Kreya breathed in, steadying her arm. She’d never had Stran’s strength with a sword or Jentt’s speed and efficiency with daggers, but she knew how to throw a knife. She’d practiced for hours each day, at Jentt’s insistence, and she’d continued having the occasional practice even after she’d exiled herself to her tower. No matter how many constructs she created, he wanted her to be able to defend herself. It had been a while, but her muscles remembered the grip, the angle.
“Lower,” Zera said. “Only a—yes, there. There.”
As soon as she moved, it would see her and switch its attention to her. She’d have only a brief second between throwing and when it could seize her mind.
She didn’t hesitate.
Snapping her eyes open, she gauged the distance, adjusted the angle, and threw. As her arm completed the throw, she felt a warmth spread through her body. Her thoughts slowed, as if they were swimming through mud, and she dropped to her knees.
Distantly, she heard a wet thunk.
The blade buried itself in the jaguar’s neck. It screamed, and in that instant, it lost control of its prey’s minds. The croco-raptor thrashed in the web. Zera sprang from the rock and ran. Kreya grabbed the controls of the crawler. Reaching out an arm, she pulled Zera up onto the crawler with her and shouted, “Nacri-ze! Raca!”
The crawler shot back into the forest.
Beside her, Zera activated a strength talisman. As one of the waiting croco-raptors hurled itself at them, Zera kicked it back. It slammed into a tree. A second raptor leaped for the crawler, and Kreya turned hard right toward the river.
Closer to the river, the forest was less dense. She urged the crawler faster, beyond the speed of the croco-raptors. At last, the cries of their pursuers faded. Soon, they were gone entirely, off to hunt easier prey.
“I fucking hate this place,” Zera said.
Kreya agreed. “Sinna,” she said soothingly to the bone.
They slowed to a less breakneck speed, and they continued along the river, northward, between the mountains and toward the forbidden plains.
Chapter Seven
After stashing the crawler beneath an overhang of vines, Kreya crept out of the mist to emerge just beyond the mountains. Zera was behind her, peering over her shoulder. Ahead of them was the border wall. Beyond it was the forbidden zone, an uninhabited land that stretched so far that it exceeded the horizon.
We made it,Kreya thought.
Getting here was supposed to have been the easy part. Instead, she felt as if she’d been shoved through a cheese grater. Zera looked in even worse shape, with a bruise across her left cheek and a slash through her left eyebrow. One arm was wrapped in bandages, though thankfully not broken. Kreya felt an ache through her whole body, plus a pain in her lower back that felt as if someone were drilling between her vertebrae. Still, they were at the wall.
“Should I distract the guards?” Zera offered.
Kreya snorted. “Not enough of them to be worth the effort.”
She counted—three guards visible on this stretch of wall, which was far too few for the size of the area. Just bowmen, mostly clustered by the guardhouse. Catapults had been set up at intervals, but no one manned them.
It looked like no one cared.
Last time Kreya had been here, the guards had very much cared. When Grand Master Lorn had sealed the forbidden zone, he’d done it with an army. Where was that army now? Maybe there was something she was missing. A trap.
“Stealth and speed then, and they’ll never know we were here.” Zera started forward.
But Kreya grabbed her wrist. “It’s too easy.”
“You’retoo worried. Eklor’s dead. There are no traps. Just a few barely-out-of-diapers guards to keep up appearances and keep out ordinary bone thieves. Darling, it’s been a good long while since we’ve been ordinary. No one’s expecting anyone like us.”
Kreya loosened her grip.She’s right,she thought. No matter how fresh the memories felt to her, it had been many years since the end of the war. This guard duty... It looked as if it was considered mostly ceremonial at this point, a light duty for those in training before they took on more important assignments. In fact, the nearest guard looked barely older than a boy. She couldn’t see his face from this distance, but his body was lanky, the stretched-out look of a just-grown child.Still a baby,she thought. He hadn’t even been born yet when the war happened. Besides, no one was expecting any thieves to try to cross the wall, especially here. Thanks to their crash into the valley, they were approaching from a completely unexpected direction.
She wondered if people had forgotten what had happened here. Had it been long enough for it to fade into legend? Luckily or unluckily, she didn’t have to rely on half-forgotten legends. She had memories.
And she remembered there were culverts with drainagegrates along the wall, every quarter mile, to allow rainwater to flow from the plains and funnel into the valley. When the wall had first been built, they’d been secured with fine ironwork, the thick kind—impenetrable. “How long does it take iron to rust?”
“Depends if it’s been exposed to water.”
“Remember the grates? Think twenty-five years is long enough?”
