Jarek may have been drunk, but he was much bigger and stronger than she was. And she had only one barely usable arm.
So when he lunged with no weapon but his hands, Asha did the only thing she could think of. As he smashed into her, she rammed the butt of her slayer as hard as she could into his temple.
Asha hit the floor with such force, the breath went out of her. Jarek, knocked out from her blow, pinned her to the ground. He was all muscle and weight. Like a boulder pressing down on her.
Asha lay beneath him, one side of her face pressed to the cold tiles, the other against the hot, sweaty skin of his chest. When the room came back into focus, she tried to breathe but couldn’t.
He’s suffocating me. . . .
She kicked and bucked, trying to shove him off. Her slayer rested only a few steps away, yet entirely out of her reach.
Her lungs burned. Her vision blurred. Gasping for air and getting none, Asha struggled harder, pushing with her legs and hips in one last burst of strength. Before the room darkened around her, hands reached down. Hands spotted and knotted with age. They tried pulling her out, and when that didn’t work, they rolled Jarek off Asha with a startling strength. Air rushed into Asha’s lungs. She gasped, gulping it in like water, letting it fill her up.
The commandant lay on the floor in a bedraggled heap. Blood matted the hair around his temple, but his heart still beat. She could see the pulse of it at the base of his throat. She had no idea how bad the injury was or how long he would be out, so she stood, grabbed her slayers, and sheathed them. Snatching up Jarek’s dagger from the floor, she went quickly to where the slave still slumped in the pool.
Sloshing through the bloody water, Asha sawed his hands free of the binding cord. When the cord snapped, the slave collapsed into the water.
Asha threw down the dagger, which plopped into the water and sank. She crouched to help him, trying to take hold of his arm to throw it over her shoulder, but with only one hand, it was too difficult.
“I need you to help me.”
His gaze lifted to her face, but he didn’t answer. His eyes closed slowly. As if he were slipping toward unconsciousness.
“No. Stay with me.”
His eyes opened but wouldn’t focus. “Iskari?” His lips were dry and cracked. “Am I dreaming?”
“Put your arm around my shoulder.”
He did.
“Now hold on tight and stand up.”
She didn’t wait for a response, just wrapped her good arm around him, helping him rise. He wobbled as they waded through the bloody pool; and when Asha tried to get him down from its edge, he nearly fell. She caught him hard around the waist, her burned hand screaming in pain.
“Listen to me,” she said through gritted teeth. “If you’re going to get out of here alive, you need to walk.”
He nodded. Air rushed across his lips as he breathed in, gathering up his strength. He leaned on her heavily and stiffened with every step, a sharp intake of breath between his teeth.
They needed to get out of here before Jarek regained consciousness. And more than that, dawn was coming. Once the sun was up, Asha couldn’t walk through the streets of the city carrying her betrothed’s half-slain slave. People would see. And they would talk.
She needed to move faster.
The elderly slave appeared with one of Jarek’s hooded mantles. A crimson one. She threw it over her fellow slave’s head and shoulders, tying the hood’s tassels around his throat.
“Where will you take him, Iskari?”
Asha didn’t know. She couldn’t hide him in the palace. Nor could she take him to the furrow, which was locked now and swarming with soldats. As they moved carefully down the corridor, toward the front door, Asha tried to think of someplace safe. Someplace no one would think to look for him.
She thought of her own secrets. Of the places that hid them.
There was the Rift, but that was too far. And Asha had no intention of adding freeing a slave to her list of crimes.
“The temple,” murmured the slave.
Asha stared at him.
The temple had been antagonistic toward the dragon king for years now. But Asha doubted the guardians would go so far as to harbor a fugitive slave.
“Iskari,” he whispered between shallow breaths. “Trust me.”
She had no reason to trust him—except for the fact that he wanted to live more than she wanted him to. So Asha did as he suggested.
She hauled him out into the silent street. The salty smell of his sweat mingled with the sharp tang of his blood. The sooner she got him to safety, the sooner she could tell her brother she’d done as he asked, collect their mother’s ring, and get back to hunting Kozu.
She focused on that thought as she half carried the slave toward the pearl-white temple rising out of the gloom.
The temple was once the highest structure in the city, built into the sheer face of the mountain. The palace had long surpassed it. What had once been the center of power in Firgaard was reduced to an empty shell. An obsolete relic.
On the way there, it started to rain. If Asha believed in prayers, she might have sent one skyward. The rain washed away the trail of blood in their wake.
And then, her paralyzed arm began to tingle. As if someone had stuck hundreds of needles in it. By the time they arrived at the temple, Asha swore she could wiggle her fingers just a little.
She thought of her slayers strapped to her back.
They can only be used to make wrongs right.
Asha studied the slave clinging to her. Beneath the mantle’s hood, his jaw clenched and his forehead crumpled in a severe frown. His eyes clouded over with pain.
Watching him struggle to stay upright, to keep walking, Asha thought that maybe her own argument didn’t make sense. Yes, he’d broken the law. Yes, he’d touched the daughter of the dragon king. But he’d done it to stop her from getting hurt. Had he done nothing, would he not have been punished just as harshly? Wasn’t it better that he caught her?
“It’s all right.” Asha’s arm tightened around him. “I won’t let you fall.”
As the slave cast a look her way, the frown in his forehead smoothed out and he relaxed against her.
No soldats stood guard outside the temple walls, with its chipped white paint and faded, crumbling friezes. The streets that bordered it were empty and silent.
Asha helped the slave up to the front archway. Inlaid in the cedarwood doors was the symbol of the Old One: a dragon cast in iron except its heart, whose blood-red glass mimicked a flame.
With one hand trapped in a sling and the other fully occupied, she couldn’t knock. So she shouted instead. When no one came, she shouted louder. The effort took all her remaining strength, which had been sapped by the weight of her load.
Finally, the doors opened and a hooded figure holding a candle looked out. The woman wore a crimson robe. In the candlelight, Asha couldn’t make out her face. But the robe marked her as a temple guardian, one of several women charged with performing the sacred rituals: bindings, burnings, and births.
When the guardian realized who stood on her threshold, she stepped quickly back.