The Forbidden Wish(86)

When she reaches the wall, she clenches the cloak in her teeth and begins climbing, finding footholds in the eroded mortar between the bricks. Arrows stud the wall around her, striking sparks as they clash with the stone, before falling away. The walls are nearly as high as the palace, and her climb is perilous, but she continues doggedly on.

“Hand!” cries a voice from above. Khavar and Nessa are leaning over the top of the parapet, and they grab Caspida’s hands and pull her up.

“Looks like it went smoothly,” says Nessa, frowning at the oncoming wave of soldiers.

The guards posted on this section of the wall lie senseless, hands bound with their own belts. But farther down the walls, to the right and left, others are now charging our way.

“Cas, you all right?” asks Nessa.

“Let’s just keep moving,” says the princess stonily.

Khavar already has a rope tied around the rampart, and she throws it wide. Without waiting to check if it’s secure, Caspida wraps the end of the cloak around her hands, grabs the rope, and slides down, planting her feet against the wall to slow her descent. The other girls follow.

Ensi and Raz are waiting below, furiously fending off a handful of guards. The air glitters with crimsonleaf powder, which Ensi slings in wide arcs. The quarters too close for Raz to use her bow, she makes do with a small curved scimitar.

“Hurry!” Ensi cries. “I’m running out!”

Caspida, Khavar, and Nessa drop to the ground in quick succession, just as the one remaining guard reaches Ensi and raises his sword, poised to take off her head with one strike.

Moving in a blur, Caspida whips out a knife and throws it. The blade sinks into the man’s shoulder with such force that he drops the sword and stumbles backward, screaming.

“Let’s go!” Caspida yells.

The girls cut right and race along the outer wall. When guards take position above and begin firing arrows, they dive behind an abandoned cart of cabbages.

“What now?” cries Ensi.

“We have to go south, through the city,” says Caspida.

“This is a disaster,” moans Khavar. “Poor Gao is so stressed.” She strokes the head of her snake, which emerges from her collar.

“Your snake is stressed?” hisses Nessa.

“Everyone quiet!” Caspida orders. “Get this cart moving. Stay low, and it’ll block their shots.”

The girls, still crouched, grab the side of the cart and begin rolling it forward. Arrows pound into the other side and sink into the cabbages with a wet sound very much like flesh. Bits of leafy greens rain down on their heads.

“Ugh,” says Ensi. “I hate cabbage.”

Caspida hazards a look over the cart, ducking swiftly when an arrow drives into the wall above her head. “Not much farther.”

I have a sickening sense of where we are going, and trapped as I am, there is no way to plead my case, to make her see the truth. Panic begins pulsing through me. I swirl around and around, curling and twisting with dread. Stop, please, let’s talk, let’s think this through, I can help you . . .

The girls reach the wall separating the palace district from the common one and hurtle over it like a troupe of acrobats, dropping to the other side, oblivious to my cries.

Caspida glances up and down the wall. “They’ll not stop here.”

The city is waking as the girls hurry through the streets. Though the sun is still hidden, the sky is turning faintly lighter, and the smells of baking bread and brewing tea waft through the air. The girls are forced to slow their pace, to blend in to the early crowd of yawning commoners on their way to set up stalls in the market. Caspida leads the way, moving with familiarity along the alleys and side streets that bend crookedly between the looming buildings. The others keep a sharp eye out, all of them walking in a tight knot, still hidden in the predawn gloom by their dark clothing. Caspida ties the lamp to her belt so she can draw her cloak around herself, her hood low over her face.

“Guards to the left,” murmurs Khavar. “Don’t look, but they’re coming this way.”

“Have they seen us?” asks Caspida.

“Not yet. We should split up. They’re looking for a group of girls. Separately we’d have a better chance.”

But it’s too late. The guards catch sight of them, shouting out and drawing their weapons. The Watchmaidens peel away in all directions, and the princess bolts into an alley. She ducks into a doorway, swiping aside the curtain covering it and overturning a stack of pots behind it, bursting in on a startled family sharing a loaf of stale bread. A baby in the room begins to cry. Caspida holds a finger to her lips, slipping into their midst, drawing her cloak tightly around herself and covering the lamp.