74
~ MEGS ~
“Oh, pig shite,” Megs said under her breath. She pushed to her feet, but Linna was already up, rune-marked dagger held between her first two fingers at her ear.
Megs opened her mouth to say, Don’t, she’s too far away from us, but the dagger went flying before Megs could utter the first syllable. A humming glint of silver in the moonlight, its spin only stopping when it grazed across the woman’s arm.
Megs held her breath, Linna tensing beside her. The woman stopped, but no telltale smoke rose from her form; neither did she age before their eyes. She picked up the dagger and glanced around, looking for whoever had thrown it at her.
Megs seized Linna’s sleeve and pulled her down behind the crenellations. “Now you’ve lost your dagger and she knows we’re here!” she whispered fiercely.
“Give me yours,” Linna said urgently, reaching towards Megs’s belt.
Megs pushed her away. “No! We’re already down one. The last thing we need to do is lose the – ”
“She was sprinting a hundred yards away from us and I still grazed her arm.” Linna held out an expectant hand. “I’ll hit her this time, I swear it. Hurry, while she’s standing still!”
Reluctantly, Megs pulled the blade with the strange engravings she’d worn at her hip for years and slapped it hilt first into Linna’s waiting palm.
The moment it touched her hand, Linna was a blur of motion, standing and throwing at the same time. She let out a breath that sounded relieved, but Megs was afraid to look.
“She’s down,” Linna said. “But we need to get to her and get our daggers back before someone spots her.” She squinted down the curve of the wall and cursed. “The middle of the night and she had to fall in the one place illuminated by lamp light.”
Heading in the same direction Akella had gone, Linna moved along the wall at a crouch.
Megs didn’t like this. It was all too exposed – the two of them inside a hornet’s nest on the edge of being stirred. And the only weapons that could protect them against their enemies were a hundred yards away. If Megs were still in the Sunrise Mountains, orchestrating a raid on a mountain-man camp, she would’ve aborted this mission and retreated while most of her fighters still lived. But this wasn’t the Sunrise Mountains, and even if she wanted to retreat, there was nowhere to go.
Linna dropped onto the slanted roof of the building that was supposedly the compound’s nursery with the same graceful ease Akella had, then looked up, waving for Megs to follow.
Mimicking Linna’s movements, she swung one leg over the crenellations, then the other, hanging from the top and trying not to think about what would happen if her landing was off. The balls of her feet struck the roof, but her angle was wrong and she stumbled. A roof tile loosened and broke free, sliding out from under Megs’s feet. But before she could fall off the edge of the roof, Linna snatched her arm and steadied her.
Megs nodded her thanks. Not for the first time, she thought she caught something in Linna’s eye, some flash of emotion that wasn’t simply about Megs almost falling off the roof. Only a minute ago, Linna had asked Megs if she had loved Akella. Was Linna harboring feelings for Megs? If she was, she’d chosen an extraordinarily poor time to bring it up.
Megs pushed the speculation aside. Linna wasn’t the only one who couldn’t afford a distraction right now.
Linna edged down the roof’s slope, then repeated the hang-and-drop maneuver off the side of the building. Megs followed, making it to the ground without further incident. She desperately wanted to go to the window at the end of the building and look inside to see what had caused it to shatter, but they would have to do that later. Right now, their priority was reaching the woman lying in the puddle of lamplight who had Megs’s dagger lodged in her back.
After a quick glance around the compound’s open courtyard, Linna dashed towards the fallen woman, Megs at her heels. The woman lay unmoving and face down, hands splayed out on either side of her head. Every time Megs had seen an Order woman struck with one of the rune-marked daggers, they had either disintegrated into dust or turned into someone elderly and frail. But between the dim light and the woman’s face pressed into the dirt, it was impossible to guess if she’d aged. The dagger protruded from her back, roughly between her shoulder blade and her spine. Did she even live?
Linna took no chances. Drawing her short sword, she approached the woman from behind, lightly kicking the back of her legs. The woman didn’t move, didn’t utter a sound. Linna took another step forward and squatted at the woman’s side, pulling Megs’s dagger free.
“Here,” she said, holding it by the blood-soaked blade. “I told you I would hit – ”
The woman rolled onto her side, reaching up and grabbing the edge of Linna’s pauldron at the same time. Linna fell sideways with a surprised grunt. In the next second, the Order woman had Linna pinned beneath her, both hands wrapped around Linna’s throat.
And there was nothing elderly or frail about her.
Megs didn’t bother pulling her short sword free. She scooped up her dagger, which Linna had dropped when she fell, and stabbed the Order witch from behind. The woman didn’t loosen her grip. Megs stabbed again – and again – and again. Finally the woman collapsed, hands falling away. Megs kicked her off Linna, preparing to strike again, but there was no need. The woman’s unseeing eyes stared skyward, mouth slightly ajar.
Linna sat up and sucked in a breath, rubbing her throat with one hand while her eyes flicked between the dead woman and Megs.
“What was that you were saying about hitting her from a distance?” Megs asked drily, one eyebrow raised. She helped Linna to her feet, then used the dead woman’s black cloak to clean the blood from her blade.
“I did hit her,” Linna said, tone defensive. Meekly, she added, “Just… didn’t hit her exactly where I’d aimed.”
Megs chuckled. “Come on. Let’s get her out of the light. We’ve been damned lucky she’s the only one we’ve seen so far.”
“We should take the cloak,” Linna said as she hooked her hands beneath the woman’s shoulders. “Use it to disguise ourselves.”
“You can,” said Megs. She picked up the woman’s ankles. The dead woman was lighter than she looked. “I don’t want anything that belonged to these filthy witches touching me. Who knows what kind of curses they place on their belongings.”
“You’re being superstitious. Be practical.”
“Superstitious?” Megs said, incredulous. “Linna, look around you. We’re inside a city whose every inhabitant is a shadow-possessed slave, and right now we’re in the headquarters of a den of assassins enhanced by shadows. I am being practical.”
Linna snorted. “Practical. Like, Akella sneaking off without us practical?”
They carried the corpse around the corner of the large, three-story building with the bell jutting from its side, setting it down in shadows untouched by lamplight or moonlight.
“I don’t understand why you have such a problem with Akella,” Megs said. “You’ve been behaving like a bratty child ever since we found her in the cargo hold. It’s not like you. And I would think you would be glad to have her – she’s a good fighter and we need all the help we can get.”
“We made it this far on our own,” Linna said. “Just you and me, for months.”
“Yeah, and in all that time the closest we’ve come to true danger was when we snuck onto the cargo ship that brought us here. But this?” Megs swept out an arm to remind Linna where they were. “This is a totally different level of danger and you know it.”
Linna scowled and opened her mouth, presumably to argue, but then she closed it again. With visible effort, she smoothed the sour expression off her face. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Let’s go find the pirate before she gets herself killed.”
Some fifty yards away, a muffled crash came from the direction of the building where Akella had disappeared. They’d tarried here long enough.
Megs straightened, readying her rune-marked dagger in one hand and her short sword in the other. After a quick scan of the grounds, they dashed away from the protective shadows cast by the three-story building and towards the supposed nursery.
The two of them crouched side by side next to the simple wooden door that led inside, pressing their backs against the wall.
They’d fought alongside each other for months at this point, battling their way through pockets of mountain men in the Sunrise Mountains until they reached the coast on the other side. They could read each other intuitively, which was why Linna didn’t need to so much as signal Megs before she eased the door open and slipped inside. It was also why, when Linna shouted “Duck!,” Megs obeyed without hesitation.