Three months after he’d fled Thelantis, Nox found himself looking down on his city with dread.

The question wasn’t whether there would be a trap so much as what form it would take. But they had no choice.

The only advantage Nox had was that he knew Thelantis as well as his own feathers. And he was less recognizable now. He was taller, his hair was different, and he knew he’d put on muscle—not that he’d spent time admiring himself in any ponds lately.

Well. Not much time, anyway.

Still, this was going to be very difficult. And if Twig was being held in the Eagles’ dungeons, it would be next to impossible.

“Breathe,” said Ellie, nudging him. “If I got out of there, Twig can too.”

They sat on a broad limb atop an oak outside the city walls, just far enough away to avoid being spotted by the high clan sentries. Gussie was using one of her inventions to scan the city, a tube of clay with a glass panel inserted in one end she called a farscope.

“What do you see?” Nox asked.

“It’s … weird. I can see Knock Street—still burned up, by the way. Doesn’t look like they’ve even tried rebuilding. The rest is quiet. Nobody hanging out in the streets, no performers in Center Square, no skyball matches or kids racing above the market. It’s like the city’s asleep.”

“Look over there.” Ellie pointed, her expression pained, toward the slums piling outside the city walls. From a distance, it looked like a heap of garbage, but Nox knew it was Rottown, the wretched place where anyone with wingrot was sent to suffer alone.

He blinked, realizing at once what Ellie meant.

Since they’d been gone, Rottown had more than doubled in size. It rivaled any of the districts of Thelantis now.

“It’s spreading faster than ever,” murmured Gussie, turning her farscope to the slums. “There must be a couple thousand people in there.”

Nox had a bad feeling as he took the farscope and had a look.

Hadn’t Ellie’s Goldwing friend said the king was going over the edge with paranoia? Thelantis followed the king’s moods and it certainly bent to his will. If the state of its streets was any indication, Garion was losing it. Nox had never seen it so quiet, the windows all shuttered and its people slinking from door to door as if afraid of being spotted.

“We better get moving,” he said. “It’ll be dark soon.”

“Wonderful,” sighed Gussie. “I love a good sewer crawl.”

“Sewer crawl?” echoed Ellie.

A few hours later, as he pushed open the grate below Knock Street for them to stumble out, Nox held back a laugh.

Ellie was boiling mad. She glared at him, shaking unidentifiable refuse from her shoes.

“Sewer crawl,” he explained.

“Never, ever, ever again, Nox—”

“Shh!” He popped a hand over her mouth. “You wanna skip over the whole rescue mission and go straight to the part where we get killed?”

Shoving his hand away, Ellie hissed, “Fine, Corncob.”

“Corncob?” Gussie snorted.

“Okay, shut it,” Nox said. “Let’s keep going.”

“What’s the plan?” asked Ellie. “Got any old friends around we could recruit?”

“None I’d trust now,” he sighed. His old boss, the Talon, was dead, and his thieving crew had likely split up to join the other crime rings still active in the city. But even if they hadn’t, Nox wouldn’t trust a single one of them beyond Gussie and Twig. There was a reward on his head large enough that it was almost worth turning himself in.

“We’re on our own,” he said. “Twig is almost certainly in the dungeons, which means we’ll have to infiltrate the palace first.”

“I can steal a Goldwing uniform,” said Gussie. “I’m tall enough to pass for one.”

And she had the right wings. Her Falcon feathers were the perfect disguise.

“If you go in first,” he said, “Ellie and I can cause a distraction in the city. Got any more smoke bombs?”

Gussie nodded and handed over a leather satchel. “Give me an hour, then smoke up the whole city. Start in the high clan district—they’ll turn out the whole guard if they think their precious nobles are in danger.”

“Good idea.”

They worked out the last few remaining wrinkles in the plan, then Gussie gave a farewell salute. She looked more nervous than Nox had ever seen her, and he hoped she’d be able to pull it off. Subterfuge had never been Gussie’s strength.

“If anything goes wrong …” she began.

“When do my plans ever go off less than perfectly?” asked Nox.

Gussie only frowned deeper. “Just be smart. I … care about you guys. You know that, right?”

Ellie and Nox exchanged surprised looks. This was not the Gussie they knew. Twig’s capture must have really rattled her.

“Sure,” said Nox. “We care about you too, Gus.”

When she’d flown off, he and Ellie slunk through the streets, walking rather than flying to avoid notice. In the time it had taken them to navigate the sewers and work out their plan, darkness had fallen, filling the streets with inky shadows. Even in Thelantis, people kept indoors at night in case of gargol attacks. They happened here much more rarely than outside the walls, but he wondered if that had changed, given the gargols’ new behavior patterns.

Minutes later, he saw he’d guessed right.

“Skies above,” breathed Ellie. “They took out the whole block.”

Nox counted six buildings torn open at the roofs. The debris still littered the street; the attack must have only been a day or two old.

“C’mon,” he whispered. “It’s a long walk to the upper districts.”

Nox made use of every secret alley, unlocked gate, and shadowed street he knew to get them through the various districts of Thelantis. It was easier than usual, with everyone locked in their houses. Even at this hour—halfway between midnight and dawn—there should have been folk about, setting up stalls, getting a start on baking the day’s bread, sweeping the streets. But the only people they spotted were guards, most of whom occupied the rooftops.

“Curfew, I bet,” he whispered as they flittered up and over the wall separating the middle district from the upper. “The way those guards are scanning the streets—it’s people they’re watching for, not gargols.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “Something’s going on here. I don’t like it one bit.”

The streets in the upper district were wider and more difficult to navigate unseen. They had to go through gardens instead, making use of the ample green space the nobility kept to show off their fortunes. Up here, a square wingspan of grass cost more than a whole building in the lower districts.

After they’d traveled a few streets, Nox stopped in a walled garden. Beyond it, on a quiet dead end, several enormous houses sat in silence. A few oil lamps burned in their windows and along the street, and no one stirred.

“Good a place as any,” Nox said. He checked the tiny sandglass Gussie had left them to keep time. “It’s almost been an hour. Let’s make some smoke.”

Ellie froze. “Did you hear something?”

Nox looked up—just as a dozen shapes dropped out of the sky and landed all around them on a flurry of wings.

“Ellie! Fly!” He bolted, but three Goldwing knights converged on him at once. He only made it two steps before their hands clamped on his arms. He tried to see if Ellie had gotten away, and heard the telltale thwack of her lockstave hitting flesh.

“Yow!” yelled a knight. “Little brat! Give me that thing!”

“Ellie!” Nox shouted. “Get out of—mmf!”

One of the knights drove a knee into Nox’s stomach. He doubled over, gasping, as they wrenched his hands behind his back and bound them. He finally glimpsed Ellie, saw her thrashing as she too was tied up, her knife and lockstave pulled away.

“H-how …” he groaned.

It shouldn’t have happened this quickly. A trap would have been set nearer to the palace—not this random street. The Goldwings couldn’t have known …

His heart fell.

Gussie.

“What did you do to our friend?” he wheezed.

“What, the Falcon girl?” asked the knight now binding Nox’s wings. “We gave her a nice cup of tea and cinnamon cake. She’s resting easy in the palace kitchens, last I heard.”

“Liar!”

“He’s telling the truth,” said a solemn voice. Nox looked up into the face of Sir Aglassine, the Goldwing commander. Every criminal in the city knew the Hawk woman by sight and reputation; her ruthlessness had condemned many a good thief to the gallows. “Agustina Berel has been working for us for weeks.”

“Wh-what?”

Ignoring him, the captain flicked a hand through the air. “Take them both to the dungeons. The king has already ordered their execution. It will be held at dawn.”

When she looked at Nox, he thought there might be a tiny trace of pity in her stern eyes. “You have only a few hours left, boy. Use them to dwell on happier memories. In other words … don’t waste them trying to escape.”