“Don’t!” Kanthe gasped out, fearing his mentor would lose fingers, if not his entire hand. “I got this.”
He didn’t.
His muscles gave out, and the cage fell toward them both. One of his legs slipped between the bars and into the pen. The front of the cage smashed into them both, pinning them in place. The bat slathered poison over Kanthe’s upturned face. Claws tore through his breeches and into his thigh.
So this is how I die.
It was a far more dramatic end than he had ever imagined for himself.
Then the wagon bucked, and the cage lifted high—and it inexplicably flew away from his face, stripping his leg back out of the pen. As Kanthe watched, the cage sailed out the back of the wagon.
He rolled to his knees to try to comprehend this miracle.
At the top of the stairs, Anskar’s two men had anchored the ends of their ropes around statues to either side of the stairs. The ropes’ lengths stretched to the flying cage, where grappling irons had hooked into the pen’s bars. The snagged cage tilted sideways in midair and crashed to the steps, shattering open.
Anskar must have prepared for this. He rushed down the steps, swung a net, and tossed it high. The net spun through the air toward the remains of the cage and the prisoner inside. The bat thrashed to break free. Its wings cracked more bars; claws shredded scraps of leather. Finally, it managed to shove its head out, snapping everywhere, its belled ears flat to its skull. It fought to extract itself. Its neck stretched with a wail of despair, as if it were drowning in the wreckage.
Then the heavy net, knitted through with thorns, fell over all.
As the wagon continued down the stairs, Kanthe accepted the inevitable. He had failed. The bat strained toward him, desperation written in its every thrash. It was a futile battle. Once subdued, it would be dragged back to the fire and burned alive.
Kanthe faced his defeat, refusing to look away.
Still, I’ll not be the one to suffer for it.
Across the distance, the bat stared at him. The fear and misery in its red eyes was easy to read.
“What are you doing?” Frell asked.
Kanthe couldn’t answer as he shifted higher, one knee still braced under him. He lifted the bow already in his hand and notched an arrow. He pulled the gut string to his cheek. The arrow’s fletching tickled his ear as he took aim.
Better this.
He inhaled one deep breath, then released the bowstring.
The arrow shot up the steps.
And pierced clean through a fiery red eye.
* * *
NYX CRIED OUT as agony shattered into her skull. She slapped a palm to her left eye. The world suddenly went dark. She missed the next step and fell headlong down the last of the forbidden staircase.
Jace caught her before she struck the stone floor. “What happened?”
The burning pain spiked for another breath, then faded to an icy coldness. She lowered her hand, and her sight returned.
“I … I’m not sure,” she said.
But she was.
As she read the worry in Jace’s pinched face, a dark storm grew in the back of her mind. With every breath, it grew larger, stoked by fury.
She quailed before it.
Jace helped her to her feet. “Nyx, what’s wrong?”
She turned and stared upward, knowing the truth.
“We failed. They’re coming.”
SIX
WISDOM WRIT IN BRONZE
The treuest wisdom lies in accepting that you know noht, while the grettest folly lies in beleafing you know all.
—Aphorism of Hestarian the Elder
18
RHAIF HATED SUMMER, especially in the sweltering stifle of Anvil.
As the first bell of Eventoll rang throughout the city, he hurried down a shadowed alley that cut from one street to the next. He huddled under a mud-beige light-cloak that brushed his ankles and wore sandals to keep the heat of the cobbles from burning his soles. He hurried along with the cowl of his cloak’s hood low over his eyes. He looked like many of the day-laborers hunching their way home, or night-staffers sullenly heading the other way.
Few, if any, lifted their faces.
Like him, the entire town sought to hide from the Father Above. The sun sat near to its highest point in the eastern sky as midsummer approached. Though that significant moment was still another three days off, a few houses already had bright bows framing windows or were decorated with oil lamps glowing behind glass shades tinted in crimson and purple, trying to bring a measure of cheer to the gloom. The celebration to come—the Midsummer Bloom—was an attempt to falsely brighten the grimmest time of the year. For Rhaif, it always struck him as the height of submission, marking how readily the townspeople accepted the sullen order of Anvil.
What’re ya gonna do? was as common as Good morrow or Sard off here in Anvil. Like an ox beaten so often that it learned to ignore the strike of a driver’s club, the townspeople simply grew hardened to their sorry state. They trudged from one day to the next, until they were finally laid low in an early grave in the burning sands. It was a small mercy that few of them ever lived past their fortieth birthyear.
And the cause behind such an early demise was plain with each breath.
Rhaif tugged the linen scarf higher over his mouth and nose, a veil that all the townspeople wore to filter the soot and smoke that threatened to prematurely blacken a lung. The deathly pall hung most heavily during the stretches of summer, when there was nary a breeze off the sea. And rather than shade the sun’s heat, the black blanket only trapped it closer, smothering the city.
Rhaif cocked an ear to the low roar that continually sounded throughout the city, what was dubbed the Grumble of Anvil. Its source was the same as the pall of soot and smoke. Hundreds of huge belching chimneys and flaming stacks—like the war-towers of some great siege—rose all around. They marked the city’s countless smelters, refineries, forges, and gas distilleries. All of the mines across the Guld’guhl territories shipped their wares to Anvil. The city was the hard iron upon which the raw ores, rocks, and salts were hammered against—before finally being shipped around the Crown.
Rhaif reached a larger street and slipped into the sullen drift of the crowd, picking the side heading upward. Here, bright Bloom garlands were strung across the way. Many were lined by tiny upraised flags, representing the sails of the thousand ships coming and going from Anvil, whether by sea, like the thick-beamed ore-trawlers, or by ethereal winds, like the gas-filled giants that safely ferried precious jewels over the pirate-riven waters.
As if summoned by this thought, a wyndship passed overhead, gliding through the black pall. It was headed toward the docks of Eyr Rigg, the tall ridgeline marking the easternmost border of Anvil. He gazed longingly for several steps.
If only …
He lowered his face again from such lofty heights and returned his gaze to the street. He knew the homes and shops to either had been constructed of white marble and topped by roofs of clay tiles in shades of blue and deep reds, all the better to reflect the shine of the Father Above. Though that was no longer the case. Centuries had layered soot over the walls and muted any brightness to a drab dullness. Only during the all-too-brief midwinter Freshening, when the winds would finally kick up and blow the worst of the pall away from the city, did any of the townspeople try to scrub away the filth. Still, it was a futile effort, as the winds always died and the pall returned to settle heavily again. While most sang their relief to the gods during each Freshening, Rhaif was not fooled. To him, the winds were merely the gust of a bellows, which cleared the smoke only to allow the fires to burn hotter.