They rode ahead, with the behemoths marching behind them. As they passed the other palaces, Kreya awakened the statues in their gardens. Soon, they filled the gold-flecked streets of the fifth tier. Reaching Zera’s palace, Kreya ordered her statues to halt.
She woke those inside and led them out to join the others. “It’s a simple plan: the statues defend the guild, and while they hold back the army, we slip inside and alert the bone workers. Then the bone workers fight the army while the five”—she glanced at Amurra—“six of us find Eklor. Any questions?”
Amurra raised her hand. “What about the persuasion talisman? How can we be sure the bone workers will listen?”
Good question. They still didn’t know how powerful the talisman was. But she’d seen Eklor’s grip on Lorn slip when his son told him about the bones. “Enough proof should break through whatever hold he has on them.”
“If they need proof, we’re about to have a lot of it,” Zera said. “Just have to make sure they’re paying attention.”
Stran asked, “Marso, can you predict where Eklor’s army will emerge?”
“I... I don’t...”
Kindly, Kreya stopped him. “Not necessary. They’ll emerge as close to the headquarters as possible. He’ll want to keep as much of the element of surprise as he can before he attacks. He won’t want the bone workers to be ready to defend themselves.” More quietly, she said, “It’s what I would do.”
It was disturbing how easy she found it to predict his actions. She liked it better when she couldn’t imagine his thoughts and feelings so easily.I am not like him,she thought.There are lines I have never and would never cross.
“Okay, great, we need to make sure the bone workers see the army, ideally before they’re crushed by it,” Zera said. “You’re right that that should weaken the effects of the talisman—no talisman, even one made by a genius, is all-powerful. We weaken the effects, free the bone workers, grab Eklor, end the war. Piece of cake.”
Taking a breath, Kreya looked at all her friends. This felt similar to the moment in the abandoned farmhouse, before they began their assault on the plain. They’d prepared as best they could, felt full of self-righteous optimism, certain they couldn’t fail. Not knowing what they were truly walking into.
“I’m sure absolutely nothing will go wrong,” Zera said with a straight face.
Shooting her a sharp look, Jentt reached toward Kreya and took her hand. “It will be different this time.”
“Yeah,” Zera said more seriously, “we’re older, wiser, and cuter.”
Kreya wanted to believe that was true. Not the cuter part, although it did momentarily make her smile. No, she wanted to believe they weren’t just making all the same mistakes, underestimating their enemy and overestimating themselves. Closing her eyes, she saw Jentt fall, pierced by an arrow, as fresh a memory as if it were yesterday. She couldn’t bear losing him again. Not when she knew how little time she had left to gift him, if he fell. And if she fell? Leaving him alone? Or if Zera fell, after Kreya had just found her again? Or Stran and Amurra, leaving their children alone?
“This time, we aren’t going in order to be heroes,” Stran was saying. “This time, we’re going for the people we love.That’swhy it will be different.That’swhy we’ll win.”
It was a beautiful thing to say, and Kreya let it warm her. She reached out her other hand, and Zera took it. Stran took Zera’s and Amurra’s, Amurra took his and Marso’s, and Marso took hers and Jentt’s, completing the circle. Kreya felt as if strength were flowing between them. She let it fuel her.
“Let’s save the world,” Kreya said. “And this time, let’s finish the job.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Their mistake was simple: they believed Eklor hadn’t changed.
Kreya and the others assumed he still only wanted to target the bone workers. If he had, then Kreya’s prediction would have been correct. He would have ordered his army to attack the guild headquarters on the third tier as soon as all the bone workers were gathered within. Kreya’s statue army then could have descended from the fifth tier and surrounded them, fighting from the outside while, warned by Kreya’s team, the bone workers fought from the inside, squeezing the enemy between them.
But hehadchanged.
Now he hated them all.
Not a single citizen of Cerre had sided with him against the Bone Workers Guild. Not one man, woman, or child had shown a drop of understanding of what he’d suffered and what he’d achieved, or at least not that he perceived. The people of this city—every man, woman, and child—had cheered and celebrated Eklor’s defeat. They had turned the execution of his apprentice into a festival, and they had glorified the five so-called heroes who had destroyed his dreams of justice. And so, he determined, they should all pay the price for their lack of compassion for his pain.
His army had crept close to the city through the mists and then clawed their way through dirt and stone, climbing high within the mountain itself, both using the existing tunnels and creating new ones. As dawn touched the peaks and ridges and bathed the rocky slopes in lemon-gold, hundreds of metal, bone, and decaying flesh soldiers burst into the city of Cerre,noton the third tier, where the guild headquarters were and where Kreya’s team expected them, but instead on the first and second tiers, through the homes of ordinary people.
The part-machine, part–flesh-of-the-dead soldiers ripped through the walls of kitchens and bedrooms. They destroyed shops and schools and markets. Several climbed to tear down the arches that held the aqueducts. Hundreds of gallons of water flooded the streets.
And as they destroyed the city, they killed its people.
Ensconced safely within the guild headquarters, the bone workers had no idea of the massacre in progress on the lower tiers. They were enrapt, seduced by the persuasion talisman and by their own fears and desires, listening to Master Eklor spin promises of a deathless future: the lure of immortality for themselves and their families.
But on the fifth tier, high above, Kreya and her team heard the screams of the dying.
And it didn’t matter if they felt hopeful or hopeless, youthful or every bit of their age, trained or not, strong or not, ready or not. The war was no longer in the past. It was here, now.
