“We’ve an expression in Carsovia: The Empress sings, and the people are in harmony. Errant voices disrupt the chorus,” she recited, pausing to blink up at the sun as it flashed briefly between buildings. “What no one says is that those ‘errant voices’ are silenced.”
“Is that what you were? An ‘errant voice?’” While this rescue was going to happen regardless of what Allun said, Eira was keen to know more about the woman she was risking her neck for.
“An errant scream is more apt.” Even though the words were playful, there was a somber and almost sinister note beneath them. As if it were both a promise, and a threat.
As if summoned by the statement, a scream ripped through the otherwise dull hum of the city, the sound chilling them to the bone.
“What was that?” Cullen whispered.
“Nothing good. But nothing changes.” Eira moved slowly from the side street they’d been walking on. A line of knights rushed past them, oblivious that the people they were looking for were right beside them.
A crowd had formed at the gates. The knights were pushing the people into a line along the buildings. Eira’s eyes met a familiar cerulean pair that quickly turned stormy with worry. Olivin did little more than glance her way, but the look said a thousand words, few of them good. His attention returned to a woman who had been ripped from the group, hunched on the ground.
She wept over a man whose face was no longer there. A burst of magic had been ripped through it. Three knights loomed over her, the middle one brandishing a rifle.
“We will ask you one more time. Where did the strangers you saw in the market go?”
The woman couldn’t formulate a response. It was all ragged breaths and sobs.
“Answer me.” The knight extended the rifle. His words were calm, but the threat was obvious.
“I don’t know. I hardly even know their faces! Please, please I know nothing. Let me bury him. My?—”
The knight shifted his grip. Eira saw what was about to happen before it did. Just like she saw the silken strands of dark hair falling over the woman’s shoulders, shorter than Noelle kept hers. Her skin a fairer shade than Noelle’s. Her frame more waiflike.
But, for a horrible second, it was Noelle kneeling on the ground. Her chest exposed. The rifle pointed, primed, ready with a thumb on its trigger.
The knight almost sounded nonchalant when he spoke next. “If you don’t know then?—”
A pulse of magic. Ducot leaped from Olivin’s shoulder with a roar of rage, magic swirling in waves off of him. Eira didn’t have a chance to speak, to breathe, before he crashed against the knight and the rifle exploded.
15
Ducot snapped a chain off his wrist that whipped out and stiffened into a blade with a swirl of magic. He moved faster than the other knights could even get out yelps of surprise, skewering the knight with the rifle straight through.
Even though shouts and screams were rising. Despite the thundering feet of people running—some to the commotion, and some away. Eira could hear Ducot’s whisper on the wind.
“For Noelle.”
Cullen grabbed her elbow, jolting her back to the present. “We need to hide.”
“We need to fight.” Eira glared at him. Didn’t he see what she just had?
“What happened to no heroes?”
“That bird has flown!” Eira gestured to the knights. Olivin had engaged one of the others, moving around Ducot’s attacks deftly. “It looks like we’re not getting out of here without a fight.”
“Don’t lose sight of the goal,” he cautioned, releasing her.
“All right, then!” Allun shouted over the rising chaos, stuffing a hand into her bag. “I’ve been waiting for just the right chance to break these out.” Throwing out her hand, Allun released smallballs—no larger than flash beads—that exploded with pops and fizzles, more distracting than dangerous.
Eira launched forward, joining the fray. Ice crackled around her, ready to overtake the knights with a thought. They went as rigid as wooden training dummies, helpless before Ducot and Olivin’s assault, each wielding their own blade forged from different magics.
The cobblestones vibrated under their deadly dance, pulsing with Alyss’s powers. She kept the knights off-balance and swallowed one whole beneath the earth. Screams were stopped short as a group of knights were stopped mid run, their open mouths eerily silent, gasping soundlessly as their existence was ended by Cullen drawing the air away from them before it could fill their lungs.
Each of them was lethal. Yet, it was unexpectedly difficult to gain ground. With every minute that ticked on, there were more knights. An endless stream of them. Olivin conjured shields of spinning gold light to block their attacks—though they flickered as the explosions from the rifles crashed into them. With pulses of magic, Ducot changed swords into silver ribbons that fell helplessly, or glass that shattered as it slipped through their hands.
“For Noelle,” Eira echoed his words, lost in the thrall of battle.
