A missile hits the wall just behind me, and the explosion slams me to my knees, sending the buckets flying. I shudder, every part of my body hurting, a shrill keen in my ears at the sound of the impact.
Get up, Laia! I scramble for the buckets and run from where other soldiers are falling. The missile has left a smoking crater in the earth below the wall, where a group of soldiers and Scholar slaves had been standing only moments ago. The stench makes me gag.
I make my way across the lower level of the wall, up a set of stairs, to the walkway at the top. I keep my head down. This is the closest I’ve gotten to the Shrike. I cannot make a mistake now.
The mirror flashes again, this time to my left. Cook is telling me which way to go, and I follow the flash, ignoring cries for water, pretending that I have someplace more important to be.
I spy the Shrike ahead of me, blood-drenched and slumped with exhaustion. Her armor is gouged in a dozen places, her hair a mess. Her ringed hand hangs loose.
When I am thirty feet away, I slow my pace. When I am ten feet from her, I clutch at the pole I hold and sling it down, as if preparing to take water to the soldiers around her.
Skies, she is so close, and she has, for once, put down that damned hammer. All I have to do is get my hands on the ring. The moment I do, Cook will launch her distraction—which she has refused to tell me about, for fear of the Nightbringer learning of it and sabotaging us.
Now the Shrike is a mere few feet from me. My mouth is suddenly dry, my feet heavy. Just get your hands on the ring. Get it off her.
I should have practiced. Cook spent what little time we had trying to teach me the art of pickpocketing, but in truth, I have no idea how to filch a ring. What if it is tight on her? What if I yank at it and it does not come off? What if she curls her hand into a fist? What if—
A tickle on my neck. A premonition. A warning that something comes. I scurry a few feet farther away from the Shrike and dole out dippers of water to grateful men.
The light ahead shifts strangely, a contortion in the air that births a slice of night’s shadow.
The Blood Shrike senses it as I do and stands, her hand fisted around her war hammer once more. Then she takes a step back as the shadows coalesce.
It is him: the Nightbringer.
I am not alone in backing away from him, and it is that that saves me from his gaze. All of the soldiers around the Shrike are in as much of a hurry to escape the jinn’s attention as I am.
“Shrike.” His grating, grinding voice makes me shudder. “Keris Veturia seeks your counsel, for she—”
I do not hear the rest. I am halfway down the stairs, buckets abandoned, mission aborted.
“What the hells?” Cook meets me when I’ve gotten well away from the wall. I hear the unmistakable whistle of another missile falling.
“We had a plan, girl.”
“It didn’t work.” I yank my helm off, not caring who sees, knowing it will not make a difference anyway—not in this chaos. “He was there. The Nightbringer. Right next to her. He would have seen me.” I shake my head. “We have to find another way. We need to lure her to us. But short of holding the Emperor hostage, I don’t know what would work.”
Cook takes my shoulders and turns me toward the wall. “We are going back there right now,” she says. “All we have to do is wait for him to leave. Everything is in place, and we won’t—”
An explosion tears through the air just yards away, where a group of Scholar slave children are digging through rubble under the watchful eye of a Martial legionnaire.
I find myself flat on the ground, coughing debris from my lungs, trying to wave away the dust.
“Najaam!” A girl cries out. “Najaam!” An answering cry, and then the girl’s sobbing as she pulls another child from the rubble. With her eyes on the legionnaire, who is still trying to rise from the blast, the little girl grabs the boy, and they begin to run, both of them limping.
Cook sees me watching and drags me to my feet. “Come on, girl.”
“Those two need help,” I say. “We can’t just—”
“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?”