. Salt the wall, the infirmaries, wherever our fighting men are. Tell the men not to touch it.” What does it mean that the ghosts have broken free of the Waiting Place? Have they killed Elias?
When the moon rises, the Karkauns call a retreat. Nothing has changed. Our men are still barely keeping them at bay. Their unnaturally powerful soldiers still wreak havoc. They have the advantage. Why the bleeding hells are they withdrawing?
A ragged cheer goes up along the wall from my men. I do not join them. Whatever is making the Karkauns withdraw cannot be good for us.
Moments later, the wind carries a strange sound to me: wailing. The hair on the back of my neck rises as it draws closer. The cries are too high-pitched to be of this world. The wild ghosts.
The men grasp their weapons, stalwart in the face of this new terror. The wailing intensifies.
“Shrike.” Dex appears beside me. “What in ten hells is that sound?”
“The salt, Dex,” I say. “Did you spread it?”