Ash and Quill(62)

Jess lunged forward, got Beck square in his sights, and very nearly killed him. Would have, if the guard Indira hadn't fired on Jess first. Her bullet hissed close enough that he felt the heat of its passage, and the shot intended to put Beck down went wide.

Beck still had a gun of his own, and now he realized he was under attack. He turned and sighted on Jess.

Santi hit the man with his uninjured shoulder, hard enough to lift Beck clear off his footing. Santi slammed him down on the steps. Beck landed with a bone-cracking thud, screaming.

Now Indira had two enemies, Santi and Jess, and a hesitation of which to target cost her dear. Neither of them was quick enough to get her.

Wolfe was.

He turned, slipping out of his guard's hold with a grace that would have been unexpected to anyone who didn't know him, and just as easily plucked a knife from the man's belt. As he spun, he threw with an accuracy Jess knew he'd never equal, and the knife tumbled in a perfectly stable arc, end over end, to bury itself in Indira's chest. 

She shot anyway, but shock disrupted her aim, and the one directed at Santi went wide, to pock a hole in the marble wall. She looked down in disbelief and then took hold of the knife and started to pull it free. She didn't manage more than a fraction of it before she was folding at the knees, and then down.

Beck was screaming where he lay on the stairs, one leg at a drastic angle, but he had no weapon and was no threat now, and Jess, Santi, and Wolfe all turned on the guard holding Morgan.

He let go and ran. Morgan lurched forward, nearly falling, into Jess's arms.

"What is this?" she shouted over the awful keening of the sirens. "What's happening?"

He didn't have time to explain. Even thinking of it made him sick. Santi tried to reach for Wolfe, but the Scholar shook him off and rushed down the steps, past Beck, to kneel next to Indira.

The woman was still alive, Jess saw. Wolfe bent and said something to her, and put his hand on her forehead. Her lips moved, and her eyes closed, and he jerked the knife free with one fast motion.

She died quickly, then. Fast and clean, as she probably deserved. Indira wasn't their enemy. Beck was, perhaps. But most of these people . . . They were just frightened and desperate, and it had all gone so suddenly, devastatingly wrong.

"What can we do?" Jess shouted to Santi. Santi shook his head without taking his gaze from Wolfe, who was wearily rising. "Sir!"

"We go," Santi said. "There's nothing else to be done."

Morgan wasn't strong enough to run, even with Jess's help; he picked her up and carried her as they moved through the muddy, stinking, dead fields toward the outbuilding near the wall. Halfway across, Jess had the feeling that someone was following, and looked behind them.

It was the doctor. Askuwheteau. He was approaching at a slipping, stumbling run, and he was leading a small column of people, including the woman Jess had met at the doctor's home. His housekeeper. "Wait!" Askuwheteau called. A young child tripped and fell, and the doctor, without pausing, scooped him up and carried him. "Do you have a way out? Please!"

Jess looked at them. People of Askuwheteau's native blood, he thought, and a number of others who must have put their faith in him. This is mad. It'll get us all caught. "Yes," he said. "Come with us. Hurry."

Wolfe and Santi were ahead of them, and though Wolfe gave Jess a stern look when he saw the stragglers trailing in his wake, he didn't say anything. Santi opened the door of the building-a barn, made for the storage of grain-and gestured them all in. He clapped the door shut behind them.

A lamp came alive with a soft hiss of flame, and it cast a smooth golden light over Khalila Seif's face. She took in a deep breath of relief at the sight of them. "How did you get free? I thought-"

"Doesn't matter now," Wolfe said. "Go. Go. Once the sirens stop-"

And as if he'd commanded it, the wailing came to an abrupt end. Echoes shattered back from distant walls, and then it was ominously silent. Not even thunder broke the stillness. They looked up, though all they could see was the dark roof overhead.

The paralysis broke when Jess heard the first thin, high whistle of a ballista bomb. He remembered that hellish sound all too well. He'd heard it in Oxford, in England, and he'd seen what a no-quarter bombardment by the High Garda really meant. "Go!" Jess shouted, and they were all moving for the back of the building, where Khalila slid aside a door wide enough for a hay cart. They were only a short distance from the wall.


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