Rin lowered her spyglass. “You’d be sentencing my men to death.”

“It’s been half a day,” he said curtly. “Chances are they’re dead already.”

Jinzha, who had been pacing the length of the deck in agitation, motioned toward them. “It’s time to pursue other options. Those men are gone.”

Rin’s fists tightened. “Don’t you dare—”

“They could have captured them.” Kitay tried to calm her down. “He could be planning to use them as hostages.”

“We don’t have anyone important on that ship,” Jinzha said, which Rin thought was a rather cruel way of describing some of his best soldiers. “And knowing Tsung Ho, he’d just set it on fire.”

The sun crawled to high noon.

Rin fought the creep of despair. The later it got in the day, the worse their chances of storming the walls. They had already lost the element of surprise. The Ram Warlord surely knew they were coming by now, and he’d had half the day to prepare defenses.

But what other choice did the Republic have? The Cike were trapped behind those gates. Any later and their chances of survival dwindled to nothing. Waiting was useless. Escape would be humiliating.

Jinzha seemed to have been thinking the same. “They’re out of time. We attack.”

“That’s what they want, though!” Kitay protested. “This is the battle they want to have.”

“Then we’ll give them that fight.” Jinzha signaled Admiral Molkoi to give the order. For once, Rin was glad that he’d ignored Kitay.

The Republican Fleet surged forward, a symphony of war drums and churning paddle wheels.

Xiashang had prepared well to meet the charge. The Militia went on the offensive immediately. A wave of arrows greeted the Republican Fleet as soon as it crossed into range. For an instant it was impossible to hear anything over the sound of arrows thudding into wood, steel, and flesh. And it didn’t stop. The artillery assault kept coming in wave after wave from archers who seemed to have an endless supply of arrows.

The Republican archers returned fire, but they might have been shooting aimlessly at the sky. The defenders simply ducked down and let the bolts whiz overhead while Republican rockets exploded harmlessly against the massive city walls.

The Kingfisher was safe ensconced within its turtleshell armor, but the other Republican ships had been effectively reduced to sitting ducks. The tower ships floated uselessly in the water. Their trebuchet crews couldn’t launch any missiles—they couldn’t move without fear of being turned into pincushions.

The Lapwing, the Seahawk closest to the walls, sent a double-headed dragon missile screeching through the air only for a Ram archer to shoot it out of the sky. Upon impact it fell sizzling back toward the boat. The Lapwing’s crew scattered before the shower of missiles fell upon their own munitions supply. Rin heard one round of explosions, and then another—a chain reaction that engulfed the Seahawk ship in smoke and fire.

The Shrike, however, had managed to steer its towers to just beside the city gate. Rin squinted at the ship, trying to gauge its distance from the wall. The towers were just tall enough to clear the parapets, but as long as the wall was manned with archers, the tower was useless. Anyone who scaled the siege engine would just be picked off at the top.

Someone had to take those archers out.

Rin glared at the wall, frustrated, cursing the Seal. If she could call the Phoenix she could have just sent a torrent of flame over the barriers, could have cleared it out in under a minute.

But she didn’t have the fire. Which meant she had to get up there herself, and she needed explosives.

She cupped her hands around her mouth. “Ramsa!”

He was crouched ten meters away behind the mast. She screamed his name thrice to no avail. At last she threw a scrap of wood at his shoulder to get his attention.

He yelped. “What the hell?”

“I need a bomb!”

He opened his mouth to respond just as another set of missiles exploded against the turtle boat’s side. He shook his head and gestured frantically at his empty knapsack.

“Anything?” she mouthed.

He dug deep in his pocket, pulled out something round, and rolled it across the floor toward her. She picked it up. A pungent smell hit her nose.

“Is this a shit bomb?” she yelled.

Ramsa waved his hands helplessly. “It’s all I’ve got left!”

It would have to do. She shoved the bomb into her shirt. She’d worry about ignition when she got to the wall. Now she needed some way to climb up to the top. And a shield, something huge, heavy and large enough to cover her entire body . . .

Her eyes landed on the rowboats.

She turned to Kitay. “Pull a boat up.”

“What?”

She pointed to the siege tower. “Get me up in a boat!”

His eyes widened in understanding. He barked a series of orders to the soldiers behind him. They ran out to the mainmast, ducking beneath shields raised over their heads.

Rin jumped into a rowboat with two other soldiers. Kitay directed the men to fasten the ropes at the ends, typically meant to lower the rowboat into the water, onto the mast pulley. The rowboat teetered wildly when they started hoisting it up the mast. It hadn’t been secured well. Halfway up it threatened to flip over until they scrambled to redistribute their weight.

An arrow whistled past Rin’s head. The Ram archers had seen them.

“Hold on!” She twisted the ropes. The rowboat tilted nearly horizontal, a functional full-body shield. Rin crouched down, clinging fast to a seat so she wouldn’t tumble out. A crossbow bolt slid through the bottom of the boat and cut through the arm of the soldier to her left. He screamed and let go. A second later Rin heard him crunch on the deck.

She held her breath. The boat was almost to the top of the wall.

“Get ready.” She bent her knees and rocked the boat so that it would swing forward. Their first swing toward the wall fell short by a yard. Rin caught a brief, dizzying glimpse of the drop beneath her feet.

Another series of arrows studded the rowboat as they swung backward.

Their second swing got them close enough.

“Go!”

They jumped to the wall. Rin slipped on impact. Her knees skidded on solid rock but her feet kicked off into terrifying, empty space. She flung her arms forward and seized a groove cut in the wall. She strained to pull herself up just far enough that she could slam her elbow into the ridge and drag her torso over.

She tumbled gracelessly onto the walkway and staggered to her feet just as a Ram soldier swung a blade at her head. She blocked it with her trident, wrestled it in a circle, sent it spinning uselessly away, and then butted him in the side with the other end. He tumbled down the stairs and smashed into his comrades.

That gave her a temporary reprieve. She scanned the wall of archers. Ramsa’s shit bomb wouldn’t kill them, but it would distract them. She just needed a way to ignite it.

Again she cursed the Seal. She could have just lit it with a snap of her fingers; it would have been so easy.

She cast her eyes about for a lamp, a brazier, something . . . there. Five feet away sat a lump of burning coals in a brass pot. The Ram defenders must have been using it to light their own missiles.

She hefted the bomb in her hands, tossed it toward the pot, and prayed.