“Yes, Mira,” she lied. It grew easier and easier. “I’m home now, and everything will be all right.”
Fei Minh smiled and caught a yawn with one delicate hand. “It’s been a long time since I stayed up till dawn. Shall we make some tea and see if we can manage?”
Their fragile conviviality lasted through tea and breakfast. Mau arrived just in time to save the day’s bread from Zhirin’s inexpert baking; if she was disconcerted to find her cousins giggling and silly from lack of sleep, she hid it well.
The respite ended with a messenger’s knock less than an hour before the dawn bells. Fei Minh answered the door, but Zhirin heard enough of the murmured conversation to send her heart to the bottom of her stomach. The Yhan Ti was leaving dock.
A moment later her mirror—carefully replaced after she’d bathed and changed—shivered in her pocket. She ducked into the hall to respond, but by the time she pulled it out the bronze was empty and silent. She whispered Isyllt’s name, but there was no answer. A second time, and a third, and still nothing. Something was wrong.
“What is it?” Fei Minh asked when she returned to the kitchen.
She swallowed. No use in pretending any longer. “I have to go.”
She ignored her mother’s angry questions and demands as she tugged on her shoes. As she opened the door she paused and risked a backward glance. “I’m sorry. I’ll be back when I can.” If I can.
Isyllt woke to a sharp knock on the door and the jangle of her wards. The bed creaked as Adam leapt up; her skin prickled with the sudden absence of his warmth. She scrubbed gritty eyes, but it only made them ache more. It felt as if she’d only slept a few hours, and from the darkness beyond the shutters that was probably true. Sweat dampened her hair, pasted her undershirt to her skin, and her burned arm itched fiercely.
Adam eased the door open and Vienh slipped in, rain dripping from her oilcloak.
“The Yhan Ti is leaving port,” she said, “bound for Assar. Izzy’s ready to slip dock, and your friend Bashari is waiting on the Dog. Come on.”
Isyllt stumbled up, groping for her still-damp clothes while Adam tugged on his boots. It took her three tries to pick up her shirt and her hands shook as she fastened the buttons. If the saints were merciful, she could sleep on the ship.
The hall was dark, only one lamp by the staircase left burning. Isyllt dropped to the back of the line, pulling out her mirror. Zhirin was probably asleep. She whispered the girl’s name as they started down the stairs. An instant later, she heard a loud crack in the common room, followed by a heavy metallic clang. Adam paused and Isyllt nearly ran into him.
“What was that?”
A thunderclap shook the room, shivering the stairs and throwing them against the wall. She lost the spell and her grip on the mirror. Isyllt grabbed for the rail, gasped as she hit it with her bad hand, and fell. The rush of pain drove away the last fatigue-fog. Smoke billowed, reeking of gunpowder.
“Bombs!” Vienh shouted; her voice was distant and hollow through the ringing in Isyllt’s ears. “Out the back.”
Doors opened along the hall as they scrambled back, wary faces peering out. Another explosion echoed and someone screamed. Down the narrow stairs to the door behind the storerooms, but when Adam unbarred the door and flung it open a bullet shattered the wood inches from his shoulder.
Through the gloom of the rain-soaked alley, Isyllt saw a red handprint on the opposite wall. Vienh swore as they retreated from the door.
“Dai Tranh! It’s an ambush.”
Smoke eddied from the front of the bar, and orange light flickered at the end of the hall. Through the fire, or into the bullets.
“They’ll be waiting in front too,” Adam said, checking his pistol.
A shot cracked before she could answer. Isyllt ducked—in truth more a startled stumble—and saw a masked man crouching on the other side of the door. He fired again and Vienh slammed into her, knocking her down. Isyllt landed on hip and elbow, eyes blurring from the pain. Adam fired back and the man vanished.
They ducked into a storeroom and Isyllt called witchlight. Vienh gasped as she slouched against the wall. Red spooled down her right arm, feathering across her linen sleeve.
“Not bad,” she hissed as Isyllt reached for her. “Just grazed.”