Fifth moon, night, day forty-three of the siege
Jewellery district, Third Circle, Rilporin, Wheat Lands
‘West is best!’ Tara bellowed as she sprinted up the King’s Way towards the closing gate into Fourth Circle. ‘Friendlies. Don’t close the fucking gate!’
Tara and her companions put on a last desperate spurt of speed as arrows whickered past them from behind. They were still twenty strides out when the gate slammed shut, trapping them in Third with the enemy. ‘Mother … fucker,’ she panted. ‘Roger?’
The lieutenant didn’t even pause, dashing past the closed gate and dodging into an alley so narrow Tara barked her elbow against the stone as she followed him in, Ash labouring behind.
The air in Third was thick with smoke, and Tara’s lungs pumped for air. Despite herself, her legs were slowing and Roger was a mere shadow ahead. She tried to force her legs faster, but they simply wouldn’t respond, and less than a minute later Roger burst out of the end of the alley. A second after that he was punched off his feet by a flight of arrows, vanishing out of sight.
Tara skidded to a halt, Ash crashing into her back and sending them both on to the hard-packed dirt and rotting vegetable scraps. Then Ash’s hand found her face and tapped twice, and then twice again – don’t move.
Arrows clattered overhead, loosed blind into the alley, and Tara just closed her eyes and tried to suck air into her lungs, bruised with effort, crushed by Ash’s weight. After what felt like an hour, he slid slowly to the side and then up the wall, keeping to the darkest shadow. Tara waited some more, in case his movement triggered a challenge, and then rose next to him.
‘Roger,’ she whispered, but she didn’t go to look. Mireces in front, Mireces behind. What were their choices?
A soft grating had them both whirling away from the wall, weapons rasping into hands. Yellow eyes and a feral grin met their disbelieving stares. ‘You coming in?’ Crys breathed and they piled through the door in such haste they nearly went down again in a tangle of limbs. Crys slid shut the door and held a finger to his lips, a finger that was batted away and replaced with Ash’s mouth for such a length of time that Tara felt herself begin to blush.
She turned her back on them and saw another figure huddled against the far wall, a man she vaguely recognised. He was so gaunt and haggard she couldn’t put a name to his face, and he had no weapons, so she ignored him and crept to a broken shutter on the opposite side of the room and peeked out. The street looked empty.
A hand tapped her shoulder and Crys gave her a swift hug. ‘How are you?’ he asked. His eyes were still glowing and Tara felt her stomach cramp with awe.
‘Well, Lord,’ she said, ducking her head, feeling faintly ridiculous – this was Crys! – and yet unable to do otherwise.
The corner of Crys’s mouth twitched. ‘None of that shit,’ he said. ‘You remember Dom.’
Tara blinked and squinted at the hunched figure again. Then she let out a low, breathy whistle. ‘Wow. Right, let’s get back to the others.’
‘None of us are going back to the Rank,’ Crys said as Ash hugged Dom. ‘Me and the calestar and Ash are going south for reinforcements. You can’t come.’
‘We are?’ Ash asked, surprised.
‘I can’t?’ Tara said. Her eyebrows rose. ‘We’ve been looking for you for hours. We came out here, risked our lives and lost men, to find you and get you back to the Rank safely. Now you’re telling me you’re not only deserting, but that I’m not allowed to desert with you?’
‘I need you here, and it’s not going to be easy.’
‘Defences never are,’ Tara said shortly, folding her arms.
‘The city’s lost. The defenders will be dead, surrendered or fled by dawn. But I need you here, afterwards. I need you to do something for me.’
Tara blinked rapidly, her eyes sore. ‘Is this a fellow officer giving me an order, or …’
‘Not the officer,’ Crys said softly. ‘The other one.’
Shit.
He handed her a bundle of cloth, and when she shook it out she coughed a laugh. ‘A gown? I have two questions for you. One: have you ever seen me in skirts? The answer’s no. And two: how do I fight in a dress?’
Crys’s face was solemn; the other occupants of the room listened intently. ‘The Mireces know there are female Wolves, but they don’t know about you or your training, your ability to plan. Skerris might, but he’s never met you; you have no face for him to recognise. There are going to be hostages when this is over, and more than that …’
Tara looked at the dress again and licked sweat from her upper lip. ‘You want me to kill Corvus.’
‘Yes. And the Blessed One.’
Infiltrate the Mireces and kill the two most well-guarded and important figures in their army. Cut the head off the snake – or try to.
‘You’re the god; you do it.’
She was shocked she’d said it aloud, but Crys smiled. His eyes – the Fox God’s eyes – were full of faith. She was the only one who could do this. He had His reasons and He’d chosen her. She appreciated His belief, but even so, she couldn’t stop her hands from crushing the gown.
‘What about those hostages?’
Crys blinked. ‘What about them?’
‘If I’m going in, I may as well do everything I can before they take me down, because I think we both know I don’t get out of this pretty. So I’ll free any hostages they have – as you said, there’re bound to have some – before I ghost Corvus and the woman. Their deaths should give the rest the distraction they need to get out.’
‘I don’t think this is a good idea,’ Ash murmured. ‘One woman, alone in that nest of vipers …’
Tara’s face twisted with sudden rage that she knew was a thin veneer over gut-loosening terror, but even so Ash took a shocked pace backwards.
‘Fuck you, Bowman. Don’t preach to me about the dangers of being a woman in the Mireces’ world, because you have zero idea how it feels to be a woman in a Rank, surrounded by men who want to fuck you, not because you’re pretty, but just because they haven’t seen tits in a year and they think what they want is more important than what I want. That they have the right to take what they like, and my only right is to give it to them. I know exactly what I’m going to be up against and I know exactly what it is I might have to do.’
Tara sucked in a deep breath, shocked at herself but thrumming with energy. ‘I understand the risks and accept the likely outcome. I choose what happens to me, and when I can’t choose, I fight. Right now, I choose to accept this task because my friend and fellow officer – and Lord – asks me to.’
Ash looked stricken, and Tara poked him in the chest before he could speak again and undermine her courage any further. ‘And don’t ever underestimate me because of my gender, Wolf. Women have got more strength than you’d know what to do with. If this is how we fight these bastards, then this is how we fight.’
‘I’m a Wolf,’ he protested weakly, ‘I’ve been taught by women and knocked on my arse by women all my life. I’d never think you incapable. I just don’t think you should be alone.’
‘Like He said, I’m the only one they won’t suspect, so I’m the only choice.’
Crys nodded his head once and Tara gathered the gown and backed away across the room, slipped through the door into the long kitchen and pressed her back against it. Nausea sloshed in her gut. What have I done? What the living fuck have I just agreed to?
‘Gods alive,’ she heard Ash mutter. ‘The woman’s a fucking menace.’
Crys laughed, low, and Tara felt a little strength return to her legs. A flicker of a smile creased her face as she began to unbuckle her armour.
‘That she is, love,’ Crys – or the Fox God – said. ‘That she is.’ He laughed again. ‘If anyone can do it, she can. Corvus is fucked. Best of all he doesn’t even know it.’