“Florence, we have to leave.”
“What? Why?” She shied away from his grip, uneasy in the man’s presence. She’d avoided and outright ignored him for two days since he had shown her the Dragon harvesting rooms. She didn’t know how she could feel about someone who seemed to revere Dragons for saving the world and endorse treating them worse than livestock in the same breath.
“There aren’t many trains left and they’re filling.” He reached for her upper arm, yanking her from the bed.
“Trains?” Florence ripped herself from his grip. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but you must be seriously confused.” She stood her ground, pointing at the still gaping door from where he had entered. “Now leave my room.”
“They’re going to blow the guild.”
“What?” It was as if she had half the powders needed for a canister and he was expecting her to produce a complete shot.
“We have to get out before they do. There’s not much time.” Powell reached for her again and she sidestepped away. He cursed loudly. “Pitchforks and sickles, woman, if you want to stay, then fine. I didn’t have to come for you anyway.”
He started for the door. Florence stared at his back in a daze. Even if she didn’t fully understand what was happening, she knew desperation when she saw it. She knew what fight or flight looked like in someone who was struggling to fall into their training rather than chaos and cowardice.
Whatever Powell thought was going on—right or not—he really believed they were all in danger.
“Powell, wait.” Florence grabbed the back of his shirt. She regarded him with a glare, hoping to make it clear that she was still very aware of the uneasy terms they were on despite their situation. “When you say they’re going to blow the Guild…” she tried to speak slowly and evenly, coaxing him into some sense of calm that could bring order from what seemed to be a tempest of thoughts raging in his mind.
“The Dragon King has ordered every guild hall destroyed. We’re the first.”
Florence’s hand went limp, dropping to her side. She laughed. “What?”
“Florence.” He grabbed her by the shoulders, shaking her roughly. “This isn’t a joke, and we must leave.”
It made no sense. The Dragon King was going to destroy the guilds? Why? He needed them. Nova needed their technology and their production and, at the very least, their gold.
“We have to get Derek and Nora.” She was already at her friends’ door, banging loudly before entering. “Derek, Nora, we have to go.”
“Flor?” Nora rolled at her lover’s side, groggy.
“What’s going on?” Derek was far more alert.
“I don’t know,” she confessed, hoping they had enough stock in her decision making ability to trust her blindly. “But I believe we need to leave.”
“And quickly!” Powell urged.
Derek and Nora, to her surprise, did exactly as Florence asked. They left the bed without further question, not even bothering to tug on more than their sleeping clothes. Together with Powell, the three hastily started down the winding halls of the Harvesters’ Guild.
At first, it seemed they were the only people to know what was happening. The halls were quiet and empty; only random scampering as a person sprinted ahead of them, or someone darted from a side room with a bag in tow. But the open doors on either side of them told a different story.
They weren’t the first to know. They were the last.
As they wound down, the halls began to crowd with people. They were pushing by each other, forcing their fellow initiates and journeymen out of the way. None seemed to regard Powell as anything more than anyone else, despite his nearly being at Master status.
Everyone was running. Shouting. Pushing and shoving. They funneled into narrow walks that wound tightly beneath the Harvesters’ Guild in Faroe, compacting in on each other in tunnels that were not meant for the current capacity.
Elbows pushed against her, pressing her forward as the masses reached a point at which it seemed they could go no further. Florence looked to turn back, but it was already too late. More people had run up behind them, slamming into their backs as she had slammed into the backs of the people in front of her. They were part of a mass of people attempting to claw their way forward at all costs.
She felt very small, and compressed even smaller. Florence gasped for breath. Her footing was slipping out from under her. She was being carried along by the Fenthri tide. Nora and Derek were nowhere to be found, and Powell had somehow drifted out of her line of sight. She was going to die here, drowned in an ocean of panic.
Her heart raced into her throat, preventing her from even calling out. All there was to see were shades of shifting gray, illuminated by the tunnel’s dim lighting. Her ears filled with the groans and grunts and cries, dizzying her mind.
A hand, sure and strong, calloused from years of work, wrapped around her forearm and yanked. Her shoulder popped and her skin bruised instantly from the force. She was threaded through the line of people—barely—to reach her friends on the wall.
Powell held her tightly, preventing the masses from ripping her away from the group again. Derek and he shared a linked arm as Derek held onto Nora with the same might. Florence gasped for breath in the small space Powell created between his chest and the wall for her.
“We have to go along the outside. There’s a door ahead, a worker’s tunnel, and I have the key,” Powell shouted. “When I open it, you have to run. You have to run as fast as you can. Don’t look back, don’t think, just trust me and run. If you fall, you will be trampled.”
Derek and Nora gave fearful nods. Florence looked up at Powell as he sheltered her from the writhing masses at his back.
“Run, and I’ll run with you.”
He gave a nod, and they pressed forward.
They squeezed in a chain, hands wrapped along elbows, along the outer wall. Derek’s nose exploded with black blood as a man behind him pushed his face directly into the wall. Florence was nearly smothered once as someone tried to turn her into a ladder to see above the masses.
“Why aren’t they letting us through?”
“Let us through!”
“Why isn’t the door open?”
“There are still people here!”
The chorus of shouts was deafening, a cacophony of fear and pleading agony.
Powell reached the door and pulled out the key. Florence positioned herself near his side, Derek and Nora pressed behind. As soon as he saw they were all there, he disengaged the lock, and let loose the floodgates.
They sprinted. Florence didn’t look back. Her lungs and legs burned, but her magic kept up. It made her faster—nearly faster than Powell, who was half a head taller.
“This way!” Powell veered left.
They followed.