Then he lunges for the nearest soldier. He manages to get his hands on the butt of a gun and raises it at Aramin—but before he can fire, a bullet hits the gun and knocks it out of his hand. The Speaker yelps and shoves his hand in his mouth, hopping a little from the sting.
I look to see Pira pointing her gun at the Speaker, her lips turned down in a scowl, the barrel of her gun still smoking.
Aramin casts the Speaker a cold look. “You’ll be fine,” he calls out to him. “The Federation will be sparing your life anyway, won’t they?”
The Speaker stands there, frozen, as the Firstblade turns his head to his Strikers and lifts his voice, as if he had been ready for this attack all along. “Form your ranks!”
Their fists go to their chests in unison, and as one, they stream from the stands and run out of the arena, off to take their positions in front of the double walls. At the same time, the Senators, finally realizing the full extent of what’s about to happen, break into clusters and run too, hurrying for their homes.
Tomm and Pira are the only ones who run with Adena, Jeran, and me as we hurry to the supply halls outside the arena. Through my link, I send frantic messages to Red.
The Federation is here. The attack has begun.
He still can’t hear my words. I curse to myself, try again in vain, and then hope that he can feel the desperation pounding in my mind as I sprint to the supply hall. Here, dozens of weapons line the cases. One by one, we strap them on without a word as Tomm and Pira look on.
Six daggers each, their edges ready and sharpened, into our bandoliers and halters.
Two long, curved blades, tucked into their sheaths with a flourish.
Two guns each, strapped securely to our belts, a cloth bandolier of bullets around our waists.
Our crossbows slung over our backs.
Not long ago, Corian counted our weapons with me every morning. Now we do it without him, in what might be the last time we ever strap on our weapons.
Beside me, Adena finishes first and turns momentarily to face Pira. “Why’d you help us that day?” she says. “Out at the warfront, when you caught us running?”
She still wears that sneer on her face, the same one she’d always turned on me, but this time she looks away toward the walls. “They said you were going to destroy the Ghosts,” she replies. “I thought that was worth it.”
Beside her, Tomm yanks out a blade and a gun. He frowns at us, but this time, his wrath is trained not on us but in the direction of the gates.
“Are you done?” he snaps at me. When he sees my full arsenal, he nods. “Hurry up, then.”
Adena turns instead toward the Grid. “I’ll meet you all there,” she calls at me over her shoulder. “There are some supplies I need to grab.”
Then she’s off before anyone can say otherwise. Jeran dashes after her, the two of them soon running in sync as they disappear past the Plaza.
I call out again to Red as I run with Tomm and Pira. Still no answer, but I feel the rumble of something buried deep in him, that power he calls when his true fury rises. It sends a current through me, and I shudder with anticipation.
By the time we reach the edge of the Inner City, a fire is burning at the top of the outer wall, where a flaming rock hurled from a catapult had ignited a store of our own explosives and collapsed an upper portion of the gate. The rest of the steel gates seem to be holding, but I canfeel the heat of the flames even from the ground, and the soldiers on the walls are running frantically, shielding their faces from the inferno as they attempt to put it out.
We run into Adena in our rush down toward the gates. Her eyes are wild, her face smeared with oil and grease, and when she sees us, she wipes a hand across her face.
“I don’t know what they’re using to hit us,” she says breathlessly, “but the fuel igniting the walls is burning hotter than any flame I’ve ever known. It’s strong enough that I can see some signs of it melting the steel along the ruined area of the outer wall. You see that?” She points to where some of the steel has started to warp. “It’s a reaction I haven’t seen.”
That makes me blink. The walls were built by the Early Ones, their steel near impenetrable. “What?” I sign. “That steel has resisted every kind of attack.”
“I know. And yet, here we are. Have you seen their Ghosts at the wall?” The fear in her eyes seems to hollow her from the inside out. “They’re enormous. The size of beasts. I’ve never seen so many.”
I think of the Premier and the two he had brought with him during the siege weeks ago. Then I picture my mother out there in the panicking crowds, trying to escape the Federation soldiers by hiding in her home. Or maybe she’s not hiding at all. She might be helping others escape, trying to gather them into areas of the shanties where the Federation’s soldiers aren’t looking.
“I have to get out there,” I sign grimly to Adena.
“You won’t be able to do it before we all head out together,” Adena replies. “The Firstblade’s going to send us out through the gate tunnels, and then they’re going to collapse them the instant we get out.”
That means there’s no retreating for us tonight. Once the Strikers head out to fight, we’re not coming back.
“And the citizens?” I ask.
