Chapter
Nineteen

Zonna doesn’t speak for hours. For almost a day.

In near silence, he washes the blood off his parents’ skin, wraps them in clean cloth, and carries them out of the camp. All our attempts to help him are refused by a single sharp motion of his head, but I encase him in a wide, domed ward whether he wants it or not—the persistent rain has become a storm again, a vicious squall that sends lightning through the sky and beats against the trees. Even with the forest as a windbreak, the gusts blowing through here would be strong enough to knock him off his feet, especially when he’s unbalanced by the burdens he’s carrying. If he notices my shield, he doesn’t give a single sign.

Only once does he knowingly accept our help; when it’s time to light the fire. When Rai, Nairo, and Etaro silently approach the site he’s chosen for the burn, he relents, nodding instead of sending them away.

The blaze Rai and Nairo start is searing. It rushes out of their hands in thick ropes of orange-white flame, and it consumes the bodies, burning through flesh and bone so fast there’s no smell, not even a single hint of singed hair and sulphur. Etaro works behind them, collecting what’s left when the fire is through, pulling all the ash away from the pyre and into a pack we emptied for them. It’s the same one that held Tyrroh not long ago.

Soon, sooner than I think any of us were ready for, there is nothing left to burn.

The impossible has happened. Two of the Miriseh are dead.

When Etaro finishes gathering the ashes, ey silently hands the bag to Zonna with a murmur of condolence. I don’t even think he hears it.

We move quickly, the same pace we’ve been pushing ourselves to meet since Osshi left. Traveling inside the wagon, though, leaves too much time to think, for Zonna especially. He sits in the far back corner of the top bed, forehead resting on his knees. Although he responds when we ask him a direct question, he doesn’t otherwise speak or move. He’s not crying, he won’t eat when we offer him food, and when one of the ukaiahana’lona stumbles in the mud and injures their leg, it takes far too long for him to even look up when we call his name and ask for help.

And that is worrying me almost as much as the way this storm feels in the sky.

This is the feeling I got in the desert sometimes, the one that made me look closer at the shadows cast by the mountains and pay extra attention to the land behind us. It’s the same kind of sharp awareness that caught my attention when the first early storm dropped suddenly on Shiara, and I’ve learned to pay attention to it. This paranoid alertness has saved my life before.

Now, there’s nothing to see. No enemy to spot. No way to change the course we’re on. No way to help Zonna who looks like he’s drowning inside his own head. The helplessness of it all only serves to make my skin itch. It makes me feel as though the sun—if I could see it in the sky—would be moving at twice the speed it should be, running faster through the sky and shoving us closer to the moment when we’re going to have to take our next step and hope it’s not too late for it to do any good.

Even with the wards over the open window and door to give us a view of the world we’re passing by, I feel trapped by the storm. I want to run. I want something real to fight instead of this pervasive, nagging fear.

Tessen joins me at the window where I’d been watching the storm lash and rage against the world. Leaning against the wall, he watches me more than the landscape for a moment before he quietly says, “Tell me again what you saw.”

“When?”

“Inside the katsujo.” He reaches out, taking my hand and running his thumb along my knuckles. I glance at the others. They’re close enough to listen, but most of them are either sleeping or having their own quiet conversations.

I do as he asks, closing my eyes but holding on to his hand. Even remembering the touch of the conscious energy at the end is too much, weaker but still blisteringly present. The power in it, and the strangeness of how it was painful and soothing in turns… I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget a single moment.

Sighing, I open my eyes. Movement over Tessen’s shoulder catches my attention—Zonna’s curled up in a corner of the bed. Is his head tilted in our direction or is that wishful thinking? By all rights, he should be in charge now that Tyrroh and his parents are gone, but somehow it’s fallen to me. And now that I have the position I always thought I wanted, I don’t know what to do.

“Tessen…” I lean closer and drop my voice as low as I can. “I need to make the decisions, and I need to be right, and I’m not ready to hold the fate of so many people in my hands. How am I supposed to do that knowing the Kaisubeh or something like them are watching? What if they’re expecting another miracle like the one I pulled off in Kaisuama?”

“Don’t think about it like that.” He brushes his fingers along my hairline and down the side of my jaw, but his eyes don’t leave mine. “Think about it like— Well, from what you and the others described, it seems like they almost want to help.”

“Help.” I rub my eyes with my free hand; it feels like I’m only pushing the thoughts deeper into my brain. “If they wanted to help, they should’ve left Imaku a lot closer to Ryogo.”

Tessen shakes his head. “They’re not people, though, not the way you’re thinking. Remember the older stories Lo’a told? From those and what you said, it sounds more like the desosa somehow gained consciousness.” Then he straightens, his head snapping to stare out the window. The wagon shudders and stops, and his grip on my hand tightens. “Drop the ward, Khya. Lo’a is coming to talk to us.”

I release the ward on the door, instead creating one to protect us from the cold storm. Our departure makes the others follow, all of them trailing us out. Except Zonna. His blank gaze does track us, and I almost go back in and ask him to come with us. The words stick in my throat. He looks away. I give up for the moment and trudge out the door.

Soanashalo’a is talking to the others several feet away, her skirt tied up to keep it out of the mud. As soon as I’m within range, she says, “I got a message from another family. They know the south, and they travel between Rido’iti, Po’umi, and the other southern cities often.”

“Did something happen?” Tessen asks.

“Not yet, but as they were evacuating like we warned them to, they saw strange lights and night-black clouds on the horizon. The last few moons have been bad, but the way they talked about these clouds—” She shakes her head. “It sounded like a storm that would end the world.”

“Maybe it’s just a new storm,” Etaro suggests.

“And maybe Varan will let us feed him to a teegra,” Sanii mutters.

Etaro glares. “You don’t know it’s not!”

“And you can’t assume it is!” Sanii shoots back.

Tessen cringes at the raised voices, and I cut them off. “Stop it. What else did you hear, Lo’a?”

“There have been reports of deep sea fishing vessels returning with stories of odd currents, strange clouds, and storms that rise up out of nowhere.” Soanashalo’a’s gaze scans the group, settling on something behind us. “Some of the ships have gone missing.”

“Stolen or swallowed?” I can imagine ships being easily eaten by the angry ocean, broken up into pieces and devoured. It’s what would’ve happened to Kazu’s ship if I hadn’t been there. And I doubt any of the Ryogan ships had a ward mage onboard.

It’s bad news if the sea took them, because we’ll have to cross that water eventually. Varan would probably laugh till he choked if we drowned before ever getting a chance to challenge him. If I can even drown now.

It’s worse news if those ships were stolen. Varan with ships? The magic alone is bad enough. I don’t want him getting his hands on anything that will make this invasion easier.

And if the storm isn’t a sign of Varan’s army, it could still mean trouble. I can’t believe any crew will be willing to sail us into a storm that looks like the end of the world. There’s even less of a chance of us being able to sail a stolen ship ourselves in something that dangerous.

“All we know is they were caught in the storms. Some believe they sank, and others insist the missing ships have been blown far off course, beyond the range of any garakyu,” Soanashalo’a says.

Tessen leans in. “Is that unusual?”

“Not unheard of, but the fishing ships try to keep in contact during a storm,” Soanashalo’a explains. “If only so the others can bring word back to families if a ship is lost.”

“He’s coming,” I say, feeling the truth like a chill in my bones. “They’re almost here.”

“We don’t know that,” Zonna argues. I jump at the sound of his voice—hoarse and flat as it is—but all of us turn to listen. “Varan’s never been good at seeing the negative consequences of his choices. He found a way across the ocean and so he’s going to use it, but he didn’t think about what this level of disruption would do to the weather patterns.”

“Or, if he did, he thought it’d take more time before the damage became noticeable,” Tessen adds. “And despite the number of ward mages Varan has following him, there’s a good chance the storms and the journey will have exhausted them all.”

I cut through the useless debate. “What it means is we need to make a decision. If they’re on their way here, do we work on building our weapons now and stay to meet them, or do we find a ship and try to sail around the worst of this to reach Shiara?”

“What’s the point of going home if the army is on their way here?” Rai asks.

“If we can make it to Shiara, we might be able to find more than thirty other immortals,” Zonna says. “We’ll have more than three times as many on our side if we free everyone Varan trapped on Imaku.”

“Sure. We can do that while they’re here destroying Ryogo.” Miari shakes her head. “How can we leave them here defenseless?”

“Worse than defenseless,” Etaro says softly, looking back toward our wagon where Ahta is standing, watching us. “All they can do is flee, and they’re not even ready for that.”

“And with eleven fighters and a trunk full of overpowered rocks, we’re not ready to face an army,” Rai insists.

Tessen seems distracted, eyes straying toward the road ahead. I step closer, letting the debate continue behind me. “What is it?”

“I don’t know,” he says slowly. “There’s something strange ahead, though.”

I follow his gaze, but I don’t see anything except trees and a solid sheet of rain. “Dangerous or different?”

“Familiarly dangerous.” He looks at me, confusion creasing his face. “It feels like the Imaku rock we stole from Mushokeiji. Before you amplified it.”

“What the bellows would any of that rock be doing here?” I ask. “I thought they made sure every speck of that was hidden away.”

“It’s a distinctive feeling, Khya.” Tessen looks back toward the road. “There’s nothing else it could be.”

Glancing at the others, I realize they’ve moved closer to listen. I make a series of quick gestures and they jog back to the wagon to retrieve their weapons. Less than a minute later, we’re moving forward, weapons drawn and magic ready.

There’s a huge section of the road that looks different in the rain. When the thick drops strike most patches of the path, they sink and disappear. In other areas, it splashes, spraying smaller droplets into the air. Like sections of the road are dirt and some are stone.

The road is covered with black rock, from pieces the size of the slab Natani’s holding to a much finer gravel Tessen is examining.

It doesn’t make sense. “Where did this come from? If this from the Mushokeiji vault, I can’t believe they’d use it on this.”

“Exactly,” Sanii says. “This seems like a massive waste of a very limited resource.”

Etaro looks between the black stone and Sanii, eir narrow nose wrinkled. “Even if Osshi told them we were here, and they assumed we were the bobasu, did they seriously spread pieces of rock across the path and think that would be enough to take out all of us? Especially since we have to assume they know we’re not traveling on foot.”

“They had spells to make the stone capable of cracking Khya’s wards,” Zonna says. “We have to assume these can do more damage than the unaltered stone from Imaku. I’m guessing that walking or rolling over this isn’t a good idea.”

“Probably not. And there’s something else,” Tessen murmurs before Zonna can answer. Slowly, he stands and peers into the trees on either side of the road, searching. “Something…”

Then his head tips farther and farther back until he’s looking straight up into the trees. “Oh, no. Khya, there’s a garakyu up there. I didn’t feel it at first because of the stone, but look.”

When he points, Soanashalo’a mutters something in her language, peering up into the trees. I look, too. I can’t see it, but I trust Tessen’s word that it’s there.

I back up, signaling the others to as well. “Have there been any others on this path?”

“Not that I’ve felt,” he says, confidence in his voice. “I’ve been watching the trees since we first spotted them.”

“Sanii, how far can those see?” Ey’s the one who knows the most about that magic.

“The smaller ones are usually only used to send messages between individual people,” ey says. “They see whatever is directly in front of them, but those are bigger. I’d guess they were set up to be able to see the entire patch of stone they laid.”

“Which means they’ll know as soon as we cross it.” Rai adjusts her grip on her weapon and sparks fly from her other hand, extinguishing when they meet the wet ground.

“Ambush.” There’s no other reason to waste this much time, energy, and stone. “They’ve got to have someone waiting nearby.”

Everyone stills and quiets, giving Tessen the silence he needs to listen. We wait. And wait. His head tilts, multiple expressions flashing across his face.

“I can’t be sure,” he finally says, “but I think they’re on the rise in the distance that direction. The rain and the wind make it almost impossible to hear anything else. Lo’a, is there another way out of here?”

“One possibility. If they know we are passing this direction, though, they will almost certainly have closed the paths behind us as well.” She’s tense, her shoulders pulled back and her hands clenched. “What I want to know is how. How did they anticipate our path when even we did not know where we would travel each day?”

“This is your land,” Wehli challenges. “You tell us.”

She pulls back a little, her shoulders curving. “I—I would say Osshi in other circumstances, but he could not have known we would be here.”

“No, but…” I look back to the wagon, remembering the moment Osshi said goodbye. He took a bag with him, but it was his smaller pack. Some of his things are still stowed. “Tessen, you’ve been paying attention to garakyus outside the caravan. Did you ever search inside?”

“Why would—oh.” He looks like a shock just ran through him. Then he curses. “It was there when I started watching for the garakyus. Bellows, Khya, I trained myself to ignore it. I knew it was there, so it didn’t matter, and even after he left I never thought to wonder why it wasn’t missing.”

“And it’s active?” I ask, my stomach sinking.

Tessen nods, expression harsh. “It’s active.”

Blood and rot. I could understand Osshi abandoning us to warn his people. There was honor in that choice, even if I thought it was wrong. This? If I ever see him again, there’s a chance I might gut him for this.

“Lo’a, we need a detailed map of this area and I need to talk to whoever knows it best.” I make the request as politely as possible, refusing to take my anger at Osshi out on her.

She nods and runs off, moving as quickly as the muddy ground allows. I head toward our wagon and then stop. “The garakyu. What do we do about that?”

Rai looks at me like the answer should be obvious. “Chuck it into the forest and be done with it.”

“But then the Ryogans will know we’ve figured out how they found us,” Sanii counters.

“They’ll know we know as soon as we blow through whatever tyatsu are out there waiting for us,” she snipes.

“Because that’s worked for us so well before.” Etaro gestures at me. “Khya almost died. Tyrroh did die.”

The reminder aches. I can block the arrows now, I want to shout, to force them to remember I can protect them where I failed Tyrroh. But it takes three layers of wards, and it’s painfully exhausting work. I can keep it up for a while, but even with the extra stamina and endurance the susuji gave me, I can’t last forever.

And Etaro is talking again before I can say a word. “Ryogan soldiers may not be able to stand up against the Itagamin army, but we’re not them, Rai. We’re eleven runaways lost in a strange land. We’re outnumbered, and they have a better position and better weapons. If they know we’re preparing for them, they’ll attack early and be done with it. How many more friends are you willing to lose today?”

Pain flashes across Rai’s face.

“So we use it against them instead.” Sanii stands with eir hands on eir hips, looking at our wagon with a speculative expression that so strongly reminds me of Yorri it hurts. This is the look he would get when he was building one of his puzzles. “If you want your enemy to be a certain place, make sure they know you’ll be there. If you want your enemy to stop looking for one secret, let them find another.”

“Give them false information.” I begin to understand, and I smile. “Yes. We’ll go back to the wagon and get what we need to plan the next step, and while we’re inside, we’re going to be talking about the news Lo’a just got—a ship on the southwestern coast is willing to take us to Shiara. It’ll explain why we stopped.”

“You realize we might have to head into that trap if we want to get the hanaeuu we’la maninaio out of here safely,” Tessen murmurs after the others run to the wagon. “They can defend themselves, but they’re not fighters. If the whole caravan turns and runs, this will happen again. They’ll keep chasing them.”

“I know, but honestly, I think we’ll only have bad options and worse ones today.” Rubbing the space between my eyes, I try to think. “The path we’re on is the best way to Rido’iti, so I think we’ll have to force our way straight through the worst of this.”

“Hopefully someone can come up with a better plan than that.”

Yet, despite Tessen’s hopes, we can’t. All we do is find a way to spare Soanashalo’a and her family the danger.

“Are you sure about this, Soanashalo’a?” I ask after the others leave her wagon to prepare things in ours. “I can’t ask you to leave your people behind. They need you to lead them.”

“You did not ask, I offered,” she corrects. “First, I helped you for Osshi’s sake, and then for your own and out of gratitude, but now it is for the safety of my people. There are hundreds of us spread throughout Ryogo, and we will be caught in this war as much as anyone. If there is anything I can do to help you stop this before lives are lost, I will do it.”

“Even if it costs your own?” It might come to that. Despite what I’ve learned, and even though I can’t be damaged or drained quite as easily, there’s no way I can promise everyone will be alive at the end of this.

She lifts one shoulder and gives me a smile that is almost believable. “What is a life when it is given in protection of family?”

“The most precious thing in the world. Don’t pretend it’s worth nothing.”

“True, and it is my gift to give.”

I can’t argue with that, not when I’m doing the same thing. “All right. Be ready to leave as soon as possible, then.”

We have an ambush to ruin.

…

Most of the wagons backtrack a mile, and then turn east down a path almost too narrow for them to pass. They’ll be armed and on guard, but we’re nearly certain the Ryogans aren’t watching that particular trail; the hanaeuu we’la maninaio who travel this area never use it.

Three of the wagons will continue along the road we’re on—ours, Soanashalo’a’s, and one more. When she explained what she was doing and ordered her family to safety, five refused. None of us could turn them away.

As we near the stone-strewn road, I signal Miari and Natani, who are walking beside the slow-moving wagons. With Natani funneling her extra power, Miari forces the stones to sink beneath the mud and then move, breaking them into pieces and scattering them through the forest on either side of the road. When it’s done, I glance at Tessen. No change, he signals.

Sanii came up with the second part. Because Chio’s skill was with lightning, he made sure to teach em about the damage that kind of power can do to a spell. According to our andofume, a lightning strike is one of the only things that can break a spell like a garakyu without a mage’s involvement. Another is to completely shatter the globe—a task that’s apparently harder than it should be given how fragile the garakyus look.

None of us can create or control lightning, but there is plenty of lightning in the sky. And we have Etaro, who’s more than capable of yanking that globe loose from the branches above us.

We let the first wagon slowly enter the view of the garakyu. Then, exactly as a flash of blue-white lightning streaks across the sky, Sanii shouts the spell that shuts the garakyu’s magic off, and Etaro rips it out of the tree, pulling it down to the ground so fast it shatters. Hopefully the Ryogans will think a lightning strike took out their inanimate spies.

But the movement of the garakyu releases something else.

Black nets fall.

“Etaro!” I ward us, layering the magic like I would for arrows and bracing for the first touch of the black stone.

They don’t land. Etaro and the wind whip the things away, sending them flying through the air until they’re wrapped around the trees, well caught.

“They’re moving in.” Tessen winces, trying to listen to the enemy through the noise of the storm. Then he gasps, sharp and pained. “Arrows! Incoming!”

Three dozen strike at once. Etaro knocks a dozen of them out of the sky. Only a portion of the ones that hit, thank the Kaisubeh, are spelled and tipped with Imaku stone. I’m already braced in a corner of the wagon, now I close my eyes and focus entirely on the wards.

The wagons pick up speed, jolting and jerking down the pitted path. I’m braced for another flight of arrows. It doesn’t come right away, and it makes me wonder how well they can see the road from their perch. The trees are thick. The rain is, too. Without the garakyu to guide their aim, maybe they can’t see we’ve moved. Maybe they don’t know yet that their trap missed. That’s what we were hoping for. The rest of the plan won’t work if that part failed.

We stop, and I don’t need to give anyone signals or orders. Everyone pours out of the wagons and moves into position. We’ve tried hard to avoid killing any of the Ryogans, and except for the one guard, we’ve succeeded. That streak is probably going to end today.

When we begin moving again, Rai and Nairo run alongside, eyes on the trees and hands engulfed in flames. Etaro is stationed between two of the wagons, ready to deflect the next round of arrows.

“Soldiers to the west,” Tessen says from the wagson’s open door. “Approaching fast.”

Sanii and I, running behind the wagon, relay the warning. The desosa inside my ward shivers as every single member of my squad draws on it at once.

“Where are they, Tessen?”

“Almost in range, but spread farther than we expected.”

“We knew we might not get them all.” And if they’re carrying the weapons from Mushokeiji, the trap won’t last long without me there to reinforce it. But I can’t see anything beyond the first line of trees. “Say when, Tessen.”

He nods, eyes closed to listen to the incoming enemy.

Rai and Nairo shoot jets of flames into the trees, trying to force the tyatsu to change direction, keep them from spreading out too far. Shouts. Orders issued in Ryogan.

“Incoming!” I scream in Itagamin.

Another volley of arrows falls on the caravan, their aim directed by the soldiers on the ground. This time, five of them break through. I’m protecting too much space. Too many people. I can’t keep the layers in place over it all.

“Khya, switch!”

I slide to a stop, eyes closed. Natani is by my side, his hand on my shoulder and an extra rush of energy flowing into my body. Using it, I activate the wardstones we hid along the road and brace myself.

Impacts. Shouts. Sparks.

The tyatsu are trapped, stuck inside a ward strong enough to stop almost anything. Almost anything. But the moment I bring up the trap, I lose focus. For an instant. A second. It’s enough.

Arrows get through. An animal bellows in pain. Someone screams.

I bring the wards back, but whatever damage is done, is done. Ordering the others to watch the sky for another attack, I run toward the trapped tyatsu. The chances of this working aren’t great—the chances of it working on my squad wouldn’t be—but this is the only way out without blood.

They brandish weapons and scream insults, more than half of which I don’t understand.

“Flames, Rai,” I murmur in Itagamin.

As soon as the sparks surrounding her hands turn into a column of fire. The tyatsu scramble back, eyes wide with fear. One of them runs so far back he slams into the opposite wall of the ward. There are scattered mutterings of, “Akukeiji. Akukeiji.”

“Evil mage,” Soanashalo’a translates for us.

“Oh good,” Rai intones in Itagamin. “At least they don’t have the wrong idea about us.”

“Listen!” I project my voice over theirs. It takes two more bellows before they shut their mouths. “I don’t know what you’ve been told, but we’re not here to hurt you.”

They stir and protest. I hold my hand up and wait until they settle. “We’re not here to hurt you, and we don’t want to, but we will. You’ve been chasing us since we got here, and I will kill you before I let you hurt us.”

“Then kill us, akukeiji,” the eldest says, spitting on the ground near the edge of the ward.

Oh yes. This is going to end so well. “Return to your leader and tell him to believe Osshi’s story. Danger is approaching, and when it lands, it will sweep you out to sea and then happily watch you drown.”

The one who spoke goes still; the others rail, yelling threats.

“Ask your leader. He knows.” I stare down the man at the center of the group, the one I think is in charge. “Your ancestors tried to exile the bobasu to a rock in the middle of the ocean. They sent a single ship and thought that’d be enough to hold the man who found a way to defy your Kaisubeh. It wasn’t. Varan survived, escaped, and now he’s returning with an army at his back. They could destroy an entire town in a day, raze it to the ground, and nothing you’re capable of will stop them.”

“We stopped the bobasu before.” The leader says it, but his eyes and weight shift.

Rai raises her eyebrows. “Did you not hear her say the word ‘army’?”

“There are thousands of warrior-mages crossing the southern ocean right now. Only ten of them are your bobasu.” I look away from the leader to scan the faces of the others. “I don’t care how powerful your stone weapons are, you don’t have enough. You can’t make enough, not in the time you have left. Even if you did have the time, you don’t have enough stone.”

“You’ve trapped us. You’re trying to trick us.”

“Why?” I want to reach through the ward and smack them with the flat of my sword. “All we’re trying to do is save your lives. And the lives of every person you’ve ever known.”

“Khya!” Tessen shouts in Itagamin from the caravan. “Time’s up!”

“Call your men off.” I hold the officer’s gaze, hoping he’ll listen. “If they attack, we’ll fight. They’ll die.”

I don’t wait for an answer. I turn and run back to the wagons.

More arrows fall, almost none of them the spelled, stone-tipped ones that rip through magic. It makes it easier to maintain my wards and it means they’re conserving their most powerful weapons for when they’re sure they have a shot. But it also proves they’re not giving up.

One of my wards shudders, something powerful smashing against it. I look that direction as I leap into the wagon, feeding more desosa into the trap.

“Most of the soldiers on the hill are the archers,” Tessen says, tension in his tone. “They’re closing in from the northeast, Khya.”

“Guess your rousing speech didn’t work,” Rai mutters. “Time to run?”

“Miari? Natani?” I call their names out the door. “On Tessen’s mark!”

They call back a confirmation and then I climb up to the roof. Tessen follows.

There’s an arch to the roof, but it’s gentle, and it makes it easy to crouch in the center holding on to one of the two pieces of wood running parallel down the length of the wagon. They usually hold extra cargo, giving the hanaeuu we’la maninaio a place to tie down crates and boxes, but now they keep us on the wagon as it bounces and shakes.

“I really wanted them to stop following us,” I whisper.

“I know.” He smiles sadly, but his eyes are on the road behind us. “But if you thought that was going to happen, we wouldn’t have made this part of the plan in the first place.”

It’s true, and it’s not the first time I’ve killed someone. It won’t even be the first time I’ve killed a Ryogan. What it will be is the first time I have ever crafted a plan and given an order that will end five or a dozen or fifty lives. We won’t even know. I might never know.

When Tessen shouts, “In position!” though, I don’t hesitate to follow that with an order.

The road passes through a hill, a tunnel carved through dirt and rock. As soon as we’re out the other side, Natani gives Miari the power she needs to collapse it behind us.

Rumbling stone from the mountain blends with the thunder overhead. Shouts echo out from inside, warnings called down their line. Screams. Then, with a rippling shudder and the sound of a rockslide, the entire hill begins to cave in.

Tessen and I watch the Ryogans die from the top of a hanaeuu we’la maninaio wagon.

Only after we lose sight of the crumbled, broken hill do I swing down from the roof and walk inside the wagon. Zonna is sitting on the bed with Nairo, and there’s blood on Nairo’s sleeve. My throat clenches. “Status?”

“Other than the wound Zonna’s fixing, we don’t know.” Sanii stands by the window, arms crossed and expression pinched. “It’s not over yet. Not until Lo’a says we’re safe.”

And that won’t be for several miles. Soanashalo’a planned a route that balanced speed and secrecy. Our plans and the Ryogans’ deaths will be for nothing if we let them catch up to us and have to fight our way out again.

“If Osshi wasn’t in trouble with his leadership before today, he almost certainly will be now,” Nairo says as he changes into clothes without bloodstains and holes. “Even if they do believe what Khya told them, I wouldn’t be surprised if they think he set them up to fail.”

Then Etaro clears eir throat. “How many do we think died?”

“I don’t know. More than should have, considering we warned them.” I’m holding on to that fact, and hoping at least one person from the squad I spoke to is left alive to remember it. That was one of the reasons we trapped them in the wards. Hopefully those traps held long enough to keep them out of the tunnel and alive.

Our trail twists and turns, but with Soanashalo’a guiding our three-wagon caravan and Tessen watching for pursuit, we make it to a clearing, safe for the moment.

When we finally stop running, when Tessen is as sure as he can be that we’ve lost them in the forest and that the rain will have all but erased the signs of our passage, I ease out of the wagon to see the damage for myself.

One wheel broken, but it had been quickly fixed while I talked to the Ryogan squad.

One of my people injured, Nairo bleeding through the hastily secured bandage on his arm, but Zonna healed that quickly as soon as they got back in the wagon.

One ukaiahana’lona dead, the massive beast shot twice in the moment my wards failed.

One of the hanaeuu we’la maninaio dead, shot through the throat in the same moment.

The rest of us made it through, and right now that’s more than enough for me because what I told the Ryogan officer is true.

The worst is yet to come.