to be sure and promptly jerked her hand away with a curse.
“Lead bullets. Bastards.” Isyllt shook her head. “They’re not Dai Tranh.”
Adam pulled out his mirror, used it to glance around the doorframe before he leaned out to shoot. “How do you know?”
“The Dai Tranh used copper bullets at the execution, even though they were shooting at mages. And they used rubies to blow up the other buildings, not powder grenades.”
“Can we solve this somewhere else?” Vienh snapped as she pressed a fold of sleeve against her wound.
Another blast shook the front of the bar; a lamp fell from its hook and shattered, splattering the floor with oil. The building would collapse on their heads soon. More shots sounded in the hall and someone screamed. Adam took another look through the mirror.
“They’re shooting anyone who comes down.”
Isyllt crept closer to the door. The air tasted of blood and smoke and approaching death. She risked a glance outside, saw a man’s sandaled foot and a thread of blood leaking across the floor. A bullet splintered the doorframe above her head and she jerked back inside. A moment later her ring chilled as the wounded man died.
“We’re going to make a break for it soon,” she said to Adam and Vienh, “but I’ll be distracted, so cover me.”
She reached into her ring, letting the cold wash away her fatigue and pain. Her magic crept out in icy tendrils, licking toward the corpse, oozing into his cooling flesh. It wasn’t something she liked to do—most people didn’t understand the difference between a demon and a corpse controlled by a necromancer, and didn’t care to learn the particulars before they started screaming. But this might be the best opportunity she had before the building came down.
Magic settled into dead flesh, save for the ruin of his chest and the lead ball lodged there. But she didn’t need his heart. She felt the body like a glove on ghostly hands. And like a glove, it moved when she flexed those hands. The man rose clumsily, driven by memory and will.
“Ancestors,” Vienh whispered.
A shot struck her stumbling shield and she flinched from the ghost of the impact, but the corpse only shuddered.
“Let’s go.”
Adam and Vienh fell in close behind her, in the dubious cover of the dead man. The walking dead discomfited even trained soldiers, and the assassin outside was no stauncher. He stumbled back with a cry as the bloody corpse staggered toward him, and fell with a gurgle as Adam’s bullet caught him in the throat.
Isyllt paused at the doorway, forcing more of her awareness into the body. Through rain and death-blurred eyes, she saw more people crouching on either end of the alley. Also masked, like no Dai Tranh she’d seen. A bullet flew past her puppet’s head; another hit his shoulder, splattering congealing blood.
To their left, the alley led to a narrow canal—to the right, the street. The light had paled from coal to iron. How long would Izzy wait for them, with Siddir already aboard?
“Take the left,” she told Adam. “Kill as many as you can, then get to the docks. Don’t wait for me.”
“What?”
“I’ll distract them. Find the stones and make sure Bashari doesn’t try to double-cross us. Come back and find me and then we can get the hell out of here.”
“And if you’re dead?”
“Then go back to Erisín and tell Kiril what’s happened. It will be his problem then.”
He balked a heartbeat longer than she expected him to. “Can you manage a distraction?”
Isyllt grinned, cold and sharp, and stroked her ring. “I think so.”
“I’ll find you.”
She nodded. “On my mark.” The dead man turned to the right and stumbled down the alley. Her ears still rang, but she heard the assassins’ frightened shouts and smiled. She reached deeper into the diamond, calling the cold till tendrils of mist writhed around her. “Ready—”
And she called the ghosts. They burst free like a whirlwind, faces ghastly and misshapen. Two flew shrieking toward the canal and the others turned right. A scream echoed down the alley.
“Go!”
Adam and Vienh bolted. A heartbeat later Isyllt stepped into the rain. Two of the killers broke and fled at the sight of the raging dead. One vanished toward the street, but a ghost caught the second and he fell, screams turning to choking gasps.
Deadly as they were, ghosts couldn’t stop bullets, but animating took more concentration than she cared to spend, and she wasn’t skilled enough to make her corpse-puppet truly dangerous. Isyllt let him