“Get back!” I whip around and shove blindly at the Sky King. He falls into Varren, who stumbles into someone else, but if they complain, I don’t hear it. The boom of exploding marble drowns out every other sound.
Debris pelts my face, and a wave of scorching heat throws us back down the hall. As if we’re no heavier than tumbleweeds. Which turns out to be a blessing, since the entire end of the corridor has been bitten off by a ball of starfire. It smolders red and gold as it rolls to a stop against the blackened wall. I stare at it. Bewildered. Then furious.
They attacked from the rear entrance.
Frustration snowballs inside me until my vision flares white. I was wrong. I don’t know Temujin as well as I thought I did, despite the fact that he’s been tormenting me like a vengeful ghost for months now, prodding invisible wounds he couldn’t have known existed.
“Snow Conjurers!” I scream. The heat from the starfire feels even hotter than the blaze I started in the vault. Melting my icy core. Thankfully, the Snow Conjurers don’t need additional instruction. Flakes of the heaviest, wettest snow fall from the ceiling of the treasury and smother the flames. I urge them to continue, and the snow builds into a wall of solid white that seals off the burning hall. It won’t hold Temujin and Enebish for long, but hopefully long enough.
“Freeze the floor!” I call as I charge back the way we came, relying on the faint glow of the dying starfire to guide us. The rest of the Kalima follow, the Ice Heralds at the rear, painting the tiles with sparkling strokes of ice.
“We can’t use the grand entrance,” the Sky King says in a shrill voice that sounds nothing like the man I’ve served for half my life. He isn’t wrong. Those doors will either be obliterated like the rear entrance or the traitors will be lying in wait in the courtyard, ready to ambush us. “We’re trapped!”
Heiswrong about that. There’s another way—a way I imagined as a child, staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows of Papá’s office while he finished his work.
“What are those tiny bridges?” I’d asked, my face pressed against the glass, enthralled with the lacy wings extending from his second-story room to the building adjacent. They looked like a highway for birds. Only birds didn’t need a highway. They could fly.
“Those are called buttresses, my dear,” Papá said. “They keep the building steady, help to hold it up. And they look rather nice, don’t you think?”
If we can reach them, they will look better than nice.
“Why are you leading usup?” Iska mutters when I bang through the seventh door on the left and pound up the steps. “We’ll be treed like snow leopards. We might as well surrender down here.”
“If you want to surrender, stay. If you want to escape and return to fight another day, follow me,” I say as I slam into Papá’s office.
The familiar scents of pipe smoke and his bergamot cologne hit me, both comforting and paralyzing. He and Mamá retreated to the safety of our estate after the attack on the Sky Palace, but if he were here, he wouldn’t doubt me for a second. Papá is proud and supportive to a fault—evidenced by the awards from every minor concert or competition I’ve ever participated in, plastered to the walls and dangling from the ceiling. The gauntlet of medals slap my cheeks, making the pressure even more overwhelming.
I stumble through the pitch black and crash into Papá’s gigantic desk, toppling papers and making a mess of his carefully arranged quills. Once I’ve battered through the furniture, I lift my hands and ease forward until my palms meet the chilled windowpane. Then I spread my fingers and pump my bitter cold into the glass. I can feel it shudder and expand—like a bowstring drawn too tight.
With a loudpop,tinkling glass falls across my boots and down the outer wall of the treasury, where it smashes against the cobblestones. I don’t know if it’s because my hearing is heightened in the dark, but the sound is louder than a cannon firing.
If Enebish and Temujin didn’t know where we were before, they do now.
“Go. Hurry!”
“Gowhere,Ghoa?” Varren asks. “You can’t expect us to jump out a second-story window.”
“Of course not. There are buttresses. Walk across to the adjacent building. Hopefully it hasn’t been invaded.”
“How?” someone shouts.
“We can’t see!” another voice interjects.
“Scoot or crawl,” I shoot back. “Do whatever you must. Just go. We cannot be captured. They’ll kill every one of us, then Ashkar will have no hope of recovery.”
“Do as she says!” the Sky King bellows behind me, and despite everything, my racing heart flutters with satisfaction. Vindication.
“We can try to provide some light,” Weroneka, one of the Sun Stokers, says. She and the others feel their way to the window and raise orbs of light as Lizbet ventures out onto the buttress. She’s the smallest and lightest of all of us and, as a Breeze Bringer, she can wield the drafts of wind to steady her balance. She’s the natural choice to make the first crossing. I keep sight of her brown braid until she’s halfway across. The Sun Stokers’ orbs grow smaller and dimmer every second, shrinking from the size of melon fruit to potatoes, but Enebish’s power is flagging too. Every time she snuffs the Sun Stokers’ light, the oppressive darkness lightens a shade. Ink to midnight. Raven to charcoal. It’s a battle of stamina, and she is out of practice.
Vanesh, another Breeze Bringer, mounts the buttress next. He shuffles out a few steps, then turns and extends his hand to the Sky King. Varren helps the king navigate the jagged window and steadies his balance until he catches hold of Vanesh. Then the two of them creep forward slowly. Painfully slowly.
“Faster!” I hiss. But the Sky King is too wobbly—encumbered and off balance in his heavy fox fur cloak and pointed slippers. “Lose the finery!” I order. Vanesh turns carefully, hands trembling as he fumbles with the buckle of the Sky King’s cloak. Which is stuck. Of course. Vanesh is still tearing at the clasp when the darkness ripples. The sky flares orange, and my ears ring with a deadly hum.
“Turn back!” I shout.
Too late.
Several balls of starfire whiz past the window, demolishing the courtyard and east wing of the treasury. Varren leaps back into the room, but Vanesh and the Sky King are too far, nearly to the apex of the buttress, and moving slower than ever, thanks to the king’s hysterics. He’s shouting threats and gesticulating wildly instead of putting one foot in front of the other.
