“My girl.” Yemi smiled. Her throat burned. She hadn’t noticed she’d started crying. “Was it just him?”
“No. Two others. Women with… cannons? In their hands. I don’t—” She began to choke, raising her hands to try and mimic what a hand cannon might look like. Yemi stopped her.
“It’s okay. It’s fine.” Yemi sniffled and wiped her nose with the back of a bloodied hand. She looked up the hallway, unsure of what to do. She might be able to carry Enna to the crypt entrance, but it wasn’t guaranteed safety, and anyone could round the corner at any moment. She still hadn’t found Nova. Could she leave Enna here? Like this?
“Either of the women have white hair?” she asked, dragging the man’s body out of her doorway.
Enna shook her head no and screamed through clenched teeth as Yemi half pulled, half carried her into the room. She knew the shot was spent in the gun Enna held, so she propped her against the bed and handed her the one she’d taken off the man in the crypts. Her father’s ghost would forgive her for abandoning principle here.
“Right, so you have one shot, okay? I’m going to try to come back for you.” She kissed Enna’s forehead.
She made her way back out of the residential wing, following the sounds of pain and clashing metal, trying not to think of what she would do if Nova was as far gone as Enna when she found her.
Heading in the direction of the grand hall, she met a cluster of rebels clamoring for something she couldn’t see through a doorway on the other side of them.
Cutter?
She tried to glimpse the spear tip whenever it flashed over the heads of the mob to make sure, but in an instant, it was gone. The rebels flooded the corridor, and Yemi began to panic. She’d only managed to take a step to try and save him before another explosion, this one directly in front of her, sent smoke and dust and rebel bodies in abillowing cloud of debris rapidly in her direction. The blast forced her hard into a wall. She ducked into an antechamber used by the household staff for storage and shielded her head as the stone around her rattled, an ominous, ground-glass sound emitted by blocks scraping against one another.
When the ringing subsided in her ears, she found the screams dying out before the dust settled. They were replaced by the sounds of begging and last breaths, the thud and squish and singe of pierced and burned flesh, the cracking of bones as they were walked over by patient, booted feet.
“Told you it would work,” said a man’s gruff baritone.
Cutter.
Relieved but heart still racing, Yemi stepped out of the room with her hands up to find Cutter and Nova walking among what remained of the fallen enemy, nudging them to check for life and then ending it abruptly.
Nova was first to notice her and took a stance poised to pounce.
“It’s me.” Yemi raised the mask.
“Fuck me, you’re alive.” Nova hugged her tightly, and Yemi inhaled her in return. She smelled of sweat and gunpowder and very vaguely of coconut. “You’re alright?” Nova pulled back to inspect her.
“Fine,” Yemi replied. “I killed a man. Men. More than one.”
“Real ate up about it?”
Yemi shook her head. “No time.”
“You’re not wrong.”
“You’re alright?” Cutter asked, joining them a second late. His ornate spear tip was cracked and sparking bright blue against the dusty haze of the area. He used a battle glove, which heated the core of the staff so that the tip sliced through flesh like butter and cauterized on its way out. Her father had had the only other one like it. Gifts of the Obé’s banished armorers.
“Fine,” Yemi replied. “Did you just set off a bomb in the palace?”
“Found a clutch of leftover fireworks,” said Nova, brandishing a muted black ball about the size of her palm.
“We have to get you out of here,” Cutter said. He scanned the halls around them for the best exit route.
“Is this the Drakes?” Yemi asked.
“I’d put money on it,” Nova replied. “I know I’ve seen the father here.”
Before they could settle on a path of escape, the overloud cocking of a gun pierced the quiet. Cutter spun and placed himself in front of Yemi and behind his shield as a group of rebels led by two women with hand cannons marched toward them from the west.
When they fired, the shots were startlingly loud, and the force of them dented Cutter’s shield before the round clattered to the floor.
This was new.
