Aina braced herself, knowing she’d have to take a hit, and lifted her blowgun. As she fired out the first dart, a bullet struck her upper arm. Teo shot the middle Jackal between the eyes as Aina shot a dart into the neck of the last one.
As soon as he collapsed, she leaned against the wall, clutching her arm and hissing as a dull, throbbing pain spread down her arm and along her chest. Glancing down, her vision blurring, she tried to squeeze her hand into a fist, but the fingers wouldn’t move.
“Aina,” Teo said, placing his fingers gingerly on her arm. A crease formed on his forehead as he pulled bandages from the pack strung over his back. Her arm shook on its own and her head spun, suddenly dizzy.
“We should keep going,” she said through gritted teeth.
But Teo ignored her, removing the bullet and bandaging the wound. She watched him, her nerves settling and the rapid beat of her pulse slowing as she did. Not long ago, Kohl had taken care of a bullet wound for her too. But this was so different from Kohl. When Teo touched her, his fingers were soft and gentle enough that she hardly felt them. Or maybe it was the numbing sensation spreading through her arm.
When Teo finished bandaging her wound, she grabbed his hand with her other hand, twining their fingers together. The ship fell quiet around them, so she could almost pretend no more danger would find them.
“I’m not leaving you,” he said, smiling as he squeezed her hand. Her heart swelled, first with warmth at his words and then with sadness—she’d fought alongside him so many times, yet not until now did she really fear for him, even though she was the one injured. Like with the Inosen being targeted because of her choice to use magic, her friends were now all on this ship because she and Kohl had planned it.
As if reading her mind, Teo placed a hand on her chin so she would meet his eyes, and said, “We can still win this.”
“I know,” she said, her voice shaky. “But there are more Jackals than I expected.”
“There are fifty total, right?”
“At the piers,” she said. “I don’t think that number included however many people the smuggler has on this ship.”
“Let’s get moving, then.”
There was a strain in his voice as he spoke, anticipating—as she did—how much fighting still lay ahead of them. But the only option was to keep moving forward, and hope that Raurie, Lill, and Ryuu weren’t facing as much difficulty on their part of the ship.
They traversed the next two halls, peering into every room for some sign of the smuggler, and finally found him in an office close to the wheelhouse. He was turned away from them, rummaging through a drawer. Keeping her movements as quiet as she could, Aina lifted her blowgun, fired a dart into his neck, and pulled the door closed behind her. A moment passed, and then the smuggler shouted from within and began yanking on the door to open it, but Aina and Teo managed to hold it shut. Soon after, the man’s grip relinquished, Aina nodded to Teo, and they pushed open the door.
The smuggler knelt on the floor, weak and shaking as the poison worked through him. Knowing he didn’t have long, she grabbed him and pinned him to the floor with her knife at his throat. He coughed up blood and his eyes widened at the sight of the blade against his skin. “I have an antidote,” she whispered, and like a puppet, he slackened in her arms, ready to do anything she said. “All your pain will go away. But you have to tell me: How many men have you brought in to fight for Bautix? And where are the weapons? Speak fast or the poison will kill you.”
The words tumbled out, so fast she could barely catch them all. “All I do is bring in the people he’s hiring from Kaiyan, all right?”
“And what about the weapons?” she asked.
Sweat covered his skin, making her blade slide easily over his throat. His eyes bulged as he marked its progress.
“I have those too. I get them in Duroz, then I pick up the hired men from Kaiyan. They’re on the bottom floor of the ship, and when they get to the city, they’re led through the mine tunnels to wherever Bautix is storing them. I don’t know where he puts them after that or what he’s planning to do with them. The man’s so desperate, he practically threw kors at me, but he’s not stupid—he doesn’t tell me anything more.”
“Good to know,” Aina whispered as she swept her knife across his throat. “You won’t be a problem anymore.”
As his blood spilled over the floor, Teo grimaced. “You didn’t really have an antidote, did you?”
Shrugging, Aina said, “I told him his pain would go away. Come on.”
They left the room and turned down the next hall, stepping over the bodies of the Jackals they’d killed. When they reached a staircase, they raced down two sets of stairs, looking in each room they passed for a sign of the weapons or for any glimpse of Ryuu, Raurie, and Lill.
But as they rounded a corner, a Jackal met them, his knife striking out. Teo grunted and doubled over as the blade thrust through his side. Aina shoved the Jackal back and punched him in the jaw—his head slammed off the wall, and before he could recover, she cut his throat. The moment he collapsed, his blood slicking the floor, Aina dropped to her knees at Teo’s side.
“I’m fine,” Teo said, his breath hitching. “We need to find the weapons, Aina.”
Blood seeped from his wound, and he tried to staunch it by pressing his hand on it. Sweat dotted his forehead and his next few breaths came shallow. She withdrew more bandages from the pack he carried and used some of the fabric to press down on the wound.
She swallowed hard, her throat dry. Her left arm had gone nearly numb, the fingers of that hand stiff when she tried to move them. Neither of them would last much longer if the Jackals found them again. Her confidence began to slip away like water from cupped hands and she imagined them failing, shot to death on this ship, Bautix taking over the Tower.
“Let’s keep moving,” she whispered after she’d wrapped bandages around him as well as she could.
As they continued onward, the scent of smoke grew in the air. Her breath caught in her throat as she remembered the Dom burning before her, the bombings through the city shaking the earth. She gripped Teo’s sleeve with the stiff fingers of her left hand. Pulling him close, she asked, “Do you hear that?”
Something crackled nearby, a sound that had grown familiar: the spark of flames preparing to spread. Her eyes flicked to the wooden walls around them and she pictured them burning, melting to charred husks and burying her and Teo here. This place would be devoured in minutes if there were a fire on the ship.
She and Teo exchanged a panicked glance, then looked down the hall to see a door ajar. The hallway curved around a corner at the end. Straining her ears, she heard no footsteps or other signs that Ryuu, Raurie, or Lill might be close. There was only the faint crackling noise coming from somewhere nearby, and the growing scent of smoke in the air.
“Let’s check that room, then get out of here,” she said, then coughed on the smoke. “If there’s a fire, that’ll take care of the weapons better than we could.”
As they moved toward the room, she wondered why the Jackals would set their own ship on fire—unless they’d already gotten the weapons off and her plan had failed. She shook away the thought, not even wanting to consider it.
But when they entered the room, a few crates stood scattered, with one flickering lamp illuminating them. She quickly knelt in front of one. Lifting the lid, she almost laughed in relief. Grenades and guns stared up at her.
“Found it,” she said, turning to look at Teo. He leaned against the wall, his hand still pressing down on his wound. His face had paled slightly, and instead of replying, he bit his lip and nodded.
“Teo,” she said, going to him. “Let’s grab as many of the weapons as we can—the fire will take care of the rest.” She fumbled for a diamond in the pouch at her belt, the fingers of her left hand shaking as she withdrew it. “I’ll try to stop the blood flow.”
She murmured a quick prayer to the Mothers. Please let me do this. Please help Teo.
But before she could draw a cut on her arm, the door swung closed. A bolt latched in place. A Jackal’s smirking face appeared in the slit of a window, then vanished.
“Aina, there’s…” Teo’s voice faded, too weak to finish the sentence, but he pointed toward the floor next to the crate.
A sheen of liquid had gathered in a puddle on the ground. Heart pounding somewhere in her throat, Aina peered around the crate. Two smashed vials lay on the ground, broken bits of glass interspersed in the spilled liquid—a liquid that looked far too familiar. Her breath caught in her throat, but she still breathed in the scent, a scent she knew better than any other: the acrid rust-and-copper scent of Kosín.
“The poison.”
She’d hardly breathed out the words when Teo collapsed next to her.